Cooking Shows
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50 free Cooking Shows trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cooking on television started as instruction: a presenter, a counter and a recipe. Then producers added a clock, a rival and a panel of judges, and food became one of the most watched contests on the air. Today there are shows where chefs sprint through grocery aisles, bid against each other for unfair advantages, or try to pass off dessert as a household object. This quiz covers the whole menu: the big cooking competitions and their hosts, judges and winners; baking contests; the pioneers of public television; travel and eating series; and the game shows that turned a weekly shop into a sport. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up the story behind each show as you play. It is written for anyone who watches food television, whether you follow every season of a kitchen competition or just remember a few famous faces. Questions run from easy to tricky, which makes the set a good fit for a trivia night, a family contest or a quiet evening on your own.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Great British Bake Off is renamed Baking Show in America because which company owns the Bake-Off trademark?
Pillsbury
Pillsbury first ran its own Bake-Off recipe contest in 1949 at New York's Waldorf-Astoria, so the British series airs in the US and Canada as The Great British Baking Show.
Q 02Which host of 30 Minute Meals is credited with coining EVOO, an abbreviation later added to an Oxford dictionary?
Rachael Ray
Rachael Ray used EVOO as her shorthand for extra-virgin olive oil so often that the Oxford American College Dictionary added the term in 2007 and credited her.
Q 03Which American chef offended Masaharu Morimoto by standing on his cutting board after an Iron Chef battle in New York?
Bobby Flay
Bobby Flay climbed onto his board and raised his arms when the hour ended; Morimoto, who holds knives and boards sacred, took offence and said Flay was not a chef.
Q 04Which Barefoot Contessa host wrote nuclear energy budget papers at the White House before buying a specialty food shop?
Ina Garten
Ina Garten quit her government job in 1978 after spotting an ad for a tiny Long Island food store called the Barefoot Contessa, and kept the name for her books and show.
Q 05Which rapper joined Martha Stewart to host a VH1 dinner-party cooking show after the two bonded at a celebrity roast?
Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg sat next to Stewart through the seven-hour taping of Justin Bieber's 2015 roast, and the pair got on so well that VH1 gave them a potluck show the next year.
Q 06Ted Allen, the longtime host of Chopped, first found fame as the food and wine expert on which makeover series?
Queer Eye
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy made Allen one of its Fab Five in 2003, and he left Bravo in 2008 when Food Network offered him the Chopped job.
Q 07Which cookbook author taught Americans French cuisine on The French Chef, a weekly series on Boston's WGBH from 1963?
Julia Child
Julia Child got the series after viewers loved watching her cook an omelette on a WGBH book-review programme; three trial episodes aired in summer 1962 before the weekly run.
Q 08Which YouTube talk show has Sean Evans interview celebrities over a platter of increasingly spicy chicken wings?
Hot Ones
Hot Ones gives each guest ten wings, every one dressed in a fiercer sauce than the last, and has grown into a brand of bottled sauces and frozen wings.
Q 09Which game show has teams answer trivia questions before a timed dash to gather groceries from store aisles?
Supermarket Sweep
Supermarket Sweep first ran on ABC from 1965 to 1967, when it was broadcast from real Food Fair stores, mostly around New York City.
Q 10Which chef, once a trialist with Rangers football club, splits Hell's Kitchen contestants into red and blue teams?
Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay had a trial in 1984 with Rangers, the club he supported as a boy, but a serious knee injury ended his football hopes and sent him toward the kitchen.
Q 11Which author and former model hosted Bravo's Top Chef from season two until she stepped down in 2023?
Padma Lakshmi
Padma Lakshmi replaced first-season host Katie Lee and stayed through season 20, picking up several Emmy nominations for hosting along the way.
Q 12Emeril Lagasse, born in Massachusetts, made his name as executive chef of Commander's Palace in which Southern city?
New Orleans
New Orleans gave Lagasse his break in 1982, when he succeeded the celebrated Paul Prudhomme in the Commander's Palace kitchen, long before television made him a star.
Q 13The cooking contest MasterChef, created by film director Franc Roddam, first aired in 1990 in which country?
United Kingdom
Q 21Which country singer, married to Garth Brooks, began hosting a Southern cooking show on Food Network in 2012?
Trisha Yearwood
Trisha Yearwood named the series Trisha's Southern Kitchen, and it went on to win a Daytime Emmy Award.
Q 22Which pop star learned to cook from professional chefs appearing remotely in an HBO Max series filmed in her home?
Selena Gomez
Selena Gomez made Selena + Chef during the COVID-19 pandemic, with no crew members allowed in her kitchen, and later brought it back as holiday specials.
Q 23Phil Rosenthal, the travelling host of Netflix's Somebody Feed Phil, created which long-running sitcom?
Everybody Loves Raymond
United Kingdom viewers saw MasterChef first: its BBC commissioner had already made Masterteam and worked on Mastermind, so the name simply continued the run.
Q 14Which creator and host of Good Eats also served as the main commentator on Iron Chef America?
Alton Brown
Alton Brown first aired his Good Eats pilot in 1998 on a Chicago public television station, before Food Network picked the show up for a run of sixteen seasons.
Q 15Which Travel Channel series sent Adam Richman to a different American city to face a restaurant's eating challenge?
Man v. Food
Man v. Food ran for four seasons with Richman, and when Travel Channel revived it in 2017 a new host, Casey Webb, took on the giant plates.
Q 16Which actor, who co-directed the restaurant film Big Night, explored regional cooking in CNN's Searching for Italy?
Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci has credited another CNN series, Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, as an influence on his own journey through Italian kitchens.
Q 17Which Netflix baking contest, hosted by Mikey Day, asks judges to spot the everyday object that is an edible fake?
Is It Cake?
Is It Cake? turned a viral internet challenge, spread on YouTube and TikTok, into a game show where bakers win by fooling celebrity judges.
Q 18Which comedian co-hosts Netflix's Nailed It!, where amateur bakers with poor skills try to copy elaborate confections?
Nicole Byer
Nicole Byer became the first Black woman nominated for the Emmy for outstanding host of a reality or competition programme, for a show built on failed bakes.
Q 19TLC's Cake Boss follows Buddy Valastro and his siblings at Carlo's Bake Shop in which New Jersey city?
Hoboken
Hoboken drew so many extra visitors because of the series that the Hudson Reporter gave Valastro an honourable mention among the county's most influential people.
Q 20On Bravo's Top Chef, what name is given to the opening round whose winner usually earns immunity from elimination?
Quickfire Challenge
Quickfire Challenge tasks are not always plated dishes: some have been relay races through kitchen prep, and others blind taste-testing contests.
Everybody Loves Raymond ran from 1996 to 2005, and its stars Ray Romano and Brad Garrett have been among the guests Rosenthal phones during the food series.
Q 24Netflix's Culinary Class Wars pits unknown Black Spoon cooks against veteran White Spoon chefs in which country?
South Korea
South Korea's hit made its eighty unknown challengers cook under aliases, while the twenty established stars competed under their real names.
Q 25Which bestselling 2000 memoir of restaurant life launched chef Anthony Bourdain toward a career as a travel host?
Kitchen Confidential
Kitchen Confidential expanded a 1999 New Yorker article by Bourdain, bluntly titled Don't Eat Before Reading This.
Q 26On Cutthroat Kitchen, each chef starts with $25,000 to spend at auctions that mostly sell what?
Sabotages for rivals
Sabotages for rivals might swap a chef's equipment or restrict how they can move, and the last cook standing keeps only the money left unspent.
Q 27Which actor-director presents Netflix's The Chef Show with Roy Choi, who trained him for his 2014 film Chef?
Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau learned his kitchen skills from Choi to make the film, and the pair reunited in 2019 to cook for and interview their guests.
Q 28Ree Drummond, Food Network's Pioneer Woman, lives on a working cattle ranch near Pawhuska in which state?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma ranch life was the subject of Drummond's blog, The Pioneer Woman, and its success led the network to give her a show of the same name in 2011.
Q 29Paula Deen, who began with a lunch-delivery business called The Bag Lady, opened The Lady & Sons in which Georgia city?
Savannah
Savannah office workers were Deen's first customers: her two sons delivered the bagged lunches before the family opened its restaurant downtown in 1996.
Q 30Which Food Network series followed pastry chef Duff Goldman and his crew at their custom bakery in Baltimore?
Ace of Cakes
Ace of Cakes showed Goldman's shop, Charm City Cakes, building edible sculptures; one, a model of the Hubble Space Telescope, went on display at a NASA centre.