Hairy Bikers' Best of British - Episode Guide

The Bikers go on a culinary journey through time to celebrate British food.

Here, they explore the incredible influence the monarchy has had over the food we eat, past and present. With their unique banter and camaraderie, the Hairy duo prepare a modern version of the classic coronation chicken and create a sumptuous beef dish named after Prince Albert. The duo also meet food historian Ivan Day and recreate dishes from the coronation dinner of James II from the original cookbook.

The Bikers take a culinary journey through time to celebrate British food.

In this episode, they explore how Britain's love affair with bread has evolved over centuries. With their unique banter and camaraderie, the Hairy duo try their hand at bagel making. They also create their own version of the summer pudding and make a delicious soup and roll combo.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

At one time, vegetarian food had a poor image. The bikers explore the history behind the vegetarian society and how the movement has now become part of the mainstream. They also celebrate some of the truly mouthwatering vegetarian dishes on offer.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

In this programme, they explore the amazing food available in our British waterways. With their unique banter and camaraderie, the Hairy duo try their hand at fly fishing for trout, create a sumptuous stuffed wild duck, and find out about how the Gloucestershire tradition of eating baby eels has effectively died out.

The Bikers continue their foodie journey through time, as they celebrate British food.

In this programme, they discover how necessity often forced British cooks to pull out all the stops in an effort to create tasty dishes. In fact some of our favourite meals have been born out of hard times. From tummy fillers like mince and dumplings to hearty scotch broths, when the going gets tough, we often turn to food for comfort.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

Here, they explore how the British have managed to create fantastic food even at times of war, when supplies are often scarce, and how some of Britain's favourite dishes have evolved out of the innovation and spirit of the people who lived through rationing.

With their unique banter and camaraderie, the Hairy duo try their hand at rabbit stew and carrot cake, visit HMS Victory to find out what Nelson's men ate at sea, and meet the army cooks to learn what troops on the frontline eat today.

The Bikers take a culinary journey through time and celebrate British food.

Here, they explore our national love of picnics and everything that goes in it. With their unique banter and camaraderie, the Hairy duo create their ultimate al fresco lunch at Beaufort Polo Club; find out how our summer obsession evolved; celebrate picnic classics such as the cornish pasty and the scotch egg; bake a luxurious dundee cake, and make a country terrine that would play centre stage in any outdoor feast.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

Here, they indulge their foodie passion by creating truly mouthwatering dishes that are extravagant and made of the finest ingredients, proving that the British certainly know how to put on a show - including food. With lobster, truffles, chocolate and the best cuts of meat on offer, the Bikers are going gourmet.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

The flavours of the Mediterranean have had a huge influence over modern British cuisine. Brought over at first by the Romans and more recently by hordes of holidaymakers returning from the sun, the range of dishes and ingredients Britain has adopted from the Med are now commonplace on our menus and in our homes. Dave Myers and Si King look at how this has evolved and create their favourite dishes.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

Cookery books are a huge business but they are more than just collections of recipes, they are social documents that reveal a great deal about who we are and what we eat. In this programme, the Bikers cook dishes from their favourite cookbooks and also meet food historian Ivan Day, who has one of the world's most extensive historical cookbook collections in the UK. The Bikers also tell the story of some of Britain's most iconic food writers, such as Elizabeth David and Isabella Beeton.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

Since early man, humans have survived by foraging food from the land, rivers and seas of Britain. Some of these natural indigenous ingredients can be the basis of spectacular dishes. The Hairy Bikers take to the undergrowth in search of delicious free food.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

As an island, Britain is blessed with a plentiful and diverse supply of produce from the sea. The Bikers celebrate our love of fish and shellfish and find out the history of Billingsgate Market.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

There was a time when the British pub was pretty much a male-only establishment and food, at best, was a bowl of nuts and some pork scratchings. Today most British pubs depend on the income from food and some dishes have become pub classics. The bikers explore the history behind the boom in pub food and snacks and recreate mouthwatering dishes that would make any publican proud

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

The British weather and seasonal change have meant that through time we have had to find ingenious ways to store food for the hungry winter months. The bikers explore how some of our tastiest treats have evolved from a need to preserve.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

Whether savoury or sweet, the British love puddings. The hairy duo create some classic puds and explore the history and traditions behind our favourites. There is no point in counting calories with delicious puds but the bikers do try and burn some off when they take part in the world black pudding throwing competition in Lancashire

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

Convenience food serves a purpose but if you want something truly delicious it's worth searching out the best ingredients and cooking them to perfection - however long it may take.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

The duo explore how our love affair with beer and cider has evolved over centuries - at one time it was safer to drink beer than water. Plus, they visit a cider festival, where they press their own.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

The hairy duo find out who ate all the pies on the football pitch and discover the history behind some of the nation's most iconic pies.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

The duo explore how Britain's love affair with takeaway food has evolved and cook some of their favourites.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

The duo explore how the British love affair with sugar has evolved over centuries. They then try their hand at making their favourite childhood sweets, create their own sweet and sour dish, and make a truly sumptuous cheesecake.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

Here, the duo look at the history of food festivals and the food with which the British celebrate them. We certainly love any excuse to put on a spread. Thankfully there are plenty of food festivals in our calendar that allow us to indulge.

For centuries the British have hunted food from the land. The bikers create mouth-watering dishes with rabbit, grouse and venison... Stunning food and fascinating stories told by the culinary duo.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

There's nothing like a few spices to liven up mealtimes. The bikers explore the origins of Britain's favourites and visit a chilli festival, with mouth-numbing consequences.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

High tea is a truly British invention, and the bikers can't resist a mid-afternoon snack.

The bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

There is nothing like a hearty breakfast to start the day, but our morning meal continues to change and evolve through time.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

The British have a knack for gardening and through good times and bad our skills at growing veg have inspired some amazing dishes.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

They explore how some of the foodie customs associated with the wedding ceremony have evolved and help prepare a Scottish wedding breakfast. The programme also explores the traditions behind the wedding cake.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

They explore how certain British ingredients combine to make classic pairings. The hairy duo create an amazing pork and apple dish and a mouth-watering pear and stilton tart. The programme also shows how yorkshire pudding would have been made and served in the 1700s and it's not with beef.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

They explore how our love affair with cheese has evolved over centuries. The Hairy duo sample some of Scotland's finest cheeses and discover that the original cheesecake recipes were British, not American.

The Bikers continue their culinary journey through time as they celebrate British food.

They explore how certain ingredients and recipes can make you feel good and put a spring back in your step- whether a comforting bowl of chicken noodle soup, or a simple fish dish- sometimes the right meal can make all the difference.

They show us that there is so much more to British fowl than roast chicken. They cook up a storm with a duck tikka and one pot partridge recipe before tasting a slice of history from a traditional Yorkshire Christmas pie packed with delicious birds, as well as revealing the history behind the famed Norfolk black turkey.

The Bikers brave the high seas to celebrate our island nation's incredible fishing industry. From sardines on toast to a spicy fish curry, they show us how versatile British fish dishes can be. They also revisit the history of traditional Welsh coracle fishing before travelling to the Isle of Wight to see how other species can replace our over-fished favourites.

They explore the history behind our greatest staple food: the humble potato. From a warming Lancashire potato and butter pie to a delicious chicken casserole with potato cobbler, recipes showing the unassuming spud at its best. We see how British potato vodka is winning global awards and remember a dark time in Welsh history when the chippies almost ran out of chips!

They celebrate the great British marketplace and the delicious food we get from it. In the Best of British kitchen the Bikers make the most of the market fudge stall with a rich walnut and fudge cake and prepare two seasonal soups. They also travel to Britain's foodie heartland in Ludlow to peruse the market stalls at the food festival and discuss the impact the supermarket has had on the food we eat.

They explore the impact our colonial past has had on our food. From the chai in their bread and butter pudding to the India pale ale in their sausage casserole, many recipes owe much to the empire. They also explore the history behind gin and tonic as well as Lee and Perrins, both of which arose from our imperial history.

They remind us that we are not really an island nation but rather a nation of islands - over 5,000 make up the British Isles, and many of these have fascinating culinary histories. The Bikers make a delicious tempura dish from the queenie scallops caught off the Isle of Man and a rich cranachan with Islay whisky, before travelling to the Isle of Wight to enjoy a Michelin-starred chef's taste of the island and revealing the little-known Jersey delicacy - the ormer.

This time they celebrate Britain's taste for the exotic, one of the driving forces of our culinary history. They prepare a classic chilli ginger bread and show how to make the perfect sushi, travel to Tatton Park in Cheshire to see how the pineapple was once the most expensive and exotic dish available to polite society, and reveal the history behind a piece of exoticism closer to home: the Onion Johnnie Man.

The Bikers explore our world-class beef. Known as 'le rosbif' to our continental neighbours, the Bikers celebrate this nickname with a beef and suet pudding and oxtail soup. They visit a farmer focusing on the future of British beef with his elite wagyu cattle, discover the history of the much-maligned beef dish, tripe, as well as learning how to roast an ox whole.

The Bikers revisit the 1970s, a decade which is all too often unfairly stigmatised for its food. They show how a well-prepared chicken cordon bleu and banoffee pie can be a contemporary gastronomic delight, before heading to a restaurant whose menu is a real slice of the 1970s as well as celebrating a decade which gave us both the self-sufficiency movement and instant food!

The Bikers look across the Channel to see how our French cousins have influenced the way we cook and eat over the centuries. The Bikers prepare a delicious roast chicken with forty cloves of garlic and a delicate mille feuille, they also show us that Britain is now leading the way in many traditional 'French' areas for gastronomy, from award winning English wines to outstanding Scottish garlic.

The Bikers celebrate the British love affair with pigs and pork, perhaps the animal which has given more to British food culture than any other. They prepare a traditional gala pie and a sumptuous rolled pork loin with apricots and ginger. They also explain the important role the family pig has played in our history and travel to Butts Farm in Gloucestershire to see how one couple are keeping our heritage pig breeds alive in modern Britain.

They make the most of Britain's outstanding shellfish, cooking up a hearty beef and oyster pie and an exquisite crab and scallop mornay. They help throw a crayfish party on the banks of the Thames and also explore the history of a British classic now almost forgotten: the winkle.

Today they reveal the British obsession with apples, as well as the slightly smaller passion for pears. They combine two of Britain's greatest ingredients in a beef and apple tagine, before creating a sumptuous pear frangipane tart. They also visit a heritage orchard sampling some of the 2,000 apple varieties in the UK and explore the history of Wassailing.

This time they explore the 'special relationship' between America and Britain's culinary cultures. They make a rich clam chowder and even richer chocolate brownies before visiting the Savoy to discuss the history of the cocktail. Plus they show how the farmer's market is one of the UK's favourite American imports.

Dave and Si dive into the British woodlands, revealing the hidden foodie gems that can be found within them. They prepare a wild boar ragu from the beasts which once roamed free and a creamy bramble fool plucked from the hedgerow. They also explore the long history of poaching in the UK and show how, with a bit of know-how, the woodland can become a medicine cabinet as well as a larder.

David and Si take a closer look at British sheep, which have provided us with milk, meat and wool for thousands of years. In the Best of British kitchen they rustle up a classic hogget and barley stew and tender lamb chops with kidneys, they help cook and eat a mouth-watering dish brought from North Africa, mechoui lamb, and reveal the history of the hardy seaweed-eating sheep found on the island of North Ronaldsay.

Today the Bikers enjoy the flavours of home as they explore Britain's love of comfort food. As well as a classic rice pudding, the Bikers prepare their own tastes of home, with Dave's stuffed cabbage leaves and Si's flat rib broth. They also reveal the history of the school dinner and see what comfort food means to all Britons, from the Notting Hill Carnival to Shabbat dinner.

Dave and Si return to the 1960s, a decade of music, fashion and food trends which are still with us today. They prepare steak diane and profiteroles, meet a restaurateur who made eating out cool and revisit a time when the motorway café was the height of sophisticated dining.

This time they explore the delicious relationship between food and faith and celebrate the vast range of faith-based dishes available in Britain today. They rustle up a delicious Simnel cake and a mouth-watering beef brisket, as well as revealing the history of the hot cross bun and dropping in on an Ethiopian Christmas feast.

This time they pay tribute to Britain's dairy industry in all of its forms. Whether milk, cheese, cream or yoghurt, it is an industry to be proud of and the Bikers will prepare a classic cheese and onion turn-over and a delicious Trinity Cream, before making some historic British milk puddings and revisit the history of school milk and British cheddar.