Jacques Chirac once quipped to pals Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin that "one cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad". He was talking about Brits and our notoriously unsophisticated, boring and tasteless cooking. Fortunately for us, gastronomic messiahs like Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein, Lorraine Pascale and Jamie Oliver have saved us from ourselves, introducing us to a world of culinary experimentation and flavours.

It would seem, however, that one rogue chef is singlehandedly reviving the old myths about our general fear of seasoning and love of boiling to tastelessness all that we eat. Enter Marco Pierre White. Somewhere I am sure a roguishly tousled head is hanging in shame following last week's Knorr advert which tried to guide viewers on how to make a Jamaican dish of rice and peas with chicken that many Jamaicans found unrecognisable, much less palatable. One commenter requested that Marco "kindly refrain from referring to that mess you made as a Jamaican dish lest you get sued for defamation of our good cooking reputation". By Monday an online petition demanding a public apology from Knorr had garnered more than 500 names.

I am unable to provide a link to the advert, as Unilever, which owns Knorr, has had it removed. For those who missed it, the video opens with Marco telling us that when he visits "Jermayca", which he does "now and then", the "delicious" meal "is something the locals cook for me". He fries some chopped onions, talks of releasing their acidity and then adds brown rice (something I have never encountered when eating the dish), water, chicken, garden peas (not the traditional kidney beans) and three stock cubes. As if anticipating the collective "eugh" that would follow this moment, MPW makes a point of telling us just how important having those cubes in this dish is. He talks of rice-to-water ratios, stirs and leaves it for 30 minutes. No herbs, no spices, no seasoning, other than the Knorr's stock cubes. I may not be Jamaican, but you don't have to be to recognise that this is as close to the original as chicken, tinned tomatoes and a few Knorr jelly blocks is to chicken tikka masala.

The backlash from the Jamaican community and its sympathisers no doubt had officials from Knorr queasy with worry over just how wrong they had got this one – the company that claims to have all the Knorr how". This is a lesson in how big brands need to tread carefully in their attempts to commodify and appropriate important cultural dishes.

Let me set the scene for what I think took place. Advertisers for the stock cube company Knorr are looking for a way to make their cubes "exciting" and "versatile". At an ideas generation meeting someone has a bright one: "Why don't we do something really edgy … something cool … ethnic." Another suggests 'that Jamaican dish you can get everywhere during Notting Hill Carnival, what's the one?" Someone else, clicking their fingers, excited by where this is going says "YEAH! What do they call it … chicken, peas and rice! Marco could really sexy the whole thing up too." This is all in my imagination, of course, but it perhaps offers an explanation for the hilarious shambles of an advert/recipe that was produced from the union between MPW and Knorr.

On any given night, households up and down the country will be tucking into a meal that is the result of a long and fruitful history of cultural cross pollination. From fish and chips to pasta and of course, our collective favourite, curry; we are a nation that enjoys what others have to teach us about food. The issue here is not the attempt at making such a distinctly Jamaican dish, it is the lack of care and consideration taken by Knorr/MPW to find out how that meal is ordinarily made. In the name of foregrounding their product they failed to see how their attempt at this cornerstone dish was a minimising insult.

Beneath the tears of laughter at the hilarity of the video was the palpable and justified anger at an attempt to disregard the expertise behind Jamaican cooking. The community's outrage at the hot mess cobbled together by MPW as "Jamaican-style" is however not just about the misrepresentation of their culinary skills. The evident lack of respect, mingled with an intention to create a marketable product was another example of cultural appropriation for wider consumption.

We have been here before and no doubt will again. So to Marco and Knorr I say, thanks for the laughs, but that really won't do.