Fun With Carbs

I missed the first airing of Food Network’s “Worst Cooks In America,” so I caught a rerun last night. I’m not normally a fan of chef-competition shows, surprising as that might seem.  I don’t watch “Top Chef” or “Chopped” or “Food Network Star.” But I figured this one might be worth a laugh. And it was – some of the contestants’ dishes were so abysmal that I fancied myself a regular Julia Child in comparison.

Some of the utter WTF entries: peanut-butter encrusted cod, boiled chicken coated in some kind of tomato sauce and melted swiss, sweet potato/ ground turkey meatloaf and some freakishly scary hollowed-out turnip and rice dish. We were howling with laughter. These were the kind of ‘cooks’ that would mutilate Kraft Easy Mac, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

After judges Anne Burrell and Beau MacMillan narrowed the field of 24 contestants down to 12 and split them into teams, they instructed the hapless chefs to complete exact replicas of two recipes: a shrimp caccuccio with littleneck clams and poached tiger prawns with clams, bok choy and shiitake mushrooms. We were giddy with schadenfreude, wondering just how bad it could get.

Now here’s where I call shenanigans. How are 12 people who are so self-admittedly terrible in the kitchen going to handle a recipe with such complex ingredients and steps? One female contestant from Arizona even shared that she’d never eaten seafood. Shellfish is one of the hardest ingredients to cook properly, in my opinion. I’ve rubberized many a shrimp in my day. And I’ve never even attempted to cook fresh clams, mostly out of fear.

Not only that, the contestants cooking for MacMillan had to blanch and shock leaves of bok choy – a delicate process involving a dip in boiling, then freezing water. Seems like a procedure that might throw anyone without significant kitchen experience.

But then Burrell complimented several of her contestants on their “beautifully cooked shrimp” and “nicely seasoned sauce,” and we were left scratching our heads. Did some magic transformation happen overnight? Or were we just the victims of creative editing? Perfectly cooked shellfish just doesn’t happen by accident, as you know if you’ve ever eaten an overdone shrimp in a restaurant dish. How did this crew jump from ‘burned macaroni and cheese’ to ‘trattoria sous chef’?

Plausibility aside, the show was entertaining, if mostly for Beau MacMillan’s snarky remarks delivered with a trace of a Massachusetts accent (he’s originally from Plymouth.) He minced no words, at one point telling a contestant that he’d rather “throw the dish out the window” than taste it.

Not sure if we’ll keep tuning in, but it wasn’t the worst way to kill an hour before bedtime on a Wednesday night.