Iron Chef America: Tournament of Champions Kitchen Stadium is the most intricate, complicated cooking-show set ever devised. Peek in the fridge, whisper to the judges, or click on a camera to find secrets and strange facts about the culinary competition with a cult following.
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Stock is so often a key ingredient to sauces that pots are already simmering on the stove before any competition starts. It’s only fair — no one can make stock and then use it within the competition’s hour time limit.
Billows of fog wash through Kitchen Stadium from a daily supply of well over 100 pounds of dry ice. It’s a dramatic effect with the added benefit of masking cables and other rough edges that are better left unseen.
In all, 127 crew members dodge about Kitchen Stadium, operating 12 cameras and 160 moving lights. It’s far beyond the average size for a TV crew.
Blood on the set is just a reminder of how real this show is. Chefs hurriedly chop with sharp knives, and accidents happen. The food also bites. Iron Chefs have been nibbed by live ingredients, including monkfish and squid. But Bobby Flay had it worst, deeply cutting his finger and then getting an electric shock.
The newest Iron Chef inducted into the ranks is Alex Guarnaschelli. Her specialty is American cuisine, but it was in Paris, after Christmas dinner 1982, when Guarneschelli first felt the hunger to become a chef.
If you think it would be great to be a guest judge, don’t forget that you are required to taste everything — even the strangest combinations. In 2004, Japanese chef Hiroyuki Sakai famously served trout ice cream. Want some?
Between the original Japanese series and Iron Chef America, no chef has competed more times than Masaharu Morimoto. But before he ever battered tempura, he batted as a professional baseball player in Japan.
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Over the course of more than 300 Iron Chef episodes, chefs in Japan’s original Kitchen Stadium used six tons of rice, five tons of eggs, two tons of tomatoes, and a ton each of chicken, beef, and pork — plus ten pounds of caviar.
Chefs are given an inkling in advance of what the secret ingredient might be as well as several hundred dollars to spend on specialty ingredients like blue corn grits, queso añejo, or tapioca maltodextrin.
Between the overhead robot cams, the pedestal cameras, six handhelds, and two jibs, it’s pretty amazing you don’t see more cameras on camera. That’s the magic of editing. Up to 10 hours of footage per battle is chopped and sliced.
The Chairman has challenged chefs with more than 30 different types of fish including barramundi, barracuda, wreckfish, Hawaiian moi, and canned tuna — not to mention well over a dozen other types of seafood.
Iron Chef originated in Japan before spawning the highly successful Iron Chef America. But did you know the world has also seen Iron Chef UK, Iron Chef Australia and Iron Chef Vietnam — as well as a prior, short-lived Iron Chef USA.
There have been more than 100 judges over the years, including many of the world’s top food critics and restaurateurs.
The Iron Chef Master of Ceremonies is Alton Brown, creator of Good Eats, one of the longest-running Food Network shows. Growing up, he watched his mother and grandmother in the kitchen, but he says he learned to cook “as a way to get dates” in college.
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