YouTube cooking channels we love

Lockdown is a great time to hone in on our kitchen skills. After all, we are trying to meet as few people as possible and spend as little as possible. For a lot of us that means making our meals from scratch day in and day out. So, below we’ve listed some of our favourite YouTube cooking channels. Of course there are many noteworthy channels out there that didn’t make it on our list. But we’ve found these few to be particularly useful during these quaran-times.

Bigger Bolder Baking

We are starting the list with Irish professional chef and cookbook author Gemma Stafford’s channel Bigger Bolder Baking. You’ll find recipes for cookies, brownies, cakes, bagels and everything else you’d expect from a channel about baking, but what’s really special about Bigger Bolder Baking is that you get to pick up helpful tips and techniques, which Gemma explains with lovely clarity. Some of our favourites from her channel include her traditional Irish soda bread recipe and her 15 minute no yeast pizza recipe.

Epicurious

Epicurious is a food and cooking related digital brand that’s been around since 1995 and there’s a lot up on their channel. But what we’ve really been loving recently is their 4 Levels series. In the series a dish, for example a lasagne, is prepared by three cooks of different levels; an amateur, a mid level cook and a professional. Then a food scientist gives you science-y explanations for the differences in both taste and techniques. It’s great for picking up tips and learning about the scientific side of cooking.

Tasty

If you ask us, we’d say that it was Tasty that made watching cooking videos so addictive and we don’t know how many of those speedy overhead cooking videos we’ve watched so far. Something we find particularly useful is their Tasty 101 video series. They show you things like how to make the perfect pie, how to make the creamiest pancakes, how to fry food perfectly and so on. In a lot of the videos they include their experiments too, so you get to learn about why things turn out the way they do.

Pick Up Limes

Pick Up Limes is a lifestyle channel by Canadian Sadia Badiei and recipes here are all plant based. However, even if you eat meat, the channel can be a great source of tips and inspiration for healthy eating and also living. Sadia exudes quite a sunny personality and some of our favourite videos include Cozy drinks to warm you up and Creamy ONE-POT pastas. There are some quick breakfast, lunch and dinner recipes too.

Jamie Oliver

British chef and restaurateur Jamie Oliver needs no introduction and some of our favourites off his channel include recipes for classic carbonara, butter chicken and Thai green curry. It’s all very doable and easy and that’s a big plus in our book. His lockdown series Keep Cooking & Carry On is quite useful too. So go browse around.

Marion’s kitchen

Half Thai half Australian Marion Grasby is a cookbook author, television presenter and food producer and her channel Marion’s Kitchen is where we go for Asian recipes such as fried rices, noodles, stir fries, dumplings and so on. She’s quite into fusion cooking too, and this garlic butter pasta that breaks ALL the rules is a great example of what she whips up. We also love her homemade sweet chili jam recipe as well as her sticky chilli ginger roast chicken.

Gordon Ramsay

Multi-Michelin starred chef, restaurateur and TV personality Gordon Ramsay can certainly divide audiences; some adore him while others can’t stand him. We think the lockdown series Ramsay in 10 up on his channel is as useful as adorable with his daughters filming it on their phones and him usually going “Pan down Tilly” every few minutes while racing to get it done in 10 minutes. Our favourites off the series include his easy curry and fish and chips. Since Gordon attempts to make the dishes in 10 minutes, you get to pick up tips for speeding things up in the kitchen too. Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course is quite an educational watch too.