Gordon Ramsay is a stickler for the rules both professionally and personally, but one Hell’s Kitchen contestant got him to break them
As we all well know, Gordon Ramsay is a stickler for the rules both professionally and personally.
We’ve watched him kindly tell contestants on Hell’s Kitchen to ‘f*** off’ for disobeying them and heard all about the strict standards his six kids have to live up to, so we are all aware we need to be on our best behaviour around this bloke.
But even those who enforce the regulations break the rules sometimes… as although he’s a hilarious potty-mouthed chef, he’s human too.
Carol Scott from the fifth season of his hit series Hell’s Kitchen might disagree with that, though.
The sous chef, from Knoxville, Tennessee, holds the unfortunate title of being one of the few people who have forced Ramsay to go against his own decree after she made a ‘dangerous’ mistake while feeling the heat in the kitchen.
She was one of the contestants on the high-stakes show in November 2007 and is sadly remembered for all the wrong reasons, rather than her cooking skills.
Fans of the show will remember how Scott got the boot from Hell’s Kitchen in the ninth episode, despite being on the winning team and it going against Ramsay’s own rulebook.
Much to the surprise of her fellow contestants, the celebrity restaurateur, 57, decided to eliminate her from the competition even though she should have been safe due to the red team’s success.
The reactions in the room were pretty hilarious to look back on – as the competitors awkwardly watched on as Ramsay brutally told her she was being sent home as he felt as though she had ‘given up’.
“Jacket off – and you’re leaving Hell’s Kitchen,” he said.
“You didn’t even make a comeback. After the dauphinoise potatoes were screwed, you gave up.”
Yes, you read that right – it was ‘crunchy’ gratin dauphinoise which caused Ramsay to crack and rip up the Hell’s Kitchen rulebook. But to be fair, she did make a mess of them.
At the dinner service, she had brought the dish she was in charge of up to the pass, only for Ramsay to smash them off the side and into the bin as he yelled: “Why are the potatoes crunchy?!”
Scott fessed up to her mistake but insisted she had no idea ‘why they didn’t cook correctly’, so she started to make a new batch of the gratin dauphinoise before gingerly telling Ramsay it would take about ten minutes.
A tip for anyone working under him – never say that.
He laid into her for delaying customers’ meals, before branding her ‘useless’ when she revealed she had cooked the spuds in boiling cream for an hour during prep.
Scott then sealed her fate when she poured even more cream on her second batch – which Ramsay caught wind of.
While pouring her sloppy spuds in the bin, he yelled: “My God. Oh Jesus! Are you mad? I wouldn’t even serve that to a pig farm madam.
“Forget it. You don’t care do you, because if you did care you wouldn’t serve me that crap!”
Somehow though, Scott’s team still won the dinner service thanks to their 54 percent rating over the blue team’s 39 percent – but it still wasn’t enough to save her after the gratin dauphinoise scandal.
And that, people, is how you get Ramsay to be a rule-breaker. Make an absolute cock up of some fancy potatoes.
To be fair, eating undercooked ones can be quite dangerous – as according to Medicine.Net, as they contain proteins and compounds such as lectins, solanine and starch, they can leave you experiencing nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
And we can’t be having that in Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant, can we?