If you blinked, you may have missed the inaugural season of Worst Cooks in America on Food Network. The show premiered January 3, and the two-part finale is set for this coming Sunday and Monday. With all of the other shows I’m covering at the moment, I couldn’t commit to watching every episode or blogging about the show regularly, but I did want to catch some of it because the premise is very intriguing.
Basically two professional chefs and Food Network personalities, Anne Burell and Beau MacMillan, have the daunting task of teaching a group of people who have zero cooking ability, to cook and to cook well. Each week a chef from each team is eliminated until there is one chef remaining under Anne and one under Beau. Those two chefs then have the task of cooking a gourmet meal for a group of restaurant critics–critics who believe that Burrell and MacMillan have cooked the meals themselves.
Not only is the reputation of each chef on the line, but the grand prize for the chef that wins is $25,000.
It’s truly incredible and at times horrifying to see the utter lack of ability in some of these folks, and I can’t even imagine what it must be like to try and teach them. But some of them learn quickly and keep advancing. So now they are down to the final four, two on each side, and that will be cut down to the final two, who will square off in the grand finale on Monday night at 10pm/9pm central.
