Like many people, I’ve been watching a lot TV recently. I love watching cooking shows and came across three (plus a mini show) I enjoyed and want to share.

First up is Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course (one season on Prime). He calls this “the only cookery course you’ll ever need.” He covers the basics, including how to shop for ingredients like fish and chiles and what equipment you need. Each episode focuses on a concept like Cooking With Confidence or Getting Organized. He also gives tips along the way like chopping garlic with salt to stop it sticking to your knife. Although it’s focused on the basics, I found this show fun to watch. The show is energetic and moves fast. Ramsay promises 100 recipes and 100 tips. That’s a lot to cram into a single season. He’s an energetic, charismatic chef who is fun to watch. He presents a wide variety of enticing recipes, and he explains what he is doing very clearly.

Next is Nadiya’s Time To Eat(one season on Netflix). This show features Nadiya Hussain, the winner of season six of the Great British Baking Show. The hook is that everyone is busy, so she’ll show you how to save time and effort so that you can spend less time in the kitchen and more time with your family. It is a very BBC show, that pushes healthy eating and promotes UK food producers. First, she shows you a recipe, then goes out to a stressed out person’s house and shows them how to do a different recipe. Finally, every show visits some UK food producer – a salmon farm, yogurt producer etc. Despite the propaganda aspects, I enjoyed the show. She is an appealing presenter and the recipes are also appealing.

Chef Michael’s Kitchen is another Prime show. This show is my jam as the whole point is to teach you to add your own twist to recipes. In each episode he demonstrates how to make a classic version of a dish like risotto then breaks down the recipe to identify the parts of the recipe you can customize. He then makes another version of the recipe with a twist. I will definitely be making Bacon and Bleu Cheese risotto. The whole season deals with seafood, which is the thing I find hardest to cook, so I really enjoyed this show.

Lastly, a fun little mini-show call Edible History (two seasons on Prime). It is hosted by Hannah Hart (also see My Drunk Kitchen on YouTube)and each episode is about ten minutes or so. She interviews an expert on a historical food period, picks a recipe and recreates it using as many historically correct ingredients and tools as possible. She’s adorable, punny and a little snarky. It’s a lot of fun to watch.