The Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best

Great family food is much more than simple sustenance. It provides comfort, both physical and emotional. In this episode, which celebrates that dual role, the Hairy Bikers meet three great home cooks with a diverse range of recipes. Dee's family is from Denby Dale, famous for its giant pies. She cooks up a meat and potato pie using a recipe handed over for the very first time from her father, who's well known for his perfect pies. Anjie lives in Blackpool. Like her mother, Anjie loves to cook a curry. She finds comfort in using a home-made cookbook entitled Hug from Mum. It was compiled by her mother shortly before she died. The third family live in the Calderdale Valley. Ruth and her mother Ann come from several generations of farmers. As well as a comforting ginger sponge and custard, they show Si and Dave their unusual 'dock pudding', made with leaves foraged from the pastures and traditionally eaten to celebrate the end of lambing. En route, Si and Dave rustle up some food that they find comforting - creamy tomato soup with rouille, home-made fish fingers, a rich oxtail stew and a classic steamed syrup pudding. The travelling over, it is the day of the Mums Know Best recipe fair where foodie folk come together to swap recipes and talk about the stories behind them. The three 'star mums' share their recipes with an eager public while volunteers take part in a culinary skills challenge. This time, Gerard Baker shows how to make a hand-raised pie. The day ends with the Mums Know Best banquet, an eclectic meal featuring all the dishes from their journey.

Nothing connects you to home like the smell of the food your mum used to cook, so the Hairy Bikers visit three mums to share their unique taste of home. First up is Mary with Welsh classics bara brith and Welsh cakes - dishes that bring the taste of the valleys alive in her Home Counties kitchen. Julia's Jamaican dishes, salt fish and ackee with dumplings, provide a totally different but equally delicious taste of home. Third mum Mariken is from the Netherlands and, while it's only a few hundred miles across the North Sea, the cuisine is a million miles away from anything the Bikers are used to. Deep fried meaty kroketten and a pea and ham soup, with most of a pig's head in it, provide a complete contrast to the food of the first two mums. Along the way the boys rustle up two of their own favourite tastes of home, a spaghetti bolognese and home made Battenberg cake. With the travelling done, hundreds of foodies descend on the Bikers' recipe fair. Amidst the recipe swapping and general mayhem, the Bikers cook their ultimate taste of home, liver and bacon, while food historian Gerard Baker challenges the boys and three recipe fair visitors to a skills challenge - making a meringue basket.

Nothing connects you to home like the smell of the food your mum used to cook, so the Hairy Bikers visit three mums to share their unique taste of home. The Bikers go in search of three mums who love cooking and eating outdoors. Rebecca's Spanish family recipes are perfect for an al fresco feast - tapas - and her tortilla, garlic prawns and meatballs don't disappoint. Lots of European countries have an outdoor eating culture, so the Bikers visit brother and sister Karl and Marika, whose Hungarian roots provide inspiration for huge family picnics. The third mum, Jayne, is a pudding queen, bringing the taste of the outdoors inside with vivid fruit flavours. Along the way, the bikers rustle up old-fashioned potted beef and potted salmon - the perfect food to eat while you are messing about in boats. At the Bikers' recipe fair they cook minced beef pinwheels, and food historian Gerard Baker sets the boys and three visitors a skills challenge - sushi rolling. After all that hard work, the perfect foodie day closes with a classic al fresco banquet.

Everyone loves a lazy weekend, and no one more than the Hairy Bikers. In this episode they go in search of mums who share their love of being lazy. Elaine's family favourite, the peach paradise pudding (a slice of 70s food heaven) and heart-warming chicken pie are the perfect hors d'oeuvre followed by Rosalyn's slow cooked beef stew and speedy plava cake. Then there's a rather savoury pudding of Jenny's pickled salads for raclette and an amazing morel mushroom sauce for roast chicken. Si and Dave don't let the side down either with a brunch classic of banana pancakes with bacon. Also on the lazy weekends menu from the bikers are spiced tea-cakes and braised steaks with chips and gravy. With the mums ready, hundreds of foodies descend on the Bikers' recipe fair. Amidst the recipe swapping and general mayhem, the bikers cook devilled kidneys, while food historian Gerard Baker challenges five recipe fair visitors to a skills challenge. After all that hard work, there's only one thing left to do - enjoy the fruits of their lazy weekend cooking at the recipe fair banquet.

Much of the great food we love is inspired by recipes from other countries. This journey is all about uncovering both familiar and more surprising recipes that have arrived on British dinner-tables from distant shores. This episode's three mums all hail from Northern Ireland but cook food from all corners of the globe. Karen has Spanish delights to share, including a sensational paella and a simple but delicious recipe for Catalan tomato bread. Helen Mills cooks family recipes from Guyana including a fascinating take on chicken curry served with a handmade roti bread. And the final mum is, in fact, a dad! Conolly shares partridge escabeche, breasts of partridge pickled in white wine and vinegar, and some classic empanadas - Argentinian recipes from his mother cooked with great Northern Irish produce. All this culinary travel gets the Bikers' taste buds flowing, and they bring mulligatawny soup and a perfect pavlova to the party. At the recipe fair, the Bikers cook their take on an international classic, haddock mornay, while food historian Gerard Baker invites the recipe fair visitors to a bakery challenge - plaited bread.

This episode celebrates the classic and uniquely British culinary invention of high tea. Almost every family has a different take on which recipes are best to fill up the family in the evening and so the Bikers are on the hunt for three mums and their take on the perfect high tea. Like generations of farmers' wives before her, our first mum Polly has to feed her hungry husband and kids every night, so the recipes she shares have been tried and tested countless times over the years. Her beef and honey stew, and lamb and mint sausages never fail to impress. Lisa is playing culinary detective, enlisting the help of the Bikers to uncover the mysteries of a family recipe book that hasn't been cooked with for years. The tasty results include simple meat patties and some great sweet-treats called diggers. Nancy is the third mum and she shares a transatlantic take on tea with her mum's 'hockey puck' meatloaf and a great potato salad. Inspired by the mums' culinary invention the Bikers cook up a great duo of savoury pies, and a divine lemon curd Swiss roll. With the mums ready, hundreds of foodies descend on the Bikers' recipe fair. Amidst the recipe swapping and general mayhem the bikers create a teatime classic - meatballs in gravy. Meanwhile, food historian Gerard Baker challenges the recipe fair visitors to a historical skills challenge - making a pie known as a 'chacky pig'.

In this rather up-market episode, the Bikers head to Wales for some posh nosh. They discover Welsh cuisine is far more sophisticated than leeks and laver bread as they meet three Mums, each with their own take on what makes food fancy. For Avis Davies, it's a Maltese stuffed marrow dish; Derith Rhisiart takes the humble Welsh cake as the basis for her very posh cheesecake, and for Jewish mum Ruth Joseph no posh table is complete without her special orchid gateaux, made in the tin her mother brought to Britain when fleeing Nazi Germany as a child. The Bikers aren't too shabby either though. In a formal garden setting, they rustle up some double-baked cheese souffles before a quick game of polo on the lawn; and a stately home provides the location for their posh alter egos Archie and Gerald to enjoy some Biker-cooked lamb cutlets en croute with a red wine gravy. With the Mums on board and their posh family recipes tried and tested, the Bikers head to the recipe fair where foodies from over the country have brought their family's bestest, most poshest recipes. Gerard, the food historian, is on hand to shed some light on where our posh nosh originated and also to devour the many, many cakes and other delicious morsels on hand. At the end of the day, the banquet is a feast of the ultimate poshness.

The bikers are on the hunt for family classics - those recipes which are a firm favourite in every household and are requested time and again by every member of the family. In East Anglia they meet three mums for whom family meals are an important and special time. Rosita Minichiello is an Italian mum whose meatballs are so loved by her husband and daughters that they sing a meatball song in celebration. Victoria Jones helps run the family farm and has three hungry sons who all love her grandma's chocolate mousse; and Padmaja Kochera is a mum from southern India who remembers her dad every time she cooks his vadas with sambhar and his chicken curry. The Bikers head to the coast and cook up their family favourites - a tasty sausage and bean casserole, followed by the classic jam roly poly and custard, perfect in the pouring rain. And the family classics continue to roll in at the recipe fair. Food historian Gerard tastes trifle, fruit cake and macaroni cheese among many other family favourites.