Kitchen Criminals, 6.30pm Monday, BBC2

Posted by Helen Jennings

Our rating:
There’s nothing like laughing at other people’s mistakes on TV – and Kitchen Criminals gives us a chance to do just that.

Sandwiched between Ready, Steady, Cook and Heston Blumenthal: In Search of…on BBC2 tonight, this brand new food programme tasks two top chefs with finding Britain’s worst cooks and turning them into kitchen angels. At the end of the series there will be a Faking It-style cook-off between the last two contestants, who will have to make a first class meal good enough to fool three leading food critics into thinking its been whipped up by a professional.

In the first show our brave teachers, Michelin star chef John Burton Race and Gordon Ramsay protégé Angela Hartnett, hold auditions for their cookery boot camp and ask applicants to bring along their signature dish. The resulting grim taste test includes "tuna bake” (a tin of tuna and a packet of powdered potato with water poured on top), “sausage and lentil bake” (cremated meat) and a Pot Noodle – yes, that’s right, just a Pot Noodle. Oh how we all chuckle.

The 20 most abysmal cooks then have a go at following John’s recipe for French toast and Angela’s instructions for king prawns with romesco crust. Can they find the oven’s on switch? Can they boil a kettle without burning the water? Can they get through the task without poisoning anybody?  Like MasterChef in reverse, it’s kitchen carnage – and only the most hopeless cases secure places on the show's culinary crash course.

It all makes for light-hearted reality TV viewing and is just the thing for making us feel better about our own limited culinary skills. Celebrity Kitchen Criminals in only a TV brainstorm away, I’m sure – but in the meantime, may the worst cook win!

Comments

[Kitchen appliances]

I thought this program was just another spin off from the decent cooking shows - this one fell well short in my estimation!

[Lissa Wilson]

Comentator Tim Vincent should have learned to pronounce the word Almond. Very irritating to listen to.

[jadestar loxton]

I was also a contestant in Kitchen Criminals by watching the way the cameramen and women and directors worked was even more facinating to me than the actual cooking as my interests are also in filming and videography, I was sad to leave as I hadnt ever met a nicer bunch of people for a long time as Im a mystic and often have to spend months away from people

[Julie Jessup]

I am on this programme and believe me despite the little bit you see it was hard work. I have decided not to give up my day job!

[Beat Attitude]

Did anyone video this show from 17th August? I was a contestant :) Interested to see how the day of footage became a show. My experience of the audition was that it was all a bit slow and boring, but John and Angela were pretty decent, even though they had to be harsh judges. I've got a lot of respect for them though, they struck me as very professional.

[Diana Spencer]

What on earth is the excellent chef Angela Hartnell doing on this dreadful programme with the awful chap - can't remember his name? She can do a lot better, and this will lower her in my estimation.