10 Things Celebrity Chefs Won't Tell You

• 2. "There's absolutely no reason to buy my cookbook."
  
  You say you love Bobby Flay's food and want to try to make it at home? Before you spend more than $30 on his Mesa Grill Cookbook, check out FoodNetwork .com's recipe database, where among the 36,000-plus recipes you can browse, a quick search will net you 1,914 of the master chef 's recipes -- or 1,764 more than Mesa Grill contains -- and it won't cost you a penny. Indeed, free recipe-sharing sites like Recipezaar.com, which offers 271,000 recipes, and Epicurious.com, which holds more than 80,000, also threaten to make your favorite chef 's cookbook virtually obsolete.
  
  
  

  Getty Images

• 3. "Just because I have a cooking show doesn't mean I'm a chef."
  
  When the Food Network canceled Emeril Live in 2007, it put TV chefs with actual chef experience on the endangered list. The new food faces tend to be cookbook authors and soccermom cooks. The problem, says American Culinary Federation President John Kinsella, is that "people call anyone who writes a cookbook a chef. That's not what a chef is." Rachael Ray will be the first to say she's never run a kitchen -- but then neither have a lot of the other big food stars, like Nigella Lawson, Paula Deen, or Dave Lieberman.
  
  
  

  Getty Images

• 4. "Sex sells, even with foodies."
  
  As the celebrity chef phenomenon has exploded, a growing number of chefs are making mouths water for reasons other than their culinary acumen. Actress and model Padma Lakshmi, for one, has gone from guest-starring on Star Trek: Enterprise to hosting the popular reality show Top Chef, where she muses about plating alongside Tom Colicchio, an accomplished chef and one of People magazine's "Sexiest Men Alive" for 2007. Lakshmi's food cred includes two cookbooks, Easy Exotic and Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet -- both of which feature glamour shots of the India-born starlet with her own recipes.
  
  
  

  Bravo / AP

• 5. "I'm addicted to porn -- food porn, that is."
  
  "Mmmm," moans Nigella Lawson as she "Jackson Pollocks" melted chocolate over chocolate cheesecake on an episode of Nigella Feasts. As viewers of the show can attest, there's a little something extra in Lawson's cooking. That something is what's known in the industry as food porn: presenting dishes with an eye toward their sensual appeal. And according to food stylist Wesley Martin, no one does it better than Lawson. "The way she talks about food and describes it is all about the senses," he says.
  
  
  

  www.imagesource.com

• 6. "The dishes I make on TV don't always work so great at home . . ."
  
  Sue Gordon, a New Jersey cooking instructor, is a big fan of the Food Network. "I'm always looking for what they'll teach me," she says. Unfortunately, when she tried to duplicate the sweetpotato gnocchi she watched Giada De Laurentiis make on Everyday Italian, she learned the age-old lesson that looks aren't everything. "It was so sticky, I had to keep adding flour," Gordon says. "The amounts were completely wrong." Turns out Gordon wasn't the only one who had problems with the recipe -- the reviews section of FoodNetwork.com features similar complaints from a number of viewers. (A spokesperson for De Laurentiis declined to comment.)
  
  
  

  jupiterimages

• 7. ". . . and sometimes they're just plain gross."
  
  Besides having to worry about whether a recipe you got from a cooking show is correct and usable, you also have to be wary of recipes that just don't taste very good. "I've seen chefs on TV create things that make me cringe in horror at the thought that people are going to eat them," says Ellen Brown. Take the Red Bean Beach Salad that Ingrid Hoffmann made on the beach-picnic episode of Simply Delicioso, for example. Users' reviews on the FoodNetwork.com's recipe board slammed the dish for its strange, unappetizing combination of beans and sweet pickles.
  
  
  

  Corbis

• 8. "It might be my restaurant, but that doesn't mean I cook there."
  
  A recent ad campaign for the city of Las Vegas used a commercial featuring Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, and Wolfgang Puck, promising that in Vegas you would visit three celebrity chefs in three days. What the ad didn't mention is that you've got a better chance of hitting the jackpot at keno than you do eating food that's actually been cooked by your favorite celebrity chef at one of his many restaurants. That's not to say the food isn't going to taste good. The menu at these restaurants is prepared from the chef 's own recipes.
  
  
  

  Bill Pugliano, Getty Images

• 9. "My show is one long commercial for my cookbooks."
  
  The publishing world sure has changed since cookbook author Mollie Katzen altered the landscape back in 1977 with The Moosewood Cookbook, widely credited with introducing vegetarian cooking to the mainstream. Before finding a publisher, Katzen sold the book out of her car, and through word of mouth its popularity exploded, making it one of the 10 bestselling cookbooks of all time, according to The New York Times. With the rise of the Food Network and the birth of celebrity chefdom, it's unlikely that Katzen, who says she was rejected by the Food Network for not being entertaining enough -- "I'm too much like Mr. Rogers," she says -- could ever have sold as many books if Moosewood were released today.
  
  
  

  AP

• 10. "Bottom line: My celebrity status is great for business."
  
  Camille Becerra experienced the Midas touch of celebrity chefdom firsthand when she was chosen as a contestant on Top Chef. After appearing in four episodes, Becerra estimates that she's seen a 35 to 40 percent increase at her Brooklyn, N.Y., restaurant, Paloma. Not bad for someone who lasted less than half a season.
  
  
  

  Tom Pennington, Getty Images