More often than not they show you a step and say this needs to rest and/or marinate for x amount of time. They then pull out a "back up" that's already marinated for the given amount of time. Do they throw it out or give it to charity
Anonymous
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from my personal experience I've worked as a crew member to many cooking segments for shopping channels. they would after the segment ends give the food away to crew members after that, they would put left overs for a couple of hours on the hallways and they were fair game to all staff and guests in the building. after a couple of hours, usually 2 hours was the guideline, they'd send custodians to dispose of.
♥Sweetness♥
One chef I used to watch would have staff finish the cooking processes and give the finished food to the crew, either that day or the next day, depending on what the food was, but I don't know about any of the rest of the shows on tv.
Mr. Smartypants
They throw it away. About 90% of the food on cooking shows is thrown away.
I forget who it was, possibly Jeff Smith, who had a double oven. He'd mix up cake batter, put it in a pan, put it into the bottom oven, then pull the baked cake out of the top oven. (I always wanted an oven like that! It would save so much time!) Anyway, that unbaked cake batter was just thrown away. Did you think he was going to come back after the show was over and bake that cake?
The FINISHED food often goes to the crew, from what I've heard.