Hell's Kitchen is an American reality television cooking broadcast on Fox (they have the same TV show with the same name also in UK). It is hosted by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

Each season brings twelve to twenty aspiring chefs to Hell's Kitchen, a modified warehouse in Los Angeles that includes the restaurant, dual kitchen facilities, and a dormitory where the chefs reside while on the show. Gordon Ramsay breaks the chefs into two teams most often based on gender, with women on the red team, and men on the blue, and are given a chef's jacket with labels of that color. The chefs compete in these teams, barring any reassignments by Ramsay, until only five or six chefs are left, which they are brought into a single common team wearing black-labeled jackets, though they now compete individually to be one of the final two. Each episode typically includes one challenge and one dinner service, following which a chef is eliminated from the game.

In challenges, the teams or individual chefs are tasked with a cooking challenge by Ramsay. The type of challenges are varied, ranging from ingredient preparation, meal preparation, taste tests, and other challenges. The first challenge of each season is a signature dish cookoff, giving the chefs the opportunity to show Ramsay their cooking. Each season typically includes one or more challenges that allows teams to construct several dishes either for a banquet to be held the next dinner service or as part of designing their own menus. Other challenges typically include a "taste it, make it" task where chefs must try to recreate a dish Ramsay has prepared by taste only, and a taste-test challenge where chefs identify ingredients without sight or sound.

The winner of the challenge is either determined by a scoring system set for that challenge, or based on Ramsay's and guest judges' opinions.