Even the most enthusiastic home cook needs a little inspiration sometimes, and when your budget for fancy groceries—or luxurious meals out—is running low, it can be extremely instructive (not to mention cozy) to find out what chefs around the world are cooking for the cameras. So, without further ado, here are the 11 best cooking shows to watch when you’ve run out of things to make, and need a little televised nudge.
Top Chef
I mean, duh. More or less everyone knows that this 21-season-and-counting reality show is the place to go (and, more specifically, win) if you’re looking to launch a bona fide food career. While the departure of Padma Lakshmi was a bitter pill to swallow, new host Kristen Kish is more than holding her own on Top Chef’s current Wisconsin-set season.
The Great British Bake Off
An all-time contender for the “coziest TV-watching experience on Earth” title, this British reality series features scores of incredibly kind and gentle bakers (okay, there are some exceptions, but not many) facing off to create the most stunning culinary confections while still being more polite to one another than most American reality-show contestants could dream of.
Chef s Table
This Netflix series is a little more complex than your standard watch-’em-chop-it-up fare. Each episode features the work of one standout chef—from Nancy Silverton to Massimo Bottura to Cristina Martinez to Mashama Bailey—and gives viewers a sense of how they really cook and conceive of food without having to shell out untold sums for a sample of the fare on offer at any one of their restaurants.
Barefoot Contessa
Ina Garten is deservedly known as the queen of Thanksgiving, but her show features her signature blend of high-quality cooking and down-to-earth, mega-relaxed kitchen vibes every day of the year. (Don’t forget: If you can’t summon the flames directly from hell, store-bought is fine.)
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
Bourdain has been one of the most sorely missed voices in food ever since his tragic death in 2018. Those regretting that they never got the chance to eat at Les Halles under his watch can take solace in his 12-season documentary food series, which focuses on day-to-day local cooking everywhere from in Los Angeles’s Koreatown to Tokyo and the West Bank.
Julia Child s The French Chef
If you’re a fan of the 2009 rom-com Julie and Julia, it might be time to take a deep dive into the real-life source material that was Child’s mega-successful public-access cooking show. For a series whose first episode aired in 1962, The French Chef holds up surprisingly well today, especially if you’re hankering for some homemade boeuf bourguignon.
Salt Fat Acid Heat
“I’ve spent my entire life in pursuit of flavor,” says Samin Nosrat in the intro to this sweet, vibrant cooking show, which introduces viewers to the titular four elements responsible for, in her words, “making or breaking a dish.” Watching Nosrat travel everywhere—from Liguria, Italy to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula—in order to learn everything she can about salt, fat, acid, and heat is an adventure in itself.
Chopped
A classic for a reason, this 15-year-strong reality cooking show hands its aspiring pro chefs four mystery ingredients, and tasks them with coming up with untold culinary wonders. The amazing part is that they generally do just that, which should provide us all with some inspiration when we’re at home staring into the abyss of a half-empty fridge.
Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy
It’s rare that Hollywood dishes up a celebrity reality project that’s actually worth the resources it takes to create, but watching Tucci sample cheeses in Italy has turned out to be all I’ve ever wanted—from a cooking show, anyway. (Ideally, I’d also like to join him.)
MasterChef Junior
Yes, the adult edition is more famous, but to my mind, there’s nothing more fun than watching tiny cooking prodigies face off to create stunning meals while judges Gordon Ramsay, Aaron Sanchez, Daphne Oz, and newcomer Tilly Ramsay look on.
Nailed It!
Nicole Byer makes a very strong case for comedians hosting cooking shows, and I’ll be honest: I miss this zany, joke-studded baking competition series almost every day.
