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.
Mar 13, 2025
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Related Recs
Everyone knows how miserable to Google search algorithm has gotten. Youtube and especially YT shorts is the best resource I’ve found for recipes, especially those outside of my own culture. It’s refreshing to see multiple people making food in their home kitchens. It feels like they’re opening a door into their home to cook me a meal or sharing the recipes of the mothers and grandmothers with me. You may not get exact measurements but if you’re fairly comfortable in the kitchen there is no better way to discover and follow new recipes. I will usually start with a larger/more popular creator to get a general idea of amounts and ingredient substitutions then corroborate with videos that only have a handful of views. It also gives you ideas of the equipment people use and feels like a beautiful intimate slice of life. Another bonus is I’m exposed to interesting new music through this videos that would have never popped up in the algorithm organically.
For Indian recipes, Shwasti is a good starting place but the youtube shorts of people in their home kitchen like this have really helped me level up my paneer bhurji. I watch a lot of videos from Hebbar as well.
Misir Wot (Ethiopian Red Lentils) is another of my favorite discoveries from scrolling and the best recipes I’ve found have been from videos like these.
The absolute star of the show was this Mhadjeb (Algerian flatbread with an onion and tomato filling) that freezes very well and is totally vegan. I did use the baking hermann recipe (the first short I saw depicting this dish) for the dough as I am not as comfortable with doughs and needed grams, but for the fillings and the actual assembly method I found shorts to be most helpful.
The internet can often feel bad and gross but this is one of those time I feel intense gratitude for the widespread access to smartphones.
Oct 11, 2024
Not really a recipe book (though certainly has recipes) and more of a reference bible about the chemical processes of cooking. Kenji answers questions like:
- Why does the pH of my pancake batter matter?
- Why should I add sodium citrate to mac n cheese?
- Why is my turkey dry?
- How to make can beans taste good?
and will also teach you how to butterfly a chicken, faux-tourné your carrots, and emulsify your vinaigrettes.
Kenji is extraordinarily online (linked his website for socials) and posts tons of stuff for free if you don’t wanna shell out for this very expensive and very heavy book. I have a ton of respect for him and genuinely think he is the most influential living person working in food right now + will be remembered among the greats.
Can’t rec this book enough!
Feb 19, 2025
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for a blossoming home cook, i'd recommend getting a cookbook that focuses on teaching technique/building blocks rather than a specific cuisine. it's a good starting place to get comfortable with things like cooking meat, making pie crust, etc., and then cookbooks not geared towards beginners will be a lot less intimidating
some recs would be the food lab by kenji lopez-alt, start here by sohla el-waylly, or anything jacques pepin
Mar 26, 2024
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