The final two contestants on Worst Cooks in America have learned to cook like a chef! They’ve done it in only ten days!

How do I know that Jenni and Rachael have absorbed a few tricks about the science of cooking? It’s because there’s no blackboard in the final episode of the Food Network reality mini-series. Once the written recipes were removed and they had to concentrate on basic cooking methods, even the worst cooks in America were cooking gourmet to fool top critics.

While early weeks concentrated on creating controversy and tension for the cameras, the last two episodes have shown that it takes very little actual education to gain cooking confidence.

If you don’t know how to boil water, it’s okay. It’s not your fault that you don’t know how to cook. Cooking like a chef is not an innate skill. You weren’t born having taken cooking classes in-utero. So, it’s okay to start now.

We’ve witnessed on Worst Cooks in America that just a few cooking method tidbits can create a curiosity in anyone. This passion then seeks out cooking lessons, online cooking classes, or even a school of cooking.

I’ve heard from two of the contestants on this show, and they mention a sudden passion for cooking videos, cooking websites and a desire to learn to cook.

This isn’t because they enjoy following a recipe on a blackboard. It’s not because they like the cooking method of being yelled at by a chef under tight time constraints. They love what they create from their hearts and minds.

Every contestant on this show has experienced what I teach people all over the globe on a daily basis. Any school of cooking, even online cooking classes, or cooking videos that ignore written recipes to focus on basic cooking methods will empower you with confidence. Confidence leads to risk-taking and curiosity. Curiosity needs to be fed information.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but “Thank you Food Network, for finally teaching someone to cook.” And thank you for proving the point I’ve been making for years. Learn to cook by basic cooking methods and forget the written recipe, especially if it’s written on a blackboard.

Previous Posts about Worst Cooks in America:
Finally! Cook-fidence!
The Flavors in Jennifer Cross' Head Saved her Butt
Cooking is About Crying and Salt
Worst Cooking Instructors in America
Are You the Worst Cook in America?

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Worst Cooks in America was back with their penultimate episode last night, leaving me conflicted. It’s a lousy show. Bringing family members to the cloistered can’t-cooks is a divisive tear-inducing tactic, but I’m still compelled to watch.

Why do I keep watching this Food Network show? It’s because I’m chuckling under my breath at the irony of Worst Cooks in America. Among all their celebrity chefs, new catch-phrases, and cross-promotion for product placement, the network is actually teaching someone to cook! I don’t think they expected THAT to happen.

While the MTV of Food has been focused on the juicy “reality show” clips of crying when cooking for the past 4 weeks, something has happened. With the audience having been excluded, the 4 remaining contestants suddenly know all kinds of culinary terms and techniques.

What could possibly be the difference that turned off all the waterworks? It’s sudden cooking confidence. I’ll coin it “Cook-fidence”!

Cook-fidence is what the contestants of Worst Cooks in America suddenly have. It’s not because they’ve learned EVERYTHING about cooking. They’ve learned enough to leave the written recipe behind. It’s liberating! Tears of joy and accomplishment replace tears of frustration.

Just a small amount of knowledge, just a pinch of basic cooking methods, and the permission to create things on their own has inspired them with great confidence. They don’t possess every cooking secret, they’ve learned a simple few that then allows their creativity to take over.

Cook-fidence has taken the place of written recipes and all the results are better on Worst Cooks in America. It can happen in your home when you learn to cook with basic methods over cooking recipes.

Previous Posts about Worst Cooks in America:
The Flavors in Jennifer Cross' Head Saved her Butt
Cooking is About Crying and Salt
Worst Cooking Instructors in America
Are You the Worst Cook in America?

Burn Your Recipes!
Cook with Basic Cooking Methods over written recipes!

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Thank you, Food Network for proving that the Worst Cooks in America are those forced to follow recipes. I’ve been saying it for years! I’ve seen it in my cooking school, and I hear it from thousands that also know it’s true. I’m thankful to have the MTV of food finally admitting it in their programming.

Worst Cooks in America is starting to confuse me more than Jenn Vecchio with half a fig. “You’re reading it off a recipe card and just going blindly”, Jenn explains. It can’t be her fault that she doesn’t know what “done” looks like because she’s relying solely on the written recipe.

The show is supposed to be about duplicating a Chef Beau or Chef Ann dish to fool restaurant critics. If so, why the heavy reliance on written recipes? Why not teach them how to cook in the STYLE of Chef Beau?

There are constant recipe problems in week 4, but the contestants are left to figure it out themselves. “I don’t know what to do”, laments Marque. “Why is it doing this”? It’s all critique from the chefs, there’s no help, no secrets of WHY something is happening or HOW it’s supposed to look. Yet, everything is about the written recipe, someone else’s’ opinion of how something should be cooked.

However, it all changed when the six survivors of sauté were told they could invent their own crostini. Eyes widened, mouths smiled at the sudden freedom they were given. “I’m already thinking of great flavors in my head”, says Jennifer Cross, revealing the inspiration that would be her savior, despite a complete logistical and emotional boil-over.

The artistic interpretation of flavors in her head was the best dish of the day. Her problems came from the pressures of following a recipe under time constraints. She couldn’t hang with the time-task that’s mandated to increase the emotion for the cameras, but blew them away with her art.

For a moment, a small part of the show had realized a goal for me. In a blink of an eye, it showed the excitement, confidence, and superior results of making up your own recipes. It’s a message I’ve been trying to bring to a mass audience for years. Jennifer Cross proved it. Cooking is joyous expression, not jealous competition. It’s accomplished with full heart, not fast clock. Unfortunately, the message was only a blip on a show that doesn’t teach anyone to cook, Worst Cooks in America.

Previous posts about Worst Cooks in America:
Cooking is About Crying and Salt
Worst Cooking Instructors in America
Are You the Worst Cook in America?

Learn to Cook Like a Chef at Home
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Worst Cooks in America served up its third course last night, finally making it obvious that they have no intention to teach these contestants actual cooking methods. Rather, cooking comes down to crying and how much salt you use.

The focus of this week’s show was to be “Feelin’ the Flavor”, skills in combining flavorings and seasonings to create a profile for your dish. Chef Ann was correct in saying this is one of the most valuable skills in the kitchen. However, in the critique of dishes, all the chefs seem to care about is how much salt is added. Even after Chef Ann admits that her, Chef Beau’s, and everyone else’s tastes are different, “too much salt”, or “not enough salt” was the only measure of flavor.

For the past two weeks, I’ve given the Food Network, (the MTV of food) the benefit of the doubt that they are actually teaching cooking methods off-camera. They’re not showing the actual instruction to give more time for the reality TV type competition.

I no longer think that. I believe there is no instruction at all. If they were taught knife skills last week, it wasn’t evident. If they were shown the first step in any cooking instruction – how to control heat – they’ve forgotten it already. If they were taught a basic sauté method that includes sprinkling water on the pan to see if it’s hot enough to start cooking, they would have had a much easier time with their grilling and side-dish sauté. If they were taught that you never add hot milk to a hot roux to create béchamel, there wouldn’t have been so much wallpaper paste sauces to criticize.


Learning to cook like a chef at home involves freeing yourself from recipes by understanding the basic cooking methods behind them. Why did some items have grill-marks, and others didn’t? Water evaporates at 212f. Sugars caramelize at 320f, giving the nice brown color to a protein product. This is why the first step in sauté or stove-top grilling is to drip water onto your pan or grill and watch it evaporate. Now, you can QUANTIFY the temperature of the pan. To correctly teach cooking, a basis of “whys” and “hows” should always precede “what”.

Worst Cooks in America is the “sink or swim”, “you should be born knowing this”, “just follow the recipe” type of cooking instruction that I despise. It continues the stereotype that cooking is very difficult, very stressful, and only professional chefs can do it. I can tell you from having taught thousands of people all over the world to cook, that it’s easy. You can do it, anyone can do it. You can do it without recipes if you know what to LOOK, SMELL, TASTE for in your pan, not in your written recipe. You don’t need to be a chef, and the only crying you should do in the kitchen is when you’re chopping onions.

Previous posts about Worst Cooks in America:
Worst Cooking Instructors in America
Are You the Worst Cook in America?

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Accurate and safe knife skills are always the start to any cooking instruction, and Worst Cooks in America starts off correctly this week. “Hooray for the Food Network!” I thought. They’re going to teach by building on basic cooking methods, not recipes! My excitement didn’t last until the next commercial break. Perhaps it’s the editing of a one hour show, but the criticism and crying took the place of teaching very quickly.

Instead of instruction on Worst Cooks in America, the contestants are just told to “do it”, placed under time constraints, and criticized as if they were already professional chefs. It’s obvious that they haven’t been taught any actual cooking methods from their reaction to the chefs erasing the blackboard recipe in the middle of their challenge, total chaos.

The contestants were taken to a Japanese restaurant and told to cook scallops and steak on a flat-top grill that Chef Beau said was “like 800 degrees”. This is like taking someone that doesn’t know how to drive, putting them on a NASCAR track, and yelling at them for not going fast enough.

“Actors practice lines, chefs practice recipes,” Chef Beau scolded the contestants. I don’t agree. Actors practice acting method, then interpret their lines. Chefs practice imparting heat to food, then interpret with ingredients.

So, it’s time for me to take over. In my online cooking classes, as well as my DVD series, the focus is on basic cooking methods, not recipes. The essence of cooking is how you control the transfer of heat to food. This should be the second step, knowing the difference between direct conductive heat, and indirect convective heat.

Rather than giving the contestants delicate and difficult products like scallops and duck breast, I would start with a simple sauté of a chicken breast. Saute’ method is the best start for anyone learning to cook. Here, you can watch all that happens as you transfer heat to food. You can combine flavors quickly, drop the temperature of the pan with a cold liquid, and make a sauce. The best way to learn anything is to start with simple procedures and expand upon them.

The chefs on this show have missed the opportunity to start at the beginning with explanations of what actually happens when we cook food. This would empower the contestants with skills and knowledge that will help them over the next 4 episodes. Maybe this is another piece of entertainment about chefs who make people cry. If that’s it, they’re doing a great job.

Previously about Worst Cooks in America

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The reason my students transform very quickly from the “worst cook in America” to confident, creative home cooks is very simple. I empower them with the underlying cooking methods and techniques that make recipes obsolete. They discover how to create amazing meals at home using their creativity, simply and easily.

This is exactly what I think this shows’ “Worst Cooks in America” desperately need to learn. Basic cooking methods, the secret ingredient if you will, that has been missing from Food TV since the days of Julia Child. Things like knife skills, sauté, braising, roasting, grilling, poaching.

So, I couldn’t be happier or more excited to watch the next 5 episodes of this truly unique show concept. I expect to see Chef Beau and Chef Ann lay out cooking basics for these students and to teach them the science of cooking that will enable them to cook all things and even amaze themselves by the time they are all finished.

But I do have some trepidation.

Last night showcased Chef Beau and Chef Ann demonstrating one of their own recipes for their teams and then tasking each student with replicating the exact dish. Hmmm…this might be an area that the show and I part ways because I am more interested in these “worst cooks in America” learning how to cook by method, not just follow recipes, but it’s early yet.

Also, I can’t help but wonder why these “worst cooks in America” haven’t learned how to cook yet. Presumably they are big enough Food Network fans to have heard about the casting call, right? They’re intimidated at the sight of a celebrity chef (a Food Network creation). So, why hasn’t Bobby Flay or Paula Dean or The Hughleys already taught these people to cook?

In any case, I’ll be watching to see what happens next and how these “worst cooks in America” will be transformed by Chef Beau and Chef Ann into expert cooks, who can replicate a chef’s whim without crying so much.

Whether or not this should be the goal of a great cooking show is beside the point.

And, yes, I will be posting a blog on Monday after each week’s episode to weigh in on how everybody is doing.

More on the frustrations of recipes in "Julie and Julia Beef Bourguignon, How'd she do it?"

Go to that post HERE

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