Half a year ago, I watched The Menu, which is a delightful film if you haven't seen it. Depending on your perspective, you might read its whip-smart commentary as a critique on fine-dining culture, an examination of the cultish qualities of class warfare, a deconstruction of the relationship between artist, audience and financier, all of these, or more that I haven't mentioned. And yet, despite the roiling thematic depths, it's a very accessible and entertaining social horror flick. That was six months ago. And today, I got recommended a video called "Binging with Babish: Cheeseburger from The Menu." In the video, YouTuber Andrew "Babish" Rea attempts to replicate the final dish in The Menu (spoilers ahead): a cheeseburger which is only special, in the film, for its simplicity. For the fact that it is food meant to be eaten and enjoyed, not to be part of some absurd navel-gazing ritual. And for the first part of the video, Babish, in my opinion, replicates the burger near perfectly. A simple burger, on a premade bun, with deli American cheese and crinkle-cut fries. No frills; no fancy tricks. A burger you or I would make, executed well, designed to be eaten and enjoyed. By the time he's done tasting this burger, we're two minutes and fifteen seconds into an eleven minute video.

Roland Barthes (look, just bear with me please) was a French critic who is now best known for his seminal 1967 essay "The Death of the Author." But my favourite of his works is his 1957 essay collection "Mythologies." In the economic boom that followed World War II, Barthes looked around at a new emerging popular culture, and chronicled what he felt were the artistic, philosophical and political connotations of everything from wrestling to the recipes in women's magazines. In the latter essay, titled "Ornamental Cookery," Barthes described the difference between recipes in the working-class Elle Magazine, and the middle class L'Express. Barthes observed that food in Elle was fancy, aesthetically pleasing, and tremendously complex to make, with garnishes and glazes and bright colors, in contrast to the simpler food in the apprently classier L'Express. Explaining this seeming contradiction, Barthes writes,

It is because Elle is addressed to a genuinely working-class public that it is very careful not to take for granted that cooking must be economical. Compare with L'Express, whose exclusively middle-class public enjoys a comfortable purchasing power: its cookery is real, not magical... The readers of Elle are entitled only to fiction; one can suggest real dishes to those of L'Express, in the certainty that they will be able to prepare them.

In other words, Barthes thinks that the recipes in Elle are there not to be made, but to be observed and hungered for by a working class that would struggle to afford the expensive ingredients for complex home cooking, whereas middle-class cooks were capable of affording the ingredients for recipes that could plausibly be made, and so had no need for spectacle or impractical flights of culinary fancy.

This same dynamic can be observed in cooking videos on YouTube. Videos like the aforementioned Babish video, where, after completing his simple, delicious burger, Babish spends hours making his own buns, synthesizing American cheese, crinkle-cutting fries, and grinding expensive steaks to form his patties. The resultant burger, again, looks delicious. But, compared with the first burger, while it's something that I, a middle class woman, certainly could make, the cheaper, simpler burger is infinitely more practical (and, I would argue, more aligned with the themes of The Menu). This isn't a phenomenon unique to the Babish video, either. It's a dichotomy I've observed in lots of cooking videos; some of which, like those made by J. Kenji Lopez, Adam Ragusea, and the like are designed to be practical, replicable recipes; some of which, like Joshua Weissman's "But Better" series, or this delightful video from YouTuber ANTI-CHEF, are videos meant to be consumed as entertainment, only nominally replicable by a typical home cook. The Elle Magazine of today. Not that there's anything wrong with art for art's sake, food designed to be viewed as much as or more than it is to be eaten. Is there?

If, in 1957, you had a lot of money, want to eat the elaborate dishes on display in Elle, and couldn't cook, there was an easy way to do it. You could hire a chef. You could ask them to make some pink, glazed, mythical dish, or, hell, you could let them dazzle you with their creativity instead. You could let them set The Menu, so to speak. But maybe what that film argues is that perhaps the thing you would be consuming would still be ephemeral, unsatisfying, perhaps even unhealthy to eat. Maybe, when we watch videos about impractical, spectacular dishes; when we delight in the excesses of fine dining on display in Chef's Table or the excesses of home cooking in Binging with Babish, we are aligning our expectations, however minutely, along an unwholesome vision of what food should be.

(I'm not looking for simple lists of YouTube channels that you like.) _{even though I'm about to dump a list of channels that I like}

There's a lot of YouTube cooking content. I was wondering what you look for in that content, and what you want to avoid?

I don't have a particularly coherent answer - I like a mix of content.

I do like plain and simple information, or informative content that gives details about technique or science or why a thing is done the way it is. Examples of this would be America's Test Kitchen, or J. Kenji López-Alt or Helen Rennie, or French Cooking Academy.

I also like recipes that I can actually make. I prefer recipes that don't have a massive array of ingredients that I don't have. Examples are Brian Lagerstrom (I like the way he tends to use a limited amount of equipment and he gives alternatives for ingredients if he thinks some thing is going to be hard to get) Not another cooking show has some nice recipes (his grilled cheese and tomato soup is fantastic).

Some channels I watch have Michelin Starred chefs discussing a recipe. I like watching this because I can't replicate most of it, but I can get ideas for improving taste or texture. Italia Squisita has a lot of content, and some of their videos are comparing a traditional Italian recipe (and these are excellent) with an elevated restaurant version. The staff canteen is a bit frustrating - it's almost exactly what I want, but it ends up missing the mark a bit. But they talk to chefs, mostly in the UK, about being a chef or about a dish. La pâte de Dom is self-taught, but they have a high level of skill in pastry.

And here's a list of videos that I can't categorise, and why I like them.

The Biryani Expert (sadly, channel appears not to be making content any more) taught me that biryani covers a quite wide range of different dishes.

Sheldo's Kitchen He seems like a nice bloke, and his food looks really nice and achievable to make. Again, sadly, he doesn't seem to have made any videos for a while, and he was saying that he has a lot on. But he has a calm style and I liked his content.

Cool Daddy, YummyBoy and Street Foods TV expose me to a lot of food that I'm not used to. I can't recreate a lot of it (I don't have a camel I can cut up and cook but it gives me ideas for new ways to combine ingredients or new flavour profiles to try.

So, what do you look for in content?

(In this thread I avoided dunking on creators, because there's a few that I really don't enjoy but I don't think me yelling about them is good discussion. _{But I'd totally join in if someone created another thread}.

I've really enjoyed Kenji's channel as I find it informative and not oversensationalised like the vast majority of food YouTube channels.

Are there any others that have got that magic mix of giving the food science and practicality, while avoiding the clickbait and sensationalism stereotype?