I’ve been having this idea pretty much ever since I started culinairy school but haven’t been able to flush out how I want to do this.
My idea is to start a cooking channel on YouTube (yeah I know there’s already thousands of those, it’d be for my own education and enjoyment mostly) but don’t do your basic recipe videos. I want to go into basics, explain cooking techniques and their origin. A bit of a mix between Binging With Babish and Tasting History but try to be more “like an actual culinairy school”, if you know what I mean by that. I’m already writing a few script ideas, about produce/equipment knowledge or one about techniques you’ll find in almost all recipes for example. still thought I’d come and ask the lovely folks here about what they’d want to see.
So, I’m wondering: Let’s say you have little to no cooking experience. Maybe frying an egg seems like a challenge to you already. What would you want to see on a youtube channel to help you start cooking. What knowledge do you feel you’re missing to start preparing meals and understand what you’re doing?
I’m not expecting a lot of responses, but if I can find out what people who pretty much never cook feel is holding them back, then that would be an amazing starting point for me.
Edit: i wouldn’t mind ideas for a channel name either. :)
America’s Test Kitchen does some really great stuff for both beginner and experienced cooks, namely presenting one method/recipe after testing a number of alternatives, and including the reasons why they prefer the method/recipe they settled on. “Many people also do it this way, and here’s how that turns out and why I prefer the method shown.” Or “Here’s what happens if you add more butter, and this is what it looks like if you add more eggs/use an egg substitute etc.” They get into the chemistry/science of why the chosen method is best or why an easier method can work as well as a more traditional one, and you feel like you learn both the how of cooking something and the why behind a specific recipe, which makes it a lot easier to understand and follow. A final benefit is that it can make a lot of recipes more approachable for a home cool with things like “in professional kitchens, they will use XYZ in order to ZYX. If you don’t have access to XYZ, YYY ingredient has a similar effect and is more common in home kitchens…”
Yeah, I think you might have pointed out a downfall for me and many other who would want to do a similar thing as me. For example, I use agar agar (a certain thickening agent) on an almost daily basis at work. It’s great but I should recognise that most people do not have access to this kind of stuff. Like, it’s easy to see people won’t have a sous vide or vacume machine at home, but there will be stuff I take for granded that far out of reach for most people.
Exactly, it’s definitely a shortcoming of a lot of recipes and cooking shows. Like just in case I do have agar agar, I’d love to hear how to use it in the given recipe, but many more people probably want to hear that ~and then~ their other more common options, as well as how those compare to the more professional technique/ingredients. They do the same thing with materials, too. Like “traditionally this is made in a round bottom wok, but we get great results with this type of pan that you’re more likely to have/know how to use.” Sending huge luck for ya, and looking forward to checking out your videos when you start!