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.

1. Don’t put raw chicken next to cooked chicken! You’re going to kill somebody!
2. Keep it simple. Work with the natural flavours of the food.
3. 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.”
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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?
8. It’s all about timing and multi-tasking in the kitchen. Separate ingredients and know how long everything takes to cook.
9. If your food is on fire, you are in trouble. That being said, even the worst catastrophes can be salvaged. Stay calm. Breathe.
10. 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