The best cooking shows on Netflix to binge right now
There is a parcel cooking shows on netflix these days. Anyone with enough spare time could absorb them all and acquire the sum of knowledge from several dozen good cooks (or just very bad temper). Anyway, watching too many cooking shows is not advisable; there’s a lot of glitz there, and if you’re going to go on a binge, you might as well get something worthwhile out of it, whether it’s exclusive advice, entertaining drama, or that perfect brain massage experience while watching hot chocolate dripping ganache on the side of a cool sponge cake.
So to help you cut the fat, we’ve rounded up our top picks for the crème de la crème, the five absolute best cooking shows on Netflix, with a little unconventional bonus option. Learn more below.
5 Acid Fatty Salt Heat
Acid Fatty Salt Heat (Where SFAH! as no one calls it but me) is the only show on this list that you could really enjoy and “digest” in one evening. It’s a truly wonderful four-part Netflix original series starring Samin Nosrat and based on his 2017 book of the same name. About 20 years ago, Nosrat ate Chez Panisse in Berkley, Calif., and immediately applied to be their dishwasher. She worked her way up in the kitchen and went on to cook in some of the best restaurants in Los Angeles and Italy before becoming a private cooking instructor.
It was while teaching that she distilled the incredibly vast world of culinary traditions and flavor profiles and practices into just four key elements. Many chefs will terrify you by insisting that a good dish Homework achieve a perfect balance of sweet, sour, salty, spice, tang, acidity, tannins, textures, and whatever umami (yes, okay, you know what that’s, well done), Nosrat made things a little easier. Go see SFAH! and discover the value of these four fundamentals while enjoying a beautiful, understated and diverse travel show, which puts mostly women and home cooks at the center – a welcome change as noted by Maura Judkis in her review commendation for the Washington Post:
To put it bluntly: most travel cooking shows are about discovering white men. And most home cooking shows deal with the domesticity of white women. Nosrat kindly dismisses all of this.
4 Anthony Bourdain: parts unknown
If chefs were musicians, Anthony Bourdain would be Dave Grohl – he’s totally badass and he was dedicated to years before I heard of him (additional note: Guy Fieri would totally be the lead singer of Smashmouth). Bourdain grew up in New Jersey and was taken on vacation to France by his father, Pierre, where he quickly fell in love with elegant and exotic cuisines. He was an executive chef in Manhattan for over a decade before rocking his media career, writing a book, then hosting several cooking shows before really pouring his sharp New York persona into this no-nonsense , punk-rock, international-food-travel. document Anthony Bourdain: parts unknownfirst broadcast in 2013.
Watch this (and the great 2021 documentary about the chef, Roadrunner) if you want to learn how to order the right whiskey with your bavette and chimichurri – and how to know if the bar is trying to rip you off on the price. Working on the show until he left, Bourdain took his team and audience to places other cooking shows wouldn’t dare. Heck, the very first episode sees him capitalize on a slight loosening of control by the Myanmar government to travel to this little-seen island and sample their greatest culinary achievements. It’s a cool sight, say ’nuff.
3 Double Bill by Mary Berry
There is perhaps only one leader who could match someone like Bourdain when it comes to charisma, character, and relentless brutality. Her name is Mary Berry. You probably know Mary Berry as the ruthless judge on The Great British Bake-Offtimidly biting into contestants’ cakes then smiling innocently before saying something like “that’s a bit dry” or “I spot a soggy ass” and destroying lives. Comments like this can end entire careers when they come from Berry himself.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s definitely an authority not to mess with! Berry stars in two limited series on Netflix, Mary Berry everyday and Classic Mary Berry. In the first case, we learn all the little details, tips and tricks that can take a simple and healthy meal to another level of perfection. The show is for those who cook for family and friends, who want to whip up a decadent dish without having to shave the truffle off a poached ostrich egg or something. In the latter, Berry gives us his unique take on classic recipes across various cultures and historical periods. The recipes are deliciously varied, sometimes rustic and hearty, sometimes absolutely gourmet, always delicious. They’re both great for gorging on if you enjoy watching appetizing meals and learning a little more about their history along the way.
It’s time for a full 180. Unlike the soft, comforting and sensual British tone of Mary Berry’s half-hour home cooking, Nailed it! is a completely insane, utterly impractical, and glorious castaway of a cooking contest. The show is hosted by bubbly and hilarious comedian Nicole Byer, who also judges the contestants’ designs alongside Jaques Torres and a guest judge. Each episode sees three amateur bakers compete to recreate stunning confections. The catch: The pastries they’re trying to recreate are extraordinarily intricate, elaborate, and probably took two days and a whole team of highly skilled culinary artists (it’s real work, don’t look for it) to put together.
The contestants only have a few hours too, and there are usually shenanigans involving Byer annoying/distracting/pranking the poor bakers. It’s wild, and it’s always ends with a baker revealing his failed attempt at a 3D sponge cake sculpture of Santa Claus with modeling chocolate for the hair, and saying “nailed” while an eye drops out.
2 Chef’s table
Created by David Gelb, this touching and visually stunning television anthology travels far and wide to tell the culinary stories of some of the world’s most accomplished and unique chefs. The fact is that no one has just opens a restaurant; there is always a story to tell, and Chef’s table is remarkably comprehensive in its approach. We’ll learn a bit about each chef’s beginnings, then how they started their careers, then find out what they’re up to now, and move from area to area as they contextualize. and inform each other.
Many of us like to watch cooking shows for sexy close-ups of delicious food, and while Chef’s table has a lot of that, it also takes us into unexpected and interesting areas of the food world. We learn the quirky details of running Dan Barber’s farm-to-table restaurant, like how his chickens have lots of paprika in their feed to give their eggs a striking red yolk, and we learn what it’s all about. is that of writing recipes when you’ve lost your sense of smell. This show is full of human stories and is often calm and contemplative in its presentation. Chef’s table is a great binge for someone looking to dive into the culinary world – and watch some sexy close-ups too.
1 Bonus: food wars!
Here we are! The mother of all jokers! Go to your room, make sure you’re alone, and grab some headphones while you’re there, because things are about to get weird. If you want to watch anime and love food, there’s nothing better than Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma from studio JC Staff, which was established in 2015 and is now in production for its sixth season. It’s not a reality show, as you might have guessed, but its fictional plot and setting serve as the perfect canvas on which dozens of culinary experts can paint their most elaborate dishes.
The plot is simple (and stunning): teenage scrappy Soma Yukihira aspires to be a great chef like his father, whose restaurant Soma has been running since he was a child. Before he can achieve his dreams, young Soma is sent to a crazy elite culinary school where the best chefs from around the world come together to learn and compete. The school has a policy where DISAGREEMENTS ARE RESOLVED THROUGH FOOD WAR! If two students disagree, they show up in a spooky huge stadium and prepare their best dishes for the judges to taste and decide on a winner, usually with a common theme, ingredient or method. Do you still see the huge potential?
Like a fictional animated version of iron boss, every week, street-smart Soma meets a punk from the world of haute cuisine, who cooks a crazy dish from Florence, Paris or Thailand, and the public learns all about these distinctive cooking styles while seeing Soma the to learn. in real time and incorporates increasingly advanced techniques into its own repertoire. It’s absolutely awesome.
Side note: to quickly address the elephant in the room, this show takes the inexplicable (but hilarious) decision to… get pretty stylized when it comes to just conveying how delicious a dish is. Be careful, the characters are likely to make quite evocative noises when they eat. They can also tremble at their knees, or be briefly transported to a fantasy realm of pure flavor where they bathe under a cascade of bearnaise sauce (eerily similar to the last Japanese show Kantaro: The Sweet Wage Man). Things like that, delicious and weird.
Read more
About the Author