Questionable Skills of Cooking Show Hosts on Food Network

AI Thread Summary
The discussion critiques the quality of cooking shows, highlighting a trend where many hosts lack formal culinary training. Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse, and Rachel Ray are specifically called out for their perceived inadequacies in cooking skills, with claims that they rely on scripts and teleprompters rather than genuine expertise. Viewers express frustration over the lack of educational content in these shows, noting that they fail to teach fundamental cooking techniques or the science behind cooking. The conversation also laments the decline of traditional cooking shows that featured knowledgeable chefs, contrasting them with the entertainment-focused format of current programming. Alton Brown's "Good Eats" is mentioned as a rare exception that combines cooking with scientific explanations. Overall, there is a call for more authentic cooking content that emphasizes skill and knowledge over personality and entertainment value.
  • #201
A stick of butter and a bouillon cube to season one onion? Now THAT's cooking. Those TV "cooks" are disgusting.
 
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  • #202
TheStatutoryApe said:
For a snack my grandmother makes onion sandwiches. This calls for two slices of bread, one thick slice of raw onion, and god's own supply of mayonaise.

NO, you can't make onion sandwiches with mayo. Onion sandwiches should be spread with butter. I LOVE onion sandwiches. :approve: I learned it from my grandparents...it's Depression Era food.

I make my mashed potatoes out of any potato I happen to have in the fridge when I get hungry for mashed potatoes, and really, I've never noticed any difference whether they were red potatoes or baking pototoes. It's just rather a shame to waste more expensive red or new potatoes on mashed potatoes where you're not going to appreciate their taste as much.
 
  • #203
Moonbear said:
It's just rather a shame to waste more expensive red or new potatoes on mashed potatoes where you're not going to appreciate their taste as much.
True. New potatoes (red or white) should be fried in butter until they have some crispy surfaces. When I was a kid I always ate them with ketchup, but these days, I often mix up a little concoction of mayo and tomato-based hot salsa to dip them in.
 
  • #204
Moonbear said:
NO, you can't make onion sandwiches with mayo. Onion sandwiches should be spread with butter.

Sacrebleu! You are right! It was butter, and it was still disgusting. ;-p
 
  • #205
TheStatutoryApe said:
Sacrebleu! You are right! It was butter, and it was still disgusting. ;-p

Well, you've never had MY onion sandwiches. :smile: It's okay, I know most people think it's a very strange thing to eat. I enjoy it though.
 
  • #206
Evo said:
She said it's like onion soup.

More like melted butter with onion garnish.

I've been eating lots of onion soup since I got my slow cooker. 4 batches so far and counting. I haven't used a stick and half of butter for all of them total even yet. She should just be sued for encouraging such totally unhealthy cooking. Sadly she thinks her food is just sinful, as she waddles around her kitchen stuffing those disgusting dishes down her mouth, encouraging her legion of viewers to clog their arteries.
 
  • #207
Moonbear said:
Well, you've never had MY onion sandwiches. :smile: It's okay, I know most people think it's a very strange thing to eat. I enjoy it though.
Yeah, I enjoy some things that a lot of people would probably consider gross. For example I love eel.

LowlyPion said:
More like melted butter with onion garnish.

I've been eating lots of onion soup since I got my slow cooker. 4 batches so far and counting. I haven't used a stick and half of butter for all of them total even yet. She should just be sued for encouraging such totally unhealthy cooking. Sadly she thinks her food is just sinful, as she waddles around her kitchen stuffing those disgusting dishes down her mouth, encouraging her legion of viewers to clog their arteries.
Now let's not get onto liability issues. ;-)
(as I sit here smoking, drinking vodka and red bull, and considering how best to throw my money away gambling)
 
  • #208
onion sandwiches is not the way i was taught. it's got to be either onion or radish and cornbread. if you're going to be working out in the field, you take a wedge of onion and a piece of cornbread in your pocket to snack on.
 
  • #209
Moonbear said:
I make my mashed potatoes out of any potato I happen to have in the fridge when I get hungry for mashed potatoes, and really, I've never noticed any difference whether they were red potatoes or baking pototoes. It's just rather a shame to waste more expensive red or new potatoes on mashed potatoes where you're not going to appreciate their taste as much.
Actually, using the wrong type of potato will result in a dense, gluey consistency, instead of light and fluffy mashed potatoes. But some people like dense and gluey, just like it has become popular today to have lumpy potatoes instead of the original, smooth, lumpless recipe. I like both kinds, although I was raised on traditional style potatoes put through a ricer for the silken finish that made them famous. Another no-no was skins in the potatoes, something else I don't mind a bit of. My mother would die if she found out I eat gluey, lumpy potatoes with skin. :-p
 
  • #210
Evo said:
Actually, using the wrong type of potato will result in a dense, gluey consistency, instead of light and fluffy mashed potatoes. But some people like dense and gluey, just like it has become popular today to have lumpy potatoes instead of the original, smooth, lumpless recipe. I like both kinds, although I was raised on traditional style potatoes put through a ricer for the silken finish that made them famous. Another no-no was skins in the potatoes, something else I don't mind a bit of. My mother would die if she found out I eat gluey, lumpy potatoes with skin. :-p
I love mashed potatoes with skins on, and just a bit lumpy, too. I like to boil them with garlic cloves and onions and mash everything at once. Mmm! I have a younger sister who (if given the chance) would always put in too much milk and mash the potatoes into a wet, gloppy mess. She actually preferred the dehydrate potato flakes that were served as "mashed" at the school lunch program to real mashed potatoes. I think she was switched in the hospital for an alien baby - she wouldn't eat spinach, fried liver and onions, and a whole bunch of other stuff that the rest of the family enjoyed.
 
  • #211
Evo said:
just like it has become popular today to have lumpy potatoes instead of the original, smooth, lumpless recipe.
People usually distinguish between smashed potatoes (the lumpy ones) and whipped potatoes (the smooth ones). I like them lumpy only if there's other stuff in them, like garlic and onions...and then I call them dirty mashed potatoes. But, when they are whipped, I really can't tell the difference no matter what kind of potato I used. I've never had a mashed potato I would call "gluey." Maybe you're not adding enough milk or butter? I don't have a fixed amount of either of those, just adjust it as needed until the potatoes are the right consistency of fluffy. What I really don't understand are people who make mashed potatoes with water instead of milk and butter. They're just runny boiled potatoes.
 
  • #212
lumpy potatoes are good. first had them as a kid at my uncle's house. i like the texture. maybe when I'm 90 and have lost all my teeth i'll change my mind, but for now i don't care to eat food with liquid consistency.
 
  • #213
Evo said:
This Christmas MIH and I are going to kidnap Kurdt and we're going to dress up in our matching flannel polar bear pajamas, with our matching glittery polar bear footies and have a Paula Deen deep fry party. We can deep fry fruitcake, christmas puddings, chocolate biscuits and gingerbread cookies.

Aha! I have discovered your evil plans. I like the sounds a christmas pyjama party though.
 
  • #214
Good grief, this week we had Rachel (I am clueless) Ray telling her audience that scallops are FULL of sugar, when in fact, they have zero sugar. She didn't just say this once in error, she must have said it a dozen times because the show was mostly about caramelizing the sugars in the scallops. Hey, clueless, scallops have no sugar in them, you can't caramelize the natural high sugar content in them because there is none! Why do they not have anyone checking this bimbo for accuracy? Oh, well, I guess that's not fair since the Food Network has no one checking anyone for accuracy. I've never seen so much misinformation. I know, why do I watch it? I'm a sadist.

The other day we had a person say that they were "rendering" a wine sauce down. No, that would be "reducing", you render fat.

Then this morning the 5 ingredient bimbo told everyone that you must buy carrots with the green tops on because that would be the moistest carrots, when in fact, the greens remove moisture from the carrots and you should not buy carrots with the green tops on. That is for appearance only.
 
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  • #215
Evo said:
Then this morning the 5 ingredient bimbo told everyone that you must buy carrots with the green tops on because that would be the most moist carrots, when in fact, the greens remove moisture from the carrots and you should not buy carrots with the green tops on. That is for appearance only.
What a maroon (thanks, Bugs!). Root vegetables must be treated with some regard for their physiology. For instance, you remove the scapes from garlic tops so that nutrients aren't robbed from the bulbs. You pull the garlic when the tops are about 50% brown and dying back, and (Surprise!) you hang the garlic out of sunlight with the tops on, so that the bulbs can draw the remaining nutrients out of the tops, AND the tops aren't undergoing photosynthesis and trying to remain vegetative at the expense of the bulbs. Think of a well-ventilated tobacco-barn - perfect place to cure garlic.

Idiots like RR and other "chefs" have little to no idea how to select produce, much less how the produce should be harvested, stored, and processed. Put those fools on a hill-side farm in Maine that has sustained families for generations, and they would die.
 
  • #216
turbo-1 said:
Idiots like RR and other "chefs" have little to no idea how to select produce, much less how the produce should be harvested, stored, and processed.

Ah! I think I'll start a thread on how to select produce. Thanks, turbo!
 
  • #217
I'm really loving Paula Deen now. She cracks me up. Today she outdid herself. She managed to deep fry slices of canned jellied cranberries. You know the stuff in the can that retains the shape of the can when you plop it out?

You make thick 1/2 slices, freeze them, dredge them in flour and deep fry them. :biggrin:
 
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  • #218
Evo said:
I'm really loving Paula Deen now. She cracks me up. Todau she outdid herself. Shje managed to deep fry slices of canned jellied cranberries. you know the stuff in the can that retains the shape of the can when you plop it out?

You make thick 1/2 slices, freeze them, dredge them in flour and deep fry them. :biggrin:

:bugeye: :smile: I think she would have been right at home at my boyfriend's fraternity in his college days. Back then, the theory was that anything tasted good fried (that, and those who couldn't cook anything else still knew how to work the deep fryer).
 
  • #219
Evo said:
I'm really loving Paula Deen now. She cracks me up. Todau she outdid herself. Shje managed to deep fry slices of canned jellied cranberries. you know the stuff in the can that retains the shape of the can when you plop it out?

You make thick 1/2 slices, freeze them, dredge them in flour and deep fry them. :biggrin:

Evo - I have to say this. You are the coolest person here on PF.

Keep it up girl!
 

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