Cooking is a survival skill. Let’s face it when you have no money to eat out, you can put together cheap ingredients and find yourself with a delicious meal. It’s also quite easy to learn, if only you finally get to the kitchen and grab some pans. Fortunately, there are several channels on YouTube that can inspire you to cook or bake, so buy a gluten-free baking mix and preheat the oven.
Bon Appétit
Not only does the Bon Appétit (BA) test kitchen have adorable chefs, but they also have fun segments that normal people don’t have the patience for. In Gourmet Makes, Claire Saffitz recreates your favorite snacks and makes them gourmet. From Combos and Oreos to Jellybeans, Claire spends days figuring out the perfect procedures to have the gourmet version as close to the original, instant ones.
They also have Reverse Engineering where super taster Chris Morocco is blindfolded at the beginning of the video. He then tastes a dish and recreates it without any knowledge of what it looks like and what it is. Another segment is Back-to-Back Chef, where the channel invites celebrities to cook a dish with the instructions of a chef behind their back. If these chefs can do it, so can you.
Tasty
With their fun vibe and colorful edits, Tasty caters to everyone looking for simple recipes and those that have the fantasy of taking it to the next level. This channel delivers videos that are supercuts to their recipes. The appeal is that they make it look so fast and easy, which can really inspire some beginner home cooks.
Their segment called Making It Big creates giant food for their guests. Alvin Zhou, a Tasty producer, exercises his arm muscles every episode as he mixes pounds and pounds of ingredients and transports them from one tray to another. The channel also has Tasty 101, where they make it their goal to come up with the perfect recipe for most pastries. It’s a lot of trial-and-error that’s pretty much normal in the kitchen.
Epicurious
Have you ever wondered about the differences between a beginner chef and an expert? Lucky for you, Epicurious is here to answer that question. It’s a pretty straightforward channel with segments that center on educational purposes. They have FAQS, for example, where professional chefs answer questions about a specific food per video. They also have the Basic Skills Challenge, where 50 people try to do normal tasks in the kitchen, such as slicing and cleaning food.
Their most popular and probably the most interesting is 4 Levels. In the video, you’ll see three chefs: an amateur, a home cook, and a pro chef. They cook something in their own ways, and at the end of the video, a food scientist debunks their every step. If you’re wondering why chefs do what they do with certain ingredients, this channel could be your refuge.
Like all the other skills, cooking takes a lot of patience and technique to master. You might lose interest along the way, but Bon Appétit, Tasty, and Epicurious can inspire you to put on an apron.
