So You Want to Be Cast on a Cooking Show?

Fifteen years ago, a food career might have meant being a cook, writer, photographer, or distributor. Now the food media landscape is larger than ever, with novels, podcasts, webisodes, and of course -- TV.

But how do you enter food television? I’ve been cast on two different cooking shows (Cooks Vs Cons and Food Network Star), and while I wouldn’t call myself an expert by any means, I do have some tips on how to get noticed. Here are 10 pointers, based on my own experience and what I’ve learned from others who have made their mark on food TV.   

Is this for me?

1) Ask yourself -- do I really want this? For some people, cooking competition shows are exhilarating and business-boosting. For others, they might be painful and regrettable. When you shoot a cooking show, you’re looking at a 14-hour day, with cameras in your face, watching your every move and misstep. And then compound that day after day if you’re doing a show that follows contestants over multiple episodes. If that sounds exciting -- carry on! If it sounds frightening, maybe food TV isn’t for you.

2) When the kitchen is a stage. All competition shows have two casting criteria. 1) Do you have the skills? 2) Do you have the camera presence? This goes for any show, whether it’s Food Network Star or Jeopardy (I know, because both me and my husband got to the screen test portion of Jeopardy casting and didn't make it). Being smart or a great cook isn't enough. Camera presence doesn’t mean that you’re gorgeous. It just means that you pop on screen somehow. Is this you? And if not, can you make it you?

Finding Opportunities

3) Get looped into casting. Okay, now for the fun stuff. You’ve decided you want to take the plunge. Now you have to find the opportunities. JS Casting casts for Food Network Star, Cooks Vs Cons, Beat Bobby Flay, and Chopped. I was on their mailing list for TEN YEARS before I was cast on Food Network Star.

4) Look for smaller, newer shows. This is a game of odds. It’s much easier to be cast from a field of hundreds than it is from a field of thousands. Plus, once you’re cast on one show, you can use that as a launching pad for other shows. I applied to Cooks Vs Cons before the first season even aired. Because it was a total unknown, my application didn’t have to fight for attention as much. And because JS Casting already knew me from Cooks Vs Cons, they eventually cast me for Food Network Star.

5) Find a friend who was on a show. Referrals matter. Whether it’s a job, or a potential date, or a publishing deal -- getting the right intro can make all the difference.

Positioning Yourself

6) Build a platform. Confession. I tried out for Food Network Star ten years ago. I was 23 years old and fresh out of college. I met with Jennifer Sullivan (the JS of JS Casting) and she said, “I like you, but I can’t do anything with you. You don’t have a platform”. Brutal, but honest! I was just a person who liked food. So what? But over the years, I built a platform and a body of expertise. I became a food novelist. An F&B marketer. A food blogger. Put in the work and set yourself apart, and you’ll make casting agents take notice.

7) Tap into “what’s at stake”. A very common question on casting applications is, “Why is winning XYZ so important to you?”. Or they might ask you point blank, “What’s at stake?”. Remember food TV is just like any other show -- it must have stories, characters, conflict, drama. Consider two contestants. Arnold wants to be cast because it’s a fun bucket list thing and he asked, why not? Betty wants to be cast because she lost her bakery to a freak flood that deprived a community of a beloved institution. Who would you root for? I’m not saying you have to lie here, but you have to consider why viewers should care about you. Like writing a novel, a storyline works best if there’s something important, even life-and-death, about the outcome.

The Audition

8) Act comfortable and confident. If you’re nervous in your initial casting, then they’ll probably write you off then and there. Being on set is way more nerve-wracking, and if you can’t handle a couple people judging you, then you won’t be able to handle actual filming, when you’ll be watched by dozens of people on set and millions of people on TV.

9) Be yourself, but more. My totally unscientific measurement is that the camera saps away 25% of our energy. So that means you have to give 25% more. Think of TV makeup. If you saw a person with TV makeup IRL, you’d be like wow you have a lot of makeup on. But on TV, they look totally natural! So, bump it up.  

10) Don’t be discouraged if you’re not cast. Seriously, don’t take it personally. Remember my #2 above where I said you’re cast based on skill and camera presence? Well, there’s something else: cast curation. And you have no control over that. Maybe they’re looking for a specific personality or a person from a specific place. Casting isn’t about winning a race, it’s about fitting a niche. Maybe that niche is you… and maybe it’s not. The best thing you can do is be yourself and wait for the right time.

I'm curious... would you compete on a TV cooking show? 

Watch my episode of Cooks vs Cons, Candy Clash

It took some time, but my episode of Cooks vs Cons can now be viewed on Food Network. You'll need a cable log-in.

Here's a snippet (actually a pastiche of two recipes... some backstage knowledge for ya):

Cooks vs Cons Round 2: Korean Beef with Toasted Quinoa, Quick Pickles & Miso Egg Emulsion

Round 2...candy! Oh boy. I don't know about you, but I've never cooked with candy before. As Bruno and Geoffrey Zakarian pointed out, it's hard to know how candy will cook. Will it melt? Hold its shape? Curdle? 

I once tried to brûlé gummy bears and it was a disaster. The heat seems to toughen the gelatin, making an impossibly tacky bite. 

So instead of opting for licorice, gumdrops, or  jelly beans, which contain mysterious ingredients with unknown properties, I used clean and simple lollipops. Sugar, flavoring and coloring. Not ideal, but not horrifying either. 

We weren't allowed to make desserts (too easy), so my mind immediately went to Korean food. Korean food is actually pretty sweet, but it's tempered by salt, spice and funk. No one-note sweetness here. I called on my go-to flavors: miso, soy, ginger, garlic and sesame (the same flavors that are in one my most popular recipes of all time). I chose pink lemonade and lemon lollipops, thinking that citrus flavors were better than, say, cherry or grape (gag). 

Once I knew how I'd feature the surprise ingredient, I worked from there. What works best with sweet and spicy marinated beef? 

Bibimbap! Concepting the rest was easy. I'd adapt the classic Korean rice-and-veggies dish with my own spin. A quick pickle added some brightness and crunch, toasted quinoa with nori contributed an earthy, umami base (and mimicked the delicious burnt rice in the bottom of a stone bibimbap bowl). I also made a miso-egg emulsion, a hollandaise-like sauce that nods to the raw egg that is traditionally stirred into bibimbop. 

The recipe below is sequenced for a tight 30-minute cook. There's no wasted time waiting for things to cook. But if you want a saner experience, then you can always make each component one by one.

RECIPE:

Beef: 
1/2 cup of sugar -- ground-up citrus candy or actual sugar
1 small onion
8 cloves of garlic
1 ping-pong-ball-sized knob of ginger
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 Scotch Bonnet chili 

1 lb thinly sliced top sirloin 

Toasted Quinoa: 
1 cup red quinoa
10 sheets of roasted seaweed

Quick Pickles:
4 radishes
3 baby cucumbers
1 tablespoon salt 

Miso Egg Emulsion:
4 egg yolks
1 heaping teaspoon miso paste
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
½ teaspoon chili powder
1 tablespoon butter 

2 tablespoons black sesame seed
¼ cup chopped chives

Rinse quinoa and place in pot with two cups of water. Bring to a boil on high, then cover and simmer on low until nice and fluffy. The "tails" of the quinoa should be sticking out. (This didn't happen during my episode... perhaps because the stove was so hot the water boiled off too quickly and/or the quinoa was old and took longer than normal to "bloom".) 

For the marinade, blend the onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil and chili. Place in saucepan and reduce on medium-high. 

For the miso egg emulsion, blend the egg yolks, miso, rice vinegar, chili powder and butter. 

For the quick pickles, slice the cucumbers and radishes with a mandolin on the thinnest setting. Salt and let rest. 

Slice the beef and place it in the reduced marinade. While the beef is cooking and picking up the glaze, toast half the quinoa in a frying pan with a teaspoon of olive oil. Add the other half of the quinoa, add sliced nori and reserve. 

Assemble your plate. Squeeze out the excess water from the pickles and place. Add the toasted quinoa with nori and Korean candy beef. Pour miso egg emulsion on top, or serve on the side. Add chopped chives and black sesame seeds. 

RELAX because that was an intense 30 minutes of cooking.

TFW People Guess Your #CooksvsCons Identity on Twitter

I tried out for Cooks vs Cons because I'm an armchair chef. Why are you making croutons and bread pudding on Chopped? Don't you know that's so overdone? Were you thinking you could avoid making dessert on Top Chef?  

And, I also have a thing for high-stakes deception (Exhibit A). Even if I wasn't a contestant on Cooks vs Cons, I'd still be obsessed with it. 

So, if you haven't gathered by now, here's now the show works. Two professional chefs and two amateur chefs compete in two rounds with surprise ingredients. No one -- not the judges, host, or contestants -- knows who is who. The audience is kept in the dark too, and they can guess along with Graham Elliot, Daphne Oz, and Geoffrey Zakarian. 

Turns out seeing people speculate about your identity on Twitter is really surreal. 

A lot of people thought I was a chef, including Graham Elliot and Daphne Oz (I think GZ was onto me, even though I made sure to call him Chef as a real chef would). Twitter thought so too. 

Jessica is the only one I'm sure of! Pro! #CooksVsCons

— TEAM TRINA (@Trinas_No1_Fan) April 15, 2016

Jessica and Mariano are the cooks #CooksVsCons

— Yolanda Moultrie (@yotmo28) April 15, 2016

#CooksVsCons Jessica is definitively a pro!

— Me (@KastoffCloud) April 15, 2016

I think Mariano is a con who is just used to making pasta. Jessica & Bruno are real cooks #CooksVsCons

— MyThoughtsMyTime (@nmills1012) April 15, 2016

I think the cooks are Peter and Jessica #CooksVsCons

— 805Collectibles (@805Collectibles) April 15, 2016

When I watch the show, I assume everyone is a chef until proven guilty. Could be a lack of conviction when talking about a dish, or a loosey-goosey way of moving around the kitchen. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in cliches, but then you realize that the producers know that, so you end up engineering some reverse reverse psychology that hurts your brain. 

ie: That guy has a lot of tattoos so he must be a chef. But the producers must realize that so of course he's not. But maybe they know that I know...  

And so on. 

And then some people thought I was a fraud. My instinct is to be insulted, but then I remember...I am a fraud. 

@FoodNetwork Jessica is a con #CooksVsCons I think she's just using her brain👌👌

— Northphillyreese (@Northphillyrees) April 15, 2016

Jessica is a con, she's probably a lawyer. #CooksVsCons

— redruM (@Phoenix90247) April 15, 2016

@gzchef Jessica is an executive business woman- con

— Meilani (@MeilaniGore) April 15, 2016

I also think Jessica's real occupation is an actress. #CooksVsCons

— Seraphim Taylor (@SeraphimTaylor) April 15, 2016

Actress, businesswoman, and lawyer are not bad guesses. After the competition, Graham Elliot said he thought I could be a knowledgeable food blogger. That's pretty close, too. Novelist is way too random for anyone to guess. 

I love that this show has two layers of challenges: one for the contestant and one for the viewer. I can't think of anything quite like it -- watching your own funeral? Witnessing your college admissions panel? Something where your personhood is analyzed as if you weren't there...but you are. 

But that makes it sound like a drag. It was weird and fun and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. 

Also -- Cooks vs Cons has been picked up for a second season! That means they're looking for amateur and professional cooks. Take a look at the casting notice here and catch up on all my Cooks vs Cons posts here. 

BTW, my bio footage was shot at PowerHouse Arena, where I had my launch party. 

Everything I was thinking during Cooks vs Cons

The Cooks vs Cons shoot was a looong day -- 14 hours. There's a lot of waiting, some napping efforts, some eating (I ordered sashimi for dinner, not realizing that nothing-but-raw-fish is probably the last thing you want when your nerves are at peak levels). 

You film many things multiple times, but the actual cooking only happens once. On a day that can move in slo-mo, those rounds went so super fast. 

A lot of it was a blur, but here's a taste of what I was thinking during those gone-in-a-flash 30-minute rounds.

Corn!! Corn is really one my favorite foods. This is good.

I'm really only running 15 feet, but I am all about that head start.

My nails are definitely chipped. I should have gotten a gel mani.

The moment you realize you should've used fresh corn is the moment you pour canned corn into a blender. No. Turning. Back.

Overmix gnocchi and you get a gummy glob. Undermix it and you might have pockets of flour. Sometimes you don't really know until it's too late.

No wasted motion. Carry all the things.

I'm not used to the power of a professional stove. The water in my quinoa is boiling off before it can cook.

Quin-womp-womp in process.

Chef, I like you and you always have snazzy sport coats, but I can't really talk right now.

I'm going to look so attractive eating on TV, right? Right??

I'm plating and I have five whole minutes left. Is this a good thing... or bad?

This dish is really good. Better than a lollipop beef dish has any right to be. But can it win??

The finals. I know this sounds lame and I talk a big "I'm so competitive" talk. But I already feel like a winner.

And ICYMI, I posted the recipe for my Round 1 polenta gnocchi with creamy corn soubise here. Round 2 recipe coming soon... 

Cooks vs Cons Round 1: Polenta Gnocchi with Creamy Corn Soubise

When Geoffrey Zakarian announced we had to make pasta for the first round of Cooks vs Cons...I wasn't very excited. 

I'll occasionally eat pasta when I'm out to dinner, but I rarely make it at home and when I do, it's always dried pasta or sometimes pre-made fresh ravioli. I know I must make fresh pasta. This has been ingrained in me after years of watching cooking shows. 

But I do have one pasta recipe up my sleeve: gnocchi. With some adjustments, I thought I could make it a 30-minute version, with some extra time for a dynamic, complex sauce. 

My first trick was adding polenta to the dough. Usually pasta dough needs ~30 minutes for the gluten bonds to form, but I had no such luxury. So I added instant polenta, which creates instant dough "glue". Bonus points because corn is the surprise ingredient and of course polenta is cornmeal. 

My second trick was to make an onion soubise. I first had soubise at Momofuku Ko, in a now-iconic poached egg with caviar and potato chips dish. A soubise traditionally calls for softened onions and cream or bechamel. But what about using corn as a not-too-rich thickener?? I gave it a try, and it worked! 

And finally, corn and pasta are both soft and starchy. Where's the pop? So I added chipotle puree to the dough, along with ground annatto seeds for color. I swapped the traditional Parmesan with Mexican cotija, to keep with the Mexican flavors. I also added some tortilla chips and popcorn for texture. 

This was a tough round, especially since I don't really make or eat pasta. But these gnocchi may make it into my everyday rotation...

POLENTA GNOCCHI WITH CREAMY CORN SOUBISE RECIPE

Gnocchi: 
¾ cup ricotta cheese
3 tablespoons grated cotija cheese
2 tablespoons potato flour
1 ½ tablespoons instant polenta
1 ½ tablespoons flour + extra for rolling
2 tablespoons chipotle puree
1 tablespoon ground annatto seeds
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
semolina flour for gnocchi dusting
salt 

Soubise: 
2 tablespoons butter
2 large Vidalia onions
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
¾ cup heavy cream
1 cup of corn
salt / pepper

Garnish:
cilantro
tortilla chips
popcorn
sumac
chili powder 

Sandwich the ricotta between four paper towels to soak up excess water. Salt your pasta water and bring to a boil. 

Melt butter in a saute pan. Slice onions and add, along with cumin, oregano and salt. (If you want to do this under 30 minutes, I recommend using a mandolin to sweat the onions faster. Slice the onions directly over the pan.) Sweat the onions until semi-translucent, about 7 minutes. 

Mix the ricotta, cotija cheese, potato flour, flour, polenta, chipotle puree, annatto and eggs. Form into a dough. Roll into snakes a little wider than your finger and cut into 3/4" slices with a bench scraper. 

Add the sauteed onions to a blender and add the cream, corn, white wine vinegar and salt to taste. This is your creamy corn soubise.

Add the gnocchis to the salted boiled water. Remove with a spider or slotted spoon when they float at the top for about 30 seconds. 

Place gnocchi in a bowl and add onion soubise plus cilantro, sumac, chili powder, more corn, sumac, crushed tortilla chips, and chili powder. Or not! The judges weren't fans of all the fixins, and I kind of agree. But at home, it's up to you. 

My Appearance on Cooks vs Cons on Food Network

That whole experience was so so so fun. I'll write more later (the recipes for my chipotle gnocchi with creamy corn soubise & Korean BBQ beef with red quinoa, quick pickles, and miso egg emnulsion, my behind-the-scenes thoughts), but for now just wanted to tell you other airing times. 

The episode is called "Candy Clash". Check here for the most up-to-date airing schedule.

To my Canadian friends, the show will air on May 2. 

Hope you enjoy!! What was your favorite moment from the episode?