Heat is an Irish prime time reality television series broadcast on RTÉ One. The programme sees two professional chefs, Kevin Dundon and Kevin Thornton, attempt to train amateur participants to each compose a restaurant menu. Each chef has won one series each. Each series, of which there have so far been two, runs for six weeks. The first series began broadcasting weekly in July 2008, with Team Dundon winning. A second series followed in February 2009, airing on Tuesday nights at 20:30, with Team Thornton winning. Dundon has described the series as being akin to "a fly-on-the wall documentary inside the kitchen of a very high-end kitchen".

Plot

The premise of the programme is that celebrity chefs Dundon and Thornton compete against the other in the act of each mentoring one amateur participant as they compose a menu in the kitchen of the highly regarded Ely HQ restaurant located in the Dublin Docklands. The participants are said to have never previously cooked in a professional environment and applicants must be over the age of eighteen years. The restaurant is effectively "split down the middle", with the winners of the first five shows progressing to the semi-finals. Winning amateurs return the following week to take on a new opponent. Customers pay for a choice of two menus the menu of their choice is rated by them at the end of the night/episode. The contestants are eventually reduced over a six-week period until the season finale when the last remaining amateurs compete against each other. The winners are confirmed using three criteria; "profit", "punters" and "peers". The punters are those who are dining on the night and the peers are those chefs not participating on the night. The winner and their mentor are crowned Heat champions. Prizes include cash prizes and holidays worth €10,000.