By Ruby Asgedome
Photo: fridgewars via Instagram
Fridge Wars is bringing something new to cooking television. The show, which premiered on CBC on Feb. 27, hosts two different Canadian celebrity chefs each week who compete against one another to create exceptional meals for two different families. The twist? The meals are prepared using ingredients from the fridges of these families.
Canadian actress and host Emma Hunter goes searching for families of different cultural backgrounds every week so that the chefs are challenged in what they create. Every episode starts with Hunter visiting the homes of the families where she shows viewers what’s inside their fridge, then selects what she will bring back to the Fridge Wars studio for the chefs to cook.
The show invites world-renowned chefs to appear, bringing their various backgrounds of cooking along with them. In the first episode, Matt Basile and Massimo Capra went head to head. Basile is known for his famous Toronto-based street food and Capra is a restaurant consultant who has been featured on many Canadian cooking shows. Both chefs come from very different cooking backgrounds which is exactly what spices things up. With the rotating and diverse roster, viewers will constantly be finding themselves cheering on their favourite chefs.
The chefs at the studio are given a mere 45 minutes to cook up the most creative recipe they can with what they are given. You may be asking yourself, how do they declare the winner? Well, that’s up to the family who provided the ingredients to decide. These chefs are expected to cook for families who they know nothing about and the most they can do is get an idea on their taste based on what’s in their fridge. What could possibly go wrong?
In the middle of the studio, a huge clock shows chefs and viewers how much time they have left. The pressure is on as the chefs scramble through a fridge with the family’s ingredients and conjure up some kind of recipe that incorporates everything. When the 45 minutes are up, each chef's meal is presented to the family. The family ranks each meal based on originality, taste and look and the marks are tallied.
Photo: fridgewars via Instagram
However, the chefs will have to wait for their scores to be revealed as a second challenge with a whole new family and set of ingredients awaits them. The chefs are again given another 45 minutes to come up with an out of this world meal to present to this new family. But this time, the chefs are hit with a mini challenge as they prepare this meal. A ‘What the Fridge’ challenge, which changes from week to week, throws a curveball at the chefs. This challenge is a curveball for both the chefs and the viewers at home who are wondering what the challenge could be. During the premiere, the challenge was the addition of four new family members which meant that the chefs had to now prepare more food in the time they had left.
The food is then presented to the second family and the chefs are once again scored on originality, taste and look. With all the scores added up from the first and second families, the week’s Fridge Wars champion is announced.
The show lasts about an hour but because everything happens so fast; time flies. As viewers watch, it’s very easy to learn new recipes along the way. The show also puts a great emphasis on how you can make so many different meals from your fridge items even when you think ‘there’s nothing to eat at home.’
Host Emma Hunter does a great job limiting how much she inserts herself into the show. Although she is the one who goes to the houses of the families invited on the show and picks what she wants to be used from their fridge, when the time comes, she gives the chefs space to prepare their meals. She checks in from time to time but her presence isn’t overbearing.
Overall, Fridge Wars brings out a whole new side to cooking shows and has proven to be unique and fun to watch.