Celebrity
Yes, including the time she made bacon with a clothes iron.
Paris Hilton has worn quite a few hats throughout her decades-long career. Born into a family known for their hotels, Hilton made a name for herself as a model and New York socialite in the late ’90s, earning “It Girl” status by the turn of the millennium. In the early aughts, she starred alongside her then-bestie Nicole Richie in the hit reality show The Simple Life, which saw them working (and often failing at) low-paying jobs; it ran for five seasons and launched them both into global fame. Then, Hilton forayed into acting in films like Raising Helen and House of Wax, launched a music career and scored a lasting hit with “Stars Are Blind,” and began selling perfumes that would go on to gross over $2.5 billion worldwide.
More recently, Hilton has released a documentary titled This Is Paris and worked extensively as a club DJ — even earning the title of highest-paid female DJ in 2014, per Time. But after posting a hilarious and chaotic viral video cooking her “famous lasagna” to her YouTube channel in January 2020, Netflix offered her an unscripted series titled Cooking With Paris, premiering Aug. 4 on the streaming service. Set to follow Hilton as she “might actually learn her way around the kitchen,” per Netflix, the series’ announcement left fans puzzled, unsure why she was offered a cooking show with little-to-no professional experience. However, superfans of The Simple Life know that Hilton has been showing off her questionable food-handling skills since the early 2000s.
Dairy Farm Disaster
Before you start cooking, you have to gather your ingredients. In the second episode of Season 1, Hilton and Richie must work at a dairy farm for the day, where they’re supposed to herd, feed, and milk the cows — but mainly fail due to laziness and disgust. Then the girls are tasked with bottling the milk, though most of it goes to waste after they spill it on the ground.
“1/2 Price Anal Salty Weiner Burgers”
In this iconically-memed scene from the third episode of Season 1, Hilton and Richie get jobs working at Sonic Drive-in, where they’re supposed to cook food and serve it to customers. But they show up 45 minutes late and then fail at most of their duties. So, the manager tasks them with wearing the beverage mascot uniform to advertise in front of the restaurant. Left to their own devices, however, they end up rearranging the marquee sign to read: “1/2 Price Anal Salty Weiner Burgers.”
Unsupervised Pies
In Episode 4 of Season 1, Hilton and Richie are made honorary co-chairpersons at the local Springtime Gala in Altus, Arkansas. They’re also asked to bake for the gala’s pie competition, which they’re actually able to accomplish. But after baking the pies, the girls leave them unattended, and the family dog eats them mere hours before the gala.
Don’t Ask How The Sausage Is Made
The girls stay with Mississippi’s Skinner family in the fourth episode of Season 2, during which family member James refers to them as “Dumb and Dumber,” which prompts Richie to threaten to “beat [his] f*cking face in.” Then, they head to work at local butcher shop Rene’s, where they’re tasked with making sausages but instead only make a complete mess. However, Hilton and Richie somehow muster up the skills to craft a special sausage just for James — made out of canned dog food.
Crawfish Catastrophe
Hilton and Richie work for a seafood shop in Season 2 Episode 5 and must catch several sacks of live crawfish, a task they’re disgusted by and unsurprisingly incapable of completing. But when the girls attend a barbecue later that night, Hilton has the bright idea to fill her purse with a few pounds of cooked crawfish, which she presents to their boss in hopes that he won’t be able to tell the difference.
Cake Batter Bonanza
In Season 3 Episode 9, Hilton and Richie get jobs at Gourmet Bakery. During their shift, they spill cake batter everywhere and make a huge mess, failing to correctly execute most of the baked goods. Despite their messy baking attempt, Hilton makes their host family a home-cooked meal later that night — complete with her infamous lasagna recipe that inspired Cooking With Paris.
Cooking With Clothes Irons
In Season 4 Episode 10, Hilton and Richie are tasked with the Beggs family’s household chores, like laundry, mopping, dusting, lawn mowing, and ironing. Amid the work, however, Hilton gets the bright idea to cook an interesting meal of bacon, quesadillas, etc. for the family’s father using two clothes irons. Not realizing how the food was made, he’s impressed and chows down. Later in the episode, Hilton has just 10 minutes to prepare a full dinner for the family’s church group and decides to use the trusty irons once again to make grilled cheese sandwiches accompanied by an odd side of Froot Loops.
To see how Hilton’s cooking skills have developed over the years, tune into Cooking With Paris when it hits Netflix. Fingers crossed for a guest spot from Richie.
