Cooking and baking are some of my hobbies. Both are art forms that bring families together and can be just as nuanced as they can be simple. Since I don’t subscribe to any cooking clubs and magazines, don’t have friends or relatives that share my interest in these manners, and am not interested in becoming a chef, I rely on YouTube as a substitute for the aforementioned. It makes me happy to find a good channel that not only makes good food, but also does so in an interesting way; I don’t want to sit through a boring, thirty minute long video recorded on an old webcam. I have compiled a small list of food centric you-tubers who create good content; these are in no particular order.

Binging with Babish

The superior version of NerdyNummies (N.N), Binging with Babish (BwB) is a channel dedicated to making foods from our favorite movies and tv shows come to life. One of the reasons he is superior to NerdyNummies is because of how he shoots is videos. BwB only shoots his upper body, leaving his head out of the shot, with him narrating his actions and directions. While N.N shoots her upper body and head, making the videos more like an actual cooking show. I don’t like cooking shows, in my eyes nothing is, “real” and everything is scripted in order to make a profit, this takes the love and authenticity away from the food. I feel that I am “purchasing” a product rather than cooking. There is also the fact that BwB strikes me as an actual student chef; the way he performs certain techniques like folding, sautéing, and blanching is more refined than N.N.

Avant Garde Vegan

Just the thumbnails of his videos are enough to get you to click on them. In a world where veganism is needed more than ever, AGV does his part by making vegan foods look just as- perhaps even more- appealing than non-vegan. The rustic look in his foods compliments the rustic, background where he shoots his videos. Foods are colorful and are abundant with raw vegetables, spices, and roots. His recipes are quick and easy to manage, and the ingredients aren’t exotic or expensive. One of my favorite recipes of his is his tomato gazpacho, most of the ingredients (I would have to buy the avocado oil) are already in my fridge, requires no cooking, and can be done in a blender. Although his method of shooting videos is exactly like N.N, the way the camera wobbles, tilts, moves, and focuses contrasts N.N’s still, always focused camera. Again, this makes his videos look all the more enjoyable.

East Meets Kitchen

I’ve previously written about this You-Tuber before, you can check it out here. Another vegan channel, EMK is a humble you-tuber that has just above 2500 subscribers; a small channel. EMK specializes in vegan Asian cooking, reproducing traditional far, central, south, southeastern Asia with a vegan twist. She introduces new vegan ingredients, describing where to get them or how to make them as well as their uses. Her videos aren’t shot like the other two you-tubers; instead they are silent, close recordings of her mixing, preparing, and cooking the ingredients with her narrating the directions. She also does vlogs.

Life of Boris

Now this channel is not a channel dedicated to food, so much as it is dedicated to, “the Slavic lifestyle.” Boris’s channel is dedicated mostly to “reviewing” entire Slavic countries, explaining Slavic lifestyle to non-Slavs, and, “Slavic” video games. However, he does have a section in his channel called, “cooking with Boris” where he makes various Slavic foods and drinks. The ingredients are not exotic, and when they are he teaches you how to make them. His cooking videos are humorous and get addicting after awhile, although he doesn’t have a large play list for his cooking videos he is constantly uploading.