Just wanna say that I'm a huge fan of Kenji. His Youtube channel is simple, interesting and the opposite of snob. A true food passionate that is doing whatever he can to go against gate keeping. He's been inspiring me to cook more (and successful at it!) for a couple years.
I've been following Kenji since his earliest days on SeriousEats. He's great, and I'm so glad he has had the opportunity to change all of our lives for the better.
I'm not a fan of watching video content, much prefer reading text. My Kenji consumption has dropped by quite a bit since he's moved to mostly Youtube. He's doing what he wants/loves though, and that's what matters.
I agree with you in that I prefer written material most of the time, but for food I actually prefer video over text. Mostly because it allows me to see and get a feel for the workflow, the timings and such that are impossible to get across from just a recipe. Especially for baking videos have been great because when it says “should be tacky to the touch but not sticky” it’s always “how sticky is sticky, what is tacky, how do I know what it feels like etc” and seeing a baker doing it helps immensely. Once I’ve gotten a good grasp for the process though I far prefer using a recipe.
Watched for the first time just now. I love the PoV videos! It's really helpful to see just what the hands are doing, and no cuts.
The biggest gaps in written IMHO tend to be (a) things people do but don't realize they do, (b) things people do but assume everyone else already knows, (c) things people do more efficiently but don't think to mention (obvious example: use a cook time break to clean prep-ware).
I have learned SO MUCH about effective kitchen workflow and organization from those PoV videos. It's a completely different kettle of fish than the fancy videos where you just see conveniently pre-cut stuff falling into a pot.
Those videos completely changed the way I drain pasta noodles, from dumping them into a strainer over the sink and losing all the starchy water to scooping them out with a spider and dropping them directly into the saucepan. Seriously upped my pasta game.
You continue to impress me with how you take what you do and your values so seriously. I honestly made the comment above with the intent to ping you with the suggestion after your current social media storm faded a touch. Thanks for teaching me how to feed myself better over the last few years.
Yep, anything that stabilizes the picture would help immensely. It's when the camera is panning around showing what he's looking at while my head is actually stationary that it triggers severe motion sickness.
If you're interested in baking, I imagine you already know of Claire Saffitz - but if not, she was previously at Bon Appétit and now has a great YouTube channel on desserts/baking that your description of things like "tacky" vs "sticky" etc being more directly/usefully explained in a video context.
And yes, I 100% agree that Kenji has been an amazing culinary content creator, researcher, and resource for years. Look at his recipes and insights on turkey/prime rib/etc for holiday meals, noodles, cookies, and more as a few outstanding examples. He reminds me a lot of many of the best things about Alton Brown and Jacques Pépin - a scientifically/analytically fussy approach to cooking and baking, but in the right ways - not in the "fussiness without usefulness" (or without useful explanation, at least) route that many chefs take.
Fair point. If there's a new-to-me technique or something else tricky I 100% agree. As in sometimes I have the opposite complaint where even reading a recipe it's still unclear what I should be doing. For instance there are times when I finally see a recipe made on Americas Test Kitchen/Milk Street/etc I realize I've been doing it wrong.
I suppose what I'm saying is I want the text recipe first, and perhaps the video. From what I've seen on the Youtube channel the video is provided and sometimes the written recipe.
I've gotten more educational value out of his cooking videos, where he straps on a GoPro and cooks a dish, than from most recipe posts. There are nuances about the cooking process that textual recipes simply lack the bandwidth to capture.
The reason I read his work is because it respects my time, no faff. Seems like he takes some care to do this.
>If I don’t like something, I simply don’t write about it. you do a much better service by leading people to great places they may not have heard of than telling them to avoid a place they probably weren’t going to go to anyway
I feel like --- I might be wrong here --- Kenji's origin story is the Cook's Illustrated vodka pie crust, which replaces water in the dough with vodka to minimize gluten formation (the alcohol cooks off). I think that's where I first heard of him, and I've been following ever since. He's pretty great.
An irony of this article, BTW, is that it highlights Kenji's love of Windy City Pizza in Seattle, but Kenji made waves on Twitter a few years ago for taking down Chicago-style deep dish pizza on the grounds that no mainstream Chicago place properly seasons their crust. As I recall, he even went to Pequods and was unimpressed.
Extremely cool fun fact, by the way: Kenji's wife Adriana is a cryptographer at Google with a PhD from NYU; her thesis is dedicated to Kenji, "for loving a crypto nerd".
I'm a Spanish person, living abroad and with a penchant for cooking, and I was too very gratefully surprised by Kenji's Spanish tortilla video. Also by his other Spanish recipes such as Gazpacho[1] or Paella[2].
It's not that they are very orthodox recipes, cut and paste from a traditional recipe cookbook, but instead very good adaptations of them, taking into account ingredients availability and different contexts.
I can't really tell about other cousines, but judging how he cooks Spanish food I'd say he knows what he's talking about.
Add to that that he seems like a very decent and empathetic person and I'd say he's someone you want to listen to if you are looking for cooking advice.
I can't believe I didn't know about Spanish tortilla before. Easily the best egg dish and also maybe the best way I currently know to prepare potatoes at home now. And they get better when they're cold! I've wasted my life!
I've made dozens since last summer, and Kenji's technique in the video has been pretty much bulletproof for me.
His extra-creamy scrambled egg is also a mainstay now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX-Y513ohbc --- I love how little patience he has with macho restaurant culture, and that he won't even link to Gordon Ramsay, who popularized the dish.
I've made his Spanish tortilla once a month or so since that video came out... However, I once dropped the whole thing in the sink while doing the "flip". (Maneuvering a hot cast iron pan isn't easy.) I've never felt more disappointed in myself than I did at that moment; I was making it for breakfast and I basically just turned the stove off and went back to bed. So now I'm always a bit wary when I start on it, knowing that it has the power to destroy me psychologically.
This has happened to me a few times, and I imagine many others!
I bought a “tortilla pan” in Spain which prevents this. It’s basically two pans with an interlock on one side. You cook the tortilla on one side, grab the other pan and lock it on, then flip it over and put the other pan on the heat to cook the other side. Foolproof and worth it when you cook as many as I do!
I am very surprised it's not a more popular dish in the US - it seems like it would fit well the Denny's, IHOPs or even some fast-breakfast drive-throughs, and work as breakfast or appetizer or dinner.
It's on every menu in Barcelona - yes, served cold.
A Spaniard taught me that mixing in some potato chips gives it some variety. He said he even sometimes makes it completely out of packaged chips.
It is a curious and useful book: the recipes are for the unfussy Spanish homestyle meals they served to the staff at el Bulli each night before opening. Each recipe is one that can scale way up, and the quantities are given to make each dish For 2, 6, 20, or 75 (!) people. It’s a good source of inspiration if you need to cook a dish for a crowd.
There are also detailed photo illustrations of the ingredients and of each step in the recipe.
Just as a point of order (and because I don't like giving Gordon Ramsay credit for things either), Jaques Pépin popularized that technique for scrambled eggs when Ramsay was ten years old.
I've watched this Jacques Pépin video countless times and the ease with which he casually prepares the two styles of omelets in ~5 minutes and narrates the process amazes me every time. I still can't perfectly replicate the second "classic French omelet" style even after years of effort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1XoCQm5JSQ&t=8s
I’ve been following Kenji for a very long time. One thing I like is on the subject of adaptations. I have made his beef stew a few times, it’s quite involved. But I love how the recipe on the site adapts over time to take into account how people in the comments find different ingredients and tooling. For example, his original recipe works great on his super nice restaurant quality oven, but not as much on your regular persons oven. He adapted the recipe for the audience to take this into account, which I absolutely loved.
While there is obviously Spanish influence in Latin American cuisine, I wouldn’t say the food cultures are similar. Furthermore, the culture can vary a lot between different (or even neighboring) Latin American countries.
I doubt he invented it, but I don't doubt he tested and researched it exhaustively. For me it comes down to three things: the baking soda eating the exterior and making a "fluffy" (surface area) result, the infused oil for flavour without burning the herbs, and the placement on a bare metal baking tray for crisping.
Like most things, it's not the cooking work that bothers me (I find it relaxing), but the cleaning. It adds up to a lot more to clean (boiling pot, strainer, pan for herbs, strainer for herbs, etc). But that's not too bad since I can do all that while they're in the oven, and we have a dishwasher.
Definitely worth the effort for me, I probably wouldn't bother making roast potatoes any other way anymore.
Oyakodon is worth it just for the little chuckle over its name alone ("oya": parent, "ko": child, and the dish includes both chicken and egg). Like many sources describing this dish, Kenji mentions this basically immediately, as they well should.
I'm a devotee of his book The Food Lab and his prior work there on Serious Eats, but haven't gotten into his videos much. I should.
It's also worth it because it is bananas easy to make, maybe the fastest possible chicken thigh cook, and there is something deeply magical about the combination of eggs, rice, and dashi/soy.
I'd like to see an as-blind-as-possible test of water vs vodka in the pie crust.
Kenji has other pie crust recipes where he talks about encouraging gluten formation.
Of course it's possible that there are some recipes where you want to encourage gluten formation and some where you want to discourage it. But I'm starting to get skeptical about this stuff, considering I've never once seen actual data tables about gluten levels, or even a clear indication that the final results were compared with an unbiased methodology.
That said, serious eats is the only website I get recipes from, and I love all Kenji's recipes. This is just something that bugs me about every popular "food science" source that I can recall.
I don't ever use the vodka recipe any more; Kenji linked once to Stella Parks' pie crust recipe, which is a very simple water-based crust, and it's worked every single time for me. The vodka was just a neat trick, is all.
Stella is to baking as Kenji is to everything else: someone whose recipes and writing I place a great deal of trust in. Bravetart is every bit as good as The Food Lab.
Important true fact: Daniel Gritzer, the current editor at Serious Eats and a Kenji's former colleague there, is also a practically bulletproof recipe writer and is very underrated. It's Gritzer's Roman pasta technique I use, not Kenji's.
My first search when I want to make something new almost always includes "serious eats" it doesn't seem to matter which author wrote the recipe, but they are almost always excellent. When there are so many websites with bad recipes out there, it is always nice to be able to have a place where the recipes just work.
That's kind of my point though. I haven't seen sufficient evidence to confidently believe the vodka played a role in the crust. To be fair, I haven't seen sufficient evidence that no difference exists either.
It just bugs me a bit that this is called "food science", when experimental design and significance testing are the core of what science is.
At the same time, I don't want to be the science police and go around discouraging people from trying to methodically make their recipes better. I love every one of Kenji's (and Stella's) recipes that I try, so much so that I don't really bother getting recipes from other sources than Serious Eats.
It's science in a different sense than you're using the word; it's cooking informed by science rather than by craft tradition. A good illustration of the distinction is in the debate between Marcella Hazan and Harold McGee, about the value of cooking with good virgin olive oil --- Hazan, from the Italian craft tradition, took umbrage at McGee's observation that heat denudes good oil of most of what makes it good.
(I may be misremembering some of the debate, so don't hold me to specifics).
McGee presumably didn't do "science" to reach that conclusion (I assume he got there axiomatically, like any good HN scientist would) --- though I'd note that Kenji frequently triangle-tests recipe specifics with panels, which is more science than most food writers employ. But he used science to get there. You don't get a journal article out of that, but it's a more scientific approach than the common alternative, which is why we call it that.
(Kenji graduated from MIT, for whatever that's worth.)
If you disagree that science should, in modern parlance, be interpreted as a reference to the scientific method, I guess I have no basis for argument. It's not my intent to be the grammar (semantic, I guess?) police.
I appreciate the sort of knowledge creation Kenji's engaging in. And I agree that it's the most rigorous I've seen presented in a remotely accessible way.
In some ways that just makes me wish he'd take it a step further. I don't think it takes any special equipment or money or MIT degree to follow the scientific method. It seems likely that Kenji already does record data of some kind somewhere. I'm not saying he needs to look at pie crust with an electron microscope, you could simply list a more detailed procedure and qualitative scoring data in a footnote.
I do think equivocating different forms of knowledge with science wastes a great way to introduce people to important scientific concepts. And I think one could argue it risks contributing to confusion about what science is, what it's capable of, and what it's limitations are.
Of course, "be the change you want to see in the world" is great advice. And at the risk of seeming to make an insincere "compliment sandwich", I really do like Kenji and his recipes.
Yes. He created the vodka pie crust recipe at CI. After Cooks he started showing up here and there on Serious Eats (iirc "A Burger Today"?) before going all in there.
I did that vodka crust pie recipe when I was young and used every clear instead of vodka. Big mistake it ended up making a combustible mix in my oven and When I opened the door the sochometic ratio was just right and POOF.
For any food I have never attempted cooking, I always default to searching "<food> recipe serious eats" (After working through Food Lab almost religiously). Every single time, the Serious Eats recipes (even the ones not by Kenji) are excellent.
My favorite tip from Kenji is for the grilled cheese sandwich. I don't follow his recipe for 99% of it, but slicing a garlic clove and rubbing it on lightly toasted bread before making the grilled cheese completely enhances the sandwich without really adding an ingredient. Thats why its my favorite tip.
Not to lightly throw around the phrase "life changing", because I honestly don't eat that many grilled cheese sandwiches where the difference substantially changes my life, but using mayonnaise instead of butter is definitely a revelation. I think I learned that from another source before Kenji, but I know Kenji has highlighted that tip at various points and it's well worth repeating.
I remember hearing lynne rossetto kasper interviewing the host of america's test kitchen one time, and him just being extremely aggressive about the idea that he was here to come and Objectively Improve on the way your grandmother used to do things. what I love about j kenji lopez alt's stuff is that he does.... very much not that, even while he's experimenting to get into the nuts and bolts of a recipe. he's respectful of traditions and individual taste and shortcuts that may be worth it to home cooks even if they're not The Right Way.
Kenji is a fantastic author and now video maker. I've learned a ton from him.
My two favorite things about him are firstly, everything he talks about is backed by a scientific approach, and secondly he has a decidedly unfussy "but you can do it your way if you like" attitude as well. He's like Pepin meets molecular gastronomy.
Serious Eats is a great source. Their writing on how to cook a steak in a cast iron pan is excellent, a really useful and interesting read for anyone who likes cooking steaks in cast iron pans.
Kenji and Serious Eats' work on cooking meat and roasts has transformational. When time allows, sous vide with a reverse sear is my current favorite/unbeatable technique for perfect results without any extra work or active time beyond the initial water bath setup.
Ah, that would be why I hadn't seen any recipes from them in some time. Not even their announcement of the redesign, since the feed stopped updating right before that went up…
I'll send them some feedback—hopefully it was just a side-effect of the redesign, and they can re-add one without too much trouble.
They also changed the URLs of all the recipes, which previously had dates in them (luckily the old ones still redirect for now).
This was useful as recently they've been republishing a lot of old content, and it was easy to see if that was the case by hovering over the URL. They've even changed the date on the recipe page to "last edited" - a couple of old ones I was looking up yesterday from 2016 now have 2020 at the top.
I personally find this super frustrating because I used to be able to tell when I wrote something by visiting serious eats. Now I have to search through my old archive hard drives which is way harder. Unfortunately I have no role at serious eats currently so can’t really push back on that.
I used to love Kenji but recently have become less interested in his recipes because they are very meat focused. I'd love to see more vegetarian/vegan stuff from him because his approach to food and communication style is great.
That's a really good point. He's my go-to guy for meat stuff, and one of the things I love about The Food Lab is the amount of thorough research and explanation. I would love more of that but for vegan and vegetarian things.
Agreed. For some reason many youtubers completely miss the vegetarian segment of the population because there's so many varieties of meats to focus on.
But a few popular ones that I follow are:
Vegan black metal chef
Peaceful cuisine
Hot for food
While I'm pretty sure that they might have meat based foods in their video lists, but they do have a really healthy collection of vegetarian foods as well.
I love his food lab book, and overall he seems like such a nice person. The book is a bit dense, but it has such great info that really helps deepen your cooking skills.
If my memory serves me right, I started following Kenji in the early 2010s, when he explained why McDonald’s burgers don’t rot[1]. I was a bit into molecular gastronomy at the time, and his science-based approach seemed exactly what I wanted to read.
Kenji is the best! Highly recommend his cookbook, The Food Lab. Several Kenji recipes are staples in our house. Kenji even convinced me that you can make a delicious quesadilla without cheese! https://www.seriouseats.com/cheese-free-sweet-potato-quesadi...
If you live in the Bay Area, Kenji has a great restaurant called Wursthall that does German food. I hope he’s still involved since he’s not in the area anymore.
During the pandemic I really up leveled my cooking, even enrolling in online culinary school. YouTube was a huge inspiration, as well as some books and blogs. Throughout all of that one of my main inspirations was Kenji. His articles on Serious Eats and his book The Food Lab are basically a bible of how to cook correctly in a way that makes sense to the engineering minded, and his YouTube channel is low-fi, super approachable, and unpretentious. He's one of the most important voices today in empowering home cooks.
It reminds me of the related story [0] titled " I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It." The author tried hundreds of burgers around the US and deemed one the best and the business seemed to overwhelm him.
Kenji is very good but also highly opinionated, often bordering on food snob. That’s fine, he’s often right but not always. I think that feeds into this problem: People following him will seek out “the best/perfect XYZ” which he looks for based on his own obsession at the time (smashed burgers, XLB, detroit pizza, etc…).
If you watch old episodes of Jacque and Julia you will see how they could easily and happily disagree on what makes something special, and there is nuance there. That nuance is lost in translation with cults of personality.
That’s an interesting characterization, because I would have said precisely the opposite: I’ve seen that he consistently goes out of his way to denounce notions like “it’s not real X unless you make it with Y.” He’s pretty outspoken that it’s better to adapt recipes based on your own preferences, skills, and ingredient availability than to try to chase “authenticity.” It’s not uncommon to hear him say things like “it’s probably more traditional to include X in this recipe, but I don’t like that flavor, so I’m leaving it out.” I’m genuinely curious why you characterize him as a food snob.
I think the characterization comes from a legion of homecooks online going through a cooking journey and treating Kenji's whimsical opinion as a law, especially when written down for one recipe.
Kenji's videos show how creative and open minded he is with cooking, but I've also had plenty of online encounters with folks preaching the food lab gospel.
Eh if you've been following him for long enough you've seen him get onto kicks and off again. He did a vegan month for a while, but that's gone. Once upon a time he was convinced that using baking soda (something you'll see him use a lot more than most) was the way to perfect, fast caramelized onions. It took a while but Daniel Gritzker and others eventually convinced him he was wrong.
None of this is bad -- the food lab is the cook book most often open in my kitchen and I love his videos -- but develop your own taste and understand the palates of those you're cooking for, don't just assume that whatever Kenji does is right.
I wasn’t suggesting assuming anyone is right, that would be silly,
But I think “whimsy” is just really off target. Most or his stuff (notwithstanding some retractions, we all learn as we go) is either pretty well researched and backed up or he’ll be very clear it’s just the way he is doing something, not canon. He has strong opinions about some things - especially cookery myths - but they tend to be backed up with a bunch of data, otherwise not so much,
I said whimsical because a lot of times Kenji's opinion will be like "I usually just whip this up looseygoosey but if we're trying to be as silly about it as possible, I suppose we could do this fourteen step process..." and then the mantra online becomes "Kenji's Iron Clad 14 Step Process for This Meal -- The Only Way Its Done".
That's why watching his videos is really important. If there's any recipes he ignores completely the most, it's his own.
Might be a good idea to clarify what you mean by example in this comment. Had to click into the video to realize you meant basically an example of him NOT being a food snob.
I usually do recipes "by the book" a few times, and then do it the way I want.
For example: chinese braised pork belly. Generally you cook the pork belly in the sauce until the sauce itself reduces and coalesceses around the pork belly, giving it a reddish appearance. Then you serve it over rice.
Problem for me?
I'm cajun/creole. While I'm perfectly fine with eating plain white rice by itself in the asian tradition, it's just not how we do it back home. We smother things so that the sauce mixes with the rice. So I added more of the liquid ingredients and brown sugar. I added some korean red pepper to up the pepper flavor of the sauce. I addded some cinnamon sticks because I felt it complimented the other ingredients.
Side by side, my pork tastes a little better than theirs. It's got more flavor. It also has sauce to pour over the rice.
It's not authentic (and not as red), but it's also something that everyone who has ever tried it has enjoyed.
Then again... if I see someone put tomatoes in a gumbo or jambalaya... or sprinkle seasoning on top of seafood after they've been pulled out of the boiling pot... that is a friendship breaker lol.
Years ago I had an exchange with him on twitter where he argued that some pre-made taco sauce kit (possibly from Frontera?) made a kind of taco (possibly al-pastor or something like that) that was superior and more authentic tasting than any corresponding kind of taco he could get at taquerias in NYC. It was an absolutely insane and inane twitter argument to engage in but also there was no way that it made any sense to take that stand. He just kind of dug in on things and had hot takes back in the day -- he's mellowed since those days but I will always remember that weird interaction.
Now that he's more into videos and his presence is about instruction and eduction through example as opposed to making a splash with authoritative longform pieces and deriving the perfect recipes and guides through Serious Eats he comes across as more welcoming to all approaches but there were times in the past when he pounded the foodie gavel.
That's different though "it's not real X unless you make it with Y" is about authenticity. I did not bring up authenticity in the criticism. You are right - Kenji rarely cares about authenticity or tradition. That's fine.
If you go through his old recipes though on SE, you'll see "The science of the best XYZ" or "Perfect XYZ" all over the place:
Apparently this is news to you: nearly all writers do not get to choose their headlines, no matter the topic area. This goes from newspapers to books. If you're basing those views on the headlines vs the explicit content in his articles and videos, you've very much got the wrong end of the stick here. He goes out of his way to repeatedly emphasize "but you can do it how you like and that's ok" in everything he's done purely solo.
It’s true that writers often don’t get to choose their titles, but in this case I wouldn’t consider it snobby or ridiculous even if he had chosen those titles himself. There’s simply no reasonable interpretation of titles like “The best X” or “Perfect X” other than as clear subjective claims based on the author’s own preferences. These titles very clearly are not philosophical treatises about how there are actually objective moral truths about different ways of preparing food, and any interpretation along those lines is either extremely misinformed or (more likely) made in bad faith.
"The best X" is just good marketing. I've generally found him to be very up front with the criteria he's using to judge a particular food, and where there's a well-known broad range of tastes (like with chocolate chip cookies), he often includes information on how to get different results than he personally prefers. But the goal of those articles _is_ to find the best way to make (a particular style of) that dish, so the title is fair.
Sure, he could put "in my opinion" and "to me" all over the place, but that would just be useless clutter. Everyone knows that "best" when referring to an aesthetic experience is always a subjective matter.
I sincerely think you missed the last 3+ years of anything he did (I don't know how he used to communicate before) because if there is one thing I cannot say of him is that he's a food snob.
He is opinionated, but explains why he does things (often offering a scientific reasoning/experiment), especially if he's not following the traditional way, he seems to give context on what would be more traditional, and is quick in communicating "but you do you"...
Dave Arnold is amazing and is probably a better HN food follow than Kenji (they're both great, but Arnold is distinctively HN-y, and also a truly idiosyncratic character.)
But Dave Arnold's slogan is "you're an enemy of quality", a title you can obtain by doing almost anything differently than he might, including not precisely measuring the displacement of ice and water before mixing a G&T. He calls things "garbage products" all the time. He is far, far more opinionated than Kenji is.
If Dave's opinionated demeanor isn't a problem for you, then opinionation (is that a word?) isn't really your problem with Kenji.
I highly, highly, highly recommend Arnold's book, Liquid Intelligence.
I like Dave Arnold’s “Liquid Intelligence”, but I cannot stand his podcast. Comically, I don’t really like Kenji / Serious Eat’s written content, but his YouTube channel is great.
Dave is 95% theatrics (faux shock jockey?) and usually those are around technique (though sometimes a food is inseparable from technique) so maybe I am more forgiving in that scenario.
Cooking Issues is fundamentally a podcast about failures and attempts first and foremost, so it tends to skew a bit more towards scientific method I suppose.
Skip to around 13:30, at the marker "Hose discussion becomes rant" (I assume Nastassia wrote that). He's not kidding. (He's often kidding about "enemy of quality", but sometimes he isn't, and it's a far blunter thing to say than anything Kenji has said.)
Yeah I usually prefer Chef John. I feel like his recipes are creative and practical, and he's also just a hilarious super down to earth person. He comes up with methods that pretty much get you 95% of the way there at a fraction of the time and cost. His Chicken Tikka Masala recipe is the best I've had (homemade or at a restaurant) and among the simplest. He also has a famous method for Demi-glace
IMO, a lot of the material from Kenji, Babish for example tilt more on the food snobbery side that demand several hour long recipes[1] and vast number of expensive ingredients.
I'm a big fan of Chef John as well. The value I find with Kenji is less the recipes themselves than the articles that come along with them. He explains how he arrived at each of those ingredients:
What's useful here is that you can make less ambitious versions of the full recipe (using canned beans and/or cheaper meat, using ground spices rather than grinding your own, etc.) while still benefitting from some of the tricks he found (chocolate, vinegar, liquor, soy sauce/Marmite, etc.).
I also want to point out that not all of Kenji's Serious Eats recipes are "the best X ever". Some are simpler and quicker, like this chili recipe. This is much closer to Chef John's recipe in terms of complexity.
Personally, I’m torn between Chef John and Adam Ragusa. Both produce attainable recipes, but Ragusa goes a bit further with pieces about the history and cultivation of food. An excellent example is found here: https://youtu.be/hQD9-FBs2qQ
Homogeneity! He kept saying that in every video and it was so offputting. I get it it's a cool fancy word but I don't don't like his style too much. Adam's tech knowledge is top game though - he researches everything so deeply and provides historical context.
> If you watch old episodes of Jacque and Julia you will see how they could easily and happily disagree on what makes something special, and there is nuance there.
One distinct event that stuck out to me was when they were cooking kale. I think it was going into a quiche or something but that didn't matter. It was such a perfect dichotomy and juxtaposition, the French man was preparing it using the contemporary American method of sautéing it directly in a pan touting the benefits of nutrition retention while the American woman was for the traditional French method of boiling it and nutrition be damned for the sake of it being less bitter.'
I miss programs like that, now when there's more than one chef it's a full on ESPN level competition.
I think he has leaned into the "best/perfect" as an SEO trick, and his audience tends to treat him as gospel - but his recipes are amazingly flexible and there is not a lick of pretense. I still use his trick for how to fake a smoke ring when making sous-vide brisket.
He's also said that those were intended to be examples of all out recipes. The accompanying article will then describe what each component makes. At that point the reader/cook is expected to determine what subset of the often over engineered recipe fits their tastes/desired level of effort.
"The best" and "Perfect" sounds a heckuva lot better than "way over the top" :)
I really get the opposite vibe. He's a huge fan of Jacque and tries to make his food accessible. He often mentions in his videos that "you can do it whatever way you want, this is the way I do it". He often makes almost junk food versions of popular dishes (potato chip tortillas).
I think he is opinionated, in that he knows what he likes so will do that and not waste time on anything else. But snob implies he'd judge you for not liking the same things, which I definitely disagree with. I do agree he has a bit of a cult following.
I get where you're coming from but don't think it's snobbery per se. There are things he prefers that I don't prefer. Over the years I've come to just understand that he & I have different tastes.
A great example would be his obsession with crispy potatoes in all things potatoes. Sure, sometimes I love a shatteringly crisp fry. Other times I want something mushy. Same with roasted potatoes. But I don't ever feel put down by him for wanting mushy potatoes.
Interesting. I watch his videos on YouTube whenever they're recommended to me - I had no idea he was a "big deal"! He's super chill and his late-night videos are always fantastic. His voice and attitude is really mellow. I'm glad he's appreciated by others as well!
I'm aware. I'm making fun of the fact he says it literally every time he peels ginger, which is like every video. I've heard him say the same line like 30 times.
I read this a lot, but I've always had better results using the back of my knife. The top of the blade is squared off and peels ginger perfectly (better than when I tried a spoon) and I'm already holding it.
What type of savage doesn't peel ginger with a spoon? Learned that from a Tibetan making momos. He would then use the side of a clever to crush the ginger before mincing.
Ginger is incredibly cheap and comes in quantities larger than I need for almost all preparations. The loss that comes from cutting it into a rectangular prism is worth the time for me, since I'm going to be throwing some of it in the trash anyway.
Don't throw the edges away; freeze them and occasionally boil them down with water to make ... well, anything really: tea (with lemon, for an upset stomach), soda (sugar + dry ice or a sodastream), syrup (sugar + boil until thick), or just a great way to make your house smell like ginger.
Huh I’ve only watched like 10 of his vids but he hasn’t mentioned it once, he just smashes with a Chinese cleaver and minces in all the ones I’ve seen.
What’s the benefit to dirtying both a spoon and a knife to mince garlic?
I lost a lot of respect for Kenji after this incident:
López-Alt wrote that “it hasn’t happened yet, but if you come to my restaurant wearing a MAGA cap, you aren’t getting served, same as if you come in wearing a swastika, white hood, or any other symbol of intolerance and hate.” He added, “MAGA hats are like white hoods except stupider because you can see exactly who is wearing them.” Both tweets have since been deleted. [1]
Your comment reads like what he did is in such bad taste that you have to let it be known, on a site that is pretty well established to be anti-MAGA, how you disapprove of this person's choice to also be anti-MAGA, and you're still trying to maintain your elitism and stature by saying "I lost respect" to continue to fit in on the site. You're playing edge lord on easy mode.
40% of the country doesn’t wear MAGA hats, and didn’t at the peak of that cult, either.
And even if they did, popularity doesn't make you different from the Nazis or the KKK, both of which had fairly high peaks of popularity in their respective geography.
The prior four years were an exercise in the extreme amplification of divisiveness by all sides. I wouldn't blame anyone—on either side—for being momentarily swept up in it.
(To be clear, I'm not claiming equivalence and don't dispute that most of the blame rests with Trump's divisiveness.)
While I agree it was inartful and ultimately counter-productive, it was nonetheless understandable (and quite frankly unremarkable) in the context of the broader zeitgeist. Thankfully we know not to judge people's character on the basis of two tweets.
I stopped following Kenji almost right at the time he decided to move to Seattle.
There is something slightly obnoxious about him that I can't quite describe that really irks me about his attitude (slightly elitist, mostly deserved, but not great if you're someone who cares about these things).
What is very interesting to me is how Seattleites are hanging on his every post and recommendation. Seattle has one of the least exciting and lackluster food scenes out of any "food city" I've ever lived in. It's honestly great for him as Seattle (I feel) lacks a food identity, so he is well positioned to influence a lot of young and well paid followers on social media
> Seattle has one of the least exciting and lackluster food scenes out of any "food city" I've ever lived in.
I'm a native of Washington, moved away in my teens and returned to Seattle 10 years ago, from Atlanta. Comparatively Seattle has a much less interesting food scene than Atlanta, and I don't think Atlanta is even considered to be a 'food city'.
Love his youtube videos, but I wonder how can someone engage in answering so many hateful comments and such.
To think that by the size of his channel he would put someone in charge of this. Perhaps the "guys, gals and non-binary pals, I'll see you next time" came from someone telling he was not inclusive enough when saying goodbye?
My experience of Seattle is that "guys, gals, and non-binary pals" feels like something totally expected out of the kind of person who would move to Seattle.
This article also mentions that he lives, specifically, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Cap Hill is Seattle's rainbow flag district, and anyone living there is probably gonna be encountering enbys on a regular basis.
I don’t really encounter many people period because I’ve only lived here during pandemic. My daughter’s preschool teacher is non-binary though, and we have a neighbor whose teenager is also non-binary so maybe you’re right. I donut to be inclusive, not for any other reason.
https://www.youtube.com/user/kenjialt