The biggest commission in SBS history, The Cook Up launched on SBS Food this week, with 200 episodes coming to Australian screens.
Host Adam Liaw is joined in The Cook Up kitchen each night by two guests as they make a variety of dishes centred around a nightly theme.
Mediaweek spoke to Liaw about the upcoming 200 episodes, and what he hopes it will bring to the table.
How The Cook Up came to be
Liaw says that the concept of a show like The Cook Up had been on the backburner at SBS for a while, with conversations starting between Liaw and SBS commissioning editor Josh Martin over a year ago.
“We were talking, ‘what if instead of travelling overseas, why don’t we do a show we can do easily within Australia?’, obviously in a kitchen, which honestly is something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time. All of a sudden that idea went from 10 episodes to 15, to 20, to 50, to 100, to 200.”
Adam Liaw and the Salloum sisters from Sydney’s Almond Bar
Making 200 episodes
With SBS signed on for the long haul, Liaw says that filming the show has been a different experience compared to what he’s used to.
“It’s a very different skill set. Normally I work with one or two cameras out in the field, these days I’m standing around seven cameras in a studio. But it was really exciting because the format allows us to do something that is really Australian and really focused on something that I think is very important, and that’s home cooking. For years I’ve been doing a lot of travelling around and showing what life is like through food in a lot of other places in the world, but now we’re turning that lens back on to the everyday Australian kitchen.”
Even though the show was originally created because of an inability to travel internationally due to Covid-19, Liaw says that he’s happy to keep the show local even after the borders open up.
“I think we’ll probably keep it in the kitchen in Australia. Personally, for me, I’m a father of three kids and I really love the fact that instead of working on the other side of the world, I’m working five minutes down the road. I can drop my kids off at the bus and have dinner with them every night. These kinds of things are really important to me.”
Themes and guests
Liaw says that the themes for each episode guide the program to show off practical and useful recipes for viewers.
“The themes really keep things interesting, and they could be anything from an ingredient – everyone has to cook with apples – or what’s a ten minute meal that you can make, or what’s a meal that only has five ingredients. We try and keep those themes on that practical side of cooking, so that if people want to know what can you do with pumpkin then you have three different ways – I do one recipe and my guests each do a recipe so there’s at least three different recipes with pumpkin that people have to choose from.”
Adam Liaw, satirist Mark Humphries, and Delicious magazine’s Phoebe Wood
As well as themes keeping the show on track, every episode will see Liaw joined by two guests.
“We have a real mix of guests, chefs and non-chefs coming in, media personalities, journalists, comedians, whoever really. So you do get to see what people are actually really cooking at home. Very rarely do the chefs come in and say ‘this is something from the menu at my restaurant’, they’re cooking things that they’re making for their families on a weeknight.
“Obviously you’ve got shows that are competition based, reality based shows that show you a different style of cooking, but it probably doesn’t translate so well to getting dinner on the table at 6:30 every night. I think that’s what this show does.”
Goals for the show
Ultimately, Liaw says that he hopes that people enjoy The Cook up and learn a thing or two along the way.
“I think people will enjoy watching it because they’ll come away from every episode with something. It could be a recipe, it could be a tip, it could be a new way of looking at something, it could be a new perspective on how people cook. One of the best things about the show for me is just how much I learn and how much I take away from it. I consider myself to be a pretty good cook, but every single episode for me, I come out with something new.
“That’s my goal for the show, we try to make it so practical that you can’t help but learn something every time you tune in.”
The Cook Up with Adam Liaw, 7.00pm and 10.00pm weeknights on SBS Food and On Demand.