>watch chopped for years
>always say they should have real chefs like on iron chef as contestants
>just discovered on youtube that they have chopped: after hours, where the judges need to make a dish from one of the baskets
It's kind of a hugbox, but it's neat to see what the judges would make.
youtube.com
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i could do an entire episode with nothing but a zuchinni and amanda freitag
>tfw Amanda Freitag will never sit on your lap as you drink tea after cooking
No thanks
This is really fun. I've been rewatching Good Eats and it's funny how much more professional even this looks than Food Network's old stuff. Good Eats is literally Youtuber tier, production-wise.
This is actually pretty good.
It's very comfy. The midnight snack to normal Chopped's dinner rush.
To be fair, I remember watching some kind of documentary of some sort on the food network, about the history of the food network, and how initially they thought it would be CRAZY to have a channel devoted ENTIRELY to food, who would watch it? But as celebrity chefs gained a following, it did too
I absolutely believe it. It's lost some charm as it's gotten more professional, but I suppose that's inevitable, and probably for the best.
I read a Mario Batali biography a few years back where the author actually shadowed him around for awhile, so it was half his backstory, and half gonzo style reporting on what he's like on a day to day basis and in the kitchen.
There was a good deal about him being one of the first FN celebrity chefs, and about why they got rid of him once they became more mainstream. If you thought Anthony Bourdain was supposed to be the bad boy chef you should check it out; Batali was/is apparently a complete mad man in comparison.
anyone else get sick to fucking death of the sad sob stories the contestants try to use to sway the judges? just fucking cook. i don't want to hear about your lesbian "wife" or other bullshit. I want to see what you can make out of horse nuts and ant candies.
These cooking contest shows have to be rigging things off camera.
there is no way to cook most of these things from a cold start, in 30 minutes. so the contestants must be able to think about their dishes ahead of time, get boiling water, and a hot oven ready to go.
My dad started setting a time limit of 30 minutes for himself when making dinner after he really got into Chopped. You're overestimating how long it takes to cook things, and they're basically just applying the ingredients to recipes they already know. It's not that hard.
Its not a cold start. The oven is always running, for example.
In this After Hours Chopped they already have an idea what they want to make because they've seen the basket already. If you watch it they also already have boiling water and the oven and fryers are already turned on.
That is what I hate about Iron Chef, though. They have an entire team of cooks and never need to waste any time delegating, which makes it seemed completely rigged.
With Iron Chef, they've already been told what the ingredient is and they've come up with recipes for it.
With Iron Chef, though, they're professional chef teams who have planned it out beforehand. They prep a handful of menus that they practice a lot, and then when the secret ingredient is revealed, it's obvious already which menu they have to stick with.
>the contestants try to use to sway the judges
You mean that the producers use to make a TV show? The contestants aren't doing it for sympathy, they're being told to talk about that stuff because producers know it makes for profitable TV.
Literally every single food program is meticulously planned from start to finish, and there's a TON of shit going on behind the scenes that never get filmed. Never believe the narrative presented in the final product.
That said, it really doesn't take very long to make a lot of this stuff if you're good enough and everything's ready to go.
>they're being told to talk about that stuff because producers know it makes for profitable tv
This, and it's even worse than the big porn companies putting out the most sterile, overacted, un-erotic porn imaginable - it just literally nothing for me, and takes away everything that made me want to watch it to begin with.
I recently watched Nadia G's travel show on Netflix, and while it's youtube tier humor and antics, she actually gets restaurant chefs to walk you through how they make some of their dishes, which is really the only thing I really care about. I tried watching Guy's Grocery Games and it almost gave me an aneurysm.
Is it me, or are almost all American cooking shows terrible?
I mean, look at American Iron Chef compared to the original.
It's you.
On both US and JP Iron Chef, both contestants would get a list of potential secret ingredients that got narrowed down the closer they got to the day of filming. It was still a surprise, but at that that point it was only between 3 definite options.
also, in case it wasn't completely fucking obvious, the challenger picks the Iron Chef they want to face WELL in advance, and not on the spot while they're filming
I would assume they film the parts where the challenges pick an iron chef all at the same time. Otherwise everyone would come in and get dressed up only to shoot 30 seconds of footage and go home.
Why does that matter?
Fuck you, that show is GOAT
It also existed way before YouTube. It was in the MySpace era for god sakes. It's cheeky fun and actual science.
>It also existed way before YouTube.
So? It has low production value.
That's not true at all. Watch their behind the scenes episode. It takes a lot of work.
not to mention every TV competition with some notable exceptions.