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J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

seattletimes.com

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Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#121

Post by jshmrsn »

jghn wrote: post #29
jypepin wrote: post #3

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. https://www.youtube.com/user/kenjialt

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.

He is working on a new book, focused on cooking with woks. So more reading to be done some time soonish.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#122

Post by fatboy93 »

octodog wrote: post #88

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.

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.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#123

Post by rootusrootus »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #117
rootusrootus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love the PoV videos! I would much prefer a stable camera video. The PoV videos are unwatchable for me unless I take dramamine.

Do you think using one of the newer action style cameras that does horizon leveling would help?

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.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#124

Post by ehsankia »

eutropia wrote: post #10

For any food I have never attempted cooking, I always default to searching " 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. Huge fan. We need more like him. :)

My two favorite recent channels are Adam Ragusea and Ethan Chlebowski. I love the more down to earth home cook recipes.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#125

Post by starky »

tptacek wrote: post #110
wpm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#126

Post by somuchlan »

maroonblazer wrote: post #98
testfrequency wrote: post #65

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 l…

> 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'.

Have to agree. Lived in seattle for about 4 years, and it’s my least favorite place I’ve ever lived when it comes to dining out and general food scene

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#127

Post by dylan-m »

octodog wrote: post #88

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.

On that note, his bean burgers are phenomenal: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-black-bean-burger-recip... :)

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#128

Post by hnick »

kasey_junk wrote: post #114
hnick wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may share a recipe, his par-boiled baking soda roasted potatoes are a simple but amazing addition to my kit. https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-roast-potatoes-ever-rec... 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 bur…

Those are far and away the dish that people are most shocked at how good they are when I serve. But they are work… for what amounts to potatoes.

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.

Re: J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

#130

Post by dbt00 »

JiBB wrote: post #68
user982 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't visited ever since their redesign a few weeks ago removed their RSS feeds.

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.

It's a side effect of an acquisition, the original ownership has changed hands.
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