And it’s not just Gordon. Cooking shows, in general, are my guilty pleasure. They sit in that sweet spot of comfort TV: part drama, part food porn, part therapy. There’s The Great British Bake Off, which I watch for reasons that have nothing to do with soggy bottoms and everything to do with Alison Hammond. There’s MasterChef, where home cooks cry over scrambled eggs. There are competition shows that turn chopping onions into the culinary equivalent of the Hunger Games. And every single one of them has a way of sucking us in.
Cooking shows work because they’re drama without consequences. Sure, someone’s cake might collapse, but nobody dies. The soufflé falls, the sun still rises. We get the rush of watching people fight against the clock, battle their nerves, and occasionally cut themselves on a mandoline, but it’s contained chaos. It’s digestible stress. The kind of stress we can handle while eating cereal in our pajamas.
And yes, sometimes we’re here for the train wrecks. I live for the moment when someone forgets to turn on the oven and spends an hour wondering why nothing is cooking. We don’t want them to fail, but we do.
At the same time, cooking shows feed us pure fantasy. Look, I am never making a twelve-layer mirror-glaze cake. I don’t even know what a quenelle is, and I’m too embarrassed to Google it. But I will absolutely sit on my couch and cheer for someone else who pulls it off under fluorescent studio lights while a judge leans over and whispers, “You’ve got sixty seconds.” It’s food without calories, effort, or cleanup. Just endless pans of brownies that I can consume with my eyes.
Cooking shows also sneak in a weird kind of relatability. When a contestant forgets to season the chicken, I feel personally validated. Representation matters, and sometimes that representation is a grown adult serving crunchy pasta to Michelin-starred chefs. It’s a reminder that even professionals mess up, and if they can have a meltdown over burnt toast, then my crimes against stir-fry food don’t look so bad.
I’ll never forget the time I tried to recreate a Bake Off recipe myself. I spent three hours attempting a “simple” tart (the recipe’s words, not mine). The crust collapsed, the filling never set, and I ended up with what can only be described as dessert soup. Did I still eat the whole thing? Absolutely. Watching the pros fail on TV makes me feel like I belong to this club of well-intentioned kitchen disasters.
But there’s also the magic factor. Cooking is the closest thing to witchcraft we’ve got. Flour, butter, and eggs go in, and somehow, a towering croquembouche comes out. (Or, alternatively, a sad pile of collapsed cream puffs, which is even better television.) Cooking shows let us watch that alchemy play out in real time. We don’t need to understand the science of tempering chocolate. We want to watch it shine.
And then there’s the comfort. Bake Off is basically the televised equivalent of a warm blanket. The stakes are low, the tent is cozy, and even when someone’s technical challenge looks like a road accident, the tone stays supportive. It’s TV you can relax into. On the flip side, Hell’s Kitchen is chaos TV, but even that feels comforting. Why? Because it’s predictable. Gordon will yell. Someone will overcook the scallops. At least once an episode, he will dramatically throw something in the trash. It’s a ritual. And ritual is soothing.
Cooking shows are also intensely social. Even if we’re watching alone, they spark conversations. “Could you make that?” “No, but I could eat it.” “How is that undercooked? It looks fine to me.” They’re shows designed to be consumed together, to argue about together, to meme together. The food is the content, but the community is the hook.
Perhaps that’s the real reason we love them: cooking shows are a form of comfort food for the soul. They combine drama, spectacle, and relatability in a way few other genres can. They make us hungry, they make us laugh, they make us scream, “Season the damn chicken.” They give us just enough chaos to stay entertained without reminding us that the real world is on fire. They’re familiar, safe, endlessly rewatchable, and always there when we need them.
So the next time you catch yourself watching back-to-back episodes of MasterChef or losing an entire afternoon to Bake Off reruns, don’t feel guilty. This isn’t just mindless TV.
This is therapy. This is modern mythology. This is humanity, distilled into soggy bottoms and perfect risottos. Cooking shows remind us that life is messy, unpredictable, and sometimes way too salty, but also that with enough time in the oven, things usually turn out okay.
