Get ready to sizzle with Miguel in the kitchen!
Our Friday nights are about to get hotter as the original cooking show Ready Steady Cook returns to Network Ten on 8 March, with one of our most-loved television chefs, Miguel Maestre, at the helm.
Ready Steady Cook features some of Australia’s best chefs joining forces with home cooks in the ultimate cook-off.
Two audience members each present the professional chefs with just five ingredients from which they must plan and prepare delicious dishes, all in under 20 minutes.
It’s the red team versus the green team, so the live studio audience decides the winner by raising a board with either a green capsicum or a red tomato.
Ingleside’s Miguel, known as ‘the crazy bull,’ is no stranger to television, with the charismatic Spaniard delighting Australian audiences over many years in lifestyle shows such as Boys Weekend, Miguel’s Feasts and The Living Room.
His love affair with cooking started early. Food was central to his life growing up in the south of Spain, with his large family getting together to share food every weekend on his grandparent’s farm.
He moved to Australia about 20 years ago and lives with his wife Sascha and two children, Claudia,12 and Morgan, 9.
Miguel, 44, is beyond excited to be hosting the new Ready Steady Cook. In a quick chat with Peninsula Living Pittwater in between takes, he says that tickets to be in the live audience were going as fast as Taylor Swift tickets. “The kitchen on set is like a theatre,” he says, with a relaxed and happy atmosphere.
“The production is unbelievable,” Miguel says. “It’s just so spontaneous and refreshing. It’s just so beautiful. Real cooking in real-time. And I think people are going to really fall in love with that.
“We have been watching these cooking shows where everything is so serious and quiet (but) cooking is not like that. How we cook at home is always fun. Ready Steady Cook is going to really change how we see cooking in this country.”
Miguel says the show is like ‘mates catching up for a barbecue’. It’s everyday cooks with a shopping bag, a few chefs giving cooking tips (when they’re not stealing kitchen tools from each other), and a pantry full of ingredients at their disposal. Ready Steady Cook reflects what Australian cooking is, Miguel maintains.
A lot of television cooking shows are usually not so easy-going, and often involve a lot of fine dining, he continues.
“Everything is pre-planned,” he says. “So this is very refreshing and so much fun. We laugh and cry and jump and dance!”
Miguel would make your mouth water relaying the delicious dishes the studio kitchen has seen so far – a scrumptious curry and some beautiful pasta. One chef made the most delicious apple crumble in five minutes.
“It’s actually almost like a cooking class,” says Miguel. “The chefs are very inventive.”
Sitting down with Ready Steady Cook on a Friday evening is the perfect way to unwind.
“It’s been a long week,” Miguel says. “So sit back, relax, have fun and learn how to cook something.”