Michael Mosley, Rachel Ward among Adam Liaw's celebrity guests

"There are a bunch, let me tell you," the MasterChef Australia winner says.

"We started with 200 a season, a full year commission."

There have been more than 500 episodes since the show began in 2021

Now it's a half-year commission, but that's still a lot of work.

"We shoot in blocks of a few months each," Liaw says.

"We try to shoot 10 episodes in a week."

He's even doing a live version of the show at the Adelaide Fringe from February 29 to March 1.

In each episode, Liaw is joined by a couple of celebrities and public figures for a session of conversation and cooking.

There's quite an array: drag artists such as Art Simone, comedians such as Nikki Britton, actors including Lincoln Younes and Dave Lawson, and musical theatre performer Christie Whelan Brown. And that's just to name a few.

This series sees the first kids' episode with two future food stars cooking in the kitchen. Liaw will cook alongside established and upcoming chefs and welcome back old friends such as chef madJoel Bennetts, writer and podcaster Yumi Stynes and teacher and food writer Julia Busuttil Nishimura.

In June, The Cook Up will mark Refugee Week by featuring chefs and guests sharing their stories and experiences - among them recently retired AFLW star Akec Makur Chuot, comedian Joe White, UNHCR technology guru Zoe Ghani, refugee advocate Asif Sultani and entrepreneur Anyier Yuol.

Another guest is Michael Mosley, the British journalist and presenter whose books include The 5:2 Diet about intermittent fasting and The Fast 800 Keto.

"He talks about food to help you sleep."

A highlight for Liaw was the appearance by Hong Kong-Canadian Martin Yan, one of his predecessors in the world of food on TV.

"He's a chef I grew up watching on TV, on Yan Can Cook."

Yan's show began in 1982 and now has more than 3500 episodes.

And actress and director Rachel Ward and one of her daughters are in one episode, talking about regenerative farming.

The Malaysian-Australian Liaw came to public prominence in 2010 on the second season of MasterChef Australia, which he won.

"I enjoyed it immensely - it was all a great experience," he says.

"My view is that reality TV gets a bad rap for being artificial."

That wasn't what he encountered: "It was real people in real situations."

He enjoyed returning to MasterChef Australia as a guest judge.

"It was fun - it was nice to be involved in the event without the pressure."

He left behind a career in entertainment law with no regrets, though that experience came in handy when reading contracts for the TV shows, books and other projects he's undertaken in the years since he changed careers.

Regarding The Cook Up, Liaw says, "In the beginning I was all-singing, all-dancing."

He did a lot of the behind the scenes work early in the production.

"Now, I have a long-term wonderful team," he says, so it's not quite as hectic. But he's still very involved.

"I will write recipes for them, I host the show, I revise the scripts and edit the scripts."

He also rustles up many of the guests.

"A lot of the people we invite I've run into at events and asked if they'd like to come."

There are fellow food-world professionals and people who contact him.

Being on The Cook Up has become so popular, Liaw says, it's reached the point where the show has many more people keen to come on than there are slots to fill.

But if the show keeps filming at its present rate, those people - and many others - just might get the opportunity to demonstrate their culinary and conversational skills to Liaw and the audience.

The Cook Up with Adam Liaw is on SBS Food weeknights at 7pm and on SBS On Demand.