Sorting Out The Signal From the Noise In YouTube Cooking Videos

YouTube’s the greatest all-purpose instruction manual. Want to learn how to build miniature rooms inside Altoids tins or make historically accurate medieval ink? YouTube has a video for it. And for something practical like cooking lessons, the platform’s a gem. Aspiring cooks, however, need to be aware of its pitfalls.

The first thing to avoid is the would-be cooking instructors trying to capitalize on their name, like Brooklyn Beckham, son of soccer star David Beckham. While barely able to cook anything beyond a breakfast sandwich, he was still able to command a $100,000-per-episode budget for his short-lived social media show, Cookin’ With Brooklyn. Brooklyn says he wants to become a great chef in the future. He just doesn't want to do all the low-paid labor necessary to get there.

Actor Stanley Tucci also uses his fame to draw attention to his Italian cooking videos, which are more instructive and humble than Beckham's. But why learn how to cook from an actor when there are so many better choices out there?

At least Tucci’s not pawning himself off as an expert on what he doesn't know, like Jamie Oliver (6.17 million YouTube followers), the Brit who became famous very young on Food Channel's The Naked Chef. This guy doesn't understand the basics of Asian cooking, but people trust him because he's a TV star. He uses olive oil to cook Thai and Chinese dishes, but Asians cook with neutral oils that don't add Mediterranean flavor. It's not fusion cuisine—it's confusion cuisine.

Oliver recommends garnishing pad thai, the Thai street-food staple generally made without herbs, with mint, cilantro and basil. He complicates preparations while claiming he's simplifying things for busy home cooks. It's all for show. Who has all three of these herbs in their kitchen, even if a dish calls for it?

Oliver’s fried recipe sums up why he shouldn't be teaching anyone about Asian cooking. He instructs viewers to use packaged, pre-cooked rice, when the whole point of the dish is to use yesterday's unused rice. Fried rice is supposed to be dry, with each grain of rice separated and toasted. Instead, Oliver adds water to the dish as he cooks it, without explaining why, making it gloppy and untoasted.

Jamie Oliver teaches an inferior simulacrum of Asian food. Rachael Ray (939k YouTube followers), the American version of Oliver, has been a television personality for years. She adds carrots, basil, and mint to her pad thai—all wrong—and boils her rice noodles instead of the correct way—soaking them in warm water—guaranteeing they'll be soggy. Finally, she tops the dish, in a piece of made-for-television fluff, with an abundance of edible flowers (pansies, marigolds, fuchsias, bachelor buttons, and baby carnations). What sort of cooking teacher claiming to be speaking to harried home cooks thinks they have edible flowers in their kitchens?

While Oliver and Ray have their phony sides, they can manage to prepare decent food when sticking to what they know. Some delusional home cooks on YouTube can't, but still feel the need to share. There's Jack Scalfani (546k YouTube followers) who, from what I've observed, is batting zero in his kitchen. The Cooking With Jack host isn't just a horrible cook—he's a health hazard. His baked chicken dish had the unappetizing color of boiled chicken on the outside. A cut into the center revealed a ruby-red portion he casually said he was going to eat around. In a now-deleted video, Jack's guest recommended a canning method that looked like a botulism instructional.

Jack’s lazy and slovenly, so it's fitting that one of his specialties is “lazy-man” versions of common dishes. He cooks his “lazy man's omelet” in baggies submerged in boiling water. The question is, “why”? The unappealing result looks like something the Brits would call a “dog’s dinner.” But Scalfani tastes everything he cooks and always declares it "delicious!”

Category errors are Jack’s signature. His “lasagna” uses penne instead of lasagna noodles, without explanation. He mixes mozzarella with tomato sauce, adds it to the pasta, and puts it in the oven. He's making “baked penne” and calling it  lasagna. It makes no sense. Jack makes his “enchiladas” with crushed-up tortilla chips instead of soft tortillas, for reasons he doesn't reveal. The result's a gross-looking casserole-version of nachos with no resemblance to enchiladas.

Kay from the Kay’s Cooking YouTube channel (334k YouTube followers), whose cooking often looks inedible, makes Jack Scalfani look like a Michelin-star chef. For her disturbing “special” fried rice, she first heats oil in a wok to the smoking point. In goes the garlic, which instantly gets carbonized, but Kay calls it “turning brown.” She adds raw rice to the incineration and stirs it for a couple of minutes before adding whisked eggs, chicken, and boiled canned peas—she’s English—as the finishing touches.

Kay’s son is the unlucky taste-tester of this bizarre experiment. Unimpressed, he calls it “crunchy,” which Kay may mistake for a compliment, as crunchiness in foods that’re supposed to be soft is her trademark. For her “spaghetti bolognese,” she wraps a ball of unseasoned ground beef around the centers of small bundles of spaghetti—she refers to spaghetti as “spaghetti sticks”—before adding tomato sauce and big chunks of onions, and then baking it. When her son does the taste test—”Try a part that's not burnt,” Kay suggests—it sounds like he's eating raw Cap'n Crunch. Still, he gives it a thumbs up.

Jack Scalfani and Kay teach us not to be fooled by follower counts jacked up by YouTube algorithms. They're home cooks with nothing to offer, but there are plenty of amateurs on YouTube worth paying attention to. Slaving away in a commercial kitchen for years isn't the only way to gain cooking skills. Passion plus daily practice can produce impressive results, especially if the learning process started at a young age under the tutelage of a talented parent.

A good rule of thumb in finding the right YouTube cooking instructor is to avoid TV personalities altogether. Cooking is craft, and craft’s earned the slow way: by repetition, correction, and respect for the cuisine being prepared, not ambition to become a TV personality. Instead, look for cooks who explain why they're doing things and adjust seasonings after tasting their food. Such lessons are transferable to any kind of cooking.

Here's a short list of worthwhile YouTube channels:

Food Wishes. “Chef John” knows his stuff. He offers approachable recipes for beginners with a focus on technique over personality. Viewers never even see his face.

For basic Asian dishes and more, check out Kenji Lopez-Alt, a highly-skilled professional cook who’s good at explaining the “whys” of cooking.

Vincenzo’s Plate focuses heavily on technique and "un-learning" common mistakes made in Westernized Italian cooking.

Pailin's Kitchen (formerly Hot Thai Kitchen). Pailin, from Thailand, is widely considered the best teacher of Thai cuisine on the platform. She provides substitutes for viewers who don't live near an Asian grocery store, and explains why she does things. No gimmicks, no chaos, no forced personality.