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Ask HN: Share your favorite YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft

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Re: Ask HN: Share your favorite YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft

#42
post #37
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any suggestions for channels that are good for beginner cooks? I just got my first job in a new city and realized I have no idea how to cook anything other than eggs & chicken

Adam Ragusea is a goldmine of well explained recipes that you could actually cook on a regular basis, even for things like weeknight meals. He tends to emphasize understanding and intuition and using your senses over exact measurement, this is how people are able to cook quickly and with lower mental overhead. Often you have to measure the first time you make a dish to get calibrated, and then can just wing it after…

Yes, this.

Adam loves to go into various details and explanations along the way. I'll even see comments from experienced cooks saying they learned something new.

Just one exception to this comment, I've found weight ratios to be very important when baking. Recipes that go by weight tend to be of much higher precision and overall quality.

Lastly, as a beginner, don't be afraid to get things really hot! As long as you don't see smoke (especially from oil, oil should never release any smoke), heat is your friend. I ditched nonstick for stainless, using heavy fats/oil (ghee, tallow, olive oil) + high heat — and never looked back. And don't forget, even as Adam would say, better ingredients make for better results!

Re: Ask HN: Share your favorite YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft

#43

Phil's Lab is a really detailed channel covering multilayer PCB design skills. He shares a lot of nuance that would be gained only through years of trial/error or an apprenticeship. https://youtube.com/@PhilsLab

Love watching PhilsLab - I dabble a bit with PCB design on my own YouTube channel and the difference between an amateur tinkerer (me) and someone who is an expert in it is amazing.

Re: Ask HN: Share your favorite YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft

#44
Rick Beato, being an industry professional and former professor, is someone I trust to teach music theory. https://www.youtube.com/@RickBeato/playlists

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned 3Blue1Brown yet, who is perhaps the single most influential figure in popular mathematics today. https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown

Re: Ask HN: Share your favorite YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft

#45
SuperfastMatt: https://www.youtube.com/c/superfastmatt

Ex-Tesla/Apple automotive engineer who manages to make the realm of working on your own car seem less daunting, with a nice side of witty humor. I love his videos - he has a video series where he's currently fitting a Tesla powertrain into a 70-year old Jaguar, which I find somewhat amusing.

Re: Ask HN: Share your favorite YouTube channels focused on mastering a skill/craft

#49
post #33

I have a number to share, maybe not all quite perfecting craft, but enjoyable for me! I did try narrowing to ones a bit more relating to learning or improving skills. Sustainable Gardening, Self Sufficient Me General cooking, Adam Ragusea Seafood Cooking, Kimagure Cook Chocolate mastery (demonstrations), Amaury Guichon 3D Printing Tips, Teaching Tech & CNC Kitchen Everything Coffee Related, James Hoffman

Do you have any suggestions for channels that are good for beginner cooks? I just got my first job in a new city and realized I have no idea how to cook anything other than eggs & chicken

j-kenji lopez-alt is great for beginners and experienced cooks alike. very science forward into the why and he generally shows you how to cook what he's going to eat for dinner. https://www.youtube.com/@JKenjiLopezAlt

helen rennie is a cooking teacher and is also good but the recipes can shuffle from esoteric to mundane so you have to pick and choose. https://www.youtube.com/c/helenrennie/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@EthanChlebowski is a solid and practical channel to pick and choose from. though the more recent videos are more of a deep dive into the science. the older videos are more about single recipes with some tangents on technique.

finally pro home cooks is a more beginner friendly format generally https://www.youtube.com/@ProHomeCooks

as an addendum:

serious eats and americas test kitchen are good reliable recipe factories but require a lot more steps and effort generally. but at the end of them you will have a very well tested and usually tasty dish. so once you have your chops from the above you can branch out a bit with some more complicated dishes.

avoid any of the big recipe aggregators as they are so low quality recipes that aren't worth your time. all recipes etc.

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