It's Hot in the Kitchen with These Top 5 Cooking Shows

With several cooking shows on television right now, it may be hard to decipher the best shows to watch. There are shows that deal with desserts, shows that highlight top chefs at their best and leave you in awe, and those that have a competitive edge. After watching a large amount of cooking shows, here are my top five.

Top Cooking Show #1: Top Chef on Bravo
This show brings young, and mostly unknown, chefs together to compete to become the Top Chef. Each episode contains a "Quickfire" challenge and an elimination challenge. The "Quickfire" challenges are mini competitions where the chefs must be inventive and creative with unique ingredients. It is always interesting to see what the chefs come up with and can even inspire you to be more inventive with food at home. Bravo also has a series called Top Chef Masters, which has the same type of challenges but with chefs from five-star restaurants. It is great to see these amazing chefs at work.

Top Cooking Show #2: Iron Chef America on Food Network
This show is a head-to-head competition between one of the Iron Chefs and an unknown chef working their way up in the cooking world. There is one mystery ingredient that must be incorporated into each dish, which creates very unique dishes. These chefs are experts that use incredible techniques most would never even imagine attempting.

Top Cooking Show #3: Chopped on Food Network
This show is similar to the previous cooking shows, but in less time. Four unknown chefs battle to complete a meal in a short amount of time. Within one episode, there are three rounds: an appetizer, entrée, and a dessert. At each round, there are certain ingredients that must be incorporated into the dish with an elimination at the end of each round. The hardest part about each round is the time constraint. The contestants have 30-45 minutes, depending on the course, to complete each round.

Top Cooking Show #4: Ace of Cakes on Food Network
This show chronicles a cake shop throughout their process of making cakes. However, what is special about this cake shop are the cakes themselves. Charm City Cakes is known for their big, outlandish, and unique cakes. It is exciting to see exactly how they craft these cakes.

Top Cooking Show #5: Cupcake Wars on Food Network
This is one of the newest shows on the Food Network Channel that gives cupcake experts a chance to compete against each other. Four contestants compete at three different rounds to ultimately premiere a thousand of their cupcakes at a massive event. Their cupcake design and taste must match the event, as well as their designed display to hold all one thousand cupcakes.

Sources:
www.foodnetwork.com
www.bravotv.com