Celebrity Chefs of the Food Network

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It's hard to imagine how televised cuisine exposition got by in the days before the Food Network. Founded in 1993 and owned by the E.W. Scripps Company, the Food Network is a round-the-clock American cable TV channel devoted to food: mostly cooking it, and eating it. In its first ten years, it has single-handedly given rise to a new class of television personality, known as the 'celebrity chef'.

Habits of highly effective celebrity chefs: They give details about ingredients, and emphasize simplicity and utilize the natural flavor of ingredients. They give you useful cooking tips and explain why and how they do things. Some chefs tell you the recipe and give you a cooking formula. To many, knowing why you are doing something is just as important so that you can make up your own recipes.

They have their own style. Chefs who don't have any particular cooking style or add their own individual mark to a dish don't last long. Great celebrity chefs add some piece of themselves to a dish that marks it as their own unique creation, whether that is a particular cooking style, a form of presentation or combination of ingredients.

They add subtle variations to traditional recipes. In some ways this could be classed as one step before fusion cooking, or the mixing of different regional ingredients. Great chefs can modify what we are used to to add some new life and different flavors. This often means lighter, fresher variants of the dishes we already know..

Last, the great celebrity chefs show passion.

The top four chefs and their shows

The celebrity chefs that rise above the pack typically go on to establish commercial empires featuring their own line of cookware, cookbooks, utensils, and even produce or aprons. Many of the top chefs have several TV shows which have spun off from their first show.

Emeril Live Hosted by Emeril Lagasse, Emeril Live features many of the same elements as Emeril's other show, 'Essence of Emeril'. The show is traditionally taped in front of a lucky live audience in New York whom Emeril will sometimes allow to taste the food he prepares. Emeril Live began production in 1997, and in the same year it won a Cable ACE Award for "Best Informational Show".

The show features a wide variety of cuisine from Cajun to stir-fry and often features well-known chefs appearing as guests. Celebrities that have appeared on the show include Charlie Daniels, Michael McDonald, Joe Perry, Sammy Hagar, Aretha Franklin and Jimmy Buffett. Without Emeril, we wouldn't have catch phrases such as "Pork fat rules," "Kick it up a notch," and possibly the most well known phrase "Bam!", which he uses when adding seasoning to the food he's preparing.

So great is Emeril's fame that you can hardly venture into a grocery store without seeing his face on a few labels of the products.

30 Minute Meals A Food Network show hosted by Rachael Ray, who debuted on Food Network in the fall of 2001. At the beginning of each episode, the unfailingly perky Ray opens with the greeting: "I'm Rachael Ray, and I make thirty minute meals. Now what that means is, in the time it takes you to watch this program, I'll have made a delicious and healthy meal from start to finish."