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Food In Focus: Your Favorite Food Shows
10 years ago
~Remember~
before submitting a dish please read our club rules and TOS on the main page From Chris, your cooking mod -
This comes from
who says:
"Hi this is yelleena !
The popularity of cooking shows, cooking competitions and food in general has taken off so much that in Australia on November 17th 2015 they are launching a free to air television channel dedicated totally to food. Channel 33 will be Food 24/7 and titled the food network.
My question to all the furs out there is, how does your country celebrate food and cooking?
What shows or food related events are your favourites?
Do you have a favourite celebrity chef?
For me I love the British show Heston's Feasts"
How about it folks - although there are a few shows I've watched and loved...the very first seasons of Iron Chef (presented by Chairman Kaga himself, and NOT William Shatner, thank you!) and on the "AWE" Network, I've been blown away by "Secret Meat Business" with Adrian Richardson...who reminds me of Jamie Oliver -before- he got super preachy :P
And of course I dont mind the "Chopped" from time to time, which we have done here at least once !
This comes from
who says:"Hi this is
yelleena !The popularity of cooking shows, cooking competitions and food in general has taken off so much that in Australia on November 17th 2015 they are launching a free to air television channel dedicated totally to food. Channel 33 will be Food 24/7 and titled the food network.
My question to all the furs out there is, how does your country celebrate food and cooking?
What shows or food related events are your favourites?
Do you have a favourite celebrity chef?
For me I love the British show Heston's Feasts"
How about it folks - although there are a few shows I've watched and loved...the very first seasons of Iron Chef (presented by Chairman Kaga himself, and NOT William Shatner, thank you!) and on the "AWE" Network, I've been blown away by "Secret Meat Business" with Adrian Richardson...who reminds me of Jamie Oliver -before- he got super preachy :P
And of course I dont mind the "Chopped" from time to time, which we have done here at least once !
I know I'm going to take some flak for this one because it's so cool to hate on the host, but I really like "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." It's not about cooking, per se, but it's about the smaller, out-of-the-way restaurants across the US that serve up good food.
As for celebrity chefs, I have a warm place in my heart for the one and only Julia Child (bonus: WGBH is my local PBS station).
Alton Brown was not a chef, he was in TV production, but he liked cooking and cooking shows. However, he was dissatisfied with the quality of cooking shows at the time, and resolved himself to make a better one. So he went to NECI and learned the craft, then produced Good Eats. If anyone out there wants a culinary degree but can't afford or don't want to go to culinary school, watch the first 5 seasons of Good Eats one episode at a time. Make the recipes, take notes, re-watch things you don't get the first time. You will know how to cook.
Favorite celebrity chefs: This one is tricky. I would say Alton Brown, but ironically he's not really a chef. A chef is a position, a title, and it conveys a specific meaning. Chefs run kitchens, supervise an entire brigade, essentially run everything that has to do with food production in a food service establishment. To my knowledge Alton hasn't ever actually done that.
So for my favorites I would say (to agree with the above poster) Julia Child, as well as Masaharu Morimoto, and Justin Wilson.
"Good Eats" - It's educational and humorous. Alton Brown combines humor, often cheesy, with a scientific explanation.
"Cutthroat Kitchen" - Another Alton Brown, This one is just hilarious due to the mass insanity that goes into the challenges.
I also love anything with Gordon Ramsay..
Vice also has their Munchies series, which never disappoints.
I also like watching "Cooking With Dog" on Youtube! An older Japanese lady cooks all sorts of Japanese food with her poodle by her side, it's really cute.
My favorite chefs are probably, Mary Ann Esposito, Rick Bayless, Alton Brown, and Matty Matherson.
As many have said before Vrghr: Good Eats! Alton Brown is wuffy's hero! He not only shows the "how", to prepare all those yummy dishes, he explains the "Why" on the why the techniques work and why he made the decisions he did. So much of the "science" behind the dishes.
Other favorite shows:
Cook's Country TV (available online and on PBS stations). Like Alton Brown, they offer not only the recipes, but the reasons behind the choices they made. And they frequently do a series of tests with different techniques and ingredients, and explain why they finally settled on the ones they did.
Then there are a series of shows wuff loves for the inspirations on how to use new ingredients and techniques. Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, Chopped, and Iron Chef (both the American and Japanese versions). Unlike a lot of the cooking contest shows that are all about the 'drama' of emotional breakdowns and histrionics, these actually show the participants cooking their dishes, the ingredients, the techniques, and the results. Most of these actually show enough of the cooking steps that this wuff can figure out the "how to" just from the videos. Vrghr can't wait try some of those diner dishes, like the "burger in a skirt" with the wide cheese skirt around it! Yummmm!
In the same vein, and probably the best of the lot, is Beat Bobby Flay, where they bring in 2 top chefs, do a "cook off" between the 2 with a featured ingredient selected by Bobby Flay, followed by the winner selecting his "feature dish" and having a competition to see if Bobby Flay can create a better version than the competing chef. Favored because it is a full half hour show with limited participation and dishes, so it can concentrate on the details of the preparation. Doesn't hurt that Bobby Flay is an amazing chef, and still manages to win most of the matches even when he doesn't know what's coming!
Vrghr has come up with more than a few ideas for dishes of his own from those shows.
As for the Celebrity Chefs: Julia Child (The French Chef), Graham Kerr (The Galloping Gourmet), Emeril Lagasse (Bam!), and Bobby Flay. There are more, but those are certainly among the tops of wuff's "will watch" list.
Once we got Food Network, our additional fave cooking show is Good Eats (our cooking school featured a few episodes for class!), and other shows like Unwrapped. Competition shows became a dime-a-baker's-dozen, so those became very old for me.
And, of course, I'll watch just about ANY cooking-show where someone's cooking. I'm not too picky about which chefs I watch. :D
And I don't know if it's on TV, but on one of my NPR stations on the radio, but I LOVE listening to "The Splendid Table." "America's Test Kitchen" is also on that radio station. <3<3<3
On PBS stations, and also on the "Create" network on some cable systems.
If you happen to have "create" on your network, give it a glance. There are a LOT good instructional shows there, and many of them have to do with cooking! It's PBS-Related.