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  • Showing only topics in ~food with the tag "chefs". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. What are some lesser known food and cooking YouTubers?

      Feel free to define lesser known how you like. Here's my list. Most of these have fewer than 100,000 subscribers. Some of them have fewer than 10,000 subs. Al Brady (32k subs) Has a nice mix of...

      Feel free to define lesser known how you like. Here's my list. Most of these have fewer than 100,000 subscribers. Some of them have fewer than 10,000 subs.

      Al Brady (32k subs)

      Has a nice mix of sweet and savoury food. Has a lot of videos below ten minutes - there's a rapid pacing here that avoids the problems of TikTok / YT Shorts cooking. Enough time to explain what he's doing, no useless padding.

      Baking on a Budget (40k subs)

      A reasonably new channel (only 33 videos as I post this). He has a method for pricing the recipes, and we can always argue about whether that makes sense or not, but at least it's consistent across his videos so viewers get an idea of relative costs. The recipes are simple. They're aimed at providing tasty filling food for cheap. The production values are low - no fancy lighting, no fancy camera, the kitchen table looks a bit rickety.

      BoSFinesse (6k subs)

      He's from Bristol (South West UK) and has the regional accent to prove it. He visits and reviews street food and cafés. I love videos like this - show-casing normal eateries. It's rough and ready - he sometimes includes swearing. And he's usually positive, or occasionally very mildly not positive. But I like that. He does a mix of shorts and long form - the long form does tend to be a bit calmer and explanatory.

      Bread and Food (400 subs)

      Features food, mostly street food or bread, from Iran. I like the "show don't tell" aspect of these videos. There are loads of street food videos and I watch quite a few. Lots of videos are presented by people that I don't enjoy watching.

      YumTopia (5.5k subs)

      Another street food channel, again from Iran. This is the video that I really like - street food often looks like it has been rapidly cooked, but there are examples of slow cooked food. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDJowrQQisg

      The Staff Canteen (152k)

      At over 100k subs this probably doesn't belong here, but I think this fits here because many of their videos get fewer than 1000 views. Views are picking up recently. It's a great channel if you're interested in fine dining in the UK. There are a huge number of interviews with some very very good chefs here, and often they demonstrate one of their dishes.

      Pete's Pans (9.5k subs)

      He researches regional dishes from France, Spain, and Portugal and he claims to present traditional "authentic" versions of various dishes. I've only just started watching, and I'm not sure if I'll end up finding that he's not for me.

      15 votes
    2. What cooking techniques need more evidence?

      There are many tips or techniques that are strongly recommended for cooking, but it's hard to know which are evidence based and which are just passed along because that's what people always do....

      There are many tips or techniques that are strongly recommended for cooking, but it's hard to know which are evidence based and which are just passed along because that's what people always do.

      Which are the tips that need more evidence?

      Here are two that I struggle with, about stainless steel pans:

      1. Water drop test / leidenfrost

      People say that if you get your pan hot enough to get the leidenfrost effect and then add the oil you'll have less problems with sticking. My problem with this is that it means the pan gets very very hot - much hotter than it needs to be for most uses. My other problem is they all say "Look, I'll cook eggs and they won't stick" and those videos either have a ton of cuts, or the eggs stick and you can see the person pushing with a spatula to get rid of the stick, or their "scrambled eggs" is really a chopped omelette.

      1. Heat the pan before adding oil. I don't understand this. Again, people say it helps prevent sticking, but they use some argument about "pores" which just feels hokey. I add cold oil to a cold pan and bring it up to temperature before adding food so the pan and oil are both at the right temperature, and food sticks and then releases, because that's how stainless pans work.

      I'm aware I could be completely wrong here and that there may be a good evidence base for these, but they don't seem to work based on how I cook.

      37 votes