Last Updated: January 26th, 2021
Finding the best food or cooking show has never been easier. Between all of the streaming services, you have hundreds of choices of both old and new shows in every sub-genre — from reality TV cooking competitions to stand-and-stir standards to the umpteenth permutation of Bourdain’s “walk, taste, talk” concept.
And Hulu is one of the best places to find shows all across this broad spectrum. Perhaps second only to Netflix.
The 20 shows below are our favorite food-related shows streaming on Hulu right now. There’s a broad range represented, from classic travel-focused food shows to down-and-dirty cooking competitions with cutthroat contestants vying for supremacy. Hopefully, you’ll find the show that suits you and dive in.
And don’t forget to try out a few new recipes after your binge!
20. Beat Bobby Flay
4 seasons, 47 episodes | IMDb: 6.3/10
This is a great concept overall. Celebrity chef Bobby Flay invites home chefs into his studio kitchen to battle it out for a finale round to cook against Flay. Where the show works is in chef Flay’s ability to engage and encourage the home chefs as they battle each other. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of trash-talking too, amping up the fun factor. And, yes, Flay often wins in the finales but not always, making this a very addictive watch.
19. Guy’s Grocery Games
7 seasons, 72 episodes | IMDb: 6.5/10
This is a bit of an outlier when it comes to food competitions. Hosted by the mayor of Flavortown himself, Guy Fieri, the show is very bombastic and likely rigged to make sure the craziest ingredients are thrown at willing contestants as they try and execute something fun and hopefully edible. Overall, this isn’t necessarily a show to draw recipes from. But it is a show that’ll keep you very entertained.
18. Eater’s Guide To The World
1 season, 7 episodes | IMDb: 6.7/10
This very highly anticipated food and travel show dropped right in the midst of the global pandemic, making it the perfect candidate for scratching both that wanderlust and foodie itch. And … it’s solid. The show hits very well-trodden foodie destinations around the world. It looks great (even if it doesn’t really offer much new). The saving grace of the show is the on-point and engaging narration by Maya Rudolph.
Though even then, you’re left wishing you’d just watched Rudolph actually hosting the show and enjoying all this food herself.
17. The Great Food Truck Race
2 seasons, 12 episodes | IMDb: 6.6/10
Do you love food truck culture? Do you love cooking show competitions? Then this is the show for you. The show follows a fleet of food trucks as they race to make the most sales in a single day with the lowest earning truck getting eliminated. It’s straight-forward, fast-paced, and full of mouth-watering food. You can’t really ask for more from a unique food competition show.
16. Tasty 101
4 seasons, 33 episodes | IMDb: 7.2/10
This is a great show to get into immediately if want to up your kitchen skills. This is more an informational program than a “show” per se. Each episode offers you a skill — like chopping or knife sharpening or cast iron use and care — or a recipe. It’s direct, educational, and will help you master some serious skills and recipes in little time.
15. MasterChef
10 seasons, 205 episodes | IMDb: 7.3/10
Chef Gordon Ramsay’s MasterChef has proven to be one of the most fun watches out there in food TV land. We’d also argue this is the most watchable show from the deep roster of Ramsay-led television shows (with MasterChef Junior coming in at a close second).
The show pits home chefs against each other in the same kitchen to see who can perform under pressure. The show brings along a wide range of well-known celebrity chefs to test the mettle of the home cooks as the fast competition sheds fledgling home chefs very quickly. A bonus here is that Ramsay’s often acerbic nature is dialed back and he’s able to show a much more empathetic side. It’s very refreshing.
14. Iron Chef America
2 seasons, 18 episodes | IMDb: 7.1/10
Iron Chef America is one of those cooking competitions that looks and sounds intense, dizzying even. Then you start watching episodes and three hours will go by before you realize it. Put simply, these are a thrill to watch, as celebrity chefs duke it out in the octagon-like kitchen for Iron Chef glory.
It’s fast-paced, engaging as hell, and always has you on the edge of your seat.
13. Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern
5 seasons, 27 episodes | IMDb: 7.7/10
Chef Andrew Zimmern took a concept proven by Anthony Bourdain — that travel and food go hand-in-hand — and expanded it to include breaking down xenophobic ideas about food. Let’s face it, it’s easy to “other” food from cultures that don’t fit in our own norms. It happens all too often. Zimmern set out on a quest to show the world that we all eat things that are unique to our cultures and locations, and no, it’s not weird. Well, maybe sometimes it is, as Zimmern pointed out in his “scrapple” episode.
12. Jamie: Keep Cooking and Carry On
2 seasons, 26 episodes | IMDb: 7.4/10
Chef Jamie Oliver has an affability that makes him the perfect stand-and-stir cooking host, especially in these hard times. This is a great cooking show for anyone looking to get into cooking but who also feels intimidated by it all. This is a straightforward show that’s meant to highlight easy home-cooking that anyone can execute. Plus, Oliver’s excitement and down-to-earth mentality really sell that you can execute any of these recipes tonight in your own kitchen.
11. Bong Appetit
3 seasons, 30 episodes | IMDb: 7.9/10
Cannabis has changed food culture drastically in places it’s legal. Food as a delivery system for THC and CBD is a natural fit, and chefs have built entire brands around just that. This stoner food show travels around the country and dives into everything cannabis and food. Again, there’s no reinventing the wheel here when it comes to travel/food shows. But who cares? Get some THC in your body and set it on autoplay.
10. Chopped
16 seasons, 197 episodes | IMDb: 7.5/10
Chopped is the home chef’s answer to Bravo’s Top Chef. Aspiring home cooks gather to compete in a high-pressure cooking competition for cash. There are secret ingredients, sharp-tongued-yet-helpful judges, and tear-jerking backstories from the contestants. This is the sort of show where you’ll realize you’ve watched an entire season of without really noticing.
9. Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
5 seasons, 56 episodes | IMDb: 7.3/10
This show might be the easiest binge on the list. You can just put it on in the background and dip in and out for hours. Whenever you do dip in, you’re going to see something truly delicious being cooked for Guy Fieri that he’ll be eating shortly. The show also serves as a fascinating window into American food culture for the working and middle classes where quality is directly related to “bang for the buck.”
This is America, fam.
8. Make This Tonight
4 seasons, 21 episodes | IMDb: N/A
This is a really useful show from Tastemade. Chefs offer classic stand-and-stir instructions for easy-to-make at-home meals. A lot of Top Chef alums pop in for step-by-step dinner recipes that look and sound great while still feeling doable. The fact that there’s a new chef in almost every episode also keeps things very fresh while providing a wide culinary net.
Give it a shot and then try a recipe or two yourself.
7. Food Wars!
2 seasons, 37 episodes | IMDb: 8.2/10
Let’s shift gears for a moment. The show is a great respite from the usual in-studio food shows or travel-based foodie romps. This is a narrative anime that has food at the center of every episode. The show follows a budding young chef as he tries to save his father’s restaurant, navigates Japan’s most elite culinary school, and invents recipes that wow his friends, diners, and family.
6. F*ck, That’s Delicious
4 seasons, 41 episodes | IMDb: 8/10
Rapper and former pro-cook Action Bronson is the perfect fit for a Bourdain-esque travel and food show. Bronson has a stoner affability that leads to quelling munchies all over the world as he tours. The show has a knack for bridging the food of the streets with the food of the higher-classes without making one feel superior to the other. Overall, this is a breeze to watch and has some serious FOMO moments.
5. Worth It
6 seasons, 54 episodes | IMDb: 8.7/10
This series from Buzzfeed has a great concept. The hosts land in a city and try differently priced versions of the same foods and then reconvene to judge whether the $100 luxury version of something in a starred restaurant was really better than the $1 street food version of that food. It’s a fun watch that’ll have you reconsidering where you spend your food dollars when you arrive in a new city.
4. Top Chef
16 seasons, 246 episodes | IMDb: 7.6/10
Top Chef is the gold-standard of cooking show competitions. The show invites around 16 professional chefs on each season to cook-it-out on TV for the title “Top Chef,” a purse of $125,000, and features at the Food & Wine Festival in Aspen. The show set the bar for which all other cooking shows reach. It’s fast-paced, dramatic, and mouth-watering fun.
3. Alice in Paris
1 season, 8 episodes | IMDb: 8.8/10
This fictional-narrative food-focused show was a revelation. It follows the titular Alice, a young Parisian, as she navigates life, friends, and living in Paris one meal and trip to the market at a time. There’s a real heart to the show in how much Alice cares about the food she cooks or dines out on with her friends and family. The whole show is built around the beauty of Paris’ farmer’s markets, hidden food gems, bistros, and food culture that Alice frequents and discovers.
The whole show is populated with real-deal restaurants, chefs, farmers, bartenders, and markets all around the city (and France). And that — combined with the easy-going nature of the narrative — creates one hell of a food show that feels so real (even if you haven’t made it to Paris yet).
2. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
2 seasons, 32 episodes | IMDb: 8.4/10
Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations is the show that changed food and travel shows forever. There are many imitators out there. But this is the OG travel and food show that’s a must-watch while it’s still available. Bourdain’s ability to blend travel, food, and culture into the single, watchable format without pandering and upping the format’s style will always be a great watch or even rewatch if you haven’t visited the series in a while.
1. Taste The Nation with Padma Lakshmi
1 season, 10 episodes | IMDb: 8.3/10
This was the best new food show of the last year. Period.
Long-time foodie, cookbook author, and Top Chef co-host Padma Lakshmi took the format of traveling America to find the heart of its food culture to new levels. The majority of the episodes deal in the migrant food that dominates 99 percent of the American food conversation while also asking what was here before all of that. That narrative thread provides a window into America’s Indigenous cuisines that is both revelatory and ground-breaking.
Overall, this show hits all the right marks of being engaging to watch (thanks to the beautiful food on display), highly educational (about America’s Indigenous and immigrant foodways), and genuinely approachable (thanks to Lakshmi’s ease with the people she meets along the way).
