While searching for a picture for my Recipe Book Page Post, I came upon an old interesting article by the village voice.
So the article essentially talks about the writers experience while sitting in during a filming of an episode and how in the end, it is obvious that the competition is quite bogus and set up.
Some main points including imposter stand-in iron chefs during the initial pedestal showing of the iron chef selection, ingredients being used that were not available in the kitchen stadium, and a lengthy time gap between the competition cooking and actual judging of the food, ultimately leading to the assumption that:
Now I will first say that I absolutely love iron chef america and the food network in general. And after watching several iron chef america episodes I already assumed on my own that they are aware of the secret ingredient before because it just seems impossible to come up with such elegant dishes when they literally uncover the secret ingredient and immediately start preparing the dish. I also figured that the winner was fairly randomly chosen at the discretion of the food network.
So not really too much of a shock if these are true, but interesting to confirm my gut feeling.
So the article essentially talks about the writers experience while sitting in during a filming of an episode and how in the end, it is obvious that the competition is quite bogus and set up.
Some main points including imposter stand-in iron chefs during the initial pedestal showing of the iron chef selection, ingredients being used that were not available in the kitchen stadium, and a lengthy time gap between the competition cooking and actual judging of the food, ultimately leading to the assumption that:
- The rival is matched with an iron chef prior to the show.
- The secret ingredient is not so secret and in actuality the chefs are aware before and practice + prepare dishes for that ingredient
- The food cooked during the competition and the food tasted during the judging is actually different (the sous chefs + helpers cook the food again to be judged by the judges)
- The winner of the match is quite arbitrary and favoured towards the iron chef.
Now I will first say that I absolutely love iron chef america and the food network in general. And after watching several iron chef america episodes I already assumed on my own that they are aware of the secret ingredient before because it just seems impossible to come up with such elegant dishes when they literally uncover the secret ingredient and immediately start preparing the dish. I also figured that the winner was fairly randomly chosen at the discretion of the food network.
So not really too much of a shock if these are true, but interesting to confirm my gut feeling.