The series notably features Ramsay's explosive anger towards contestants, which in reality is heavily dramatized for the benefit of the audience.

Hell's Kitchen is a reality television show that uses a progressive elimination format to narrow down a field of 20 chefs to one single winner over the course of one season.

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.

The two or three chefs from each team that were deemed the worst performers were asked to present their dish to Ramsay, and the chef he deemed to have the worst dish of the challenge (or had the least amount of realistic potential to improve) was eliminated on the spot without participating in a single dinner service (though, in its final iteration in Season 21, the decision was nullified after the contestant affected by the challenge, Ileana D'Silva, successfully pleaded her case to stay to Ramsay and compelled him to change his mind).

For dinner services, the chefs are expected to work their station (appetizers, meat, fish, or garnish) on the kitchen line to prepare food in coordination with their teammates and to Ramsay's high standards for quality and presentation without his or the sous-chefs' assistance.

Later episodes may feature a private dinner service, where each team must serve a five course meal to 12 guests, with each member leading their teammates to prepare one course.

Ramsay's goal is to complete every dinner service, but exceptionally poor kitchen performance by one or both teams will cause him to close their respective halves of the kitchen early and send them back to the dorms, thus ending the dinner service immediately (in the first three seasons, poor kitchen performance resulted in the restaurant being shut down and customers leaving hungry; Season 4 onward resulted in chefs being eliminated early and a professional cast of chefs finishing the service instead after complaints of customers not being fed, forced a rule change).

Ramsay may also evict individual chefs from the kitchen based on repeated poor performances during a service, though this has largely been phased out in more recent seasons due to stricter experience and industry involvement criteria of potential show applicants, and on semi-rare occasions (once every two seasons on average), may eliminate a chef on the spot.

This is a group consensus, but Ramsay may occasionally name a chef "best of the worst" or "best of the best" on their team and instruct them to choose the nominees; this concept, however, has faded away over time due to the contestants sometimes making nominations based on personal bias rather than kitchen performance.

After giving these nominees the chance to defend themselves, Ramsay selects one to hand over their jacket and "leave Hell's Kitchen."

During this scene, there is a voice-over of Ramsay explaining his reasons for eliminating the chef; albeit humorously at times (in the first season, he simply addressed the show's progress on-camera to the viewers).

If an eliminated chef has performed exceptionally well, Ramsay may allow them to keep their jacket as a token of their success up to that point, if he sees fit.

Once the original field is cut down to either five or six chefs (depending on what Ramsay wishes to do), they are awarded black jackets and assembled into a single team.

Ramsay will ensure that all menu items meet his standards for high cuisine prior to service, and he and his sous chefs will oversee the service to make sure that his high quality standards are retained, but does not otherwise get involved (as long as he feels the finalist is in control of their brigade), allowing the two remaining chefs to demonstrate their ability to run the line.

In reality, the winning chef appears to only be guaranteed the cash portion of the prize and an offer to work somewhere within Gordon Ramsay's network of restaurants.

For the show's first two seasons, the Hell's Kitchen restaurant set itself was housed in the former studios of Los Angeles television station KCOP at 915 North La Brea Avenue, in Hollywood, which at one time hosted production of game shows Tic Tac Dough and The Joker's Wild.

[11] KCOP was acquired by News Corporation in 2001 and its studios were integrated with those of Fox affiliate KTTV in 2003, leaving the La Brea facility vacant.

The dining room area was the location of the former KCOP news studios, and living quarters for the contestants were built behind the restaurant.

[13] Before season three, the Hell's Kitchen facility was moved to Century Studios at 3322 La Cienega Place in Los Angeles.

[15] The first 18 seasons were produced in modified warehouses in Los Angeles which included the restaurant, dual kitchen facilities, and dormitories where the contestants resided while on the show.

The nineteenth and twentieth seasons were filmed at the Caesars Entertainment Studios property near the Las Vegas Strip.

[17] The series has drawn numerous online and editorial accusations of staging and dramatic license,[18] mostly due to editing techniques of the producers, who splice together several hours of footage from a dinner service, in order to make certain contestants appear as poor performers, later justifying their elimination.

[19] Hell's Kitchen has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards in the Outstanding Art Direction for Variety, Music or Nonfiction Programming category in 2007, 2008, and 2009.

[35] Visual Entertainment (under license from ITV Studios) has released the first fourteen seasons of Hell's Kitchen on DVD in Region 1.

[72] On September 11, 2008, Ubisoft released Hell's Kitchen: The Game for the Wii, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows, and iOS, which features the likeness of Ramsay, and the many important tasks shown in the American version of the show.