The Worst Cooks in America

The Worst Cooks in America premiered on the Food Network last night, and I watched it today. I like reality competition shows that deal with people's skills, like The Next Food Network Star and HGTV Design Star. This falls in line with those shows, but with a twist.

Two professional chefs, Anne Burrell and Beau MacMillan, started with 24 people whose friends and family nominated them as some of the worst cooks in the country. In the opener, they were all asked to create a familiar dish for Anne and Beau to taste. 12 of the 24 would be selected as team members for the two chefs, who will attempt to take those 12 and whip them into shape. Ultimately, the two contestants to perform the best throughout the competition and end up as finalists will prepare a meal for a panel of three professional chefs, trying to pass their food off as Anne's and Beau's creations. The winner of that meal tasting wins not only bragging rights, but $25,000. Not a huge prize, but considering that these people all just want to be able to cook, it would be nice to accomplish that goal and get 25K thrown in to boot.

Anne and Beau chose the team members for their counterpart, which meant that they were actually choosing those who did the worst in the first competition in order to make the contest as challenging as possible for their competitor. I think they did a great job casting the 24 that were chosen, throwing in a number of people who were memorable and touching, and I was pretty happy with the 12 they selected.

I'm already pulling for Rebecca Hooper, a Utah mother who was in tears over her desire to cook delicious meals for her young daughter. I'm hoping she makes it far and really improves her cooking skills, whether or not she makes it to the end. You can tell how much she wants to do well and that she's not in it to win a prize. I was so happy that she made it through to the team selection and past the first challenge to create a chef's dish; in fact, Anne chose her dish as the best one for the challenge.

I'll be interested to see how this plays out and how much improvement the contestants can make before they are eliminated. Hopefully those who go home early will be inspired to take cooking courses and continue to learn, as they all seem to want to be good cooks.