Recipe Station

We'd noticed the sudden influx of celebrities into the cooking world, but we had no idea just how many had made their mark. Website Thrillist, however, offered an in-depth analysis of this surprising trend and a look at the many celebs-turned-chefs.

We Just Hope The Kardashians Stay Out Of The Food Space…

Pointlessly Famous Person Kylie Jenner wants to teach you how to cook. Which doesn't really make sense, because she's not technically a chef. But you know what celebrities excel at? Opportunism. Which is why you might've noticed that, recently, every personality with a platform of any kind wants to tell you about their meatloaf.

First, there was the celebrity chef. Now, there's the celebrity-who-chef: Gwyneth Paltrow, Chrissy Teigen, and, of course, Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, all have lucrative cookbooks. Aziz Ansari has a YouTube special called “Food Club.” Tiffani “What Ever Happened to the Amber?” Thiessen has a show on the Cooking Channel. And that's just skimming the surface.

Sometimes, celebrities' passion projects bust spectacularly — remember Shaq's rap career? But today's celebrity food ventures are not an embarrassment to the culinary world. There's a symbiotic relationship at work here that benefits everyone involved — from the chefs you'd assume would be annoyed, to the home-cooking consumers.

This phenomenon is way older than the internet. The beloved Julia Child, for example, wasn't a professional chef at all (she was a spy during WWII!), but she got more people into cooking than possibly any other human in modern history. And the formidable felon Martha Stewart was a model well before Entertaining was published. Anyone is capable of cooking, but it takes a special kind of motivation to convince people to actually get into the kitchen. Celebs-who-chef use their star power — however it was acquired — to get people interested in food. There's no reason to revere Child but rebuke Kris Jenner and her nachos if they both get people excited about home cooking. Granted, Child's recipes are significantly more advanced and nuanced, but an entry point into food is still an entry point, and, as Martha says, that's a good thing. Anthony Bourdain, a chef whose celebrity basically overtook his need to continue cooking, agrees.

“I don't have any problem with it [celebrities getting into the food space]. It's worth remembering that Julia Child was not a professionally trained chef and probably the most influential and important cookbook ever written in the English language was The Art of French Cooking. Vincent Price was not a trained chef, but apparently a very good cook. Surely many of them could be branded crap brand extensions. Chrissy Teigen, judging from her Instagram account, is a very serious cook. She is constantly cooking, is really into chefs and restaurants and has a strong Thai background — cooks with her mom a lot. I have every reason to believe that's a very good cookbook,” he said.

The ever-sardonic Bourdain could've easily skewered the trend, and why shouldn't he? The cynic could argue that celebrities' side projects, particularly the numerous exploits of the entire Kardashian clan, are singularly motivated by money, and the need to extend their influence into every imaginable aspect of the consumer's life. For a trained, serious chef like Bourdain, these jokers could easily be viewed as undermining the entire profession.

He didn't challenge it, though, and instead, he chooses to see the value of this kind of intrusion in the food space. And other chefs agree with him. “I've definitely seen more of an interest and response from cooking shows and books with celebrities… and I've definitely seen an increase in interest about cooking, overall, because of it. Cooking shows and books expose people — who may not have that kind of exposure in real life — to new concepts about food,” said chef Justin Warner, winner of the eighth season of Food Network Star.

Just because someone isn't a professional chef doesn't mean they can't cook. After all, most of us don't run our own restaurants but are still pretty proud of our cooking skills. Still, would you take cooking advice from Kylie Jenner? We're a bit skeptical. What about you?

Article Source: Thrillist

Photo Source: JASON HOFFMAN/THRILLIST