Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff. Lauren bog obam Here, a smartly dressed woman in a sunlit kitchen, gushes about her love of ricotta cheese as she blithely scoops ingredients, including the cheese, into a skillet warming on the stove. She ticks through the dishes she'll prepare today right before your eyes warm a rugula salad with walnuts, baked zd with butternut squash, and for dessert, a simple, yet decadent twall crisp layered with
raspberry compote and whipped mask capone. Her thirty minute cooking show is one of your favorites, and for a moment you consider recreating this exact meal at home. But like most things made for TV, the delectable spread has a secret ingredient you probably don't have on hand, dozens of behind the scene hands that crep and stir the proverbial pot. Traditionally, all the cooking shows you'll see on TV begin with
on site chefs who prep food in advance. Sometimes as many as twenty people will chop, whisk and season ingredients in a full service kitchen before a cooking show is recorded. The Food Network Kitchen, for example, has included five separate kitchens that each have a stove, oven, sink, and refrigerator. That way, chefs can prepare food for several cooking shows in advance. These prep kitchens, as well as being made for TV kitchens on some cooking shows, require fully stocked
pantries too. For example, competition cooking shows like My Personal Favorite Iron Chef may require pantries with hundreds of items for each participant. Iron Chef America stocked two d and fifty items per chef, including nine types of flour, seven vinegars, and five kinds of salt, as well as thirty types of herbs and spices. Along with having the right ingredients on hand, chefs and off camera kitchens prepare swapouts, which are dishes at various stages of completion that can be
used during a cooking show. The next time you watch an instructional cooking show, note the carefully orchestrated actions in specific segments introduction, preparation of ingredients, stovetop cooking, seasoning, adding extra ingredients to the dish, and plating. During many of these segments, you're likely to see the work of people
in an off camera kitchen. Of course, even with all this help, it doesn't necessarily mean that the host of a cooking show has it easy, especially if they're recording with a live audience. The host still needs to cook and speak to the audience, often while a producer communicates by earphone and a studio director gives silent instructions from the floor. Cooking competition shows can be a challenge for the contestants too, although perhaps not in the same way.
Take Food Networks Chopped, for example. The contestants on this show are tasked with creating edible dishes from a basket of mystery ingredients, and it can take up to twelve hours to film a single episode. Often the contestants aren't even cooking, they're being asked the same on camera questions again, or waiting for the judge's decisions. Whatever the format, instructional, competition, or a hybrid of both, understanding the way a cooking show works has a lot to do with uncovering what's
going on behind the scenes. There are simply some things you can't fully understand by watching the end result. Today's episode was written by Laurel Dove and produced by Tyler Clang for more on this and lots of other tasty topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio or more podcasts my heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.