Associated Press

For years, I have said much the same as this when I’m asked what I think of cooking shows on TV. Yes: They make people aware that different, often better types of food exist.

But at a cost: When you watch most celebrity chefs go to work on TV it is a) baffling and intimidating, and b) a charade. Baffling and intimidating because nearly every ingredient is usually prepared in advance, and what isn’t is selected so that the chef can show off his (almost never “her”) knife skills, which are bound to intimidate nearly all of us who can never aspire (and why would we, really?) to chopping an onion with our eyes closed; his ability to make food fly in the air while cooking it; and/or his skill at presentation, which has absolutely nothing to do with taste.

A charade because it’s all taped, and therefore not only doesn’t take place in real time but doesn’t even give a sense of what “real time” might be. And I’m not talking about braising time or the like but the actual work involved.

A further charade because when it’s taped, all sorts of egregious mistakes can be magically made to disappear. I was at a taping of a Food Network star a couple of years ago when he put a piece of meat on a stovetop grill over obviously way-too-high a flame, and the thing immediately caught fire and was almost completely incinerated. I say “almost,” because the taping stopped, the charred evidence was whisked off the set, and an assistant came on and grilled a new piece of meat properly. After which time the chef returned, took it off the grill, and said “There you have it,” or something like that. Witnesses: about a hundred, many of whom might not have even noticed. Viewers: millions.

Hey. Things catch fire sometimes, even in “real” kitchens. Things overcook, they undercook, they look like something the cat dragged in, they’re oversalted, underspiced, soggy when they should be crisp, dry when they should be moist . . . in restaurants, good restaurants, chefs do these over. On TV, chefs gloss these over. Rarely are you given a sense of what really goes on.

The home cook, especially the aspiring home cook, needs encouragement — not befuddlement. Show people what actually happens in the kitchen, show people that mistakes are made (“The grand thing about cooking is you can eat your mistakes” — Julia Child), show people that, just as you need not be Rafael Nadal to play tennis, you need not be Gordon Ramsay to cook a decent meal. And a decent meal — one you can proudly but humbly serve to your family and friends, and happily eat yourself — knowing that it could be better but that indeed it’s your creation, it’s wholesome, and it is in every sense good — is, or should be, the real goal of every home cook.

How you chop an onion? It doesn’t matter. At all.