As a chef, I watch the Food Network with more than a bit of amusement.

The unrealistic portrayals of food preparation and the demands of cooking are laughable at best.

In many shows that appear on the Food Network, the viewer sees a nice, shiny kitchen with a host in perfectly ironed and immaculately clean clothes, standing over a spotless stove.

What a load of garbage.

The last time I saw a spotless stove was when a brand new one was brought into work – that lasted a whole two days.

This is not to say real commercial kitchens aren’t clean, but rather that they don’t have a team of cleaners, nor is only one meal a day prepared in them.

The most amusing part of the Food Network is their futile attempts at documenting just you how “easy” it is to make the wonderful dishes featured in their programming.

Ever try to go out and buy the ingredients for one of the recipes? Good luck. If they’re not very expensive, they are often hard to find.

Winnipeg is not exactly the culinary capital of Canada.

On many of the programs, such as Chef at Home, or 30 Minute Meals, the celebrity chefs chop a couple of ingredients, mix them a bit, pop something in the oven and voila! You have filet mignon with pommes anna and red wine jus.

When I watch such culinary ruses, I can’t help but think, “Whoa, back the magic culinary train up.”

First, how do they get to the finished meal with about five seconds of effort?

The actual steps involved in making many of the recipes shown on the Food Network require lots of preparation and lots of dishes, neither of which the viewer witnesses.

To top it all off, if viewers attempt to make the featured recipes, the dish’s presentation is never going to look like it does on television.

Don’t even bother to try, unless you currently live with a food stylist.

I went to the Food Network website to see if any people had tried the recipes featured on the network and what their experiences were. I wasn’t in Rachel Ray’s review section for long before I noticed the numerous complaints about her dishes.

Even in the positive reviews there were still problems evident.

One woman loved the food but found the recipe took one hour to make. The time it’s “supposed” to take is 12 minutes.

From 12 minutes to one hour is a huge difference. I found other reviews claiming similar discrepancies.

Maybe they are meant to take 12 minutes if you’re a Food Network star and everything is prepared for you prior to the show.

Other complaints described how crappy the recipes tasted, and how they looked nothing like how Ray’s had. The complaints went on and on.

One of the greatest insults to cooks everywhere, in my opinion, are shows like Ray’s on the Food Network. They present an unrealistic portrayal of the demands of professional cooking, as well as paint a dishonest picture of the work that goes into each meal.

I’m pretty sure Ray and her ilk are the antichrists of cooking.

I’ve heard if you play her show backwards you’ll find hidden messages that spell the end of cooking as we know it.

Thomas Rousseaux is a chef with Diversity Foods at the University of Winnipeg.

Published in Volume 65, Number 18 of The Uniter (February 3, 2011)