‘Chopped’: The Original Show Involved a Mansion, Butler, and Pet Chihuahua Who’d Eat the Losing Dish

Chopped is one of Food Network’s most successful shows in history. The cooking competition is the third-longest-running show behind only Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives (still running) and the venerable Alton Brown’s Good Eats.

The premise is simple, but Chopped wasn’t always considered a simple showdown among four chefs.

‘Chopped’ owes a lot of its success to the simple format

Reality shows evolve over the years, yet some remain simple. American Idol, The Voice, and America’s Got Talent rely on audience votes to crown the winners each round. Survivor, though it has evolved with complicated plots over the years, showcases the cunning of each contestant to try to convince who to vote off the island.

Chopped, like the other shows just mentioned, is one of those reality shows that hasn’t messed with the main formula too much.

The premise of the one-hour show is simple. Four professional chefs cook three dishes for a panel of three judges (who are foodies or professional chefs in their own right) using identical kitchen set-ups. Contestants have a time limit of 20 minutes to make the appetizer and 30 minutes each for the main course and dessert.

The catch is that the show determines which four main ingredients must go in each dish. The chefs don’t know what those ingredients are until mere moments before they begin cooking. If contestants fail to use a particular ingredient, they lose the round. Ingredients can be simple, like cheese or flour, while others are more complicated like gummy spiders or entire sandwiches.

The Chopped judges eliminate one chef after each round. The one who survives following the dessert course takes home the prize money of $10,000.

The show first ran regularly in 2009, and it’s still going 13 years later. Food Network has premiered 52 seasons of Chopped, according to IMDb. But a season can last four episodes along a similar theme. This easy-to-follow format wasn’t the first iteration of the vaunted cooking competition.

An unaired pilot added too much extraneous stuff

Host Ted Allen’s show is all about how the chefs deal with surprise ingredients while showing off their skills as culinary experts. Food Network producers originally wanted to make the premise more like Iron Chef. Vice interviewed Allen, who explained the unaired pilot that will never see the light of day.

The pilot was filmed in a mansion, had a butler for a host, featured chef contestants pulling up in limos, and a pet chihuahua who was fed the losing chef’s dish.

Allen said, “I wish I knew the chihuahua’s name. Food Network got the pilot, which they spent actual money to make, and I think they kinda rolled their eyes and said, ‘Okay, that’s a little weird for us. Let’s just have a straight-up competition about chefs.'”

Food Network executive producer Linda Lea removed the extraneous elements when she realized the potential. Plus, animal rights activists and veterinarians would call out the animal abuse on set from feeding human food to a dog regularly, which isn’t healthy for the animal.

Luckily, fans adore Chopped for its practical cooking tips.

No drama, just professional chefs showing off their talents

Food Network has thrived on shows where experts showcase their skills, like food exhibitions in Vegas where cooks make mountainous cakes or sugar-crystal sculptures for professional judges. Chopped condenses those types of contests into a show that’s like athletics for chefs.

Because they don’t know the secret ingredients beforehand, Chopped chefs truly get to show off their mastery of how to cook and combine pleasing ingredients to the palette. Much like a real kitchen in a real restaurant when someone makes a special order, chefs must learn to adapt on the fly.

Chopped eliminates the season-long drama of character development found in so many other reality shows. Chefs have just one show to win. It’s as if they put all of their training, experience, and expertise into three races to win a gold medal. 

Affable host Allen says the show is relatable to ordinary audiences on several fronts: “We all have the experience of opening the fridge and needing to throw a meal together with what we have on hand.”

Any parent who has thrown together a meal with hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and peas understands this concept perfectly.