Cooking Shows

[Yno]

I used to watch License to Grill with Rob Rainford, but that Discovery Channel changed to Planet Green and the show is only available in Canada, apparently. It was pretty entertaining and had some really good ideas. In my opinion, Rainford was a much better host than Raichlen is.

[The Burn]

Let's see, competition shows: Masterchef, Top Chef, Beat Bobby Flay & Chopped (and CandySueQ, I loved your episode) I also did the Pit Wars, etc. but finally got burnt out on them. Non-competition: America's Test Kitchen, Man Fire Food, Bobby Flay's Barbecue Addiction (and use several of his recipes), BBQ Crawl, had watched some of Steve Raichlen's older shows and have his entire Project Smoke saved on the DVR to watch eventually.

[nickgutnick]

I like the show Secret Meat Business with Adrian Richardson, most of the food he cooks looks awesome. Its a show from Australia, so definitely different take on things.

[Atalanta]

I liked the original Iron Chef, didn't watch so much Iron Chef America. I do NOT like Bobby Flay. Miss Good Eats. I like Man vs Child (which, IMO, should be called Chef vs Child) and most iterations of Chopped. Trying to get my BF onto Cooks vs Cons.

I'm not a fan of Cutthroat Kitchen, but I was watching Camp Cutthroat last night and there were two bits that I wanted to mention here. 1. One of the guys was made to cook using snacks as fuel - chips, pretzels, etc. Once he got it going, it seemed to work well (the judge said it had good flavor). 2. The final round the guy who ended up winning kept "boasting" - "I made a cake on a grill! I made a cake on a grill!" I was thinking that here the reaction to that would be, yeah, so?

[Potkettleblack]

No one likes Bobby Flay.

[RonB]

I do like ATK, but I only watch it if my wife has it on. It never occurs to me to actually look for a kitchen show to watch. I've seen several competition shows, but I'd much rather be here swapping lies than watching that stuff.

[rat88]

I quit watching cooking shows on DTV after getting suckered into watching a Treager commercial disguised as a real cooking show by slightly modifying the title. I still cant believe how much DTV is charging and 40% of the programming is infomercials

[Potkettleblack]

I used to watch a ton of shows. I don't really care for competition shows, as I can only really eat one meal at a time, and consider competition to involve arbitrary rules and arbitrary compromises. That said, I was an Iron Chef fiend back in the day (and still dream of getting half a Tokyo X hog to do a nose to tail season with)...

Nowadays, mostly Chef's Table. That's my jam. And the two Somm movies. Even though the first Somm movie is essentially about a tournament, it's a pass/fail tournament, not a winner take all. As for podcasts: The Feed Podcast with Rick Bayless and Steve Dolinsky, which has cooking episodes, restaurant episodes, business episodes, and drinking episodes. I'm falling out of love with The Splendid Table as food trends evolve, Lynn seems less involved in the show, and I have very little interest in the "kale and kombucha" cuisine. Gastropod is more my jam, being about food science and history.

[Abom]

I hate the way the Food Network has become. I miss the real cooking shows, and despise the competition shows. If you remove the commercials, and all of the recaps, there's not much program time left. Good Eats is still my favorite cooking show of all time, and I loved the Frug before he was removed.

There was another great show called "Food Mob" that was on Internet TV "Revision3". This was two guys, a professional private chef and a camera man. This guy specialized in making recipes extremely simple. All sorts of shortcuts and other wisdom and the food was very accessible and good. The only problem was they couldn't control their language, and eventually decided to stop their show because people were complaining, and they weren't about to change. LOL

[JCBBQ]

Yes, Chef's Table is excellent and beautifully filmed. I loved the first couple of seasons of Mind of a Chef. Also, on Netflix is the movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It's a must. The guy is absolute perfectionist - in a Zen kinda way not a maniac like Ramsey.

[Abom]

+1 on Jiro's. You kinda feel sorry for his sons though. He just won't retire and turn over the reins! LOL