Catch Up with Hell’s Kitchen Contestant Elsie Ramos
Posted by Madeline Miller on Edible TV.
New Jersey’s The Record recently caught up with a contestant from Season One of Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen, Elsie Ramos. Her name might not be immediately recognizable, since the show wasn’t that huge of a hit way back then. Ramos is making a name for herself in a new way these days - she’s got a new cookbook: Elsie’s Turkey Tacos and Arroz con Pollo: More than 100 Latin-Flavored, Great-Tasting Recipes for Working Moms.
Ramos is a mother of six boys (there’s a special place in heaven for her, if you ask me). They range in age from 17 to 23, so she is uniquely familiar with feeding a family quickly. Her goal with her new cookbook is to help out parents who are in a similar situation. The recipes are “the kind of food” she’s used to cooking.
During her interview, Ramos gave a little insight into her time in Hell’s Kitchen:
Even with no formal education, she earned the role on “Hell’s Kitchen,” bowing out in the finale, a few steps shy of winning an executive chef job. She actually was the top performer in the next-to-last episode and spent a day cooking live on television with Ramsay as her reward. Ultimately, that day away from the set was her undoing, she said.
“I got back and didn’t have time to prepare, didn’t know what was on the menu and virtually had no one helping,” she said. “But I know it’s all reality. It’s a competition, and everyone’s out for themselves.”
Since the show, Ramos “returned to her job as an office manager for a private equity firm but also enrolled in night classes at Manhattan’s French Culinary Institute and began preparing recipes for the book after Hoboken-based Wiley publishing house approached her.”
Don’t forget that you can see a whole new group of contestants go through the same experience Elsie did when Hell’s Kitchen premieres on Monday, June 4th on Fox.
