They have plenty of behind the scenes doing the prep and clean up. I often thought how does Ina's kitchen always look so nice then I just figured it out. She can't be that neat. She uses all those dishes who cleans them? Her staff, heck that is probably not even her beautiful home. Way to neat and clean. Lol

Just like I always said, TV cooks make everything look easy and delicious.

They have help to keep everything cleaned up.

One thing that helps me when I add dry ingredients (especially flour!) to my KitchenAid mixer is to use the pouring shield accessory that you can buy. It's about $15 or $20 and well worth it, at least for me! :-)

Perhaps your mixing bowls aren't deep/big enough or your speed too high when adding ingredients? The latter would be a big cause of messes in the kitchen!

Your spatula is the only thing that needs to get messy when mixing and pouring batter.

I'm a neat cook, mostly because I assemble everything ahead of time, including the utensils I'm going to need. I keep a sink of hot, soapy water and a dish cloth ready to clean as I go, too.

Cooking shows are a good way to observe the pros' techniques; it's not magic. Practice makes perfect....good luck!

Multiple takes.

Whenever I watch Lidia sautéing something in a little olive oil and butter I am amazed that she never splashes any oil on her blouse. She often wears polyester or silk blouses so a mark would show, plus she's short and on the busty side - a real target.

I agree that practice is a lot of it, as well as production assistants (PA's), but there's also Take #4.

That said, I can usually get the batter out of the bowl and into the pan without making a mess.

Here's how:
1. Use a bowl that isn't too big or heavy to tuck under the elbow of the non-dominant hand. The steel KA tilt head mixer bowls will do for most people. The round lift bowls are harder to hang onto. Big heavy ceramic bowls make it easy to make a batter with a handheld mixer, but are way hard to tuck under.

2. Use a long handled flexible scraper with a long blade. The shorter the handle and the stiffer and shorter the blade, the more your hand will be in the goo. Old scrapers get stiff and sometimes are better kept for other uses and replaced for batter. OXO SoftWorks makes a good one, with an easy to keep hold of handle:
   
   
   3. Put your pan on a surface that is LOW enough for you to have good control of the bowl over it. If you're tall, this may be your kitchen counter. If not, it might be the table or even the sink. If you're too tall and it's a long drop from your elbows to the counter, put a block or box or books under the pan, perhaps with a silicone mat to keep it clean underneath. This is probably the most important thing. The center of your bowl should be about a foot from the pan, give or take, for you to have optimum control.
   
3. Start at the top of the bowl and scrape down the sides first. Set down your scraper and use both hands to start pouring the batter into the middle of the pan. If you start in the middle you won't flow over the sides. As you pour, you can run your ribbon around the edges of the pan once you're sure of the flow rate and position.
   
   5. When it's no longer flowing steadily, tuck the bowl under your elbow and starting from the side that's up, scrape down and out, reaching back to the bottom of the bowl last. Given that you have an easily held onto bowl, in optimum position, with a long enough and flexible enough scraper, you should now be able to scrape the bottom of the bowl without getting your hands in the gunk.
   
   OTOH, if everything else is working for you, and you don't want to change, just put out an old towel, and/or a bowl of water, to wipe your hands with and get on with it. :)

Editing! I sometimes make a bit of a mess, but I am a clean as you go kinds gal. My dh on the other hand can make toast and somehow half the pots and pans in the kitchen get dirty! LOL

I notice that cooking show chefs do not scrape out the inside of bowls or even eggs when adding ingredients. They don't even necessarily use the correct amount, scooping out about 3/4 cup of sugar or flour with their measuring cup and calling it one cup. Ditto measuring spoons, if they use them. I even copied down one recipe, and then checked it on line, and the cook left out a major ingredient, which you'd never catch on to by watching the show.

Ina is a messy cook, imo. She's always scattering stuff everywhere, which makes me smile.

I am fairly neat when I am cooking but I seem to use every pot and pan and dish and gadget in my kitchen, haha I have way too many things to wash after I cook.

I cook a _lot_ (professionally even) and find that if you don't make a mess in the first place it's easier to clean up. Make every move count: don't flail about in a hurry and scatter stuff everywhere. Do everything deliberately, work slowly at first until the muscle memory builds up enough to work faster without thinking about it.
I also keep a sink full of hot soapy water to put things into as I dirty them and wash up a bit whenever there's a stage where you have to wait for something to happen, eg "beat for three minutes"- you can get a lot of clean up done in three minutes instead of standing there watching the mixer go around.

Julia Child was absolutely great on The French Chef. The show was taped live and she kept it real. Yes there was help with cleanup etc. but for the most part the show was the least staged show in my memory.

Thank you to everyone who took time to comment. Plllog, I think one of my problems is that I'm short so all of my counters are a bit too high for me. If I thought that I would never move, I would love to have my island rebuilt to be the correct height for me to comfortably chop, mix and use a rolling pin.

I found out years ago that the key word is PREP....Yes, on TV they have assistants to do it, but simply getting everything out of drawers/cabinets, and measuring dry/wet ingredients ahead makes everything go faster and neater. What makes confusion is when you have to stop mixing/cooking to find/take ingredients and utensils.
We have an eat-in kitchen, and I don't like to see a mess on the counters when I sit down to eat - and nor does anyone else.

Fun2Bhere, we freshened our kitchen almost 10 years ago after living with it for 25 years. We put in travertine floor tiles, and since the linoleum was stuck down to the cement slab so well, they just laid the tiles on top. Also, we had our tile counter tops removed and granite installed but kept the cabinets and table. Now my back aches from leaning over the counters and island as I work. Between removing the apparently rather heavily grouted counter and island tiles and installing travertine floor tiles and granite counter and island tops, I feel like I grew 4 inches. And my further advice, do not install a deep sink. You will be leaning over even more than ever. I am 5'7", which is a little taller than average, but even my short daughter at 5'4" regrets her deep sink choice when they remodeled.

Fun2BHere, I'm sure that's frustrating. When I was planning my kitchen, I was trying to wedge in a rolling center along with my other many wants, but all the designs I figured out would have been particularly hard to clean, and no shot of cleaning for Passover. I had tested for my optimal kneading/rolling height, which is 33", but really wanted my small island to be 38" for general work. The cabinetmaker declared that the perimeter would be 36.5" for his needs. :) And that's when I figured out that I just needed to have my shoulders 3.5" higher.

Given that there's a pair of rarely worn Swedish style (not high heel) wooden clogs in the front hall closet--rarely because they're too tall and dangerous with our uneven sidewalks and the unforgiving nature of clogs, but brand new and too hard to part with--I knew how to achieve this! One of the Kitchens Forum members labelled them Plllog's clllogs, because I recommended them. It makes so much sense! Clogs are great for this because they don't change the ankle/knee/pelvis/back positioning, so there's still a good power matrix, unlike with high heels that have the toes significantly lower than the heels. They're just convenient little stilts. IRL, I more often slip on some Crocs which aren't as tall, but close enough to get the angle of force right. I highly recommend them!

I also have a couple of these platform steps (from Amazon, of course). They were two for the same price when I got them, though, so might be better from a hardware or warehouse supply. They're great for reaching the back when cleaning high ovens, for nine-year-old helpers, and for reaching a shelf not high enough to get out a painting ladder. Very lightweight (plastic), secure, stable, interlocking, and each square able to hold a couple of big guys. Those are deep channels between the treads, though, so not for use with heels on. :) There are also plenty of folding or footed platform steps on the market, and you might find one useful.

Plllog, platform steps are new to me and could make a lot of sense for use in my kitchen. I'll have to see if I can find them locally to try one out. I have a step ladder in every area of the house, but a step ladder doesn't work that well for cooking. Thanks for the additional ideas.

Sheilajoyce, I guess no one has the perfect counter height except for my 5'10" friend who had all of the counters raised in her semi-custom house. I can't reach even the lowest cabinet in her kitchen without a step ladder.