Cook alongside pop star (and amateur chef) Selena Gomez.

If you like food (check), affable celebrity hosts (check), and pretty kitchens (check), then Selena + Chef is for you! The first two episodes of Season 2 just dropped on HBOMax (you can watch the first episode of Season 1 here, for free), and Selena herself is hosting a Twitter "#CookAlong Watch Party" on January 24! 

#SelenaAndChef is back on 1/21! ❤️ this Tweet for an invite from @HBOMax to join me in the kitchen for a #CookAlong Watch Party on 1/24. I’ll be watching along with you, right here on Twitter! pic.twitter.com/xkzLZxDKNi

— Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) January 11, 2021

The show's setup is simple: Selena Gomez, actress and singer, virtually invites a renowned chef into her kitchen. Together, they cook restaurant-worthy dishes, talk about her iridescent knives, and the celeb chef generally helps Selena learn her way around a kitchen (like how to use, you know, her own convection oven).

As a bad cook, it is both comforting and helpful that Selena Gomez is a bad cook, too. Her lovely guest chefs are great at making allowances for that, and I've learned loads from them. Even if you're great in the kitchen, though, Selena + Chef is still a fun watch! The recipes are clever and delicious, it's easy to cook along with the show, and Selena and her guests make endearingly awkward conversation. Her grandparents, who live with her, and roommates (who also, obviously, live with her) also appear fairly often, and the show doubles as an interesting portrait of celebrity lockdown. 

Still, for all that, the loveliest part of the show isn't the host, the celebrity chefs, or the savory recipes—it's at the end of every episode when Selena invites the chefs to talk about their charitable initiatives, and she donates $10,000 to each one, every episode. 

So meet your newest quarantine buddy: Selena + Chef. Check out the show on HBOMax, and let us know what you think. 

P.S. Want in on those recipes but don't want to have to watch a whole show to get them? HBOMax posts the recipes here. Just pick your recipe, and get a printer-friendly PDF. Which one will you cook first? Let us know in the comments.