by S.W. Connor

Created on: August 10, 2009

We've all seen them. The television show starring the kooky/mean/attractive chef who will teach us, the home cooks, how to make delicious meals with unusual/cheap/healthy ingredients to please our families. The celebrity chef is the newest and fastest growing type of reality star. Starting with Julia Child in the 1960's, cooking programs have exploded all over our TV sets in recent years and have even given rise to a channel dedicated solely to this phenomenon.

The wide variety of celebrity chefs on our screens (and taking up space on our bookshelves) offers a little something for everyone. In one afternoon of viewing you can encounter quick home-cooking ideas from perky hosts using everyday ingredients to decadent and expensive dishes created by a serious Michelin starred chef and everything in between. It is all very entertaining and makes the mouth water, but the question remains: Are these celebrity chefs showing us worthwhile cuisine or just overrated hype?

For many home cooks, the idea is fast, easy and healthy and that can often be at odds with a professional chef's repertoire. However, most of today's celebrity chefs have designed their shows with this in mind. With their expertise and knowledge of local ingredients, accomplished chefs inspire the home cook to experiment, but only slightly, with new flavors and techniques while staying within a budget and comfort zone.

For example, consider chef Gordon Ramsay. If you were to peel away the loud and belligerent exterior what will emerge is a Michelin starred chef dedicated to inspiring and teaching a whole new generation of home cooks that every meal does not have to come from a can or mix but can be made from fresh ingredients and can be made quickly for a busy family.

Some celebrity chefs travel the world showing viewers the wonders of exotic cuisines or unusual (and sometimes scary) ingredients. Most people, of course, cannot travel the world sampling these delicacies however we can still learn of, and experiment with, the less familiar flavor combinations from the other side of the world. Indian curries, Vietnamese Pho, Moroccan tagines..the list is endless. These fantastic flavors are often available in our own cities and towns and we would often ignore them if it weren't for our adventurous hosts showing us that they really aren't that frightening at all.

It is true that some celebrity chefs, say Ferran Adri or Wylie Dufresne for example, tend to use extremely unusual methods in their cooking. While the home cook's interest in molecular gastronomy may be low, what these chefs show us is that you can literally play with your food.

Overall, the celebrity chef has shown us how to enjoy food and take pride in what we make for ourselves, and our families, and this is definitely worthwhile. Are they crowding our TV screens? Definitely. Can they be annoying at times? You bet. But, in the end what they have done, and what they continue to do, is take what many consider a chore and make it fun, make it different and make it tasty.

Learn more about this author, S.W. Connor.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.