Karen Katz has led shows featuring chefs Emeril Lagasse and Buddy Valastro. Now she's taking us behind the scenes.
Karen Katz can roast a turkey in 30 minutes.
Well, as long as she has a legion of culinary staff and four birds at various stages in the cooking process to help her squeeze the recipe into a single television episode.
Katz helmed more than 1,000 hours of similar foodie scenes as an executive producer during the early years of Food Network and witnessed the growth of food television into the powerhouse it is today. Along the way, she has worked with James Beard award-winning chef and restaurateur Emeril Lagasse — for nine years on the network’s flagship “Emeril Live” and another two at “Emeril Green — and Buddy Valastro of “Cake Boss” fame on “Kitchen Boss” and “Next Great Baker.”
Now she’s dishing about those experiences in a new memoir, “Getting Sauced: How I Learned Everything I Know About Food From Working in TV” (Morgan James Publishing, $20), offering a peek at life behind the scenes for the cast and crew, as well as special guests, such as Julia Child and Martha Stewart. Along the way, she serves up plenty of humor via vignettes from disastrous dinner parties and hijinks during her travels abroad. And she narrates her own culinary journey, from the canned peas and TV dinners of her childhood to the intricate home-cooked dishes she explores today. You’ll find recipes — a fresh take on the ubiquitous 1960s tuna noodle casserole, for example, and French lamb and sausage cassoulet — sprinkled throughout.
Q. Are people surprised to hear just how much you guys are doing in order to put a show on the screen?
A. I get that comment all the time. People are like, “Oh my god, I had no idea.”
In any TV show, there’s an army of people that make it happen. But in food TV, there’s the TV army, but then there’s the food army. For example, “Emeril Live” — we had 90 people at any given time working on that show (including) people who swoop in in the commercial breaks to clean everything up.
Q. These celebrity chefs are doing real cooking with real food — live. What happens when something goes wrong?
A. On “Emeril Live,” there was never anything that wasn’t real food. I mean, no “little mashed potatoes for ice cream” cheats or anything like that. Emeril is a real cook. Even if things go south, he’ll figure a way to save it. Julia Child would drop the chicken on the floor, just pick it up and go, oh, it’s gonna cook anyway. That’s what great chefs do, they improvise, and they make the best of it.
Q. Speaking of Julia Child, what was it like to meet her?
Julia Child was just so iconic and so revered that when she came to the show, it was like the Queen of England came on set. I mean, we practically all curtsied. And rightfully so — she really paved the way for so many people. She had a great sense of humor. And she was very kind, particularly to the culinary staff. Because she gets it — she worked in TV, and she understands.
Q. You also write about your own cooking journey. Does it give you whiplash to see how far you’ve expanded your culinary horizons?
A. I am still far from being a professional, but I’m an ambitious home cook. I’ll try anything. I bomb a lot; not everything comes out all the time. But I think learning how to cook is like music or learning another language. Once you become fluent in the basics, you can improvise. I do feel that I’ve gotten some really good basics.
Q. You’ve traveled so much for work — fished for oysters off the coast of New Orleans, line danced in Nashville, even foraged for mushrooms in Northern California …
A. That was always a wonderful benefit of being a producer. You don’t have a vacation, because it’s really hard work when you’re on the road, but you really get to see a place (with) different eyes. You’re not a tourist; you’re often behind the scenes. I’m a city girl — where else would I be in the middle of a forest looking at chanterelles? It really afforded me a lot of opportunities, going on fishing boats or in a cheese cave with people who are so dedicated to their product.
Q. You write that a TV show’s cast and crew become like family. Are you still in touch with the Valastros?
A. Yeah. You know, I actually sent Buddy a copy of the book. He was a sweetheart, they’ve been very supportive. Emeril was extremely supportive of the book.
You know, it’s not a tell-all. I’m not trying to trash anybody. There’s no purpose to that — we all have bad days. It was a very special time in my life, and a very important time in my career. And so it was fun to kind of relive it as I was writing it.
Q. You’ve spent years in this industry. Why is foodie TV important?
A. I think food TV is a real, kind of relaxing medium in the sense that you don’t have to do a ton of thinking. We all need food. We all love food. It is something universal. You don’t have to argue about it — you know, aside from whether you like peas or not.
And I think, particularly during difficult times, like COVID or when some tragedy happens in the world, it’s a place for people to find comfort and entertainment.
