The Great American Recipe

I'm not sure why the production is rendered in extra-vivid color, oversharpened. It has a look that reminds me of early astronomical photos from the Hubble telescope that were processed with unsharp masking. The result is unrealistic.

Where the Great British Bake Off gets people from all around the isles to to bake and add their spin to classic or invent new British bakes.

The Great American Recipe encourages Americans from all walks of life to share their own recipes and takes on how they interpret American food. The show attempts to show regional and cultural variations of different foods.

Some highlights are a Korean Americans gochujang tacos. A Vietnamese Americans spaghetti and meatballs with sriracha, and that's only in the first 2 episodes. Personally I believe the show does a good job of showing the complexity of American food and how good in America changes over time through the influence of immigration.

Who are these hosts and judges? No offense, but they make or break the show. Who are they? Could they afford some create chefs? And the host...its like they said let's make sure we get diversity over quality. Kind of annoying to watch. I just like watching pple cook. This concept doesn't get old to me. It is better than many of these corny netflix series though where everything looks cooky and upside down like a pee wee Herman show. I know if I stop watching, it wasn't the cooks. It was the judges and host. They were overkill, and who are they anyway? What qualifies them? That's my biggest annoyance right now. Otherwise, you tried Create. Thank you!

In the end, it was a robbery. Definitely disagree with the winner but then again, the judges weren't much to qualify anyone.

A competition show that doesn't eliminate contestants. A quest for "the best home cook in America" with no stakes or reward that constantly overlooks poor protein cookery. A reality show that offers no reality other than saccharine melodrama that's often undercut by edits that I swear were done to make the contestants look like liars.

This is a mess of a show that has a good idea but needs to cut out all the pro-forma cruft and focus on home cooks cooking, sharing their home life, and improving their skills. Don't try to shoehorn vapid talking heads and poorly-formed reality TV challenges just because it was trending well on Food Network 15 years ago.

It's a competition cooking show, so that pretty much sums it up. But one thing that kept me watching for the second season was they got rid of the stupid weekly eliminations. Reality TV producers don't seem to understand that introducing us to an interesting person who vanishes in a few episodes (for no other reason than creating tired drama) really does a disservice to the show, and the viewer. I like that this show is overwhelmingly positive, without all the manufactured drama.

Here, we get to follow all of the cooks, hear more stories, and see a lot more interesting recipes then we would have otherwise.

That said, it would be nice if there was some kind of objective scoring system, with blind judging by a tasting panel, for example, just to give an appearance of fairness. As it stands, it feels like whoever has the most heartwarming story for a given recipe usually wins.

As ethnically diverse as the show is, I would like to see more diversity, specifically in the age range of participants. A couple younger and older participants would make a more interesting mix.