Someone made the snarky comment that Food Network is porn for fat people. While I think that’s a little rude, it’s not far off the mark… a more accurate way to say it would be porn for food freaks, not all of whom are fat by any means.
I know I really enjoy a lot of food shows, but I’m not really sure I can explain why. I pretty much never watch any of the straghtforward recipe shows with names at the helm, it’s generally how-its-made (Unwrapped) or competition (Next FN Star, Chopped, Ultimate Recipe) or the science of food (Good Eats, Food Detectives).
The only show I regularly watch because I really believe the recipes are going to rock and I’m going to learn something that will really improve my cooking is Amerca’s Test Kitchen on PBS - I think Cook’s Illustrated is all that and then some. The most reliable cookbook I’ve ever owned is The Best Recipe, by the editors of CI, and they are. Absolutely fantastic; the only time it isn’t is when it’s a matter of starting preference - like I prefer a crisp cookie to a soft one, that sort of thing.
I love Alton Brown’s information, but his general preferences are very different from mine and I don’t find myself interested in many of his actual recipes.
And of course, Iron Chef - The original lives in its own special universe and I don’t know that it has that much to do with food.
The shows you could not pay me to watch:
Anything with Emeril Lagasse or Rachel Ray. That would be torture. Both of them curl my toes.
Oh, and Bobby Flay… .I HATE BOBBY FLAY. The only reason I watch Throwdown is to see him lose. GOD I hate that guy. Smug, obnoxious… of course, the first time I ever heard of him was when he jumped on his cutting board and offended the hell outta Morimoto during Iron Chef.
Has anyone ever eaten at his restaurants? Are they any good?
My taste in cooking shows runs to the PBS end of the spectrum. I *love *Lydia Bastianich and Jamie Oliver, and like you, love America’s Test Kitchen and despise Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse. I also despise Paula Dean and her screechy southern accent and mega-fattening recipes.
I love Italian and Mediterranean recipes, as I like to try to cook healthily and take advantage of the bay area’s awesome produce and farmer’s markets.
Oh, yeah, I also like Rick Bayless’s show and credit him for making it possible for me to make Mexican dishes better than those that I eat at Mexican restaurants.
I recommend you read the cover story from yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine. It’s by Michael Pollan and is called Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch. It’s about exactly this question; why do we like to watch food shows, when we’re not watching shows about people doing other household chores and why did food shows change from the instructional stuff pioneered by Julia Child to the spectator sport of Iron Chef.
I don’t watch the shows for the recipes. I can’t get most of the ingredients anyway (especially fresh herbs and exotic spices and seafood and unusual veggies), but I love to watch people prepare food and enjoy it. Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives works for me. It’s the only one I watch. I’d love his job.
Count me as one who loves to cook but can’t get interested at all in watching shows about other people cooking, unless it’s a competition show like Top Chef, Top Chef Masters, Iron Chef, or occasionally Throwdown (but I can’t stand Next Food Network Star.) I would much rather look at a photo of a finished dish in a cookbook or magazine and say “Yeah, I want to eat that” and go make it.
I was enamored for a short while with Paula Deen, actually, but mostly for her devil-may-care-about-my-waistline-because-cooking-and-eating-yummy-stuff-makes-me-happy attitude. Now I’m not interested anymore.
I think Alton Brown’s brilliant, but he’s a little too hyperactive for me- watching his show actually makes me anxious.
If it’s not about a dish or technique I’m really interested in learning about, I just can’t be bothered.
I mostly like the food challenges he competes in, but he also seems like a nice enough guy and he’s pretty good interacting with the chefs/cooks at the local restaurants.
I still can’t believe the 12 Egg, chili filled omelet challenge. I’d puke eating half of it.
I cannot stand the “food facts” shows (Unwrapped), the “food tour” shows (Diners Dives with Dipsh*t, $40 and no tip A Day), or – worst of the lot – the faux competition shows (ugh).
I do watch Ina and Giada and Nigella and Ellie Kreiger because they make good stuff; not as good as ATK or Julia, though. Paula Deen is annoying, and her boys even moreso. RayRay I only watch at the gym, with the sound off. Alton and Mario are fun to watch for technique, though I’d rarely want to make some of their stuff.
And I’m convinced that Sandra Lee is a joke being perpetrated upon the viewers.
My wife will watch hour upon hour of Food Network (which I refer to as “food porn”)…then switch the channel to HGTV (“house porn”).
I used to like Rachael Ray, before she became a media creature. Now, not so much.
I’ve always liked Alton Brown. Before he got into food, he was a commercial producer, and that shows in the production of his shows. I may not eat half of what he shows on “Good Eats”, but I know I’ll learn something interesting. “Feasting on Asphalt” was also extremely entertaining. I got to meet him once (albeit briefly), and he came across as just as down-to-earth as he does on his shows.
I used to enjoy Iron Chef (the original Japanese version, which is now on some other channel – Fine Living, maybe?), for the pure silliness (“oooh, I can taste the crab brains!”). Iron Chef America isn’t bad, but it lacks some of that silliness.
I’ve only recently caught any Paula Deen… the accent is almost beyond belief. I do appreciate her “screw it!” attitude towards fat and calories, but she kinda wastes it on crap recipes. She has pretty low standards, I think.
That’s part of my problem with a lot of the recipe shows; I’m a very good cook and I have a natural ability to project what something is going to taste like pretty accurately from knowing the ingredients and preparation, and especially if I can get a look at it. (this is only true when I’m very familiar with all the parts, which I’m definitely not always, I’m not very exotic) And I know for a fact that a lot of the stuff I see made on these shows is nothing to write home about. It’s jsut not that great, especially the really simple, straightforward stuff like Deen’s. it’s just unapologetically high-fat and high-calorie. I’ve only watched a couple of times, but it was always just some glop that you could find on the pages of a cheap checkout line rag.
[Carolina accent]Ah’ll jus’ put in a pound o’ buttah.[/Carolina accent]
In the same way that I wasn’t surprised that Steve Irwin’s tragic death was caused by an animal, when Paula Deen dies of hardening of the arteries, I’ll say, “yup, saw that comin’.”
Gah, we watch so many cooking shows it’s ridiculous. Almost all the competition ones that have been listed (plus the Challenges, Throwdown and Top Chef / -Masters), Ace of Cakes, Man V. Food (great to see some love for that here – Adam is one of my TV boyfriends), Will Work for Food (that’s who I wish had won last year’s NFS) and then several straightforward recipe series, like 5 Ingredient Fix, Hubert Keller, and whoever else we like the blurb for that episode.
The only ones I can’t stomache at all is Ina and Tyler Florence. They should cook together. Smugness overload. < shudder >
Hate: Lee, deLaurentis, Deen, Chopped, Ace of Cakes, every cake competition, anything that has the word Disney in it in any way
Like: Unwrapped, Throwdown, Guy’s Big Bite, Ray
Love: Fieri, Blayless, Flay, Iron Chef, D, D & D, Man vs Food, Next FN Star, Florence
Adore: Alton
Stoid - Flay’s restaurants are fucking awesome! In fact, we are heading back to Mesa Grill for our anniversary dinner next month. Bobby can do no wrong in my book.
I watch food shows for tips on improving general cooking. Usually I’m not at all ambitious enough to go out and try out a receipe I get because that involves getting weird items I never purchase like cream or rosemary or paprika.
I LOVE the original Iron Chef and I must say the new Iron Chef America has grown on me. Other than that, I watch Everyday Italian with Giada de Laurentis cause she’s hot, and Hell’s Kitchen because its funny. When I catch them, I watch those Food Network challenges where they make weirdo cakes that look like stuff that doesn’t look at all appetizing.
I thought I couldn’t hate Bobby ‘Squeeze bottle Mexican’ Flay anymore, then I watched Throwdown. Who else but that ass would come up with or agree with a concept like that. Lie and tell someone you are going to put them on a show, then at their big moment show up with a camera and say ‘We were just dicking with you, there is no other show, just another jerk-off for Flay.’ Liked Punkd, but focusing on smashing people’s greatest dream.
They only good thing is that He usually loses, but I guarantee you he didn’t expect that when it started.
You don’t think he loses on purpose sometimes? To me it seems purposeful, so it’s not such an I Love Me type of show, which (to me) would turn off viewers.
Different shows appeal to me for different reasons:
Kitchen Nightmares and F-word – early series of both. It is educational and interesting to see what it is actually like in the kitchen of a restaurant, and how line-cooking differs from what we do at home. The early seasons (UK seasons for KN) are at lot less melodramatic than the American ones; you tend to learn something rather than just having Ramsay shouting, and the chef storming off while the waitress cries on-camera.
Next Food Network Star is interesting to see what makes a TV “personality” and how that is different from a chef.
Top Chef/Top Chef Masters is interesting to see how the chefs respond to challenges, and the occasionally interesting food concoctions. Chopped as the Short Attention Span Theater version of the same is pretty lame however
Secrets of a Restaurant Chef is fascinating, and I’ve managed to cook some of the things from that show (once I grabbed the recipe from the website). More so than many of the cooking bimbo/himbo shows, Anne Burrell teaches little tips as well as the big picture.
Iron Chef America is just fun, in a very silly way.
I really like ALton Brown’s Good Eats and Asphalt shows; they are informative and contain some of those little fact-nuggets that make life interesting.
Hate a lot of the personality shows; Diners. Drive-ins and Dives is the most egregious of these, but most of them where the host wanders around and demonstrates nothing more than the ability to eat on camera and make wildly enthusiastically repetitive comments.
For some reason (even though I like Iron Chef), I hate the Cake Challenge shows. Just seems like a waste of time. I do occasionally watch Chef Duff in Ace of Cakes but a little goes a long way.
I do think the Gordon Ramsey shows do do the world a good service, even if he is almost as big an as as Flay.
Too many shows like Top Chef make people start to think they could own a restaurant/ be a chef. Even if it is a Melodrama sometimes, Ramsey’s shows do give a solid reality check on the part of the business that sucks.
I like the specials that are cake or pie competitions. I watched a cake one a few years ago that was great, very suspenseful, because all the pastry chefs were creating these elaborate cakes that had to survive a hot summer afternoon or something… it was very cool.
And i’m a pie freak so I’m always interested in pie competitions.
So o much of the food on that show doesn’t look particularly tasty, it’s just showing examples of sickening excess. I think DDD is the nightmare proof that Americans are just as gluttonous and disgusting as the rest of the world thinks we are. Combine piles of meat and cheese and wrap it in something and fry it and then splash a bunch of chii on top. Ugh.