they can show you how to make specific recipes but usually the videos also include really good cooking tips (from people with lots of kitchen experience) that you can incorporate into any cooking adventure! this is how i learned more about food/how it works/cooking techniques. there is so much content out there that you can definitely find a format or chef that is really entertaining to you and also helps you learn
Related Recs
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Their goal is to test recipes, figure out the most straightforward way to make them at home, and then show you how to do it.
It might take a little while, but just watching them will show you what cooking looks like. Recipes aren’t so intimidating when you’ve seen what different methods are and how they should look.
I recommend getting a free trial on their website and watching some episodes. Then perhaps start with cooking vegetables as side dishes. That way you remove the complications of cooking meat, and there’s less to lose if they don’t come out quite right.
8h ago
reddit will have differing opinions and pretentious people (there is however one thread about how to cook perfect sushi rice that i constantly revisit) and google’s algorithm for recipes especially has been riddled with AI slop. I have always loved cooking but youtube has really leveled up my cooking game, especially for recipes outside my own culture that my parents and grandparents never made. i get a lot of inspiration and recipes from youtube shorts, especially videos with very few views of people cooking in their home kitchen.
Specific Creators
For general technique and the WHY’s of cooking I also recommend ABTK like @BEE1000 has said. I also love all the J. Kenji Lopez Alt POV videos as they’re very approachable and by a great chef/huge kitchen nerd. I have watched his salsa verde recipe many times and made delicious salsa verde every time. His cookbook, The Food Lab, is absolutely worth buying. He is a big nerd/scientist and will explain why and how everything happens in the kitchen, from the maillard reaction to how to dice vegetables. He also uses grams in all his recipes. When in doubt, look on the Serious Eats website for recipes. Futurecanoe is funny relatable cooking content by someone who can actually wield a knife and gives you access to trendy recipes. He also is very down to earth and shows you fuck-ups are normal, part of the process, and hopefully how to learn by his mistakes. For Indian food I watch a lot of shorts but love videos by Hebbars Kitchen and written recipes by shwasti’s veg recipes of india online. When making something new for the first time, I will watch several videos and adjust to my taste/preferences. For Chinese food I love Chinese Cooking Demystified, they do a great job of explaining Chinese ingredients, substitutions, and techniques. For vegan and plant-based foods from around the world I like Baking Hermann on youtube. he recommends delicious recipes to try and he has recipes with grams on his website and his Mahjeb (pictured below) recipe changed my life. For Japanese food I watch shorts and like and trust the website and book from Just One Cookbook. For Korean, Maangchi is the GOAT and I also like the korean vegan cookbook.
Cookbooks
Cookbooks are underrated!! the other thing that’s underrated?? getting them from the library!!! it’s a great way to branch out and browse options before investing time and money in the kitchen and on ingredients. I mentioned a couple cookbooks I like above but I also like The Moosewood Cookbook, the new and best recipes (literally an encyclopedia), the joy of cooking, Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables. See if there’s a restaurant you like and if the chef has written a book!
General Advice and Techniques
Early on you rely should use exact measurements but once you’re comfortable in the kitchen/with a particular dish you can start to trust your gut when making most things, baking aside. It is absolutely worth investing in a kitchen scale, I use a coffee scale and it works well. This is also absolutely necessary imo for baking and doughs. Have a sharp knife! Get comfortable with a sharpening stone or ask your dad to do it like me lol, it makes all the difference. Stainless steel and high heat are scary but with confidence and patience they will become your friends. You need to practice and fuck up chopping to get things right. Make a shit ton caramelized onions (using Kenji’s recipe in The Food Lab cookbook or online) to get comfortable chopping an onion with the confidence that you’ll still have something tasty in the end even if your cuts are a bit wonky. Make a carrot ginger salad with match stick carrots to practice chopping a ton of carrots and not have the pressure of cooking them all evenly since it’s not cooked.
Apologies for no advice for cooking meat, my husband is a vegetarian and does the dishes but (rightfully) refuses to wash raw meat contaminated dishes so I get Bojangle’s and arby’s when I crave the meats and thus can provide no advice. My brother does cook a lot of meat and adores his sous vide so you can always try that. Also ,I apologize for not providing links, if you need any specific ones I’m happy to provide them in the comments but am afraid of my phone crashing and deleting this mid-hyperlink.
Above all, find out what you genuinely enjoy cooking and eating, go all in on that, and share in the joy and excitement of your creations in the kitchen by feeding your friends and loved ones. That’s the moment you’ll truly feel the magic of making food.
7h ago
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for those of us who still get cold feet getting into the kitchen — just watched the first ep on eggs and found it informative and entertaining. will be watching again, this time with a notepad 📝
Feb 7, 2024
Top Recs from @flop
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this weekend a man on the bridge dropped his airpods so i picked them up for him then on his run back when he passed me he smiled and waved because we were microfriends. i will never see him again but we had our moment
i just made this term up but it feels right to describe a nice little fleeting human connection
drop your microfriendship stories/recs
Mar 20, 2024
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lemme just look at all the packaging and various products and vibe. i am not trying to get in and out, i am trying to observe
Jan 31, 2024
a new immersive search engine for public domain content. the interface is so cool! i feel like this could be so useful for creative projects
Jul 31, 2024