10 Times Your Favorite Food Shows Lied To You
Reality TV is famously staged. Our favorite food shows also follow a "real" formula. While we may love all the drama and the delicious dishes on display, there is a lot more "movie magic" going on behind the scenes than we could imagine. Some shows give contestants extra time to plate their dishes, ensuring the judges always have something unique to look at and taste instead of the sloppy mess we see at the end of the challenge. Others make chefs film reaction shots repeatedly to ensure that their disgusted look at the big reveal is perfectly captured from every angle by all cameras. One of your favorite shows even has an entire secret chef working behind the scenes — even if the hosts take credit for her final product.
Of course, "The Food Network" has had its share of scandals. But the drama of our favorite food shows reaches past the network to Bravo, Netflix, and beyond. No food show is safe! So, if you're ready to pull back the curtain on the biggest secrets in culinary television history, let's dig in! Here, we explore the times when your favorite food shows weren't telling the full story.
1. Jacques Torres doesn't make the cakes on Nailed It!
We all live for pastry chef Jacques Torres' quips on "Nailed It!" The premise of the show is simple: The contestants create some of the worst-looking cakes you've ever seen, but have a great time doing it. Yet each episode starts with the most beautiful example of a delicious pastry. As the in-house pastry expert, we assumed Jacques Torres made these cakes — especially since he seems to know everything about them. However, all the example cakes and cookies here are baked behind the scenes by a "secret chef" named Charity George (via Entertainment Weekly).
"The hands you see when Jacque's explaining how to do it the right way... That's me," she told the outlet. Chef Charity is a Southern California native who has appeared on many food shows over the years, including "Ultimate Cake Off," "Cake Wars," and "The Late Late Show with James Corden." Although on those shows, she got credit for her cake-making skills. She is the best at chocolate and sugar art, meaning she can create intricate designs from completely edible materials. In her business, she typically creates wedding and specialty party cakes. If you love what she does and are keen to learn more about baking, you can take classes from her. If there is ever a "Nailed it!" revival, these skills would definitely help you win!
2. The kitchen in Barefoot Contessa isn't Ina Garten's home kitchen
"Barefoot Contessa" has been airing since 2002 with its beloved and upbeat host Ina Garten. While the kitchen featured on the show was thought to be modeled closely after the kitchen in Garten's home, it's actually a nearby studio. Well, kind of! The studio kitchen is on another residential property near Garten's home in the Hamptons, New York. It's in a guest house that she purchased specifically to use for filming her show. However, the kitchen was updated to include all the fixings that a good tv kitchen needs — like more than one refrigerator and an eight-top stove, so Garten and her team can do some serious cooking.
If you've ever looked on at her kitchen with envy and wondered why your kitchen can't be as nice, don't worry. The kitchen is larger than any other home kitchen because the camera crew needs space to move around. No actual home would have a kitchen this nice and spacious. (At least, that's what we like to think...)
3. MasterChef contestants get extra time to finish their dishes
The frantic nature of the timed challenges on "MasterChef" makes it exciting to watch. You can never be sure if a chef is going to miss the mark and present a steaming pile of slop to the judges. Still, this never seems to happen on the show. Even if the editing makes it seem like everyone is running out of time, the plates typically look fantastic. Why? This is because the production team is lying about how much time the participants have to finish their meal preparation.
"MasterChef" judge Christina Tosi told Lucky Peach, "Every dish you see on TV looks, well, beautiful... There is always downtime between "Time's Up!" and when we taste." Meaning that the chefs get a little bit of time to make sure things look presentable. The chefs never cook two dishes, either. The one you see in front of the judges for tasting time is the same one that's come out of the oven. "She added, "The second that time's up and we know there will be a lapse, we go directly to each cook's station and inspect each element so that nothing can be lost in the transition. Keep in mind that we taste food at each cook's station as they work, so we have a good idea of who's looking good, and who is going down in a ball of flames."
4. The participants in Top Chef's restaurant wars are totally rigged
About halfway through each show cycle, participants on the Bravo hit "Top Chef" are asked to do the impossible. In two days, teams must brainstorm and execute the menu for an entire restaurant. The segment, known as "restaurant wars," is a fan-favorite challenge because of its ensuing chaos. But somehow each season, the chefs manage to pull off some delicious and interesting dishes. Some fans of the franchise might dream about the day when it's finally their turn to enjoy a meal on restaurant wars — but that is unlikely to happen.
While the diners seem random, that's not true. Instead, those enjoying the meals on restaurant wars are a select group of insiders. "It's people who know someone who's associated with the show," former producer Shannon Wilkinson told Seattle Met. "It's friends of producers or friends of people who are associated with the show in some way. It's not like they're going to take an ad out in the paper." While the show wants us to believe that we're watching someone like us on-screen, that's a lie. Time to put the dream of being a restaurant wars guest on the shelf!
5. Chopped films those reaction shots over and over
With over 50 seasons, it's clear that "Chopped" isn't going anywhere. The show is famous for a straightforward approach: There aren't any silly sabotages like on "Cutthroat Kitchen," and the contestants aren't at each other's throats — as is often the case on "Top Chef." What is real though is the high stress of opening the mystery basket and having limited time to create a dish using only the ingredients inside. Things move fast on "Chopped," so things often go wrong as the chefs rush to finish on time. But, it's all real — for the most part!
What isn't real is how shocked the chefs are during the ingredient reveal. When discussing the reaction shots, host Ted Allen told Vice, "We have four camera operators right in front of each of the chefs. We're looking for, 'Oh my god, it's chicken in a can.'" Sometimes, the production team doesn't get the big reaction they wanted, so producers make them do it again. After all, viewers aren't mind readers. If we don't see the chef's feelings written all over their faces, we will have no idea how frustrated they are. So in this case, the movie magic makes things easier to follow.
6. The sabotages on Cutthroat Kitchen are all actually doable
The most fun part of the Food Network's "Cutthroat Kitchen" is trying to figure out how in the world contestants are going to pull off those wild challenges in time. But what you didn't know is that producers test the challenges first to make sure they are doable. "Not only do we test them multiple times to make sure they're doable, but we actually test them in tandem with other sabotages that we might put in the same round," host Alton Brown told Yahoo! Entertainment. "We would like for people to be able to survive two sabotages. Three? Ah boy... you're on your own. But I actually don't remember that ever happening."
Of course, it makes sense that producers would want contestants to be able to finish the challenge — sabotaged or not. The show would quickly lose its shine if we knew it was game over as soon as someone had a time delay or needed to bake brownies blindfolded. But are there any sabotages that are just too cruel or just plain fail? "About 20 percent don't work," Brown told the outlet. We would love to see an episode with those failed challenges — who knows how wild the kitchen would get!
7. There are two versions of most dishes on The Pioneer Woman
The great thing about "The Pioneer Woman" host Ree Drummond is that she is as friendly as she seems on TV. However, according to an exclusive interview with Mashed, plenty of the food you see on the show was cooked at a different time than filming. "If you see a beautiful closeup of a dish being cooked while I'm also cooking, sometimes those are two different versions and two different batches," she said. "They sometimes do a whole dish [like that], and then they cut them together."
If you've ever tried to create the sizzling close-ups of your cooking creations at home, now you know a trick! Those fantastic shots were not filmed as Drummond cooks. Instead, they are filmed once the production team knew more about the shots it might need. This editing trick isn't exclusive to "The Pioneer Woman," as Drummond emphasized that it's standard practice on many food shows to shoot footage this way. This approach helps viewers see all the steps that might not have been captured during the first walk-through.
Static Media owns and operates Daily Meal and Mashed.
8. Participants in Cupcake Wars are MORE stressed and tired than you think
Each short scene on your favorite food show is the result of hours of work. A one-hour episode of "Cupcake Wars" could be the result of dozens of hours of planning, filming, and refilming. What is obvious though is how stressed and tired the bakers seem to finish their challenges in time. However, "Cupcake Wars" contestants actually have it way worse than we might think.
When asked about her experience on the show, the Contestant Kyra Bussanich told The Tender Foodie, "People ask me every day at the bake shop if 'Cupcake Wars' is really as crazy and stressful as it appears on TV and I always shake my head. No, it's not as crazy as it seems: it's at least 20 times more intense." Typically, reality shows try to make things more dramatic than they seem to make good TV. If anything, Bussanich thinks things were played down. "You have to remember that they are filming everything in one day, which equates to roughly 16 hours of tape time per contestant," she added. "There are four teams. So they have to condense all that footage into 42 minutes (plus commercials), which means that a lot of it ends up on the cutting room floor."
9. MasterChef contestants have access to cooking classes and a library of cookbooks
If you make it to the end of "MasterChef," you will be on set for six days a week for 11 weeks. That's an exhausting schedule and one that takes a toll on contestants as the challenges continue. However, the show isn't entirely truthful about what participants are doing when they're not on camera. If you've ever wondered how certain chefs seem to be improving out of nowhere weekly, you aren't imagining it. "We cook every single day except Sunday," finalist Josh Marks told Mediaite. "On Sunday, we either have free time in the kitchen or [are] in a cooking class."
While the contestants don't have access to any support during the challenges themselves, there is plenty of time to practice beforehand and afterward. "They really teach you how to be a chef," Marks continued. "You're not just on there cooking all willy-nilly. So they're teaching us baking component classes, where they teach us how to make pastry cream, sponge cake, cobbler, shortbread, pie crusts, etc. But they don't necessarily show us how to assemble an apple pie and make a pie, but they show us how to make the crust." While the classes don't necessarily correlate to exact challenges later in the season, this practice surely makes things easier for all chefs involved.
10. Guy Fieri doesn't drive the red Camaro to every Diners, Drive-Ins, And Dives stop
Guy Fieri's red Camaro is iconic. One of the best parts of "Diners, Drive-Ins, And Dives" is seeing him drive up to each location in the car to introduce us viewers to the city, the food, and the restaurant. He then hops out to show us some of the most mouth-watering food in the nation. Unfortunately, Fieri has been lying to us the whole time! This entire segment is actually fake. Not fake as in he's driving in front of a green screen in a studio, but movie magic in that the car is only used for production.
The Camaro is worth about $100,000 and is a prop. It's not even driven between set locations! Instead, his vehicle is shipped between filming locations in a trailer, — a la Lighting McQueen in "Cars." Fieri arrives on set in another vehicle, goes through hair and makeup, and then hops in the Camaro when the cameras are rolling. Any time you see him driving off into the sunset, he's not. As soon as the team gets the shot, the car goes back into storage.