Top 10 Times TV Chefs Were Wankers

#10: Too Much Salt

Gordon’s in Greece making salsa verde for the locals, which already raises a few questions. After all, salsa verde is a Mexican sauce made of tomatillo and chili peppers – it’s not particularly Greek, nor would you expect Greek home cooks to be that familiar with it. But that familiarity, or lack thereof, hardly matters when the food tastes terrible. Gordon’s proud of it, especially since it’s utilising local capers grown in Santorini, but she hated it, saying it had far too much salt. He’s forced to apologise and tries to add some other ingredients, like lemon juice, to counteract the saltiness, while Gino and Fred make fun of him.

#9: Jerk Rice

In 2018, Jamie Oliver was in hot water over his “punchy jerk rice”, a microwavable rice pouch using the “jerk” name but none of the “jerk” flavour. As was painstakingly explained by Levi Roots and Rustie Lee, jerk is a very specific type of marinade made from allspice and scotch bonnet peppers, cooked in Jamaica for hundreds of years. Jamie’s jerk rice, however, was primarily made of chilli, aubergines, and beans. He was widely accused of culturally appropriating the “jerk” name to try and sell rice that had nothing to do with Caribbean cooking. Oliver claimed it was merely meant to draw “inspiration” from jerk spice. This was years after Levi Roots had personally taught Oliver how to make it.

#8: Botox

In this infamous interview, Gordon was down under talking to the hosts of “Today” live from a food and wine festival in Sydney. Soon enough, the conversation turned to swearing when a bit of foul language slipped out; while Ramsay’s a known quantity, 8 o’clock in the morning is definitely still too early for this. He advises Australian viewers to change the channel if they don’t like his language, but eventually gets tired of their questions when they start asking him about botox. Apparently, it had been circulating in the tabloids that he’d gone to America and had some work done. And try as they might, they couldn’t get him to stop swearing.

#7: Remixed Full English

It must be so easy to eat fresh, healthy food when you’re an aristocrat with your own farm and an enormous property! In typical Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall fashion, he devoted one segment of “River Cottage” to telling us that we were making our Full Englishes wrong, coming up with a new, worse way to cook one. His first mistake was removing sausages and mushrooms, but then he took the sauce off the beans and layered the plate with fresh tomatoes – which he didn’t even fry! Yes, we’re sure this is healthier, with small servings of lardons and croutons, but is it a Full English? There weren’t even any eggs!

#6: Edible Skeleton

Even more deranged than Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – a man who ate placenta on one of his programmes – is Heston Blumenthal. The king of weird food for a few years in the 2000s, Heston made his name by cooking things you’d never even heard of in ways you couldn’t imagine. In this episode of “Heston’s Feasts”, he was preparing a gothic-themed evening, complete with a main course inspired by Frankenstein’s Monster, which he served on a replica human skeleton. While most of it was actually relatively normal for Heston – like serving beef ribs in place of human ones – the presentation was predictably obnoxious, as was serving pulverised, deep-fried calf brains inside a skull.

#5: Eating a Rat

Gino D’Acampo was King of the Jungle this year, so clearly the public hadn’t turned against him, but the Australian authorities definitely had. After struggling to feel nourished on an all-rice diet, the celebs, ring-led by Gino and Stuart Manning, caught, killed, and cooked up a wild rat in a risotto. The show was lambasted for not intervening, with ITV apparently choosing must-see television over animal welfare, and the RSPCA got involved and tried to prosecute D’Acampo for his antics. They were ultimately only charged, not prosecuted, while ITV was fined. Plenty of British charities were also outraged by the incident.

#4: The Public

The Naked Chef was public enemy number one for a while in the noughties, by going after unhealthy kids’ food without offering affordable alternatives for people who don’t have the money or, crucially, TIME, to cook everything from scratch. In this clip, Jamie went up against his nemesis, Julie Critchlow, who rebelled against his revamped school dinners. She was surprised when, upon meeting him, he was more polite than anticipated, but still made him apologise for insulting her during an appearance on “Top Gear”. Perhaps Jamie should rethink the way he comes across if people’s first reaction to meeting him is always that he’s not as much of an arsehole as they expected.

#3: Fish & Chips

Marco Pierre White has a complicated history with fish and chips. There’s the infamous tale of him charging a cocky customer £25 for fresh, hand-cut chips after he ordered them off-menu at one of White’s restaurants, but there’s also this bizarre recipe. Celebrity chefs LOVE putting a new spin on fish and chips and charging a fortune, and in this clip, White decided to use fresh turbot. He then made an egg-less beer batter and showed off those hand-crafted chips again. He was livid about people not making chips properly and then insisted that working in a chippy is his dream job. By the end of the clip, he was irate.

#2: Fried Egg

Another case of a customer trying to order off-menu, in this clip from the first series of “Hell’s Kitchen”, Gordon Ramsay came up against a demanding celebrity guest: comedian Vic Reeves. Reeves turned up and ordered two fried eggs, which the waiter then had to tell Gordon about. Reeves then comes up to argue with Ramsay, who wasn’t anywhere near as famous in 2004 as he is now, utterly unfazed. It’s exactly what you’d expect from Reeves, insisting that egg on toast is simple enough to throw together. While it’s always rude to order off the menu, it’s impossible not to be amused by Reeves’ prank, especially when Gordon apologises.

#1: Chicken Nuggets

Yes, it’s more Jamie Oliver, but you can’t tell us that you’re surprised. In this legendary clip from his American programme, “Food Revolution”, he presented a group of primary school age children with his chicken nuggets recipe, then challenged them on whether they still want to eat it. As we all know, the kids were totally unfazed by the ground-up gristle – and so was the audience, pointing out that it’s a great way to avoid food waste if you’ve already used all the better cuts of meat. Years on, and he’s still not managed to put people off chicken nuggets, nor has he beaten the relentless allegations of classism.

Let us know in the comments whether you make your own chicken nuggets.