I give this show a solid rating though I have only become a recent viewer of this. I base it on the following-Ted Allen - the host, is perfect for this type of program.The contestants are real battlers.Foods chosen for this is creative.When the show finally had a "Beat Bobby Flay" Chopped episode, they came up with a field of 12 champs to try to beat him. They had a champs tourney to decide who would challenge him. While the concept was good here, they made one mistake in setting it up. The final episode only started with 3 people and Flay only had to face 1 champ in a final round. They should redo this tourney and have Flay face off with 3 former champs in all 3 courses and see if he can handle all 3 meal courses. This makes Flays victory in the tourney much like a rigged contest. It is much easier to win chopped when you only have to do 1 course. Granted the winner, just like on Flays own series, got to name what they had to make, but the difference between winning 1 course and winning all three is huge.Each regular show starts with an appetizer round, then an entree round, and then a desert round. Each round has a box of ingredients that must be used to make each course. Usually the box creates a challenge that forces the contestant to be creative.Then a panel of judges sample each dish and decides which dish should be chopped. Now if every dish is ever raw, there will be a commercial break where the judges all have to run to the water closet. Usually this does not happen, but then Ted Allen controls the proceedings quite strictly.The show is worth watching just to see how weird the food can be, and how strange the contestants and judges are. It is fun to find judges who like ostrich legs, and eel. Maybe some day the challenge will be to feature beauty mud in a dish. After all, women who use this stuff have been tasting it for years.

This show is fixed.You can tell the judges have decided beforehand which contestant they want to win. Once, they chopped a chef even though his competitor forgot to put the meat on the entree plate. Chefs with particularly troubled pasts, revealed during the bio part of the show, often seem to win the competition. The judges are predictably smug and unfriendly, oftentimes critiquing a dish by saying something really stupid, like "The dessert is too sweet." I'd like to see the judges prepare something on the clock, but they don't have the guts to do it. Every one of them knows they'd get 'chopped'.Not a real competition. A legitimate contest would be much more interesting ..... and fair.

In a world of fake reality television shows the simple idea of pairing 4 people up against each other competing for $10,000 while cooking offers more than most. Being a bit of a foodie myself I really enjoy the mystery basket approach of secret ingredients. I find this show much more "real" than say Iron Chef America. The strict time limit and need to produce all 4 plates single handedly makes for more intense buzzer beater endings to each round. The quick personal stories of each competitor in the beginning of the program set up each episode to give the viewer a sense of their expertise (or lack there of) as well as occupation. There have been teen chefs, stay at home moms, and military personnel. The recent episode of accepting suggestions from social media sites was also a fantastic idea that I enjoyed as well. My only suggestions to improve the show might be to add fan of the show to guest judge along side the professional judges from time to time. I would also like to see less "sob story" during the cooking portion of the show and focus more on the techniques and commentary from the judges. Also for those strange mystery basket ingredients I would like to hear more from the judges about what they know about it and how they might integrate the ingredient if they were competing. Overall one of my top shows to watch each and every week.

I really enjoy watching the contestant chefs prepare elegant gourmet dishes from surprise unusual ingredients. For a while, that worked for me. But the more I watched, the more disgusted I became by the judges.Of course, we, the audience, don't see everything that happened, only what the directors splice together for broadcast. And we can't taste the food. We can only hear the comments of the judges and the contestants. And we can only see the scenes cut from the various cameras, scenes provided obviously out of their natural sequence and spliced together to provide a feel for the competition rather than a raw presentation of it.That is what the audience has and it is all the audience can use to judge the program. If the directors have omitted important information that would change our opinion, too bad.The show's host gives the rules at the beginning of the show. Each dish will be judged on presentation, taste, and creativity. But creativity rarely gets the judges' thumbs up. The contest begins with each of four chefs preparing an appetizer. The chef with the "worst" appetizer is chopped and each of the three remaining chefs prepares an entrée. The chef with the "worst" entrée is chopped and each of the two remaining chefs prepares a dessert. The winner is chosen based on all three courses.Given that scenario, a chef who is second worst in both the first and the second rounds should have a nearly impossible task of winning. However, it happens more often than we would expect. The judges' critiques of the first two courses are shown again along with their critiques of the final course, but the judges' interpretation inexplicably changes so that one final contestant, who earlier was deemed by them to be far inferior to the other final contestant, in the final analysis becomes a close competitor and even wins.Worse for me is that chefs whose dishes appear to be quite beautiful and are given only mild negative comments by the judges, are chopped over chefs whose dishes appear to be quite unappealing and are given far more severe negative comments by the judges. In too many cases, judges have chopped chefs, not for any objective flaw, but because of the judges inappropriate subjective criteria, e.g., the absolute quantity (i.e., not the relative quantity of how much of one thing versus another thing was on a plate, but how much in total was on a plate, e.g., one clam was not enough for an appetizer, a sandwich was too much), the sweetness of a dessert (one judge likes things very sweet, another judge doesn't), the sweetness of an appetizer (one judge doesn't like sweet appetizers), the degree to which something should be cooked (some judges prefer rare, some prefer medium, none like well done).Recall the criteria: presentation; taste; and creativity. Portion size is not among the criteria, unless we stretch presentation to cover this, and that would be quite a stretch. Taste, I think, means that it should taste good, that the flavors of the required ingredients shine clearly and are well balanced. Again, it would be a stretch to include in the taste criteria whether an appetizer should or shouldn't be sweet. Of course, any dish, even a dessert, may be too sweet. And that would be factor in taste, along with too bland, too salty, too sour, too bitter. But too sweet is not at all the same as sweet or not sweet. And the degree of doneness (rare, medium, well) clearly does not fit under any of the criteria.There are things that must be cooked to a minimum degree (e.g., chicken and pig). And anything can be overcooked. No, these don't fall under presentation, taste, or creativity. Nor does chef's blood, but getting your blood in the food is also a no-no. As is double-dipping, i.e., tasting the food from a utensil and putting the utensil back into the food. Indeed, sanitary conditions aren't among the criteria. But these are universal rules and properly implied. Things like rare, medium, well are personal preferences and not properly implied.To be fair, if the judges have a standard by which dishes are to be judged, they should inform the contestants beforehand. But they don't. After a while, the show became, for me, an exercise in watching mediocrity win $10,000. I am not entertained by watching mediocre chefs play it safe with their cooking. I see nothing interesting. I learn nothing interesting. For those reasons, I had to chop this program from my schedule.