Tonight | Recipe of the Year on ABC: comfort recipes meet a CWA classic – Ten home cooks bring the dishes that shaped their love of food into the barn for Comfort Week, then face a classic Country Women’s Association recipe that demands precision. The second episode moves between personal memories and the technical demands of a traditional bake. It airs Sunday 18 October 2026 at 7:30pm on ABC, with streaming on ABC iview.
The two challenges ask different things of the cooks. Their own recipes carry family history and familiar flavours, while the CWA task gives them a common test of care and technique. That contrast is the heart of this week’s competition.
Comfort food with a personal history
The contestants return with recipes that mean something to them. Handwritten cards, childhood kitchens and family favourites provide the starting points as the ten cooks revisit the food that first drew them to cooking. The dishes are not simply nostalgic; they must also stand up in the competition barn, where the home cooks are being judged on what they put on the plate.
A CWA recipe tests technique
Alongside their own comfort food, the cooks tackle a classic CWA recipe. Here, everyone works to the same tradition, with precision and care as important as sentiment. It is a different kind of challenge from recreating a family dish, and one that leaves less room to rely on personal memory. The episode pairs those two sides of home cooking: the flavours that feel like home and the discipline needed to make a familiar recipe well.
Recipe of the Year airs Sunday 18 October 2026 at 7:30pm on ABC and streams on ABC iview.
Read more in TV Central’s ABC coverage. Watch on ABC iview.
