Delicious Reality Series ‘Crime Scene Kitchen’ Is as Much Detective Work as Whisking

For most people, the placement of a garbage can is an aesthetic decision, but for the producers of “Crime Scene Kitchen,” it’s a crucial piece of strategy.

That’s because this competition series, hosted by Joel McHale and now in its second season on Fox, is equal parts mystery and bake-off. In each episode, teams of bakers decide what to cook by exploring a recently used kitchen, looking for clues about whatever dish was made before they arrived. With nothing but those (frequently literal) bread crumbs to guide them, they head into their own kitchens and try to recreate the mystery item. The team that’s furthest from the original dish goes home.

The drama frequently springs from the bakers’ detective skills: It can be deliciously excruciating to watch a team make a perfect key lime pie only to discover they were supposed to make something called a “boardwalk pie” instead. The producers strive to inject that tension into every challenge. “You need to make a target dish that has some resonance with the audience, but you need to be able to confuse [the contestants] who have tons more knowledge than the people at home do,” Conrad Green, the “Crime Scene Kitchen” executive producer and showrunner, told IndieWire. “In an ideal world, one or two teams get it right, and one or two teams get it wildly wrong.”

The hints are as vital to the game as the dishes themselves. Challenges are loaded with “food clues,” like a smear of icing left on a cake tin, and “puzzle clues,” like recipe cards with key ingredients written on them. And all this gets workshopped before the cameras roll. As part of their season prep, the producers run a test kitchen, inviting both amateur and professional bakers to play early versions of the games.

“It’s very surprising,” said supervising producer Andrew Vicinich, who’s instrumental in challenge design. “We have an idea in our head of how it’s going to work, and then when we run it four or five times, we learn things. We learn different dials we can turn: If we put these two items together, then it might lead to a type of laminated dough. But if we separate those items, then what happens? We approach it somewhat scientifically, just by altering specific details and seeing what the results are.”

As they’ve learned from testing games — and filming Season 1 — the producers have made the new episodes even more challenging. There’s usually something important in the trash, and it’s always tense, waiting for players to discover it. But now it’s not even guaranteed the players will know the garbage is there. “In Season 1, we were nervous they wouldn’t be able to find all the clues, so we probably didn’t hide them that well,” Vucinich says. “There were trash cans just out in the open. But this time, we put the trash can under the [kitchen] island, and there were some teams that didn’t even find it until their second episode. That was great.”

Similarly, that boardwalk pie (also known as an Atlantic City pie), which has a saltine cracker crust, inspired a dastardly clue in the Season 2 premiere, where the bakers had to lift up the blade of a food processor to see a hunk of cracker hidden underneath. Only one team did, and they were the only ones to make the proper dessert. “We spent a lot of time fine-tuning how visible to make that chunk of saltine,” Vicinich said, noting that his team includes culinary experts as well as reality show challenge vets. Laughing, he added, “We probably overthink to a degree, but it seems to be working.”

For Green, that cracker crumb epitomizes both the thrill and the horror of making the show. “We were terrified no one would get it,” he said, noting that for all their preparation, the producers can’t control what happens once the teams dig for clues. “Once you get two or three teams that are just all over the place, and no one’s getting it, you think, ‘My God, we’ve really blown this one.’ But then it’s brilliantly satisfying when you see [the mystery food] and someone has made something that looks just like it.”

Of course, the producers’ anxiety is a sign that “Crime Scene Kitchen” is working. If they’re not a little nervous that none of the bakers will crack the code, then the viewers won’t be either. “That’s the point of the show,” Vicinich says. “We want people on their toes. Is it the obscure dessert with saltines? Or is it the obvious, graham-cracker crust cheesecake? No one knows which way is up, and that’s good.”