Our def­i­n­i­tion of bud­get cook­ery may dif­fer from celebri­ty chef Gor­don Ram­sey’s.

True, the world famous restau­ran­teur and cook­book author speaks of cheap cuts with mes­sian­ic zeal, but the episode of Gor­don Ramsey’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course ded­i­cat­ed to Food on a Bud­get, above, also finds him pay­ing a call to Lina Stores’ SoHo loca­tion to dis­cuss ham, sausages, and sala­mi with the late “deli mae­stro” Anto­nio Sac­co­mani.

It’s not exact­ly Cost­co.

Nor can we buy bone-in Lamb with fried bread as a cost con­scious dish, though the accom­pa­ny­ing milk soaked fried bread — home­made crou­tons real­ly — will cost slight­ly less to make this year, as the USDA is pre­dict­ing that dairy prices will fall after 2022’s his­toric lev­els.

As long as we’re at peace with the idea that the man is not ever going to be found stretch­ing rice and beans to feed a fam­i­ly of four for a week when there’s left­over risot­to to be res­ur­rect­ed as aranci­ni, the series is a gold­mine for chefs of all bud­gets and expe­ri­ence lev­els.

It’s not so much the final dish­es, as the short cuts and best prac­tices on the jour­ney.

His “chef in Paris” might indeed kill him for ugly­ing up a dish with deli­cious­ly hum­ble pan scrap­ings, but his iron­clad max­ims to waste noth­ing and use avail­able ingre­di­ents will ben­e­fit home chefs with an eye on the bot­tom line, as well as pros in high end restau­rants where prof­it mar­gins turn on a knife’s edge.

In an age when any fool can Google up dozens of fool­proof meth­ods for cook­ing rice, some­times it’s reas­sur­ing to get this sort of intel straight from the lips of a glob­al­ly rec­og­nized expert. (We’re big fans of Julia Child’s scram­bled eggs…)

How does your method mea­sure up against Ramsey’s freely shared secret for cook­ing per­fect rice?

Weigh out 400 grams of rice on a kitchen scale

Rinse with cold water

Sea­son with salt and pep­per, and — going up the food chain a bit — 3 pierced car­damom pods and a star anise

Add 600 grams of water (that’s a 1:1.5 ratio for those play­ing along with­out kitchen scales or the met­ric sys­tem) 

Bring to a boil, and steam, cov­ered for 8–10  min­utes 

No peek­ing!

Remove pot from heat and fluff

Such uni­ver­sal tips are the most per­sua­sive rea­son to stick with the series.

Ramsey’s rapid fire deliv­ery and lack of linked recipes may leave you feel­ing a bit lost in regard to exact mea­sure­ments, tem­per­a­tures, and step by step instruc­tions, but keep your ears peeled and you’ll quick­ly pick up on how to extend fresh herbs’ shelf life and keep cut pota­toes, apples and avo­ca­dos look­ing their best.

Oth­er episodes reveal how to grease cake tins, pre­vent milk from boil­ing over, remove baked-on residue, peel kiwis and man­gos, deter­mine a pineapple’s ripeness, seed pome­gran­ates, skin toma­toes, and keep plas­tic con­tain­ers stain-free…

Seri­ous­ly, who needs Tik­Tok when we have Gor­don Ram­sey 2012?

Ramsey’s advice to bypass expen­sive wine when cook­ing those com­par­a­tive­ly cheap cuts of meat low and slow gets a chef’s kiss from us. (In full dis­clo­sure, we would hap­pi­ly swig his brais­ing vin­tage.)

As to the slow-cooked duck, truf­fles and caramelized figs with ricot­ta, we must remind our­selves that the series is over 10 years old. These days even eggs feel like a splurge..

Per­haps some stress free cook­ing tips will low­er our stress lev­el over this week’s gro­cery expen­di­tures?

Here too, there seems to be some dis­crep­an­cy in Ram­sey’s def­i­n­i­tion and the gen­er­al pub­lic’s. His idea of stress free is achieved through lots of prep­work

If your idea of de-stress­ing involves skin­ning & debon­ing a salmon or mak­ing home­made fish stock, you’re in luck.

Obvi­ous­ly the end prod­uct will be deli­cious but the phrase “chili chick­en with gin­ger & corian­der” acti­vates both our sali­vary glands and our impulse to order out…

Watch a full playlist of Gor­don Ram­say’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s First Food-and-Trav­el Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Drink our cof­fee. Or else. That’s the mes­sage of these curi­ous­ly sadis­tic TV com­mer­cials pro­duced by Jim Hen­son between 1957 and 1961.

Hen­son made 179 ten-sec­ond spots for Wilkins Cof­fee, a region­al com­pa­ny with dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Bal­ti­more-Wash­ing­ton D.C. mar­ket, accord­ing to the Mup­pets Wiki: “The local sta­tions only had ten sec­onds for sta­tion iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, so the Mup­pet com­mer­cials had to be lightning-fast–essentially, eight sec­onds for the com­mer­cial pitch and a two-sec­ond shot of the prod­uct.”

With­in those eight sec­onds, a cof­fee enthu­si­ast named Wilkins (who bears a resem­blance to Ker­mit the frog) man­ages to shoot, stab, blud­geon or oth­er­wise do grave bod­i­ly harm to a cof­fee hold­out named Won­tkins. Hen­son pro­vid­ed the voic­es of both char­ac­ters.

Up until that time, TV adver­tis­ers typ­i­cal­ly made a direct sales pitch. “We took a dif­fer­ent approach,” said Hen­son in Christo­pher Finch’s Of Mup­pets and Men: The Mak­ing of the Mup­pet Show. “We tried to sell things by mak­ing peo­ple laugh.”

The cam­paign for Wilkins Cof­fee was a hit. “In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty of com­mer­cials in the Wash­ing­ton area,” said Hen­son in a 1982 inter­view with Judy Har­ris, “we were the num­ber one, the most pop­u­lar com­mer­cial.” Hen­son’s ad agency began mar­ket­ing the idea to oth­er region­al cof­fee com­pa­nies around the coun­try. Hen­son re-shot the same spots with dif­fer­ent brand names. “I bought my con­tract from that agency,” said Hen­son, “and then I was pro­duc­ing them–the same things around the coun­try. And so we had up to about a dozen or so clients going at the same time. At the point, I was mak­ing a lot of mon­ey.”

If you’re a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment, you can watch many of the Wilkins Cof­fee com­mer­cials above. And a word of advice: If some­one ever asks you if you drink Wilkins Cof­fee, just say yes.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online