Best cooking show currently on tv for professional cooks?

Iron chef is great, amazing plates, different ways of cooking and plating food, love it.

 

Chopped is second try to think of a dish to make along with the contestants, test yourself with them.

 

kitchen impossible with Ramsay, lets you get a owner/operators view of how some business's could be run to be successful. 

Hard question as I generally despise most cooking orientated TV shows.

 

(almost all of them leave out the details -and you know where the devil lives?)

 

Some are seemingly OK for creative ideas, but they don't work so much with paying customers expecting a meal.

Best for what? Knowledge, or entertainment?

Most of them are sh--.

The only ones I would currently recommend are no longer on the air.

I'd recommend Top Chef to anyone who wants to see chefs who work in some of the best restaurants in the country.

It's hard to rate these shows because you find yourself having to separate the drama from the actual cooking.

The shows expose us to new and different ingredients but technique is most always left off camera, so we don't always get to see the prep what goes on behind the scenes.

If I find myself watching a cooking show, it's going to be for entertainment only, so I dig the more elaborate ones. Restaurant Impossible, Restaurant Stakeout, those types. Not sure why but I can't stand more than about 3 minutes of most other cooking shows, especially Top Chef!

Top Chef- real talent, less drama

Chopped- fun to see people try to pull something together quickly

F-word- ramsays england show bbc

avec eric- eric ripert from La Bernadin in NYC...one of best

Chopped  to see how everyones brain works differently. Also creative

Two of the best back in the 90's were world class cuisine and Great Chefs on discovery....real restaurants...

real documentary style shows about real chefs in real settings have all but been replaced by dramatic 

heavily edited and cut together "reality" shows. sometimes entertaning, but you cant learn from what they 

dont show you. i get more out of archived footage of julia child. the only one i consistently LEARN from is diners &

dives. and chopped, but mostly just finished product ideas from oddball ingredients.

This is gonna be a fun thread. 

I'm not calling anyone out. I'm not challenging anyone's opinion, or claiming that anyone's opinions are wrong. This is only conversation. Everything is all fine and good.

 

 

My two(2) top shows are, in no order except the way I'm typing, are "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives", and "The "F"-Word". Both shows have given me an amazing number of real usable edible affordable doable accessible recipes. On opposite sides of the coin you have Guy the banana, and a very tolerable Gordon. I've learned and swiped many dishes from these two(2) shows. 

 

Iron Chef is entertainment, nothing more. The $$$ spent on that show are more than the GNP of many small countries. Fun, but not realistic. 

 

Chopped is garbage. A generally bad show. The combinations they use are stupid. I see very little value professionally from that. The judges, on the other hand, are idiot morons. All things being equal ... I'd like to stab the bageebies out of almost every judge that's ever been on that show with a fork. 

 

Top - Chef is just cool. One(1) word makes it a great show otherwise ... "Padma".

 

Any show with any of the following is just fine too: 

 

 

It shouldn't take an abacus to figure out my motivation. We're not talking rocket-surgery here.

This is TV ... it's entertainment. DUH. 

 

 

I'm sure I'll have more to say as things go on. LOL. 

Anything that doesn't include Ina Garten or Anne Burrell.

Awesome post iceman! What no Nadia G??

Ive been watching Nigella Bites for years. Anyone remember the one where she hunkered

down at the end of the show in the bathtub with nothin on and enjoyed a snickers bar? lol

I think you missed a few other....rocket scientists too. 

 

If I have time , Chopped. Spontaneous ideas, speed , their drive. I like to see pure raw talent . I have seen some pretty sad dishes but at the same time some terrific food combinations and plating skills that could make it to a lot of menus.

Petals

Sorry.      She wasn't on the link that I was referencing from.  Thanks for your thoughts though. 

LOL I was just goin with the fun. Some love her, some hate her with a  passion.

I find her entertaining, her recipes basic, but for the most part foolproof.

Don't You mean In your opinion chopped is garbage.?

I think that the "qualifiers"  that I started off my post with explain exactly what I mean.  I do that for this exact reason.

?????

I like Laura Calder's French Food at Home.

I think it's a given that any comment, good, bad or otherwise is merely an opinion.

Unless one of us has been granted the ability to judge for others.

I say chopped is garbage.

Someone else says it's great.

We're both right.

In general, I think all the best cooking shows are in the past; The Frugal Gourmet, Julia Child, the "Great Chefs of...." series, but one of the newer ones that I have loved from the beginning is "Great Eats" with Alton Brown.  I love his humor and he almost always provides good information.  I find most of today's "cooking" shows to be rather lacking and so if I'm watching a food show it's usually more along the lines of "Drink" or "Unique Eats" or other shows that focus more on places than actual cooking.  BTW, both of those shows are found on The Cooking Channel, which I like more than The Food Network, which just seems to use the same few people over and over and over.  The Cooking Channel has it's losers also (i. e. Bitchin' Kitchen is abominable!!) but has a few more unique programs and reminds me of Food TV in it's earlier days.

Shows that feature someone making a glutton of themselves, consuming a huge amt of food (some so spicy that even if eaten normally would have no flavor other than HOT) in under (time limit here) minutes.

The (chef?) who travels to some pretty cool places and ruins it for me by munching on some third world version of organ (and bugs, dung, cobra blood) delicacies.

I realize that in their opinion this is "great educational tv" and after exposing myself once or twice, I now leave that channel for those in my home with stronger stomachs.

 

mimi

this show isn't on right now but you can find it on the net.....master chef Australia...it had two seasons I believe before it came to america.  Its ten times better than the america version.

 

also the exec. chef of moto is filming a cooking show right now as we speak and will be out soon to come....that should be a dope one to watch

 

I do like the F word by Gordon.

since pete has already mentioned that most of  the great cooking shows are in the past i just need to say that keith floyd will live forever.

there is no way the chefs on Iron Chef do not know what the ingredient is ahead of time. when they grab the SURPRISE product of the day, there is no conversation between chef and sous chefs, they just go about they're business.

I am one person removed from a chef that appeared on (and won) Iron Chef America. What I heard, is that the "official" food network story isn't quite true either. This chef was given a list of 3 possible ingredients a month in advance and told the final choice a week in advance. The only thing he didn't know was what Chef he'd be going against, but said it was obvious when he walked in to the studio and saw some of the trademark ingredients of one of the iron chefs. 

 

I had another chef that appeared as a sous chef on a recent episode, but I haven't talked to said chef since then, so don't know. 

Quote:Originally Posted by IceMan 

 

Any show with any of the following is just fine too: 

 

 

It shouldn't take an abacus to figure out my motivation. We're not talking rocket-surgery here.

This is TV ... it's entertainment. DUH. 

 

 

 

Yuck! Rachel Ray?! Really? Wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Giada, Nigella and whoever the chick next to her is are the only ones worth looking at(especially Nigella, god she is a mega-babe!).