Oh yeah, I loved the updated Good Eats series.
The British Baking Show was probably the last cooking competition I’ve watched. Even then, I kind of lost interest in the later episodes.
And oh yeah. We watch Cook’s Country, America’s Test Kitchen, and Milk Street pretty religiously. The other shows around them get watched pretty often, as well. Patty Jinich’s show is always pretty good.
That’s my wife’s Saturday strategy: she watches the morning cooking shows on Food Network (Pioneer Woman, The Kitchen, Girl Meets Farm), then when Fieri takes over (at 11am our time), she switches to PBS.
As much fun as it is to see the chefs on the various competition shows negotiate the weird obstacles that they have thrown at them, I really like the second half of your average episode of Beat Bobby Flay because there’s no funny business. There’s no “build your dish around this weird ingredient” or “you must stand on one foot while you cook.” Flay and the challenger simply see who can do a better job of cooking the same dish.