The Best Food Competition Shows to Stream Right Now

Remember when food competition shows were a rare commodity? Even after cooking shows began to take off, it took a while for TV to tap into the potential of a good kitchen showdown. Iron Chef changed the game, and then streaming opened up the floodgates. Now, the extremely bingeable reality TV format is everywhere. If you know where to look, you can find a cooking competition show based on just about any dish or style of cooking you could think of.

In such a crowded field, TV Guide is here to help you sort through it all. These are the best food competition shows that you can stream right now. And if you're looking for the best food documentary shows to stream, you can find that list here.

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Iron Chef

This is the OG — the cooking show that you could say started the craze in the United States. While the show would eventually inspire a number of American spin-offs (which can be streamed on Discovery+), the original Japanese version was a runaway hit of its own. Eventually dubbed into English and aired on the Food Network starting in 1999, the show was a massive, surprise hit amongst American audiences, and Iron Chef introduced the cook-off format that would become the norm for cooking competition shows for years to come. Influential and entertaining, Iron Chef practically created an entire television ecosystem in America all by itself.

Hell's Kitchen

While Iron Chef brought the food competition show to America, no one is arguably more important in the rise of the genre here than Gordon Ramsay. The foul-mouthed British chef is synonymous with the rise of the food competition show, and the wildly popular Fox series Hell's Kitchen is his most successful creation. With Hell's Kitchen, Ramsay played up the caricature of the intense, angry chef, constantly yelling and swearing at his kitchen minions who toiled away in the hopes of making it to the end and securing a job as a head chef. For better or worse, Hell's Kitchen popularized the in-your-face style of reality food competition.

The Great British Baking Show

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is The Great British Baking Show, which takes a more gentle, warm approach to the food competition genre. Amateur bakers compete in a series of rounds, attempting to impress the judges with their sugary delights. Along the way the hosts revel in humor and discuss the history of the dishes and styles of baking, creating a show that's perfect escapist entertainment.

The American Barbecue Showdown

Cakes and sweets are good and all, but who doesn't love some good, smoky barbecue? Netflix has its fair share of barbecue-themed shows, but none like this reality series. Eight contestants with varying levels of experience square off in a number of barbecue-specific competitions. What makes the show unique is its focus on the method of cooking. Cooking barbecue involves balancing temperature and using smoke for flavor, and the trickiness of getting it right within the confines of a reality show makes The American Barbecue Showdown one of the more entertaining offerings on Netflix.

Chopped

While some competition shows highlight the chefs' strengths with certain techniques, Chopped instead prefers a little chaos. Sure, this is a Food Network reality competition where four chefs compete in a three-round contest to win $10,000, but the twist here is that every round the chefs must work with strange ingredient combinations. The chefs are given baskets containing four mystery ingredients and use them in unique ways to create an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert. The appeal of this show is the outrageous combinations that the chefs must make sense of. Where else can you watch people try to use alpaca hot dogs, sauerkraut, carrot ketchup, and pâté to create an appetizing dish?

MasterChef

If intense culinary scrutiny is what you're looking for, then MasterChef is what you want. The long-running American version, which airs on Fox, is a grueling multi-week competition, and the show is not exactly subtle in its over-the-top nature, always looking to exaggerate emotional backstories or conflict. But that's exactly what makes the show entertaining, as the judges (Gordon Ramsay is the lone stalwart, having judged every single season) clash with the contestants, never holding back in both their praise and their criticism of the dishes.

MasterChef Junior

Not every cooking competition has to be cutthroat, and there's no better example of that than MasterChef Junior. As mentioned earlier, the original MasterChef thrives because of how outrageous it is, as it leans into the performative aspects of reality TV. The opposite is true of MasterChef Junior. This show succeeds because it embraces the charm and kindness of its young contestants. It's feel-good television at its finest, and as an added bonus you'll feel very ashamed of how your cooking skills stack up next to these kids.

Guy's Grocery Games

Guy's Grocery Games has a little bit of everything. It's a cooking competition, but it's also an homage to the classic game show Supermarket Sweep. The Food Network series features quizzes and bonus rounds and mysterious clues, all on top of the usual format that sees chefs competing to make dishes featuring specific ingredients. Maybe the stakes here aren't as high as in some of the other shows on this list, but as is often the case with any of Guy Fieri's shows, this one has a fun, laid-back vibe that'll keep you watching.

Next Level Chef

The most recent creation on this list, this Fox show from Gordan Ramsay is pure spectacle. With the food competition genre so crowded, what's needed to stand out now is a good gimmick, and that's exactly what Next Level Chef has. Fifteen chefs, divided into three teams and working under the guidance of Ramsay and chefs Nyesha Arrington and Richard Blais, compete in a series of cooking challenges. That all sounds pretty standard, until you learn that they're all cooking inside a massive three-level structure that contains three different kitchens. The top floor contains a modern, upscale kitchen with all the contemporary tools one could need, the middle floor is a standard commercial kitchen as seen in just about any basic restaurant, and the bottom floor contains low-quality cooking equipment, making it tricky for the chefs to adapt to each level. Now is the time to catch up with this silly but very entertaining show.

The Great Food Truck Race

Food trucks are all the rage these days, and The Great Food Truck Race does a great job of capturing the spirit of the industry. Hosted by Tyler Florence, the Food Network competition follows a number of food truck teams each season who drive their trucks across the United States and sell their food in various cities, each trying to earn money and not get eliminated. Along the way, the teams must adapt to new game challenges while also securing profits and keeping their food truck afloat. It's a chaotic, entertaining show that's oh-so-easy to binge.