Why are TV chefs cooking our language?

Let’s face it, we’re a nation of foodies – our obesity statistics prove that.  And TV chefs are doing what they can to redress the problem and show us how to eat healthily.  

Like many of us, I do enjoy watching a good cooking programme, and these days there are plenty to choose from on every channel.  But watching these talented TV chefs conjure up mountains of delicious delights is not quite the same as listening to them.  Have you heard them recently?  They’re reinventing the English language, and it’s deeply worrying.

I’m not talking about simple lapses in grammar or syntax that anyone might make, especially if they’re multi-tasking in the way these culinary maestros do by simultaneously demonstrating and explaining their recipes while answering questions and/or interviewing their guests, so I might cringe a little when I hear that pancake batter “needs to be much more runnier”; “plates need to be more hotter”, or food can be made “even more tastier” or even when I hear that summer is “fastly approaching”, but I can take it, along with a small pinch of salt.

Verbing nouns is a well-known abomination in the corporate world that is beginning to spread elsewhere, including the world of cooking.  I’m not sure when butter became a verb, but we’ve been buttering our toast for many years, so it doesn’t sound too odd to butter a pan or pie dish to prevent food from sticking to it.  But why stop at butter?  I recently watched a TV cook telling us to “pepper the steak, but don’t salt it yet”.  And when the food is ready, you don’t put it on a plate to serve, you “plate it” or “plate it up”. 

Sometimes an unusual expression catches me off guard and makes me question it.  The chef who said, “If I use too much of it, it will outstand the other flavours” may have been grammatically correct, but it was a usage of the word ‘outstand’ I haven’t heard before.  While the cook who “oversighted” the sugar in her recipe, left me wondering if she intended to invent a new word, or simply meant she had forgotten to add sugar.

  

We’ve all grown used to hearing about plates of food thanks to one particular programme, but what does cook up lurid images in my head is the phrase “the plate [or the food] eats well”.  The thought of plates devouring themselves or items of food munching away at each other is far from appetising.

Chefs on television have long lamented the absence of ‘smell-o-vision’ so that viewers can experience the delightful aromas emanating from their dishes, but one TV chef recently seemed to expect something even more from our TV sets when he instructed us to “Look at the flavour” being created from his dish.  I tried until I was cross-eyed.  I really did.

With thanks to www.pngtree.com; to www.coprogallery.bigcartel.com/category/nouar, and to www.superbcook.com/dishware for the excellent images used in this post.