On TV, Jack Hourigan acts as if she knows little about cooking -- and for a while, that was true.
On Thanksgiving, we can all talk turkey by calling the Butterball Hotline. But Jack Hourigan can take her questions about the big bird — and all things culinary — to Tyler Florence, one of America’s top chefs and author of “Tyler Florence’s Real Kitchen,” any day of the year.
Hourigan, who has lived in Northeast Ohio for the past eight years, co-hosts the Food Network’s “How To Boil Water” with Florence. Millions of people tune in three times a week to find out what Jack doesn’t know.
On the show, now in its third season, the soft-spoken actress with a warm, natural, down-to-earth personality serves as a stand-in for viewers and appears to be eternally enrolled in Cooking 101. Florence shows her how to make nice, relatively uncomplicated meals that are a little fancier than the dishes most of us cook every day. She watches, helps and demonstrates her ignorance as he prepares things such as roasted leg of lamb, risotto with wild mushrooms and scallops, and molten chocolate espresso cake.
Yet one-on-one, it’s obvious Hourigan is bright, quick-witted and serious about her work, all essential ingredients for her job as TV’s most incompetent cook. She’s also supposed to be funny and entertaining. That comes easily. When Hourigan, who studied theater at McGill University in Montreal, moved here from Toronto, she trained with Second City Cleveland. She wrote and performed for the company for 18 months. Around the time Second City closed, Hourigan began her Food Network gig.
As a result, Hourigan’s preshow cooking style was pretty basic. “I would go through phases when I would experiment, but I’d usually fail and get discouraged.” So her status as a rookie in the kitchen wasn’t all acting. Now that she’s taped about 80 shows, is it becoming difficult to continue playing the novice? “I’m still not a gourmet chef, by any means,” she says, insisting she learns something new on every show.
With her TV kitchen experiences, Hourigan has upgraded the tools in her real kitchen, adding such items as a microplane, which she uses in place of a regular grater, and tongs, which you can use for mixing, stirring, turning, tossing salads and serving food.
There are a few things Hourigan owns up to making very well. One of them is shrimp cocktail, a favorite for holiday entertaining since childhood. She learned how to improve on her mother’s basic version during her first season on “How To Boil Water,” from chef Frederic van Coppernolle.
“He taught me to boil the shrimp in a broth with herbs and carrots and onions,” she says. Hourigan serves it with a good homemade sauce, using real horseradish that, she proudly announces, she grates herself.
She’s also gotten some on-air lessons in turkey preparation. One especially good recipe from last season uses just the turkey breast. She says that in addition to cooking quickly and making slicing simple, it can come in handy for smaller gatherings.
Look at her now. She’s become a celebrity. And she got there by asking silly questions. You know, the ones you and I might ask. The irony is that in real life, people think of her as an expert of sorts. And as her recipes reveal, that’s exactly what she is.
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