Keeping step with Rachael Ray’s career is really quite dizzying. There are the four Food Network cooking shows she hosts, the 11 cookbooks she’s written, her new cooking and lifestyle magazine, the touring that goes with promoting all those ventures, and—oh, yes—she was just married last fall (at a castle in Italy no less).

Most of us would need a nap just thinking about her schedule, let alone actually following it. But for the 37-year-old multimedia star, whose popularity and success stem from her self-deprecating humor and “anti–Martha” approach, her 24/7 pace may be the only way to release all the personality and energy cooped up in her tiny (5'3") frame. Good thing she can keep up that pace; there are a lot of people banking that her cheery approach to quick and simple cooking will continue to be embraced and followed.

For some, watching chefs compete to create the most over-the-top meal, using exotic ingredients and super-modern gadgets is a good form of culinary voyeurism, but Ray and a slew of other good-looking, talented cooking personalities are the new secret ingredients to the sustained popularity of cooking shows.

“Absolutely, they are young and they are good looking,” says Kathleen Finch, senior vice president of prime-time programming for Food Network. “But they are also talented.” Case in point: Tyler Florence, host of How to Boil Water, is certainly easy on the eyes, but, Finch is quick to point out, “he is a very accomplished chef, really well trained and a good teacher. He has the skill set, and he is able to break down his knowledge in a way that is not intimidating, but inviting.” So when Florence rolls up his sleeves and mushes ground beef with his hands, it helps viewers to think about getting their own hands into a bowl.

Florence joins a list of other noted celeb chefs— and pretty faces—including barbecue wizard Bobby Flay, Date Plate host Kelly Deadmon, Naked Chef Jamie Oliver and the queen of shortcuts, Sandra Lee.

And this culinary cuteness is a recipe that seems to be working: Food Network ranks first among ad-supported cable networks in year-to-year subscriber growth, reaching 87 million U.S. households—up from 27 million in 1997.

The Ray way

 Emeril Lagasse—arguably Food Network’s most famous face—put “bam” and “kick it up a notch” into our vernacular. But for Food Network’s kitchen pixie, Rachael Ray, it’s a slew of Rachael-isms that inspire confidence (and lightheartedness) while cooking. They range from “I’m just gonna run my knife right through it…” as she breaks down an onion or a head of cabbage (rather than being a stickler for professional kitchen knife skills) to “delish!” when she checks the progress of the beans she is cooking. And, of course, “EVOO,” her acronym for extra-virgin olive oil, takes the highfalutin’ edge off an ingredient that was once reserved for the pantries of well-heeled gourmands. Her form of comfort food has come at a time when viewers are craving comfort as much as they crave chocolate. When times are tough, the familiarity of the kitchen reminds us of simpler, more peaceful times. In other words, Ray’s “evoo” equals a form of escapism that makes viewers comfortable in their kitchens—so comfortable they just might use them to cook.

To meet that end, Ray has just about every facet well covered. Food Network offers not one, not two but four daytime and prime-time shows hosted by her, including 30-Minute Meals, Inside Dish with Rachael Ray, $40 a Day and her latest, Rachael Ray’s Tasty Travels, which debuted last summer.

She has a line of kitchen appliances (Salton) and cookware (Anolon) on the market, and to bring her message home literally, Ray’s volume of work to date easily fills an entire shelf. Three cookbooks, all published by Clarkson Potter, hit the market in 2004 alone—$40 a Day: Best Eats in Town, Cooking Rocks! Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals for Kids, and Cooking ’Round the Clock: Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals; and this past fall her eleventh book, 365 No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners.

It’s not just Ray’s cookbooks that have been selling like hotcakes. Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa, star of Food Network’s most popular program, has four bestselling cookbooks to her name. According to Simba Information’s Business of Consumer Book Publishing 2005, the projected market for cookbooks last year was $493.9 million, a 5.1 percent increase over 2004 and a 19.4 percent increase over 2001. Bowker’s Books In Print reports that the number of new cookbook titles and editions in 2004 was 2,096, a 26 percent increase over 2000 and a 40 percent increase over 1995.

Too many cooks in the kitchen?

Ray’s boldest move to date may be what kicks her up a notch from cable television cooking goddess to the pantheon where Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey reside: her role as editor-in-chief at Every Day with Rachael Ray, a food, lifestyle, travel and entertaining magazine.

The magazine debuted in November, and demand was so high that publishers went back on press to print an additional 135,000 copies. There’s no doubt that there’s a market for epicurean magazines—Cooking Light, with a 1.6 million circulation, and Bon Appétit, with 1.2 million, lead in this category, while Food & Wine and Gourmet both exceed 900,000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. But Ray has a way to go to catch Martha Stewart Living, which is one of the top 40 magazines by circulation, with 1.9 million total paid copies per issue.

While Ray’s magazine is still being put to the taste test, Food Network’s daily menu of cooking shows aimed at its 25-to-54-year-old target audience is ever-expanding. “Foodwise, they want simple, easy, quick and accessible—not 14 courses,” Finch explains. “They want to be able to have wonderful food on Tuesday night after their kid’s soccer game or have guests over and not be stuck in the kitchen all night.”

Enter Giada De Laurentiis, host of Everyday Italian. She too is stunning, and like the rest of the newcomers in their televised kitchens, she knows her stuff. Years of owning GDL Foods, a Los Angeles–based catering business, gives her the authority and the credibility to tell you what guests are going to respond to.

Continuing in the easy (and cheap) mode, when Food Network heard of Yale student Dave Lieberman’s success with getting his fellow classmates to cook via a cable access cooking show, they knew “he was a gigantic talent.” Lieberman’s hit show, Good Deal with Dave Lieberman, promotes quality ingredients at reasonable prices. “He really brings the message of affordability to our viewers. For him, it’s about being fresh from college and starting out, but that translates to affordable, no matter who you are,” Finch says.

Home on the Range

But in the end, it’s still Ray who has the most airtime.

It boils down to conviction—her own innate trust in what she is doing and her talent to pass it on to viewers. It’s not uncommon for Ray to be cooking away on her 30-Minute Meals program and to tell viewers that it is OK not to measure an ingredient, but to instead “just eyeball it.” Or she might stick a spoon into a sauce, taste it and exclaim with a genuine, or seemingly genuine, response, “This is awesome!” It’s OK to like the way your own food tastes and to praise yourself for doing a good job.

She cooks with everyday ingredients that we are comfortable asking for at the meat counter or finding on aisle 4. Ray is bringing a new generation of people into the kitchen for the first time, and encouraging those who have strayed from their ovens to head back to the range by making it not just doable, but—because in her world, cooking is fun and not a monumental investment of time or money—just what we were missing.

Hundreds of cookbooks are written every year, and the popularity of cooking shows seems endless, but Ray and her colleagues have our attention because the dishes they demonstrate are within reach of both our culinary and monetary abilities. And that’s just delish!

Out of the Kitchen and onto the Couch

When you’re hand-picked by Oprah to host your own talk show, that’s a sure sign of success, right? Viewing audiences will get the chance to decide for themselves next fall, when Rachael Ray begins hosting a daily one-hour talk show. King World Productions inked the deal with Ray in association with Oprah’s Harpo Productions and Scripps Networks.

 “Rachael Ray is a terrific talent whose positive energy, infectious smile and dynamic personality jump right off the television screen,” remarked King World Productions CEO Roger King when the deal was announced. “She’s already made a mark for herself with a legion of fans, and her star is going to keep rising for many years to come.”

The show will showcase Ray’s laid-back, relatable personality. “People know me for my love of food, but I have so much more I want to share,” Ray told PRNewswire. “Our show’s going to be all about taking a bigger bite out of life. I want people to see themselves in this show, because life is full of messes and successes, and getting there is half the fun.”

What’s Cooking on Food Network?

With nearly 700,000 viewers tuning in every day during prime time, Food Network is working hard to attract the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic. Here are its five top-rated programs:

1. Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten
2. 30-Minute Meals, Rachael Ray
3. Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello
4. Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee
5. Paula’s Home Cooking, Paula Deen

Get Cookin’

If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and create your own culinary masterpiece, check out these sites for free recipes:

foodnetwork.com
meals.com
bhg.com/food
epicurious.com
recipelink.com
allrecipes.com