So I've gone through the chef show, the final table, the great british baking show, and chef's table on Netflix. YouTube I've gone through my episode backlog of bon appetit, binging with babish, the cooking guys, and as much Jamie Oliver as I can handle. I also made the terrible mistake of rewatching a bunch of Anthony Bourdain shows. Safe to say that was a punch to the gut.

I'll take any recommendations I can get to keep me going and my sanity somewhat tethered.

 

If you want to watch a Chinese(I think?) sort of food there's Liziqi on youtube. Not watched much but it does look interesting.

Sadly it's more of a show how they make traditional meals type thing, rather than explain the ingredients/process.

Still fairly interesting.

 

There's a few more on Netflix. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is decent. And if you like cooking reality tv Cooked is pretty good. (It's about cooking with weed)

 

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has been putting up YouTube videos almost daily, most of them POV cooking in at home with a go pro on while he narrates and explains. Scientific, wholesome, unpretentious and engaging.

He also feeds the dog. Fantastic stuff.

Similarly, Alton Brown has been streaming from home, sometimes he has Good Eats reruns on for breakfast while he makes commentary. That's more variety ish content but he also has been doing his typical good eats style videos on his channel as well.

Chinese Cooking Demystified is a channel Kenji referenced at one point that I also like. Stumbled upon it looking for wok care videos and they do a whole lot of deep dives into Chinese cuisine.

Slightly tangential but James Hoffman does videos specifically on coffee. Like all of the above he's intensely passionate and intensely knowledgeable about what he does yet humble and human about it. His video on Dalgona coffee showed up on my recommendations and I resisted it because algorithm reeeee and the title sounded clickbaity but it was actually right what it said on the tin.

 

Joshua Weissman is pretty good, both entertaining and informative.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChBEbMKI1eCcejTtmI32UEw
He does have a bad habit of saying the word "cwispy" but the videos are high quality so I let it slide.

Marion's Kitchen is really a delight to watch
https://www.youtube.com/user/Marionskitchen

You suck at cooking is less info and more humour so I don't make a habit of watching everything they drop.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCekQr9znsk2vWxBo3YiLq2w

 

I'd also recommend "ugly delicious."

 

I've been watching Liziqi for years, and I can't believe how many people have found her recently.

If you like her, you will like this gal too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQG_fzADCunBTV1KwjkfAQQ

 

This is great, I knew there had to be more people on here that watched these. Best relaxing YT content on the platform, for me. Don't care if it's a propaganda campaign, it's awesome.

I sure miss the heyday of Food Network, when most shows were actually teaching you how to cook things. Now it's just stupid oversensationalized bullshit, or fucking flavortown, or a mix of both because WHY FUCKING NOT. Bleh. Thankfully, Youtube has more cooking channels than I could ever have time to watch. Few from my subscriptions that haven't been mentioned yet:

Wife's Cuisine is awesome if you like Korean food.

Adam Liaw does simple, well-explained asian dishes.

Internet Shaquille is good for some food and humor.

Strictly Dumpling is a travel food show that is mostly asian stuff, but it's all great. This dude has at least one other channel (Mikey Chen), but they're worth the watch anyway.

Magic Ingredients is another good Chinese cuisine channel. It's in Mandarin, but is almost always subtitled on release.

You've done the one thing I haven't been able to bring myself to do as far as watching stuff. I've still got the entire last season of Bourdain's show on my DVR, and every time I start to turn one on I just can't do it.

 

Alton Brown's Good Eats is definitely a great edu-taiment show about various food types. I'm currently doing a binge watch of a couple episodes a day.

 

A bit of a different rec, I'm a fan of Sorted Food on youtube. They're a cooking channel, but its done very much in the youtube style. Challenges and competitions amongst they're group, but at the same time they do their best to be pretty educational. Its quite a good mix of presenters, they've got 2 trained chefs and 3 guys they call "normals". So the chefs explaining things to the normals functions as a really good way of communicating information at the right level for the audience.

 

Thank you so much everyone.

Granted I'm a little crossed, but watching Liziqi has me in tears.

Also glad Kenji is blowing up. Learned a lot from him.

Re: Chinese Cooking Demystified—does anyone else feel like they cook a bit slowly? For e.g, they'll deep fry some meat, save the oil, take the meat out, then blanch veggies, then make a sauce with a bit of the oil, and then mix it all together. I'm sure there's reasons for all of those things, like region-specific techniques and what have you, but my inclination has always been to layer.

Every other type of meat dish I make goes something like this: meat (if chicken, skin side down) goes on the pan on medium-high heat, and while that's browning, I'm quickly chopping some aromatics which I throw in the pan, and then chop some veggies in the meantime cos they generally need less time to cook. Sometimes, I'll do the "sauce" in a separate pan and pour it on top of the meat if that's more convenient, like if I'm doing a soup/stew where I have root vegetables and/or mushrooms slowly browning with the meat.

Am I missing out on a lot by not doing it the "slow" way? Other than the obvious, "you're doing a different dish."

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Italia Squisita is another great one. It's all in Italian but many videos have subtitles. They've a few few videos where Italian chefs react (read: roast) famous YouTubers having a go at Italian dishes. I love their pizza videos.