Turn it off then

Saucyman,

What is with the world of hate for Rachel Ray? Only mildly annoyed

I don’t think it is a world of hate. With 4 TV shows being currently produced or continuously rerun, a half-dozen books in print, a magazine and never ending parade of commercials and endorsements, someone loves her. But you know a person is contentious when they manage to stir up controversy by wearing a scarf in a Dunkin Donuts commercial, so much for my theory scarves are the new ties.

It is the foodigentsia who despise her and/or her work. In particular, Anthony Bourdain currently uses Ms. Ray as the object of his scorn previously reserved for Emeril Lagasse. But Mr. Bourdain consistently endorses restaurant skills: His value structure dictates anyone who endures 12 hour shifts in stressful, low paid, physically taxing environments is a better cook than anyone who pulls up to a stove at home - it is the brotherhood of the checked pants that trumps all on the subject of food. I don’t agree, but at least the man has a code he lives by.

For the chefs who have put in the long hours in dedication to their craft, it is easy to understand the hatred, but it is not quite as understandable are the legions of civilians who despise her. Sites like the Rachel Ray Sucks Community, catalog every culinary transgression and annoying thing she utters. Her shows, like the boneless, skinless chicken breast she favors aren’t personal favorites because they lack complexity. That and eating on $40 dollars a day while traveling is as probable as a semi knowledgeable home cook actually completing one of her meals in 30 minutes – And yes E-V-O-O is annoying enough without then parroting Extra Virgin Olive Oil after the initials, why use the initials in the first place? As a matter of fact, why say E-V-O-O/Extra Virgin Olive Oil 6 times in 22 minutes?

The fact that she can and does, is Ms. Ray’s true skill, she can talk. Just as Mr. Bourdain uses a profound combination of snark and sincerity to sell his worldview, Ms. Ray uses words, lots and lots of words to shape her enterprise. No gaps, no downtime, no NPResque moments of dead air – intimating a level of thoughtfulness. She is constantly talking, describing what her hands are doing, complimenting her own efforts, making puns, commenting in an quasi Bob Dole 3rd person type of way- declaring something delish after she tastes…constantly firing those words out, not letting a moment pass where a viewer can be shaken from the hypnotic grip of her voice. In its own way, it is pretty amazing - addicting if not entertaining.

Maybe those verbal skills make her more qualified for a job on cable news or a co-host of The View than a cooking show host, but even if she didn’t spend 6 months over a fryalator in her youth, she does have some bona fides. Before she was a multimedia sensation, she taught cooking classes in a small store, did segments for local TV in upstate NY, which led to the publication of a moderately successful cookbook, which in turn caught the attention of the Food Network.

Here is the question that orbits around Ms. Ray – What do you expect out of every meal? Is each one going to be more memorable than the last, aren’t there just days when you want a warm comforting bowl of soup? Lets say Martha Stewart and Rachel Ray were making split pea soup. Martha might talk about the ham she is using– cured in a hand-built smoke house made from salvaged maple. The ham was brined in sea salt from the Baltic and smoked slowly over applewood, ecologically harvested from her mother’s organic orhcard in Vermont, which Martha personally stayed up 8 nights to ensure the fire was kept at the right temperature. Ms. Ray would open a carton of chicken stock and toss pre-sliced ham in the recipe and spend the next ¾ of her show explaining how to make grilled cheese by coating a frying pan with E-V-O-O, that is Extra Virgin Olive Oil, BTW. I’d choose Martha’s table every time, but aren’t both options better than opening a can of soup? Don’t you sometimes just want a meal that is quick and easy, isn’t that the standard Ms. Ray should be measured against rather than Thomas Keller, Alice Waters or Martha Stewart?

Her defenders will claim she knows how real people shop and cook and here in Slate, tell food snobs to leave her alone. Technically, I could be labeled a food snob, so I don’t want to pile on beyond this - maybe the biggest fault with Ms. Ray is her penchant for using salty, pre-sliced, pre-shredded, low fat, flavorless, processed, heavily packaged food only reinforces some ugly things about how most people really shop and cook.

Maybe before Ms. Ray finally leaves the studio kitchen to build an audience in daytime TV, where she might be more at home, she can host a show called One Really Good Meal - based on fundamental skills and planning. Even if that show goes into production, somehow I think that Long Island accent, the manufactured ditzy persona, the hawking of Ritz Crackers and rapid-fire succession of monosyllabic words are still going raise people’s ire.