For nearly half a century, chefs on television simply explained a recipe and you followed along at home. Cooking shows have changed away from recipes and toward competitive cooking, reality television, and celebrity. We’ll look at some of the most popular BBC cooking shows in this article.

Watching BBC cooking shows – The food journey

BBC provides us some of the most delectable dishes, food that looks like art, and documentaries that teach us about the tales behind popular dishes when it comes to cooking and food-related programmes. With so much work poured into this genre, it’s no wonder that the best cooking programmes can be found on BBC with ease.

Today, we want you to join us on our culinary adventure and learn how to cook some of the most popular, scrumptious, tasty, and simple dishes.

Now, without further ado, let’s watch some of the best BBC cooking shows and prepare some of the most delectable foods.

Top 10 best BBC cooking shows right now

1. Saturday Kitchen Best Bites

A look back at some of the best ‘Saturday Kitchen‘ segments. The popular cooking show features recipes and meal ideas, as well as talks with top chefs and celebrity guests. In ‘Best Bits,’ the best of the best are selected to be shared with viewers once more. Whether it’s an interview with a wine expert, a popular recipe, or updates on what’s new in the world of food, the show ensures that foodies get the information they require.

2. Mary Berry’s Fantastic Feasts

Mary Berry, the former host of the Great British Bake Off, is returning to our screens to help amateur cooks who want to make a special meal for a loved one but don’t know where to start. This cooking show on BBC follows Mary Berry as she helps despairing inexperienced cooks who want to surprise a loved one with a large meal. Berry selects the meals that the three chefs will prepare and provides guidance on how to prepare each dish. Along the way, she receives assistance from some well-known figures who supervise the kitchen and produce extras to complement the main courses being prepared.

3. Marcus Wareing’s Tales from a Kitchen Garden

Marcus Wareing takes a break from his hectic schedule to enjoy life on his smallholding in Sussex. He sets out to increase his selection of products and bring in a variety of new livestock that will give him with meat, milk, and eggs with the help of some of the top farmers, gardeners, and producers in the UK. The Michelin-starred chef will travel the length and breadth of the country to discover the secrets of planting, rearing animals, and growing vegetables, then turn them into delectable meals, over the course of the series.

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4. Best Home Cook

In this touching and entertaining cooking show on BBC, Mary Berry returns in all her baking glory, highlighting some of Britain’s most amazing home cooks. The three will select themes of increasing difficulty, working with chef Angela Hartnett and produce expert Chris Bavin, to put everything our home cooks have brought to the kitchen to the test, including their flair, expertise, and inventiveness in the kitchen. Each week, contestants will compete in three stages: making a family favorite, designing a dish centered on a single ingredient, and attempting to avoid the dreadful elimination round.

5. MasterChef

MasterChef is a competitive cooking reality show produced by Endemol Shine UK and Banijay that airs in more than 60 countries. The BBC produces it in the United Kingdom. The show lasted from 1990 to 2001 before being resurrected in 2005 as MasterChef Goes Big. Franc Roddam and John Silver designed a fresh format for the revival, which Karen Ross produced. The name was changed back to MasterChef in 2008, but the format stayed the same.

The regular MasterChef series, Celebrity MasterChef, MasterChef: The Professionals, with working chefs, and Junior MasterChef, with youngsters aged nine to twelve, are the four versions now available. The show’s format and aesthetic have been replicated in many international versions all around the world.

6. Daily Kitchen Live

Daily Kitchen Live is BBC cooking show premiered on BBC One in 2020. The show is produced by Cactus TV, which also produces Saturday Kitchen, which airs on the same channel. The show, which was formed in reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK, addresses “lockdown difficulties” that viewers face, such as cooking on a budget or for individuals with restricted food resources. Chef Matt Tebbutt and food writer and anti-poverty activist Jack Monroe are the hosts. The show aired for two weeks starting on April 13, 2020, between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.

7. Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure

Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang, both chefs, have strong personal ties to China. They take viewers on a gourmet journey around the country in this program. They dig beneath the skin of the changing nation through the people they meet, cook with, and eat with on the 5000-mile journey of rediscovery that takes them from the country’s megacities to the neglected villages in the western half of the country. Their inventiveness drives them to innovate and question traditional Chinese cooking conventions while diving into China’s food culture’s central tension between tradition and innovation.

View more: Best Chinese movie chef competitions for food lovers

8. Family Cooking Showdown

Families battle for first place in the competitive cooking show ‘Family Cooking Showdown.’ Each heat is divided into three categories: the £10 challenge, home visits challenge, and impress the neighbors challenge. As the rounds pass, the families must impress the judges in order to advance to the next, until one family is crowned in the final.

9. Great British Menu

Great British Menu is a British cooking show in which renowned British chefs compete for the opportunity to prepare one of four courses at a four-course banquet. Series one and two were hosted by Jennie Bond, a former BBC Royal correspondent, and featured two cooks from different parts of the UK creating a cuisine each week. Three chefs from a region of the UK make a menu in series three and four, both narrated by Bond but with no presenter, and only the two with the top marks advance to the Friday judging. In series five and six, with Bond narrating the fifth and Wendy Lloyd narrating the sixth, three chefs from different parts of the UK make a cuisine, with in-kitchen judging by a previous participant chef; only the two chefs with the highest scores advance to the Friday judgment.

The Friday program of each series is when chefs showcase their entire menu to a judging panel, which includes Matthew Fort, Prue Leith, and Oliver Peyton. Each week, one chef advances to the final, when the judges sample the dishes once again and award marks out of ten.

10. I Can Cook

From October 2009 to December 2012, I Can Cook was a children’s television series that aired on CBeebies. Katy Ashworth hosted the show, in which she demonstrated how to prepare and cook simple dishes while entertaining the audience with music. Each episode focuses on the preparation of a single savory or sweet meal.

The foods are simple to prepare because the show is aimed towards children. Alternatives to traditional dishes, such as the grape pizza, are available.

The show incorporates wider components of culinary education, such as using cutaway sequences to show Ashworth in exterior areas, describing the process of farming and growing any essential ingredient in the show’s recipe.

You may combine food porn with shows that can help you become a better chef with our list of the top cooking shows on BBC. Though you can watch everything on Netflix, including family films, thrillers, holiday films, rom-coms, Korean films, Halloween films, anime, comedy, reality series, and horror films, our recommendations for the greatest BBC cooking shows will make you salivate. Prepare yourself for a new addiction, as these incredible shows can easily become addictive. Have fun streaming!