On cooking shows, how much of the food that is prepared off camera is actually prepared by the show's star?

I actually watch them doing their own chopping and mixing. The difference from what they do and what happens with us is they have everything they need right in front of them. You’ll never hear, “oh; I’m out of that ingredient” or, “let me walk over to the pantry for the tenth time to get that.”

The finished product may well be done by assistants following the chef’s recipe.

I suspect that the finished product that comes out of the oven was made by assistants and food stylists to the specifications of the cooking host. Clearly, the hosts know how to cook, because most of them do the whole demonstration right in front of you, but they don’t have the time it takes to cook a whole cake or a roast, and because it’s on TV, they want it to look fantastic when the thing comes out of the oven, hence the food stylists (same thing with magazine photos of food). I love to cook, but my food never looks quite as pretty as the stuff I see on TV.

Great question. I’m guessing not much. But another question that comes to mind is who eats the food cooked in cooking shows?

@mazingerz88 I remember reading somewhere that by the time the judges get to taste food cooked on say Masterchef, it may have been sitting there for quite a while because of all the TV production stuff and how long that can take.

It cerrainly is hard to tell, isn’t it? On one of my favorite Julia Child shows, which were all live and much less polished than food shows are now, she needed flour and couldn’t find it. She looked everywhere and was getting more and more flustered. Finally a helper brought in a bag of flour. She went on with her cooking. At the end, as she went through the ingredients of the recipes, she left out . . .you guessed it: the flour. I think the staff got to eat her creations. Who eats the 1000 cupcakes made on Cup Cake Wars?

Just like any fancy restaurant, the sous chef probably does the bulk of the prep work and final touches under the direction of the chef…or show host.

You can certainly watch them put it together on Canadian shows and Jamie Oliver certainly cooked the ones he did in his garden stove and campfire.

I just watched Donna Hay’s cooking show and she cooked everything. She didn’t chop everything up but she put it all together when it came to the cooking. I want Donna Hay to adopt me.