Written by Fatimah Gimsay

Raise your hands if you’ve found yourself consuming all the content you can lay your hands on these quarantine months. These days, I find myself watching and rewatching all types of shows. However, I always find comfort in great food shows, the ones that suck you into their worlds and make you feel very present in the kitchen with the hosts.

 There’s just something warm about someone inviting you into their culinary safe space for half an hour and making you feel involved as they make several meals. If the cooking shows you’re watching don’t make you feel like this, I think you need to get into the following shows. 

1. Delicious Miss Brown - Showing on Food Network 

What to expect: Kardea Brown (the host) gives you full southern cooking with a heavy foundation of soul food and rich African American culture. The meals are filling, the jokes are landing and you’re literally aching for more.

Miss Brown is thoroughly family-oriented and plucks knowledge from her amazing grandma, the matriarch holding a ton of recipes. It’s comforting, it’s familiar and it’s delicious. 

2. Kids Baking Championship - Showing on Food Network

What to expect: Children screaming and baking. No, really, lots of screaming and baking.

It is no doubt fun, bright and uplifting watching adolescents know more food terms than my big adult self. The show is hosted by super pastry Chef Duff Goldman and the amazing Valerie Bertinelli. The kids are smart, ambitious and talented. Trust me it gets hard when elimination starts but the fun trumps the fear. 

3. Nadiya’s Time to Eat- Showing on Netflix 

What to expect: Realistic shortcuts to delicious meals.

After winning The Great British Bake Off, Nadiya Hussain is back with a family-friendly show. Nadiya is very much like me in that we both love shortcuts and what I call “lazy cooking”. This show helps you incorporate flavourful cooking into a hectic lifestyle, making sure you don’t starve just because you’re a working individual. Feel free to binge and take some notes because it’s easy to get lost in the warmth of the show. 

4. The Kitchen -  Showing on Food Network 

What to expect: Friends cooking with and for each other. These friends are Sunny Anderson, Katie Lee, Jeff Mauro, Geoffery Zakarian, and Marcela Valladolid.

In times like this when we’re stuck at home and separated from loved ones, this is a perfect watch. It’s a great reminder of what we miss and what we can do once we’re reunited. Talented chefs who happen to be friends who also work together share recipes amongst themselves and with the audience, of course. Maybe once we’re out of this Rona situation, you can have a potluck with friends inspired by The Kitchen.

5. Cooked With Cannabis - Showing on Netflix 

What to expect: Food literally cooked with Cannabis, it’s all in the title.

This is another fun, chill level competition hosted by Kelis (yes, thee Kellis from “Milkshake”) and Leather Storrs. If you’re looking for a stress-free experience, this is it. These people are making appetizing dishes and infusing flavours in ways I didn’t even think of before. It is literally a showcase of delicious gourmet food that gets you high.

6. Chopped - Showing on Food Network 

What to expect: Tension, hosted by Ted Allen.

We all love Chopped and the randomness of the ingredients in those baskets. The show is amazing and tension-filled if you’re okay with that. It takes you from sheer curiosity to screaming at the top of your lungs when a chef forgets an ingredient at 15 SECONDS TO GO. It’s like football condensed into 30 minutes. So much adrenaline, excitement and love of food combined together. 

7. Street Food, Asia - Netflix 

What to expect: An intriguing display of culture and brand new food knowledge in this docu-series.

If you’re obsessed with Asian food, especially with how we think Nigerian Chinese food is god tier, this is your show. It’s a great experience as it takes you through the streets of Asia teaching you about the origins of street food and how some of our favourite meals are made. The first episode is one of the best pilots for a food series I’ve seen and everything about it is just wholesome and right. 

Fatimah Binta Gimsay is a storyteller, content producer and author of The Lazy Halal Guide, a 20-recipe cookbook for halal meals. Currently, she writes for African Television and runs a food page called Lazy Halal Kitchen, on Instagram. When she's not writing or cooking, she's creating other art through photography and taking in the art around her.