Viewers of Jamie Oliver’s new festive cooking show Jamie’s Easy Christmas have condemned the programme as ‘tone deaf’ with the chef promoting expensive ingredients and prolonged oven usage as people’s energy bills soar.
The show first aired on Channel 4 on Tuesday 6 December where Jamie whipped up crispy duck and noodles, short rib beef and a vegetarian filo pie. However, many viewers were gob-smacked that the recipes were so expensive, with one viewer hailing the show as ‘tone deaf in the middle of a cost of living and energy crisis’.
A dish of slow-cooked beef short ribs, for example, involved the chef searing the meat in a pan before slow-cooking it for four hours in the oven. One viewer tweeted: ‘Totes love a bit of Jamie Oliver but putting anything in the oven for 4 hours feels crazy given the cost of energy’.
While another particularly perturbed user called out the chef for describing the cut as ‘economical’, tweeting: ‘Did @jamieoliver just call Beef Ribs a 'cheap cut'????!!! On what planet are Beef Ribs a cheap cut??!!!'.
Meanwhile, another recipe for a veggie filo pie involved putting the oven on for two hours, which led to one person tweeting: ‘No one is putting their oven on for two hours my friend... No one’.
One joked that while the recipes ‘look great’, they’re also ‘not that easy’ to make and ‘you’d [have] to remortgage for the ingredients’.
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Jamie’s recipe for crispy duck noodles was hailed as costing ‘a bomb’ to make and some suggested that the chef offer viewers cheaper, quicker meal solutions instead:
‘I don’t see how that expensive roast duck is a good idea given the current financial climate - the added ingredients alone will cost a bomb given their quality. How about some one pot recipes that take half an hour that cost £8 for 4? Read the room guys!’.
Jamie’s Easy Christmas airs on Channel 4 on Tuesdays at 8pm.
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