Top Chef Junior host Curtis Stone dished his tips and tricks with Us Weekly for planning the perfect event.
When it comes to entertaining guests, the 42-year-old cook is a pro. “[Have] a set plan,” Stone advises Us during a Top Chef Junior event in L.A. “It sounds so boring but it’s so important because if you invite a bunch of people around and you’re like, ‘I’m going to have this fabulous dinner’ and then you start cooking, you have no real scope of where you are in the process, how much you’ve still got to get done.”
“That’s how you can have those disasters where you’re like, ‘Oh my god! They get here in an hour and I still haven’t made 50 percent of what I need to do,’” he continued, noting that planning ahead is crucial. “Quite often when you write that out as a list you’re like, ‘Alright. I’m gonna make a blueberry pie for dessert.’ Then you say, ‘Alright, we’ll I need to make the base, I need to make the crust, I need to make the filling, I need to bake the pie and that’s gonna take 45 minutes and then the next job takes an hour and it’s in the oven for an hour and a half.”
Adds the Take Home Chef alum, “It’s a three and a half hour job, so you kind of count back and you’re like, ‘Alright, well I should start that and not an hour before the guests arrive, you know? Cause otherwise I’m f–ked.’”
Stone, who is gearing up for Top Chef Junior season 2, emphasized the importance of balancing one’s time in the kitchen wisely. “It’s a lot of time management and then I think when you’re entertaining guests, try to imagine what kind of atmosphere you want,” he suggested. “Do you want people passing food around and sharing? Do you want them standing up with a drink in their hands? Do you want to be more formal? … And that helps you in designing your table and what music you’re gonna play.”
A premiere date has not yet been set forTop Chef Junior season 2. The show airs on Universal Kids Network.
With reporting by Carly Sloane.
