Tiffi shares a good article

_Elsa_

Tiffi tells Yeti about an article that she found ‘8 secrets about how famous cooking shows are filmed’.

‘Each hour-long episode of your favorite competition show can take 12 to 14 hours to shoot - As anyone who has ever worked in TV or film production can tell you, a lot of what you see on screen happens through editing.

There are a few different places all the leftovers can go - Food waste is a widespread problem, so it’s natural to wonder who eats all the leftover food from the shows. But since some food gets kept out under hot studio lights for hours – well past the time when it would be safe for anyone to eat – a lot of it can end up in the garbage.

Some cooking shows use food-styling hacks to make dishes look even tastier - When it comes to shows with food, there is often a fair amount of styling involved to get the best shot possible. Shanti Hinojos, who has been a food stylist for over a decade, told LA Weekly about some of the tricks she uses to make dishes look perfect for TV, including putting marbles in bowls of soup to make the rest of the ingredients float to the top. She compared her job to that of an architect because she’s constantly using things like toothpicks, wedges, and plastic wrap to prop food up and stuff it to make it look fuller.

The judging isn’t usually based on the final dish plated by the contestant - Often, the plates brought up to the judges by contestants are already cold, so the judges might look instead of tasting. “When you’re a judge on a competition show, you have to get, real quick, accustomed to eating cold food. The way you deal with that is the minute we cut after a cooking round, the judges get up from the chopping block, and they go over to the stations and they taste things that are hot,” “Chopped” host Ted Allen told Yahoo! TV.

That’s probably not your favourite celebrity chef’s actual home kitchen - In most cases, celebrity chefs don’t actually film their cooking shows in their homes. Set designers are probably the ones behind the cosy kitchen you’ve camped in for the last half an hour. It’s a set designer’s job to breathe life into the places where film and TV crews shoot. And, with personality-driven food shows, the kitchen needs to strongly reflect the chef’s personality.

The contestants on “MasterChef” have access to cooking classes and a library of cookbooks throughout filming - The filming schedule for “MasterChef” is pretty intense, but according to former contestant Josh Marks, they get one day off a week to hone their skills. “We cook every single day except Sunday. On Sunday we either have free time in the kitchen or in a cooking class,” Marks told Mediaite. He also said they had access to nearly “every cookbook in the world,” which they could draw inspiration from throughout the competition.

Some cooking competition shows don’t let contestants reference any recipes during the show - MasterChef contestant, Elise Mayfield, told the AV Club that competitors aren’t allowed to have any recipes with them, even for baked goods. The rules vary by show, of course, but having to memorise your formulas ahead of time is an added layer of stress for everyone competing.

The full judging process on competition cooking shows can take 90 minutes in real-time - Most competition shows run for about an hour with commercials, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we only see a fraction of the judges’ comments in each episode. “I thought that a lot of it would be staged, but actually none of it is. There’s just a lot of editing,” “Chopped” contestant Sequoia Pranger told the Statesman Journal.’ (Info here) 

Let’s continue here - Today is the day! 

Start at the beginning - The search is on for the Kingdom’s best chef