Food Network Pet Peeve

[Lanshark]

Can't stand Ted Allen. His halting speech reminds me of Captain Kirk.

 

[LisaR]

She washed her hands prio to rubbing the roast, right? If so, I have no real problem with this. Granted, it's a little messy, but it's not unsanitary as long as the veggies are to be cooked. If the veggies are going to be served uncooked, she is risking a cross contamination issue.

She was rubbing her hands over the RAW roast and without washing her hands she grabbed hold of the roast pan, opened the oven door and then picked up a knife to cut the vegetables. I can't remember if the veggies were being cooked or not but at that point she had contaminated the oven door handle and the knife plus she was touching the veggies. Still a giant YUCK in my book!

 

[mfd25wife]

She was rubbing her hands over the RAW roast and without washing her hands she grabbed hold of the roast pan, opened the oven door and then picked up a knife to cut the vegetables. I can't remember if the veggies were being cooked or not but at that point she had contaminated the oven door handle and the knife plus she was touching the veggies. Still a giant YUCK in my book!

My hands would even feel yucky. I wash my hands so much when cooking that it's crazy. I hate having anything on them.

 

[luv2sew]

What grosses me out is, and I watch the show all the time but I have no idea why, is "Iron Chef America" or any Iron Chef for that matter. I would not want to have to eat or taste that food after the chef's have been profusely sweating over it for an hour....literally they are dripping bullits of sweat everywhere

The fondant thing, and people not liking the way it's rolled out, I am a little confused about because is not that the same as rolling out pie dough. I'm confused about fondant cause how do you cut a cake with that on it and it just doesn't look the least bit appetizing to me and the cakes always look as dry as the desert...give me that good old fashioned whipped cream icing, leave the fondant off.

 

[pearlieq]

I'm confused about fondant cause how do you cut a cake with that on it and it just doesn't look the least bit appetizing to me and the cakes always look as dry as the desert.

Most of the time the decorated fondant is peeled back off of the cake before it is cut and served. There is a layer of buttercream under the fondant. For a wedding cake this is usually done back in the kitchen after the bride and groom have cut their piece.

You're right--fondant it's not very tasty. It tastes a bit like a flavorless marshmallow. It won't hurt you to eat, but it's not that good.

You're also right that those fancy decorated cakes are usually very dry. They are often baked up to a week ahead of serving. They are sprayed with sugar water to keep them moist before they are covered and decorated, but it usually doesn't help much or taste very good. Also, pastry chefs sometimes use more dense, moist cake layers like carrot cake, pound cake, etc. to try to combat this problem.

 

[alexandria674]

Well, they probably edit out washing their hands, I mean I wouldn't want to stare at some chef washing his hands, I want to see him cook and I do agree on seeing the chef moaning and chewing for ten seconds.

Can't stand Paula licking her fingers while she is cooking though. I love her and all, but it kind of weirds me out. What also gets me is seeing Giada De Laurentiis stating "perfect" after almost every move she makes.

 

[luv2sew]

Wow thanks for the information on that fondant...but they go through all that trouble for something they pull off and throw away before serving.

Geeze what a waste and I bet it's not cheap.

 

[luvmy3]

I wish Tyler would chew and swallow his food. I hate when he talks with a mouth full of food.

This is my biggest pet peeve, especially Guy Fieri on DD&D.

 

[luv2laugh]

Most of the time the decorated fondant is peeled back off of the cake before it is cut and served. There is a layer of buttercream under the fondant. For a wedding cake this is usually done back in the kitchen after the bride and groom have cut their piece.

You're right--fondant it's not very tasty. It tastes a bit like a flavorless marshmallow. It won't hurt you to eat, but it's not that good.

You're also right that those fancy decorated cakes are usually very dry. They are often baked up to a week ahead of serving. They are sprayed with sugar water to keep them moist before they are covered and decorated, but it usually doesn't help much or taste very good. Also, pastry chefs sometimes use more dense, moist cake layers like carrot cake, pound cake, etc. to try to combat this problem.

I have to completely disagree with you! I have never seen be peeled before it is served! I actually bake and decorate cakes myself. I bake my cakes 2 days before an event, and I guarantee they are very moist without any sugar water added! Taste is my number one concern; decorations are second.

Additionally, fondant is like any other food. Different recipes yield different results. If you have a good baker, then the fondant can be very delicious! (NEVER eat Wilton's... trust me! Yuck! That should not even be considered edible!)

Now, Duff on the other hand...I have heard that Charm City Cakes are very dry. I wouldn't know personally as they're so expensive!! I believe it's a $1000 minimum now!

 

[DWGal210]

I understand what others have said regarding washing their hands before they make food, but I am guessing by that you mean you do that before you prepare food that you are going to eat yourself. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me, if you're cooking food/baking cakes as a business, and producing it for the masses, I would think that wearing gloves would be a must.

Around here, we had an incident where a catering company got sued because tons of people got sick after a wedding reception...and it turns out the fellow that was assembling the salads had fecal matter on his hands . I don't know if he washed his hands or not earlier that day, but he must have just been grabbing the lettuce and assembling those salads with his bare hands. Ew Ew Ew...if I was that bride I would be fit to be tied, but that's a different story and a different thread.

 

[pearlieq]

I have to completely disagree with you! I have never seen be peeled before it is served!

Huh. I've never seen it served, except at small parties where the cake is cut and served by the host instead of wait staff. Then you just peel it off of your own piece. Otherwise, the wait staff just pull back the entire layer, discard it, and then slice and serve the cake.

Most commerical bakers favor form over function. I certainly wouldn't want to tuck into a nice bite of fondant from a 20lb tub. Yuck!

 

[luv2sew]

I hate to say this but....if these people are not washing their hands after using the rest room and after seeing the walls platered with those signs to do so....then what makes you think they are not fumbling and touching those gloves they put onto their hands before they do so. Just saying

 

[NotUrsula]

Fondant was originally designed to be eaten; that's why it's edible. If you were supposed to pull it off and toss it, it would be much simpler and cheaper to cast everything out of wax or plastic instead of sugar. The white filling in many candies and in things like chocolate-covered cherries is actually fondant.

The problem is that commercial bulk fondant is tasteless, like many other commercial baking products (including the "buttercream" icing that most supermarket bakeries use.)

Home-made fondant is fine for eating. Here's an ingredient list for homemade vs. commercial decor fondant; see which one looks like it would taste better:

Homemade:

• 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) Unsalted Butter
• ¾ teaspoon Vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon Salt
• 2/3; cup Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 5 cups Sifted Confectioners' Sugar (+ 1 cup for work surface)

Commercial:

• 3 Tablespoons Warm Water
• 5 teaspoon unflavored Gelatin
• 1/2 cup liquid Glucose (you can get this from baking or some craft stores) or Corn Syrup in a pinch (but reduce the water if substituting corn syrup)
• 1 Tablespoon Glycerine (optional: improves softness)
• 6 cups Confectioners' Sugar, sifted

As to touching the food, I expect commercial cooks to touch my food. It's only on assembly-line prep lines that everyone wears gloves. Also, with pastry work, you need the feel of the stuff on your fingers to tell you if it is the right consistency or not -- gloves will make getting it right much harder.

Smoking I hate, but it's epidemic in the commercial food service industry. As long as they don't smoke *in* the prep area, I can live with it if I have to. (Drove me nuts when I was a banquet waiter -- all my coworkers were told not to smoke in the plating area, so they smoked in the dish pantry. That meant the clean glassware, dishes and linens were permeated with smoke. In banquet work, very often the waiters help with the plating.)

As for home cooking, I'm OK with not washing my hands between handling foods if all of the foods that I handle, and all of the dishes, are either going into the heat of the pan or oven (hot enough to kill whatever might pass from one to the other), or going straight into the sink for washing. I only stop to wash my hands between prep of different ingredients if one of them is going to be served raw. If you are cooking for a crowd, this is why it pays to pre-prep and measure all your ingredients, so that you won't be putting packages and bottles back into the fridge once you've started handling the meats. The oven handle I'll touch, because once I've got everything in, I wipe it down with cleanser while everything is cooking and I'm cleaning up the prep.

 

[joyjoy]

Paula Deen is gross. Did you see that episode of Kathy Griffin MLOTDL where Kathy and friends visited Paula's house and had dinner? Ew. Paula put a giant glob of mashed potatoes in her pie hole and immediately asked Kathy, "Now whaat is thaaat agaaain?" with her mouth open. Sickening. Also she totally embellishes the Y'all-ness. She says it like "Yahowwll" and it is grating. And the jewelry. Ugh.

 

[sbell111]

I understand what others have said regarding washing their hands before they make food, but I am guessing by that you mean you do that before you prepare food that you are going to eat yourself. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me, if you're cooking food/baking cakes as a business, and producing it for the masses, I would think that wearing gloves would be a must.

I fail to see the difference. If my washed hands are good enough to safely cook for my family, why would they be unsafe if I was cooking for strangers?

Around here, we had an incident where a catering company got sued because tons of people got sick after a wedding reception...and it turns out the fellow that was assembling the salads had fecal matter on his hands . I don't know if he washed his hands or not earlier that day, but he must have just been grabbing the lettuce and assembling those salads with his bare hands. Ew Ew Ew...if I was that bride I would be fit to be tied, but that's a different story and a different thread.

This might have been a case of unsanitary conditions back at the farm, not in the kitchen. There have been salmonella outbreaks that were caused by e-coli in the manure or irrigation water. If this is the case, the kitchen worker may have been contaminated by the food. If this is the case, wearing gloves would not have helped.

It should also be mentioned that if teh vegetables were the victim, not the culprit, the kitchen worker could have avoided the problem by washing his hands properly. Gloves would not have been necessary to avoid the contamination.

 

[DWGal210]

I fail to see the difference. If my washed hands are good enough to safely cook for my family, why would they be unsafe if I was cooking for strangers?

This might have been a case of unsanitary conditions back at the farm, not in the kitchen. There have been salmonella outbreaks that were caused by e-coli in the manure or irrigation water. If this is the case, the kitchen worker may have been contaminated by the food. If this is the case, wearing gloves would not have helped.

It should also be mentioned that if teh vegetables were the victim, not the culprit, the kitchen worker could have avoided the problem by washing his hands properly. Gloves would not have been necessary to avoid the contamination.

Good points - I can see that. It very well could have been from the farm. It was just reported on the news that it was due to the materials on the man's hands, but I guess you never know for sure.

 

[Nancy]

It has never occured to me to worry about it. I cook with rings (I take them off for messy jobs like meatloaf but I knead dough with them on), nail polish, etc. I wash my hands before I start and when appropriate during. No one has yet died in my kitchen.

We get too caught up in this stuff. Are we expecting a full surgical scrub before cracking an egg? Should we just have the chefs irradiated before they're allowed in the kitchen? Wrapped up in sterilized space suits?

This is bringing back memories of The Anal Retentive Chef from SNL. http://www.hulu.com/watch/4101/saturday-night-live-cooking-with-the-anal-rententive-chef

Right, I don't believe that every chef is wearing gloves while they cook, cooking with gloves on is horrible!

I hate that! The silence is followed by some moaning and groaning though ....I can do without the sound effects! Just cook it, I know you love it!

I hate the hair. Pull it back, don't touch it. Hair needs to be out of your face, off your shoulders and no where near the food. I get that you are on TV but I have never worked in any kitchen that allowed stray hair.

I'm guessing if they were no doing a TV show and were in a commercial kitchen cooking that they would have the hair back and chef hats on. BUT if they came on TV looking all drab and not done up then we'd have people complaining "OMG they are doing a TV show he least they could do was make themselves look good and do their hair and makeup"

OOH this drives me nuts too!!! I just see them rolling out all that fondant WITH THEIR BARE HANDS and it makes me feel sick...I can't imagine eating a cake where some has literally man-handled the frosting and decorations with no gloves. Does no one from their (Ace of Cakes) Health Department watch this show?!

Working any kind of pastry, dough or decorative icing is very hard to do with gloves on..you need to feel to get it right.



My pet peeve...is the use of so much salt. They will say they are using a "bit" of salt and it looks like they are putting on a handful! I just imagine how salty the food will taste.

 

[Imzadi]

It should also be mentioned that if teh vegetables were the victim, not the culprit, the kitchen worker could have avoided the problem by washing his hands properly. Gloves would not have been necessary to avoid the contamination.

I used to work for one of the top, high-end celebrity caterers here in NYC. (My cousin is the booker.) It is a health code violation in commerical kitchens to not use gloves while preparing foods.

(In the case above, they probably stopped looking for further ways of contamination when they found the worker didn't use gloves, nor washed his hands. It's easier to blame the person, plus it's the more likely cause than suspect the food may be the actual cuprit and do further testing.)

The purpose of gloves is so that if a worker did not wash his hands before touching the foods, the sterilized gloves would be the protection.

At our company, waiters routinely were called into the kitchen to help the chefs assemble the foods. if we were working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the nearest bathroon to wash hands is a good 10 minutes away from the kitchen, in both directions. We cannot have 10 waiters wander away for what turns out to be 30 minutes just to wash their hands. The food needs done in the time it would take them to come back. So, in accordance with health regulations and time, they don gloves on.

The problem, even when using gloves is that it is presumed when workers are wearing the gloves that they keep their hands only touching the food products. I've seen many a waiter, flip back his hair, touch his nose, touch their cell phone, or in the case of filling a glass with ice, grab the back of the chair with the gloved hand to move it out of the way to get to the glass, and then stick that same hand into the ice bucket. Ewww!

 

[Evil Genius]

I like Guy Fieri but can't stand to watch him cook. Between the big rings and the watch and the hanging bracelet, it just makes me gag.

 

[sbell111]

I used to work for one of the top, high-end celebrity caterers here in NYC. (My cousin is the booker.) It is a health code violation in commerical kitchens to not use gloves while preparing foods.

(In the case above, they probably stopped looking for further ways of contamination when they found the worker didn't use gloves, nor washed his hands. It's easier to blame the person, plus it's the more likely cause than suspect the food may be the actual cuprit and do further testing.)

The purpose of gloves is so that if a worker did not wash his hands before touching the foods, the sterilized gloves would be the protection.

At our company, waiters routinely were called into the kitchen to help the chefs assemble the foods. if we were working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the nearest bathroon to wash hands is a good 10 minutes away from the kitchen, in both directions. We cannot have 10 waiters wander away for what turns out to be 30 minutes just to wash their hands. The food needs done in the time it would take them to come back. So, in accordance with health regulations and time, they don gloves on.

The problem, even when using gloves is that it is presumed when workers are wearing the gloves that they keep their hands only touching the food products. I've seen many a waiter, flip back his hair, touch his nose, touch their cell phone, or in the case of filling a glass with ice, grab the back of the chair with the gloved hand to move it out of the way to get to the glass, and then stick that same hand into the ice bucket. Ewww!

I'll bet a buck that those same health codes require a working hand sink in the kitchen area.