Why, week after week, are the contestants unable to serve dinner on time? How can they expect to run a restaurant when they can’t master a skill every cook at Denny’s has?
Is risotto hard to make? I remember last season, someone was always screwing up when cooking risotto.
I wouldn’t say it’s hard to make, but a classic risotto is labor-intensive. You very slowly add a bit of broth to the arborio rice in the pot, and stir until the broth is absorbed. Then add a bit more broth, stir, repeat until the rice will not absorb any more broth. This not only gets a lot of flavor into the rice but also “beats up” the very starchy short grains of rice and makes it very creamy and rich through releasing that extra starch from the outside of the grains. At home, this can take 15-20 minutes of near-constant attention for me to make this process happen. I can step away to put something else in the oven, stir something else, etc., but I have to always remember to quickly return to the rice to give it a good stir and add more broth if it’s ready for it.
Now they may or may not use that exact method in Hell’s Kitchen, but even if all the broth goes in first, there’s bound to be a lot of stirring to get the best creaminess.
This is why burning the rice was so bad, because it takes so long to get a risotto made under standard methods, and also because this means someone was definitely not paying attention to the rice. In this case, it sounds like two people weren’t paying any attention since it was on the wrong station for an hour, and I’d think I’d notice if someone else’s pot was there for that long.
Because competence is only number 4 or 5 on the list of things the producers are selecting for when interviewing potential contestants.
It’s also because of Ramsay. Different foods, obviously, take different amounts of time to cook. So, in a lot of kitchens, if something gets done early, it stays in the kitchen in a warmer until everything else is done. Ramsay doesn’t believe in that, though, because that’s not that good for the food. So, in Ramsay’s kitchens, and on the show, the food all has to get done at the same time. This requires an enormous amount of coordination between the people in the kitchen, and if they don’t cooperate or communicate well, or if one of the dishes gets screwed up, it can cause major delays, because the whole order is now ruined and has to be redone.
No its not because of Ramsey, that’s the way food is properly prepared and served.
You can make the best Foo Foo ala Muku in the world but that doesn’t mean shit if you can’t remember what’s been ordered, what needs to drop when, time your stuff as well as everyone elses, and get it all (the whole table) plated and out the door at the same time.
A Dennys might have stuff sitting under a warming lamp waiting for the rest of an order but typically not. Lots of $10 an hour cooks are masters of timing and not good at much else.
It all looks a little contrived. It’s like a show where the contestants want to be car mechanics and they all just started beating the engine with hammers.
They’re going to film a TV series in a Firestone?
I’ve long suspected that the contestants are slightly sabotaged and the real penalty comes from them not noticing the stuff the Ramsay’s sous chefs are doing behind the scenes to increase difficulty and create stress.
All things being equal, if I were ever to be on that show, the “dish” that I served Ramsay on the first episode would be beef wellington and risotto. I’d be practicing those two things until my arms fell off before heading off into his kitchen.
It’s also easy to overcook (like pasta), so you have to be very careful to get the optimum texture, cooked through, but slightly al dente; creamy, but not too soupy or pasty. I’ve had a lot of sub-par risotto at decent restaurants and, when checking out an Italian restaurant I’ve never been to, it’s a dish I always order as a yardstick.
A big part of the skill in properly managing a kitchen is timing the food so everything comes out at the correct time. With some exceptions, you shouldn’t be holding anything for long periods of time, and I agree with Ramsay’s method. I’ve worked in a high-end professional kitchen (as a kitchen porter) and one of the most amazing things to watch was the delicate ballet of chef, sous chef, commis chef, saucier, etc., all coming together to bring the various courses together and out at exactly the right time.
I even had a stint as a “guest chef” in a pub in Budapest, and it was essential for me to take into account “different foods, different times,” so when I got an order for four different plates at a single table, I very much had to think about what order and exactly when to do the dishes, so that table will be served at exactly the same time. And this was with only me cooking. Imagine coordinating a bunch of other people together, and there’s lots of opportunity for problems.
Cooks at Denny’s don’t have a guy screaming at them, throwing food at them, and breaking plates near them while calling them a bunch of donkeys.
This show went down three or four notches for me after seeing some of Ramsay’s other shows and finding out that he is nowhere near like this in real life. It is all for show…
Only because they’ve never come to my table.
I don’t know much about this show except it features a jerk in the kitchen. What’s it about? Are the contestants already cooks? Are they just trainees? Or total newbs?
There was an article not too long ago about how the contestants in these reality shows don’t get a lot of sleep. Many of the episodes are taped back-to-back. I think that is part of what is going on in Hell’s Kitchen. Throw in some pressure from Ramsey, a little sabotage, some unfamiliar dishes, a lack of sleep and , vee-ola, instant fluster-cuck.
Found a cite.
The show went down a bit for me too after seeing many episodes of “Kitchen Nightmare” and “The f Word”. Especially after watching episodes of “The f Word” when Ramsey is interacting with his wife and kids.
Hell’s Kitchen really plays up the drama and the yelling on purpose. I guess they thought us USA-nians wouldn’t be interested if there were no violence/drama. I’ve noticed several times when Ramsey kicks the trash cans that they are empty so they are obviously placed there just so he can kick them for the camera.
All that said I love the show. For me the show is about the drama and then the contests/punishments and then the cooks and the food last.
Definitely, but it seems to have been taken to a bizarre extreme with this show, to the point where the focus is almost entirely off the food. I wouldn’t really want to eat anything made by this bunch. It may all be creative editing/scripting, but it seems like every single episode has had everyone screwing up almost everything, except for one random person who gets mildly praised for not having been a complete disaster. You don’t get the impression there’s even one person there who could actually run a kitchen, and it makes it less fun to watch.
For example, on Masterchef (a less shouty BBC show which runs more of a knockout tournament format) you get the impression in the final stages that despite being amateurs they’re all really good cooks, and that the people who make the final really deserve it. You want to find out what they’re cooking, and you really want to eat it, for the most part. This may be just as false an impression, but at least you’ve got something to root for beyond a lack of fingers in the pancetta.
I quite like Ramsay’s shows even if he is an absolutely massive knob, but this one is so contrived it’s almost unwatchable. It’s like watching the world’s worst kindergarten teacher swearing at the world’s stupidest toddlers.
(Actually, that sounds kinda fun…)
They’re a mix - everything from accomplished housewives on up to executive chefs.
Generally, most of the contestants are an assortment of line cooks, caterers and similar people that are already cooking professionally to some extent.
Gordon hates self-important executive chefs. Even though the point of the program is to pick an XC for his restaurant, woe upon anyone who comes on the show and says “I’m an executive chef!”
By comparison, he’s been known to lavish all sorts of praise on the housewives. I recall on a previous series of HK, a competitor made a wonderful chicken soup in a “bare pantry” or “leftovers” challenge. Plain, simple, but amazing. Unfortunately, they generally don’t have the chops to survive the pressure cooker known as a commercial kitchen and get bumped off pretty quickly.
I Read Somewhere that homemade risotto is nearly always better than restaurant risotto for this reason. Restaurant cooks have too many balls in the air to hover over a risotto for 15 minutes, so they don’t get the texture right, even in good restaurants.
Bwahahahah. 
That’s the most apt description of it I’ve read yet. Mad props, Badger.
As I understand it, the classic way to organize a restaurant kitchen is called brigade de cuisine and it’s a very clearly defined hierarchy with each person in a specific role. (There’s a scene in the movie Ratatouille where they describe this system.) If Ramsay organized the contestants in this manner, things would go smoothly. But he doesn’t and partly because that would be boring television.