Review of Real Meals TV

Produced by TV360 LLC, Real Meals TV has been cooking on the air since May 2006. Hosts Allison Fishman, Samia Akudo, Jean Tang, and Jeff Lepine show viewers home-cooked specialties, both their own dishes and meals prepared by strangers who have graciously given the show an invitation into their kitchens.

Like the guest cooks, the hosts are a mix of professionals and hobbyists; Jean is a food journalist and Allison is a pro chef, while Samia and Jeff are both actors with an interest in sharing their foodie delight.

With categories like meat, chicken, seafood, vegetarian, pasta, and soups, Real Meals TV covers all the basics of home cooking. Each two-to-five minute video comes with an easy-to-read, easy-to-pause, and easy-to-rewind recipe for simple to moderately difficult entrees. It’s almost exactly like the Food Network—even down to the lighting and editing style—but the cooks here range from professional chefs to amateur cooks straight from their own kitchens.

There are a handful of main recipe categories – Pro Meals

(pro cooks), Your Meals (home cooks), Healthy Meals, and RealSpirits – along with channels like tips, contests, most popular, and newest clips. Recipes include the standards like chicken soup and meatloaf to more advanced delicacies like Sweet Potato Soufflé and “Ants in a Tree,” which actually looks pretty good.  Helpful tips, like what to do when your onions burn and how to make the perfect grill marks, are sprinkled throughout the vids. Even the “pro meals,” like Chef Marc Taxiera’s piselli and Chef Marc Murphy’s apple pork chops, are easy to follow with a press of the video player’s pause and rewind buttons.

And if you’re brave enough to submit a recipe that will be tested and judged by the viewing public, don’t forget to upload your own cooking video.

Personally, I’m excited to try the butternut squash macaroni and cheese. The site explains that it will “trick your kids into eating vegetables,” but I’m just hoping it will trick me into liking squash.