A Guide to Early 2000s Cooking Shows
Welcome to #EmerilHive, a weeklyish newsletter by delirious shut-in Becca Thimmesch. This week, we’re still thinking about those mid-aughts.
I’ll say it.
Fuck Chopped.
Fuck that show and all of its derivatives. Fuck Chopped Jr., fuck Halloween Wars (???). Fuck em all.
Maybe I’m more sentimental about food as an ethos than others are, but the concept of three strangers performing their trauma on tv so they can cook against each other for like 30 grand makes me genuinely mad. Cooking is about learning! and feeding others! Not beating someone who needs the money for their wife’s cancer treatments so you can afford your wife’s cancer treatments!
There was, for the unaware, a time before Chopped. A time when Food Network was churning out content that was, primarily, informative.
I yearn for those days, I truly do. But it has occurred to me, in the response to my last post, that not everyone was racing home from the first grade to tune into the cooking channel, so I figured I would walk you through what it was like, including links to some very low quality Youtube videos.
Let’s start, as it feels appropriate, with Emeril.
Emeril Live
In a format unlike any other, Emeril Live was like if Johnny Carson cooked gumbo, with a healthy sprinkle of The Tyra Banks Show on top.
As the name implies, the show was filmed in front of a live studio audience, comprised of three tiers: stadium seating, clusters of dinner theatre tables, and those lucky few at the counter. At the start of each show, Emeril would do a monologue among the audience, pausing to joculate with grandmas and razz the yokels. He’d pause a few times to yell Doc Gibbs and the Emeril Live Band!
Yes, there was a live band. They’d riff and the audience would cheer and Emeril would go that makes me so happy to say that.
It was the peak of human existence. The band wailing, the audience howling, absolutely losing their minds when he’d Bam! or Kick it up a Notch!
Those were the hits, of course, but I was actually a much bigger fan of the deep cuts. Like when Emeril would turn to Doc Gibbs and say, now I don’t know where you get your greens, but where I get mine, they don’t come seasoned!
And I’d be like, duh, Doc!
(this clip really hits all the topline details)
30 Minute Meals
I don’t know if you guys remember, but your mom was very busy in the early 2000s. She was either very lucky or very unlucky to be raising children during an era in which women were free to work—as long as they still did all the cooking and cleaning and shopping, of course. Enter 30 Minute Meals, a zippy half hour in which Rachael Ray talked you through weeknight dinners on the fly.
Rachael Ray is not a classically trained chef. She is merely an extremely stacked (yes, that’s right) upstate New Yorker with a raspy voice and a penchant for quick meals. She worked on this chaotic, mod, red+yellow+green set, the camera crew following her around as she walked to the pantry with a sheet pan in hands, piling it high with meticulously re-labelled generic ingredients for whatever insane meal she was cooking. She had two predominant bits: calling olive oil EVOO and calling her garbage bowl—a vintage melamine receptacle for food scraps—her trusty GB. My girl loved acronyms.
It was, of course, unable to escape the societal ills of the times. 30 Minute Meals was rife with diet culture rigidity and what I would describe as critical levels of White Lady Nonsense. alas….
(Mexican Lasagna, people!)
Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis
Ah, Giada. You gorgeous, toothsome woman.
If Rachael Ray was a swarthy, domineering Italian American, Giada was her prim Roman counterpart. Everyday Italian had no time constraints, no chaotic color schemes. Each episode began with Giada on her couch in a luscious caftan, describing the dish to come over uptempo new age music. Then we’d find her in her immaculate, cool-toned kitchen, tossing pastas and whisking vinaigrettes.
Giada, like many of the women of Food Network, was all about being thin. But for her, it all came easy. Rachael, who is naturally, as I said, extremely stacked, was down in the trenches with us curvy girls suffering through the Paris and Nichole era. Her recipes were all about denial—of fat, of sugar, of anything we didn’t deserve. Giada, waifish yet improbably buxom, fit much more easily into the body standards of the time. Her recipes were all about restraint, about being perfectly content eating a half cup of pasta with a tablespoon of goat cheese. For her, eating “light and healthy” never meant sacrificing ingredients or making grudging swaps. It merely took an unending, perfect compliance to punishing portion sizes and militant self-control.
Ladies TV folks!!!
(I would like to wear her pronunciation of penne like a sweater)
Paula’s Home Cooking
If you, like me, watched enough Paula’s Home Cooking at the time, you were probably also 0% surprised at the notorious n-word lawsuit. Truly nothing could have been more easily forthcoming!
For those beleaguered by the diet-focused programming of the network’s other leading ladies, Paula’s Home Cooking was a welcome respite. Butter, oil (pronounced awl), cheese, sour cream, all welcome at the Deen table.
I would have to say that PHC had one of my favorite formats of any of these shows. I have three words for you: Large Adult Sons. Paula’s two Big Boys were always ostensibly running errands for her, due home any minute. She’d pause while stirring heavy cream into grits and wonder, “now just where have those two gone off to?”
Then they’d cut to Jamie and Bobby, like, shooting guns into a creek or something. Perfect television.
(Miss Paula uploading full episodes to her Youtube channel!! Primo J&B content)
Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee
Before Reese Witherspoon graced us with Madeline or Elena, there was Sandra. On Semi Homemade, Sandra Lee showed us that, if you give a catastrophically neurotic+horny white woman an unlimited tablescape budget, the results can be truly magical.
The premise was simple: elegant twists on store bought products, plus gorgeous food styling, was all any busy woman needed to impress her guests. And it was an alluring one, promising that you, yes you! could turn grocery store items into expensive looking spreads.
Where it went of the rails, of course, was that Sandra herself was off the rails. She was the most chaotic woman on television and I loved every second of it. A significant portion of each episode is dedicated to the tablescape, that is, the expertly-DIY’d themed decorative landscape to accompany each highly specific gathering. I have to say, I would pay a pretty penny to be on the guest list.
(you might recognize the vodka pour from this episode but I assure you, the entire thing is worth it)
Unwrapped
If you’re stressed for some reason, not that I can think of any, I cannot recommend diving into the calming, lighthearted world of Unwrapped enough. Come on in, take a load off, let low-stakes DILF Marc Summers walk you through the wonderful world of food manufacturing.
In writing this, I discovered that I have a deep association between Unwrapped and falling asleep. When I was a kid, it used to come on at like 10:00 pm, so my brain has pretty much hardwired the theme song with my mom realizing it was past my bedtime. But even if you’re not a little Pavlovian Perro for that zippy, SATC-esque theme song, I bet it’ll relax you too.
The show opens on a vintage diner or boardwalk, panning to my man Marc as he says some bullshit like ah, summertime—the season of the twinkie. Then he narrates in that golden tenor while perfectly-ordered confections roll by on the conveyor belt. Pristine content!
(Marc …. thank you)
Good Eats
Okay, let me preface this by saying that anyone preaching this as a time for learning, self-betterment, writing your King Lear, etc can suck my ass! Global Pandemic!
That being said, if you’d like to learn about food science, Good Eats is an excellent place to start. You join the highly neurotic Alton Brown in his kitchen as he deep dives into various dishes, ingredients, and cooking styles. There’s a chalkboard!
Come for the light learning, stay for the various bits. Alton has a series of nemeses, weird side characters, and uh, I guess they’re puppets (?) occasionally join in on the fun. It’s a show weirder than it has any business being, and I think you’re really going to enjoy it!
(please, PLEASE watch this one)
The Barefoot Contessa
Okay folks, I will admit that I didn’t fully appreciate Miss Ina when I was a kid. I didn’t understand her carefree lifestyle, her lackadaisical approach to measurements, her critical levels of whimsy. But now, as I hover in my twenties, I long to be a an East Hampton retiree spending her leisurely afternoons making sure Jeffrey is well-fed. It is, in fact, the only thing I would like to do!
For those keeping track, it appears the Lady of Long Island is, like us, not doing well. Ina, you’re in my prayers.
If you’re looking to put a few paces between yourself and reality for some reason—again, not that I can think of any—why don’t you power up the ole’ Youtube and check out some early 2000s classics? Maybe you’ll learn a new dish along the way.
Emeril Update
Another week? month? 48 hours? Who’s to say! But Emeril Lagasse does not appear to have died, contracted coronavirus, or been accused of sexual harassment. Let’s ride!