Does Watching Cooking Shows Make You A Better Cook?
April 24th, 2009
Mark Bittman started a lively discussion about the merits of TV cooking vs. real cooking on his Bitten blog recently, calling the demonstrations by most celebrity cooks baffling, intimidating and a charade. He harkened back to the days of Julia Child, whose producers allowed her to make mistakes on camera from her very own Cambridge kitchen, now eternally preserved in the Smithsonian.
What good does it do to watch a celebrity chef show off his bionic onion-chopping abilities, Bittman argued, and anyone who watches his cooking demonstrations on the New York Times website knows that he has attracted a cult following precisely by not showing off, creating an if-I-can-do-it relatability by demonstrating the pared down recipes and simple techniques that define his persona as The Minimalist.
Watching a turbocharged celebrity chef coast his or her way through a dish (”Bam!”) usually means consuming a load of empty calories. Depending on the charm of the performer, the exercise can provide a welcome time-wasting distraction or feel as cringe-worthy as watching a lousy magician pull a rabbit from a hat.
Cooking is a skill learned by trial and error, by getting your hands dirty, by doing. Short of that, watching someone else cook can be passively instructive in a way that reading recipes cannot. If you are paying attention, you may make connections and pick up new techniques while watching someone else cook a dish, combine new ingredients or even chop an onion. Seeing how easy it is to make a pancake or a chocolate truffle, to fry a piece of fish or bake a soufflé may be the spark that propels you into the kitchen instead of fantasizing about all the things you’ll make after a heavy session of food porn via the web, your cookbook collection or the food channels on your TV.
What do you think? Do you watch cooking shows for sheer entertainment or have they made you a better cook?
April 24th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
As with watching Mom, Grandmothers and aunts in their kitchens talk about what their doing, watching cooking shows have made me a better cook.
It started back in the day with Julia Child, Cooking with Lydia (Bastianich), Ciao Italia, The Frugal Gourmet, The Galloping Gourmet (OK, I admit, he was a bit more entertainment) and down to the simplest public TV local wild game cooking show.
Definitely made me a better cook.
Today’s tv market calls for a show on home preserving. One of the lost arts of yesterday.
I’m weary of cake competitions…….let’s back back to cooking, eh? (that’s for the FoodNetwork, not Cookthink)
April 24th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I used to love watching the Food Network, especially in high school. I feel like it helped me become better at cooking. It gave me confidence to try new things and some shows teach how to do basic things that you can build off.
I learned things like how to easily cut a mango, an avocado, the order of ingredients to make salad dressings, how to temper eggs and other tips and tricks that I would have learned through trial and error, though I doubt I would ever get to the trial part without seeing it done from scratch on TV.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:49 am
If someone has the desire to cook and eat better food — a lot of people really don’t — then cooking shows can help by illustrating technique and providing motivation. Sadly, most shows that imparted real information are gone, replaced by shows that rely on the cook’s personality to retain viewers.
I suspect there is only so much a new viewer can learn from Food Network. After they’ve watched for some time, they’ve picked up all the insights and tips the shows are likely to convey. After that, it’s all just noise and flash.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Most of it is noise and flash, but I think technique-focused shows like Good Eats are very useful. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from Alton Brown, who focuses on conveying the theory behind the techniques so that you can understand it and apply it in your daily cooking.