Joel McHale Says ‘Crime Scene Kitchen’ Contestants Want Him to ‘Stop Talking’

Joel McHale tries to keep Crime Scene Kitchen as lighthearted as possible — but sometimes he overdoes it.

“Oh well, I’ve had people go, ‘Joel, thank you so much. Do you mind leaving the kitchen now?’ That has happened way more than once, and my wife has said it to me multiple times,” McHale, 52, exclusively told Us Weekly while promoting his partnership with Rice-A-Roni. “I try to learn about them, I found out about where they’re from and … try to get them into conversations while they’re cooking. It really has happened where they’ve been like, ‘Joel, I gotta do some measuring, so can you stop talking to me for a second?’”

McHale, who has hosted the cooking competition show since May 2021, noted that he has “no problem” backing off from the contestants because he just wants to “keep it light.”

“Obviously, there’s lots of drama, but I try to keep it light and throw in as many jokes as I can,” he added.

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Fox’s Crime Scene Kitchen is a cooking competition in which bakers must identify a type of dessert based on just a few clues — with $100,000 on the line. After they recreate the recipe, judges determine how closely it matches the original dessert.

McHale’s costars Curtis Stone and Yolanda Gampp have said that McHale always keeps the contestants laughing, which McHale does to “put the people at ease.”

“[I’m] making them hopefully laugh while they’re obviously working extremely hard to win this gigantic cash prize and win this show,” he explained to Us. “I get to taste delicious desserts all day, which is a real burden for me.”

McHale added that the chefs and bakers on the show, including Stone, 48, and Gampp, 47, have crazy amounts of “knowledge” about food.

“It’s like they know how to build airplanes from scratch and the encyclopedias that they both have as brains are terrifying,” he joked. “I don’t have anything like that. I can tell you what I did three days ago and other than that, that’s pretty much it.”

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Aside from hosting Crime Scene Kitchen, McHale is also teaming up with Rice-A-Roni to promote their latest innovation, Mac-A-Roni, which is available in creamy cheddar and creamy white cheddar flavors.

“When they came to me, I was like, ‘Oh, you guys have no idea, I grew up eating Rice-A-Roni, and I love pasta.’ And when I eat it, I go for it,” he told Us. “I have two teenage sons, and they can’t get enough of it. It was as if they had made the product for me and my family. So, we love it. It’s very tasty. I’ve eaten way too much of it. … It’s the perfect side dish.”

Crime Scene Kitchen season 3 premieres on Fox September 26 at 9 p.m. ET.

With reporting by Sarah Jones