Host a Hell’s Kitchen Themed Day at Home!

My husband absolutely loves watching competition shows on TV. One of his favorites is definitely, Hell’s Kitchen. This year for our anniversary I decided to re-create one of the episodes in our own kitchen. The day was super fun, easy to pull off, and you could make a ton of different variations based on whatever show you’re into. I also thought this would be fun to host as a little gathering of friends as well. Below I’ll list what we used, the challenges we set up, and how it call came together.

CHALLENGES

These are going to be the fun of the day where you choose the events that you do together!

Challenge 1. Knife Skills

• Chop carrots to each category of basic chef cuts
• Julienne, Small Dice, Large Diced
• We watched this YouTube video first to get a quick idea of what to do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJNA4vrdWec
• We also used a reference image and selected which cuts we were going to make. See image below for examples of cuts you can make. You could do a timed challenged, a perfection challenge, or identifying their names.

Challenge 2. Palette Test

• Grab three to five foods to test blindfolded
• Can choose anything from the table, pantry, or fridge, but no tricks

Challenge 3. Signature Tacos, graded on presentation and creativity

• Create your own taco using any of the ingredients presented on the table

Challenge 4. Recreate Presentation 

• Use a reference image and see who can make the better presentation
• Recreate husband and wife chocolate covered strawberries

ALTERNATE CHALLENGE IDEAS:

Some that we didn’t do, but I think would be really fun:

Idea. Taste it Now Make It — Purchase a frozen meal, or dish where you know the ingredients, and both of you try to recreate it as close as possible

Idea. Select one of Gordon Ramsey’s Dishes and follow the recipe to see whose is better

Idea. Budget Challenge – Set a price point, go to a local grocery store and create a dish using no more than the money you were allows to use! Could be an app, entree, or dessert!

Idea. Kitchen knowledge quiz, you could ask about cuts, sauces, tools, cook time, etc and it could be has easy or hard as you wanted

COSTUMES/SUPPLIES

I think the best part of any event is getting to dress in character, theme, or fancy! In this case, we went with the classic outfit the cast of the show get to wear as they compete. We went with the traditional red team vs. blue team.

Links to the chef coats we got off Amazon: Chef Coats, Unisex

Links to our bandanas: Red and Blue Bandanas

Balloons: Red and Blue Balloons (If I had thought about it early enough I would have got one of the garland strips that allows you to make a strip or arch of balloons, but I didn’t have time so I got some tape. It did not hold and our balloons were just around on the floor, but it was still fun!)

PRIZE!!

Choose something that your winners might like. I went with a classic Hell’s Kitchen hoodie! Link to Winner Hoodie but I also think some kind of cooking gadget could be fun if there are a variety of size winners. In my case my husband and I both wear a medium haha.

RESULTS FROM OUR DAY!

Next up: Signature Tacos! See below for each of our tacos, based on presentation and creativity my sister voted for the one she most wanted to try haha

Presentation Challenge: It’s our anniversary so we chose to go with Husband and Wife strawberries. The Blue team submitted four different strawberries, but the judges still chose the ones on the right side!

This day was a total success and we both had a ton of fun. I would totally do it again and would recommend it to anyone else looking for a fun date night in idea!

xoxo,

Amanda