Television and cookery have been happy bedfellows for years, going together like pie and mash, fish and chips or even Heston’s egg and bacon ice cream. From the early days of Fanny Cradock, we have gone to Delia, Jamie, Hugh, Gordon, Nigella and Nadiya, people so well known they don’t even require surnames. Many of them have helped make passable cooks out of quite a few of us.
However, lockdown gave our cooking extra impetus. Survey after survey has shown that we spent more time in the kitchen, partly out of necessity because the pubs and restaurants were shut and partly to fill the yawning vistas of time we found ourselves with. Earlier this year a YouGov survey (which was not alone in the thrust of its message) showed that 73 per cent of people in the UK enjoyed cooking over lockdown and 91 per cent would continue to cook as much this year, if not more. And this week Ofcom figures showed that adults spent an average of five hours and 40 minutes a day watching TV and online video content, a huge leap on the year before.
This week Ofcom figures showed that adults spent an average of five hours and 40 minutes a day watching TV and online video content, a huge leap on the year before. Cookery shows surely took a significant bite out of our couch time, with shows such as Bake Off, MasterChef, Nigella’s return and Jamie Oliver’s lockdown cookery show achieving large audiences.
Others have joined the fray in recent months. The actor Stanley Tucci launched an engaging Italian cookery show for CNN and Paris Hilton, yes Paris Hilton, this week launched one on Netflix.
After Hilton soft-launched on YouTube, millions gawped in wonderment at her declaration that she was an “amazing cook” before making what can only be described as a hash of what should have been lasagne and at one point turning to the camera, holding up a spatula and revealing that she didn’t know what it was. It was, in its own strange way, a performance of strange and beguiling genius.
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Hilton’s final efforts may not be all that tasty. So here is our rundown of the best cooking shows and competitions available on the box or to stream now and into the next lockdown. Bon appetit!
MasterChef
The chefs John Torode and Gregg Wallace
The ingredients A straightforward competition that over weeks looks for the best amateur chef in the land using a series of challenges that test skill, staying power and originality. An international success story, it first aired in the UK in 1990.
Verdict Gimmick-free, it’s an epic competition and winning is a genuine honour.
Order it from Britbox (the first six series from its 2005 reboot are available)
The Great British Bake Off
The chefs Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood
The ingredients Still a broadcasting sensation despite its move from the BBC to Channel 4. The tent, the colour scheme, the mishaps and soggy bottoms are part of the national conversation even if the judges and presenting team have changed over the years.
Verdict Still as entertaining as it is informative, it’s a near-perfect format that has been much replicated, but never bettered.
Order it from All4
Jamie Oliver Keep Cooking and Carry On
The chef Jamie Oliver
The ingredients When lockdown struck, Oliver came to the nation’s aid, correctly predicting that we would be spending a lot more time in the kitchen. As his school dinners drive showed, he’s a man who likes a mission and this show helpfully teaches us how to make healthy favourites from basic ingredients or even leftovers. His “versatile veggie chilli” is especially lovely jubbly.
Verdict Pukka public service television
Order it from All4
Delia Smith’s Cookery Course
The chef Delia Smith
The ingredients No-nonsense guide to basic cooking. Everything is clearly laid out in Delia’s classic show from the 1970s with programme titles including Fish, Pulses, Puddings, Sauces, Bread and Eggs. Still an invaluable guide for the beginner. Let’s be havin’ you!
Verdict The daddy — or rather the mummy — of modern cooks, our Delia stands the test of time
Order it from iPlayer
River Cottage
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The chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
The ingredients Our host, the throaty-voiced Old Etonian, lives out his cuisine in every respect: rearing animals, growing vegetables and producing recipes (and many spin-off cookbooks) from his 100-acre farm on the Devon/Dorset border. This is lifestyle cookery at its most comprehensive.
Verdict About as middle class as you can get, but is that such a bad thing?
Order it from All4
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
The chef Anthony Bourdain, the Hunter S Thompson of food writing, famed for exposing the seedy side of the restaurant trade.
The ingredients Over 12 seasons Bourdain explores the culture and cuisine of lesser-known locations around the world. In one episode Barack Obama joins him in Hanoi to tuck into a Vietnamese noodle dish from a plastic bowl in a streetside restaurant. It’s also about people and how food can bring us all together.
Verdict Food as anthropology
Order it from Amazon
The Chef Show
The chef Jon Favreau, Hollywood actor/director and star of the 2014 film Chef.
The ingredients Favreau and his friend Roy Choi — the man credited with starting the gourmet food truck revolution — visit A-list pals and chefs (Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Holland) and make them a meal while discussing food culture and swapping recipe tips.
Verdict A tasty, freewheeling bromance.
Order it from Netflix
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
The chef Samin Nosrat, who wrote the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling cookbook of the same name.
The ingredients The influential Nosrat believes that salt, fat, acid and heat are the four fundamental building blocks of good cooking (note the absence of sugar) and this theory underpins her acclaimed foodie documentary series. For Nosrat, eating is a sensual pleasure. She makes Nigella look like a food prude.
Verdict The programme that asks you to eat like nobody’s watching.
Order it from Netflix
Floyd on France
The chef Keith Floyd, the mischievous bon vivant, perennially fond of a “quick slurp”.
The ingredients It’s easy to forget that Floyd was a rule-breaker and innovator, deconstructing programme-making techniques by addressing the camera directly and betraying the tricks of the trade. For this 1987 visit to France, he was in his pomp, travelling to all the great gastronomic regions of the country, from Provence to Périgord, Brittany to Burgundy, slugging back the vino and quoting Ford Madox Ford.
Verdict Formidable! Hic.
Order it from BBC iPlayer
Joshua Weissman: But Better
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The chef The Californian has been cooking since he was three years old — he launched his YouTube channel in 2014 and has more than four million subscribers
The ingredients Fast food and guilty pleasures are redeemed with healthier cooking techniques. Fancy homemade Oreos or a Chipotle Burrito? There’s even an episode on how to make from the comfort of your kitchen counter Ikea Swedish meatballs, a McDonald’s Big Mac and Burger King chicken fries — but better. The results are less greasy, guilt-inducing and often much cheaper.
Verdict Slickly glazed YouTube clips featuring millennial favourites served up Insta-ready
Order it from YouTube
Chef’s Table
The chef Each episode focuses on a different famous kitchen maestro
The ingredients Six seasons to binge on, with culinary big shots from across the globe offering their unique takes on how to make a sophisticated treat. Advice from the world’s most renowned international chefs include Ben Shewry in Australia, Magnus Nilsson in Sweden and Francis Mallmann in Argentina.
Verdict Refined — induces travel-envy as well as tummy rumbles.
Order it from Netflix
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
The chef Short-fused gaffer Gordon Ramsay
The ingredients Expect inexperienced restaurant owners and out-of-control fridges with unsavoury offerings in this heated kitchen drama. Each struggling restaurant across the UK and beyond desperately needs Gordon’s feisty expertise, although some are more open to help than others.
Verdict Fiery hot, and that’s just the atmosphere.
Order it from All4
MasterChef Australia
The chef The heat is on as amateur cooks pursue the $250,000 prize
The ingredients The Down Under version of this famously tense cooking show is based on the British MasterChef format, but spiced up with more sun, smiles and vibrancy. As celebrities from across the globe touch down in choppers, or occasionally tune in via life-sized holograms — they range from Nigella Lawson, who makes everything sound delicious, to the singer Katy Perry making a surprise appearance — this larger-than-life Aussie rendition is winning over a cult following in the UK.
Verdict Mouthwatering — not least because of all the sweeping drone shots of stunning landscapes
Order it from Amazon
I hate food shows
By Tony Turnbull, the food editor
While Paris Hilton tries to work out what a blender is on Cooking with Paris, ITV’s midweek treat is Cooking with the Stars — not just another reality TV contest, we are told, but you could have fooled me. The show, creaking to its finale, has all the usual tropes: a smattering of minor celebrities, heart-rending backstories, tear-spattered successes and sudden-death cook-offs. There’s even a lifeline in the shape of a golden frying pan gong. In fact, it’s got pretty much everything except any genuine interest in the food, and it sums up everything I hate about TV cookery shows.
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Why do we have to fetishise cooking in this way, to always turn it into some kind of competitive sport? We have become a nation of culinary voyeurs too fearful to pick up a pan ourselves for fear we’ll mess things up, and who can blame us when every show presents cooking as some high-risk poker game that results only in success of failure?
“I’m really worried,” says Rosemary Shrager, who has been charged with coaching the hapless Johnny Vegas in how to make duck à l’orange. “If he doesn’t notice he’s left out the stock, it’s all over.” Except, of course it isn’t, Rosemary, is it? It just means his sauce is a bit over-reduced and he still triumphs against Strictly’s Shirley Ballas and her limp chips. Cooking’s like that, it’s much more forgiving than we think. Unfortunately the TV game show format is not. If it hasn’t got sufficient jeopardy, it won’t fly.
It’s not just Cooking with the Stars, of course. The whole sector has become lamely formulaic, forever reinterpreting Kevin McCloud’s once-novel mantra “I can’t see the house being finished in time for Christmas”.
I’m a great fan of Marcus Wareing, John Torode and Gregg Wallace, talented men all three, but as soon as I hear them intoning that cooking doesn’t get any tougher than this, I have to switch off.
Great British Menu is no better. “The seasoning of the sauce, the cooking of the fish . . . Are you happy with that?” the guest chefs are forced repetitively to ask every competitor. We get it. Watching people tasting food is boring TV, but so too are artless attempts to ramp up the tension. With every passing episode the production strings trail ever more obviously behind it.
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Heaven forfend, I’m even getting bored with Bake Off, whose gently saccharine charms are starting to cloy. And can you name a MasterChef winner since Tim Anderson in 2011, the same year, coincidentally, that the newly axed X Factor had its last breakout stars in Little Mix? Can you see where I’m going with this?
Why can’t we have cookery programmes that aren’t afraid to put food centre stage, to inform as much as entertain? Where is the new Anthony Bourdain drinking cobra blood on A Cook’s Tour, the new Samin Nosrat exploring the four pillars of cooking in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, or a rival to Netflix’s Chef’s Table, which shines a light on some of the many cooks with interesting stories to tell?
Do you know, I’ll even take Delia in her kitchen, full of her awkward silences, weird mispronunciations and rictus grins, over watching another batch of hapless celebrities making (or at times pretending to make) a hash of things. At least Delia taught me how to make shortcrust pastry. As no one said of Johnny Vegas, ever.
