The Frugal Gourmet: What Happened Behind The Scenes

The Frugal Gourmet was one of the most popular cooking shows on TV until it all came crashing down here's a look behind the scenes of the show and its controversial host Jeff Smith at one point 300 public television stations were carrying The Frugal Gourmet and at its most popular 15 million viewers at a time were tuning in then it just disappeared the show had its share of successes but there were also some problems Brewing beneath the surface before The Frugal gourmet's downfall Smith had sold sold 12 million of His companion cookbooks to his TV series with the last one coming out in 1995 2 years before the TV show ended however the Press started insinuating that Jeff Smith didn't write most of his own recipes for the show and cookbooks and that he had stolen them from others the show had 11 Seasons with 261 episodes and specials plus Smith put out over a dozen Frugal Gourmet branded cookbooks with recipes corresponding to episodes from the show we counted over 300 recipes in one of his early cookbooks so he was sharing thousands of recipes with his fans it's hard to imagine anyone coming up with that many unique recipes what was worse in a lot of people's eyes was that not only was he passing others recipes as his own and making money off of them but he wasn't even bothering to change most of them with his own spin when confronted with the fact that many of his recipes were practically word forword copies of recipes and other cookbooks he didn't deny it I picked the dish up I didn't pick it up I stole it uh while New Orleans I think that's the best city in the country for stealing dishes he told Newsday sure I mooch off other Cooks every good teacher is a thief but I always try to give credit when I do however if he had actually given credit to all original recipes you have to wonder why anybody would have been accusing him of theft Not only was Jeff Smith reportedly lifting other Cooks recipes but the Frugal Gourmet gained a reputation for having recipes that didn't quite work thus the show eventually ended up hiring a chef to pick up the slack no I've never learned to crack eggs in one hand one of my Cooks can do it and I'm always embarrassed when he does that and then looks at me and smirks in response to criticisms about his shortcomings in the kitchen Smith said I never claim to have Chef's training I'm a good cook but I'm not a chef but I bet I've done more study of history than they have and I bet they wish they sold as many books as I do jealousy is not a kind bed fellow the chef that the show hired in 1986 to be Smith's assistant was C wam wam joined in the show's fourth year once he started collaborating with Smith the recipes on the show were less of a hit or miss Affair in addition to helping Smith with the show wam co-authored two cookbooks with him The Frugal Gourmet whole family cookbook and The Frugal gourmet's culinary handbook in fact The Culinary handbook was nearly all wm's work it was based on a 1904 cookbook and wam did pretty much all the adaptation to turn it into a Frugal Gourmet cookbook today nobody would be be phased by a TV cooking show celebrity doing Product Promotion it's the age of paid influencers and many of today's cooking celebs have their own product lines but in the 80s the idea hit differently Smith wasn't getting paid to promote everything on his show but he was doing it enough for it to be offputting to some Smith would often Nam drop he had his favorite Brands like hankle knives or Silverstone lined frying pans however some of the brands that he Nam dropped paid him to do so knowing that he was getting paid to promote some Brands cheapened his recommendations for some was he suggesting KitchenAid because it truly made a good product or because the company was paying him to promote its food processor some people who opened the Frugal Gourmet whole family cookbook and other cookbooks saw the nearly 100 page introduction and thought it looked like one big commercial for products he liked and some that he was promoting again though his level of paid Product Promotion is tame for today while his onscreen Persona was mainly light-hearted and fun-loving there was another side of Je Smith those who knew and worked with him regularly saw different sides of him than the camera saw on the Frugal Gourmet Michael will you grab these don't drop my cork screw collection now you're in trouble friend Smith often bossed his assistants including Chef Craig wam around on screen and some fans have wondered how that translated off screen what you heard about Smith depended on who you asked a chef who helped him for a single season found him friendly and easy to get along with another friend who once appeared on his show found him supportive however if you asked his film crew they tell you he was easily irritated others just found him plain condescending Smith admitted to sometimes letting his emotions run high he explained his susceptibility to being cranky by saying my emotions are always on the surface and I'm not embarrassed by that I think it's the only way I can prevent ulcers many of The Frugal Gourmet Seasons revolved around ethnic food which was great for introducing new foods to viewers who had only ever tasted their own Regional Cuisine however Smith was perhaps too casual in his approach and not as politically correct as he should have been for someone trying to Faithfully represent a culture's food o you see Smith was already digging into International Cuisine by the first season often devoting entire episodes to just one nationality when asked about the perception some had of him making ethnic stereotypes he denied it he told Newsday if I was I'd hear about it from the communities I write about if I make jokes it's because I'm having fun and because I feel that I'm part of their culture one thing you might not have realized about episodes of The Frugal Gourmet is that Smith insisted on powering through an episode no matter what happened if he made a little mistake he wanted it to be a part of the show so there usually weren't lots of takes for his show or redos of things that didn't work out like he'd planned like other cooking shows tended to have when you watch an episode of The Frugal Gourmet The Experience feels more realistic than with many other television Cooks there are pans food and ingredients everywhere like in a real kitchen everything's happen happening all at once and Jeff Smith is often saying whatever comes to mind organically in the moment Jeffrey stop using your apron for your towel his lack of self-consciousness and realness was one of the attributes that Drew in Watchers all those years sometimes he'd bring out a dish only to realize it wasn't the one he'd planned to show the audience but he'd keep it in the show anyway and just move on there was some confusion about what the Frugal Gourmet was all about the show's name made many viewers assume he would show them how to make gourmet level meals cheaply however Jeff Smith's definitions of frugal and Gourmet were quite different many times in his shows cookbooks and interviews he'd have to go to bat for the definition that he presents in his cookbooks in the introduction to The Frugal Gourmet cookbook he explains it succinctly he says that rather than Frugal meaning cheap it means that you use everything and are careful with your time as well as with your food products thus using Fresh Foods carefully would result in spending less money he explains that he uses Gourmet to mean a lover of good food and wine rather than some sort of food snob Smith told the Associated Press people criticize me for enjoying good food when I use the word frugal frugal doesn't mean cheap it means you don't waste your money when they saw the name of the show some people got the idea of a penny pinching Miser eating subpar food while some of the recipes he shared did offer fancy results with inexpensive ingredients that wasn't the main idea the show was designed to appeal to the middle class and offered a gateway to good food without being too pretentious speaking of not being Thrifty The Frugal gourmet's Kitchen was nowhere near Frugal the kitchen set was estimated to have cost about $112,500 adjusted for inflation that's nearly $38,500 plus it was filled with all kinds of kitchen gadgetry that made it worth far more much of the equipment was Industrial Level so that it didn't break down from intensive use so it cost more than you might have thought from an initial glance Jeff Smith had a very exacting idea of all the equipment he needed for The Frugal Gourmet you can get an idea of how important the equipment was to him by perusing the introductory section to his cookbooks which only got longer and full of more equipment as the years progressed he had a multitude of knives favoring hles and sabatier he likes Silverstone lined pots and pans enameled cast iron Dutch ovens and Corning wear he had all sorts of food machines including a KitchenAid food processor then there were all kinds of specialized gadgets from garlic presses to special equipment for inter AAL food these are the little gadgets you use for taking the food out they're little uh little baskets you see everyone has their own and a rice bowl it's terrific fun he certainly didn't skimp on buying special equipment for international cooking Endeavors for example in his dim sum episode he has Stacks and stacks of Chinese bamboo steamer baskets whether the home viewer had access to all this equipment wasn't really important he just liked to show what was possible however all his gadgets certainly inspired some kitchen wish lists the Frugal Gourmet ended in 1997 after Smith was accused by six men of sexual abuse when they were teenagers reports current.org the site further reported that more people would likely testify against him at the trial separately another man claimed Smith's sexually abused him after picking him up as a hitchhiker in 1992 when reporters started digging around they found that there had been rumors around Tacoma about Smith for years the first to speak out publicly was Clint Smith who started talking to reporters in 1993 and finally got a spot on a local radio show to accuse Jeff Smith in 1995 Clint claimed that Jeff had started paying him a settlement to keep quiet back in 1991 but stopped paying everything snowballed after the radio show with another of Smith's alleged victims hearing the broadcast and coming forward while Smith maintained his innocence he settled with the seven men who sued him rather than go to trial in 1998 Smith initially wanted to continue The Frugal Gourmet franchise but he apparently never found an underwriter willing to take him on after all the controversy Smith died in 2004

Channel: Mashed

Views: 30,879

Keywords: mashed, chef, cooking show, behind the scenes, the frugal gourmet, jeff smith

Id: h66U7y9lnpY

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2024