If you turn to Gordon Ramsay for cooking advice, the legendary chef is probably going to have some useful info, but if it’s frozen food you’re curious about, the man has sent some mixed signals over the years. As a famous TV yeller/chef, Ramsay is known for speaking his mind on foods he won’t touch, and one thing he’s been keen to attack in the past is frozen food meals. While many of us might turn to a frozen pizza or burrito for a cheap, quick meal when we don’t have the energy to cook, Ramsay once told Bon Appétit it’s the one type of food he refuses to eat.
As for why we won’t touch frozen food, Ramsay’s reasons are understandable, but they’re also a little tone-deaf. “It’s so easy to prepare a quick meal using fresh produce, such as a simple stir-fry, but people still resort to ready meals that all taste exactly the same,” he told the outlet. It’s certainly true that there are plenty of quick and easy recipes if you’re in a rush and that plenty of frozen foods are of less-than-ideal quality.
But in the life of most non-celebrity chefs, there are times when you simply don’t have the ingredients, time, or energy to cook. Additionally, it appears that Ramsay doesn’t think every frozen meal tastes the same, or else he wouldn’t have launched his own line of frozen meals called “By Chef Ramsay” in 2023. Maybe his frozen chicken pot pie really is that much better?
Gordon Ramsay Thinks Cooking Is Too Easy To Make Frozen Food (Except His Own) Worthwhile
There is one possible answer to why Ramsay would break his own culinary taboo to sell frozen food… No doubt, the chef clearly loves food and has a deep respect for the art of cooking, but there’s obviously more to it than that. While there is no shame in capitalizing on your success as a chef — plenty of celebrities in the food world have started restaurant chains or launched their own lines of cookware — Ramsay’s list of projects and endorsements blows even someone like Guy Fieri out of the water.
Ramsay has nine different restaurant chains, including one named Hell’s Kitchen after one of the more than 14 different television shows he’s also starred in. The celebrity chef has also endorsed HexClad pans, Flora Vegan Butter, Welch’s fruit snacks, a glasses and contact lens chain named Specsavers, and, most recently, a freemium mobile farming game called “Hay Day.” Maybe Ramsay really does chow down on a pack of fruit snacks while building a digital farm on his phone, but clearly enjoying a product isn’t a prerequisite for putting his name on it.
It’s certainly possible Ramsay just came around on frozen food, but either way, his opinion is a good reminder that you don’t have to take everything celebrity chefs say as gospel. They may be skilled and knowledgeable, but they are also typically wealthy and famous. There’s no denying that longtime success can warp the perspective of almost anybody, Gordon Ramsay included.
