You don’t always have to be the best chef to get to the final round. You just have to not be consistently the worst.
- Don’t put raw chicken next to cooked chicken! You’re going to kill somebody!
- Keep it simple. Work with the natural flavours of the food.
- Gordon Ramsey wants “big boys” to have “passion”. Otherwise, they end up ruining a “brilliant, delicious steak”, turning it into something he “wouldn’t feed to (his) dog.” “What a shame.”
- One advantage of food reality shows is that you do actually have to have some kind of talent. A crazy personality helps, but if you can’t cook, you’re off.
- If you have a challenge involving a food (avocado, shrimp, crab, sea urchin), think a bit outside the box in terms of how you can incorporate that food into your dish, while still focusing the dish on that food.
- You don’t always have to be the best chef to get to the final round. You just have to not be consistently the worst.
- I don’t know how much most Food Network chefs cook anymore. A huge part of their appeal is personality. Take Guy Fieri, for instance. Besides eating delicious sandwiches and going to “flavour country”, what does that guy do?
- It’s all about timing and multi-tasking in the kitchen. Separate ingredients and know how long everything takes to cook.
- If your food is on fire, you are in trouble. That being said, even the worst catastrophes can be salvaged. Stay calm. Breathe.
- It must be a strange feeling to cook a complicated dish and then serve it to a Japanese pop star or a grandmother or a soldier or a cowboy and be judged on what you cooked. You just have to take it, no matter what their amateur opinion is. I guess that’s how it works in restaurants, though, right?
Image of Tenderloin used courtesy of Shutterstock