Cool YouTube cooking channels?

Kenji Lopez-Alt

https://www.youtube.com/@JKenjiLopezAlt/videos

The GoPro format is great, you can see what he does with his hands and you see all of the cooking, with practically zero cuts in the video. All the while he explains why he's doing the things you see.

Foodwishes is the OG YouTube cooking show: https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/ has over a decade of content. Recipes vary in complexity but always does a good job of breaking down the steps & explaining the what and why.

America's Test Kitchen and Bon Appetit both have channels with a lot of content, but are geared towards getting you to subscribe to their paid content.

There's also a ton of old TV content available. E.g. Good Eats has a number of episodes posted (or maybe just parts of episodes, but enough to learn).

Kenji Lopez Alt is also a major content creator. He has several first person view videos with commentary while he cooks. This is a good format to see the cooking skills in action and help learn / improve techniques.

Beyond these big ones, there are many good channels with focus on specific culinary styles.

You Suck at Cooking It's surrealist storylines with cooking!

You Suck At Cooking has a lot of meals in a fun format, Adam Ragusea? I think that's how you spell it, is pretty good too, longer videos and less on the meals themselves and more learning about food in general.

Speaking as someone that started with little experience, I love Adam Ragusea and Pro Home Cooks. Both explain things you never thought to ask about cooking and concepts that you can apply across lots of different dishes. I've learned things that I still continue to think about long after watching whenever I'm making up some food :)

Alex does mostly simple recipes, but he's interesting because he doesn't just try once but keeps remaking the recipe until he gets it perfect and explains the whole process and all the details.

ANTI-CHEF does very fancy recipes from a beginner's perspective. He shows off a lot of techniques that a more professional chef might gloss over as obvious.

I think the channel "You Suck at Cooking" is a great channel. It's funny, has a nice wide variety, and he usually tries to keep the recipies practical enough that people can do them at home.

I'm a huge fan of Adam Ragusea. He takes a science, history, and home-cook approach to everything which makes uniquely tasty yet simple recipes. He optimizes for the fewest dishes and simpler techniques that aren't impossible for a home cook to do.

Internet Shaquille is something that hasn't been mentioned yet that I think really resonates with what you're looking for. All of his videos are short, focused, and aimed at helping regular people in the kitchen (with the exception of his April Fools videos, which satirize clickbait videos). There is some humor, but the information density of his videos reflects his ethos of not wanting to waste your time. To this end, sponsor reads appear at the end of the video (if they're sponsored at all), so you can completely skip them.

I found myself the same many years ago and need something entertaining but look delicious. Some can be intimidating but i e replicated several of my four regular channels around this subject.

Binging with Babish https://youtube.com/@babishculinaryuniverse

Matty Matheson https://youtube.com/@mattymatheson

Brian Lagerstrom https://youtube.com/@BrianLagerstrom

Ethan Chlbowski https://youtube.com/@EthanChlebowski

Honorable mention if you want to try your hand at any desserts/sweets for Claire Saffitz https://youtube.com/@CSaffitz

J. Kenji López-Alt is fantastic. Professional chef who shows a lot of the how and why in his videos. How to do something in the recipe, and why it's done. Professional chef with a bunch of other paid resources if you end up liking his style

Here are a few great channels from my Youtube subscriptions!

Tasting History with Max Miller hits a perfect cross-section of my interest in cooking and my interest in history. Max goes through a historical recipe each episode and pauses part of the way through to explain the history of the dish.

Minute Food has lots of short (sometimes under a minute!) videos about the science behind cooking.

Chinese Cooking Demystified is a husband-and-wife duo living in China that goes over traditional Chinese recipes, I especially like how in the voice-over they frequently list substitutions for ingredients that may be difficult to find outside of China.

Atomic Shrimp does far more than just cooking, but the cooking videos on his channel always give a neat insight into the everyday meals an older British IT Specialist makes.

Can't believe noone said Binging with Babish yet. Has a great series called Basics with Babish which is exactly what it sounds like.

I'm a bit obsessed with watching cooking shows on YouTube. Here are a few of my favorites in no particular order.

• Anti-chef: Guy is on a journey to learn how to cook. Blew up when he started working through Julia Child's cookbooks. He also has a series where he is trying to make something from every country in the world.
• Barry Lewis - British guy who tries a lot of Tiktok foods, hacks, and has compares ingredients based on price
• Beryl Shereshewsky - cooks foods from around the world based on a shared theme/ingredient
• Pasta Grammer - Italian woman teaches her American husband about traditional Italian foods
• Claire Saffitz - incredible baker
• Chef John - he's an excellent teacher
• Sorted food - their older videos had a lot of battles and educational content. My favorite series they do is recipe relays.
• J Kenji Lopez alt - I actually can't watch his channel because the POV makes me motion sick. However, he's a fantastic chef and you should watch him if the camera angle doesn't bother you.
• Glen and friends cooking - he tries a lot of recipes from old community cookbooks
• Tasting History with Max Miller - tries ancient recipes and teaches you the history of that food
• Pro home cooks - I don't watch this channel as much anymore, but it used to be 2 brothers who taught viewers basic cooking techniques to throw together basic meals. Now it's run by just one of the brothers and he sometimes makes more complicated items, but still has a lot of simple recipes.
• NYT Cooking - specifically the Mystery Menu series with Sohla and Ham. Won't necessarily teach you to cook but is fun to watch them come up with ridiculous seeming menus.

Brian Langerstrom has a wide variety of recipes and I feel like he tests them enough only to put out the best:

https://youtube.com/@BrianLagerstrom

Also love Smoking and Grilling with AB. He says himself he's trying to "demystify" cooking. Delicious recipes that build on flavors, I've made a few and they come just as he tells you:

https://youtube.com/@SmokinandGrillinwithAB

Lastly, but not my least favorite, Ethan Chlebowski. When he gets real technical about the best ingredients it's very informative:

https://youtube.com/@EthanChlebowski

Uncle Roger

Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time

I want to promote Ann Reardon from her How to Cook That channel.

She doesn't typically do recipes, but goes into things like the chemistry and about what's happening when you deal with certain recipe combinations. She also debunks cooking videos and "hacks" regularly, while also educating on potential safety issues. Example was the flash boiling liquids you can do in a microwave and wood burning risks (although that was not necessarily cooking related).

https://youtube.com/@HowToCookThat

Nat’s What I Reckon if you want a sweary Australian delivering recipes with a good amount of comedy!

Binging with Babish is very cool. He makes food fro TV shows and movies. And he has really sexy arms.

I just so happen to have a good friend that has been working on his own cooking show for years. It’s definitely a passion project of his and I’d love it for him to get more exposure. Caveman Cooking is the name and it’s definitely worth checking out!

https://youtu.be/3N2Oa8BhfFw

Food Wishes is the GOAT.

Food wishes for pure recipes and puns, sorted food for some fun and to further learning

Kenji Lopez-Alt

https://youtube.com/@JKenjiLopezAlt

A lot of great recommendations in here. One I haven't seen mentioned yet is Molly Baz

Glen and Friends https://youtube.com/@GlenAndFriendsCooking

It's not nearly as popular as many of the others mentioned. He's been doing this for a long time, and his recipes are all over the place. He has a couple different series of videos. For instance one is about making cocktails, and my favorite is the old cookbook show.

Glen has an insane collection of old cookbooks and is really knowledgeable about the history of cooking. He offers information you can't find anywhere else.

He also often does "method" recipes. He likes to say this a ton, "it's not a recipe, it's a method." What he means is that while you can follow his recipe directly, you can use different ingredients as long as you follow the method. He does a lot of "pantry cleaning recipes" like this and it's all about just using what you have to make something which is an incredibly useful skill to learn and practice.

Maangchi for korean food.

Definitely Babish Culinary Universe.

Cooking with a dog, Nats what I reckon are both fun to watch and easy to follow

You suck at cooking is a great option, he also has a recipe book. Binging with banish is another good one. For entertainment purposes Epic Meal Time is an oldie but goodie not sure how their new stuff is but years ago they were the shit!

This vegan sour cream is really nice, super easy also: https://youtu.be/8ILzKYAZWGY?list=PLxWGB-fhb7NXHzQPI5dn6kM_8cGxarJKl

Same channel, lasagna with no tomato, for those that can't eat nightshades. https://youtu.be/WES5UFjgvQk?list=PLxWGB-fhb7NXHzQPI5dn6kM_8cGxarJKl

For Chinese cooking, I like these three:

https://youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified https://youtube.com/@chefwang https://youtube.com/@sheephoho

This is my go to site and YouTube channel: https://mealprepmanual.com/

https://youtube.com/@TheMealPrepManual

You can meal prep for the week and if you count calories and the macros, you find that too.

My wife and I love watching Chef Pierre

If you want to get into baking John Kirkwood videos are really good. https://www.youtube.com/@JohnKirkwoodProFoodHomemade

His Sandwich bread made easy at home is one of my favorits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWpSbYV96_c

I have also followed a few videos from Natashas Kitchen that have turned out well. https://www.youtube.com/@Natashaskitchen/videos

And on a more funny note multi-millionare twitch streamer Asmongold demonstrates how to cook a $2 stake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hETgbsF5yY8

Middle Eats and Nadia Gilbert are both great.

I recommend Pick Up Limes. Great (vegan) recipes and tips along the way.

I don’t care much for her mindfulness and lifestyle videos but those are easily skippable. And she did unfortunately release an app recently, so of course she will try to get you to download that.

Dylan Hollis

You'll learn some weird history, some things to do and LOTS of things NOT to do.

And you will laugh your goddamn ass off.

https://www.youtube.com/c/bdylanhollis

Ordinary sausage.

https://youtu.be/d-RjkfDnuLg

I learned a lot from watching the original Japanese Iron Chef. You're not learning recipes of any sort. What I learned were techniques and that it's okay to experiment and be creative in the kitchen. For day to day meals, it works pretty well when trying to come up with meal ideas based on what's on sale at the grocery store. If I want to try making something specific, that's when I search for recipes.

One really practical way to learn some new recipes is to use a recipe box service like HelloFresh or Gousto.

They deliver a box with all the required ingredients and easy to follow recipe cards.

For anything that you make & enjoy, you can keep the recipe card and cook it again using store bought ingredients.

These recipe boxes regularly have deals and promotions (e.g. 60% off, refer a friend, etc.) so it doesn't have to be too expensive.

Or if you don't want to order one at all, it's worth knowing that HelloFresh make all their recipes available online for free. So you can download and print off any that you like the sound of, without ever even ordering one of their boxes.

Check out "you suck at cooking" (thats the name of the channel), while its recipes are very good and uses cheap easy to get ingredients and real, the procedures are ironic and made like a parody of cooking videos, its very entertaining but not as usefull if you whant to use the video as a step by step guide althought you can still use them as one, provided that you get the joke, but if you are willing to have some patience then you are not gonna be disapointed.

https://youtu.be/vMshCdGwK1g I really like this guys methods and Ideas on cooking. Nothing really fancy but he makes some “fancy” dishes with simple techniques. His dishes seem to focus on fresh ingredients.

Also, my favorite advice for cooking - Control everything, but especially control your heat.

Tim's Kitchen Tips

The whole series is great.

I'm a sucker for Sauce Stache.

Amazing videos about vegan alternatives to meat; he tries everything and it's so delicious looking and he's got a great personality. He also goes deep with a variety of mushrooms which opened my eyes a bit. I've been wanting to get my hands on a lobster mushroom ever since I saw this one.

Also the chicken of the woods one is great.

And another random coming video I watched that changed my cooking was this one about knife skills for cutting food.

• and the bonus onion video from Gordon Ramsay and

It has had it's rise and fall, but Bon Appétit has a ton of great videos, both for instructions and entertainment.

https://youtube.com/@bonappetit

A few years ago, a lot of the chefs came together in some sort of union against the leadership with pretty ugly claims, resulting in most of the chefs leaving Bon Appétit. I'm not sure what the current situation is, maybe we're morally supposed to stay away from the channel?

Anyways, I love the old videos with Brad Leone, Molly Baz, Claire Saffiz and several others. The videos beyond the major resignation has a completely different feel to it, so I haven't been following the channel a lot since that.

Alton Brown/Good Eats

Adam Ragusea

I don't necessarily use them for specific recipes but they are detailed and explain why they like doing things a certain way. I think that is the biggest thing when you are learning to cook and not just follow recipes.

I'd also put Ann Reardon/How to Cook That in a similar spot but more geared toward baking.

Though I only speak a minuscule smatter of Italian - and none is necessary to enjoy these videos - I really like anything with Giorgione in it, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q5i5C35ISE

OR even better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WLMm08P-u8&t=9s

Just dive down this wonderful rabbit hole.

I found Headbanger’s Kitchen pretty accessible when I was researching keto-centric cooking. He also does a lot of Indian dishes and some vegetarian as well.

https://m.youtube.com/@HeadbangersKitchen

Horns up! 🤘

this is a good video of you want to learn and hone good kitchen skills especially knife handling. Jacques Pepin really has some good videos.

Jun's kitchen

I don't know if it's on YouTube but Amazon has one called Oh cook with James May from top gear. It's pretty entertaining.