Why you can trust our experts
Discover how we choose products to recommend
As the UK’S number one food media brand, BBC Good Food is trusted for its quality home-cooking recipes and buyer’s guides. Our reviews experts test and rate hundreds of products a year to bring readers fully impartial, up-to-date product advice and help you find the best for every budget.
Products are carefully shortlisted, tested and scored against strict review criteria in controlled conditions. Only the best products make it into our buyer’s guides as trusted recommendations and star buys.
HOW WE SELECT PRODUCTS TO REVIEW
We test an extensively researched cross-section of products in every category to ensure budget, mid-range and luxury options are all represented. In order to be shortlisted, a product must be available nationwide through an online retailing platform. In order to fairly test a wide enough range of products, we ensure that a shortlist of no less than 10 products are called in.
HOW PRODUCTS ARE SCORED
Our review team and cookery hub set a range of testing criteria laid out on a grid that we refer to as the testing matrix. Each review will have a dierent testing matrix depending on the nature of the review and the products that are being tested.
We replicate a domestic kitchen environment for scoring gadgets and equipment. All tests are done in controlled conditions.
Our experts mark each product against core and contributing criteria. Only products that achieve a minimum average of 3.5 stars or above, overall, are considered for inclusion.
Would we buy the products ourselves? This is the question our experienced team keeps firmly in mind while each gadget is put through its paces.
CORE CRITERIA
We use BBC Good Food recipes for the cooking element of each test while also marking the product out of five against the following core criteria: overall performance, quality of materials, value for money, ease of use and cleaning, safety, environmental credentials and versatility.