what we’re watching, reading, and listening to during quarantine
Written by: BITE staff members and contributors
Illustration by: Claire Oh
DISCLAIMER: In light of the recent reports and public black-lash against Bon Appetit’s systemic racism and unfair treatment of its BIPOC employees, the BITE team no longer supports Bon Appetit or its sister food website, Epicurious. However, we are keeping this article up to honor the other wonderful sources our generous writers have provided.
During this period of self-quarantine, we’re finding ourselves with more time to dive deeper into our love for food and food media. If you’ve exhausted your go-to sources, here are some of our favorite sites, books, blogs, Youtube channels and podcasts that we think are worth exploring. Happy food-ing!
Kate KaplinAt the moment my favorite recipe source is an old but solid one – the New York Times. I have been using almost exclusively their recipes to cook for my family every night. Also, Gabrielle Hamilton has an amazing article on the effect of the COVID-19 shutdowns in the times which is a great read. Finally, the Bon Appétit youtube channel is my comfort food. It always makes me feel better after watching.
Alex WangJ. Kenji López-Alt: This guy is a real cook’s cook. Unlike a lot of cooking Youtubers, he’s got a pretty legit resume, from working at Serious Eats to writing a James Beard Foundation Award-winning cookbook, to running his own restaurant. If you want to learn how to become a better home cook, this is your guy. He’s famous for his POV recipes where he straps a GoPro on his head so you can see every single thing he does. And what he does are all the little things that separate amateur cooks from professional cooks: from workflow tricks that make your cooking and cleanup time a minute or two shorter, to subtle little food science details that are the answer to why great restaurant food tastes still tastes different from great home cooking. My favorite playlist of his is Late Night eats, where he throws together mouthwatering cheat food out of random things lying in his fridge.
Cocktail Chemistry Youtube Channel: Nick is the Binging with Babish of cocktails. That’s probably the best and only way to really describe him.
How to Drink Youtube Channel: I say this without a glimmer of hyperbole: Greg Titian is probably the most entertaining and charismatic host of any channel on Youtube. Like Binging with Babish or Cocktail Chemistry, he makes cocktails from movies, TV shows, or video games. The difference, though, is that Greg is also a film buff, and uses his videos as an opportunity to share trivia or delve deeper into the stories behind both pop culture and classic cocktails. But don’t let that fool you into thinking he’s a bartending slouch. He’s got an almost encyclopedic knowledge of spirits born from his and his team’s meticulous research, and he has a unique gift for knowing how to spin seemingly disparate ingredients into perfectly balanced libations.
Alex (formerly known as Alex French Guy Cooking) Youtube Channel: This guy is a kooky Gallic mad-scientist of cooking. Most of his videos involve making things from scratch, but the word scratch has a different meaning to Alex than other amateur cooks. His attention to detail runs far deeper than any other YouTuber, so deep that I sometimes wonder if it borders on obsessive-compulsive behavior. Making Pizza Margherita from scratch? Alex devised a way to make buffalo-milk mozzarella at home. Making custom-molded chocolate bars? Not quite enough; try grinding your own cacao nibs. But he doesn’t just make food from scratch. He’s a carpenter and programmer, so many of his videos involve building his own tools, notably a 3D-printed croissant roller, a device to make perfectly spherical meatballs (a harder engineering challenge than it seems), and a professional-grade pasta machine that he later took to market.
“How to Cook from Tokyo’s Vending Machines” by Munchies: This is the single greatest food-related video ever made. It really speaks to me about what being a student at UChicago is like.
Claire SchultzI've been really into the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (I would die for Claire Saffitz, and that can go on record) and the related Meme Appetit/Out of Context BA Test Kitchen Instagram & Twitter pages. I've also been relying on the Epicurious and New York Times Cooking apps a lot to keep me going and mix up the repetitive quarantine dinner routine (the recent Alison Roman drama has put a bit of a damper on things; I make a lot of her recipes like any good twenty-something chef, so it's a shame). My sister has been taking an online bartending course, so there's been a lot of cocktails in the house, too. And, as always, I'm long overdue for a Great British Bake Off rewatch to remind myself of some simpler, more comforting times.
Olivia XiongSeriousEats.com (J. Kenji López-Alt and Stella Park (BraveTart)) is probably my number 1 go-to site. LOVE LOVE LOVE the crispy potatoes recipe that is on there. I make it way more than I probably should, but it’s also definitely a great recipe for dinner parties. Stella Park is amazing for pastry recipes, and her cookbook BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts is … iconic.
ChefSteps is an old favorite, though I haven’t really been keeping up with them recently. They’re based at Pike Place Market in Seattle, WA, and you can visit their kitchen (or could pre-COVID) there. They focus a lot on molecular gastronomy and experimental cooking and have pretty great and thorough guides on specific techniques.
My favorite book is On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. McGee breaks down the history and usages of milk, eggs, meat, vegetables, fruits, spices, etc. It’s basically a really nice dictionary that talks about the best way to cook things and why we approach certain methods with particular techniques/how they achieve a given result.
Melanie Wang Liziqi Youtube Channel: Everyone should SO check her out; all of her content is so incredible and soothing to watch. It really feels like you're connecting with food and nature in such a real way that is so different from the processed videos we are used to seeing on social media. Her videos just bring such a sense of calm and satisfaction and warmth that is so peaceful during these crazy times
Margot Young “The Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow” NY Times article: This article from the NYT probably wouldn’t be described by most people as fun or a particularly thrilling read, but it is very informative, especially given the current state of grocery shopping and food prep. Now, as someone who smells (and then forces someone else to smell) every dairy product I take out of the fridge, I would call this a fun read. This article would be extra helpful for people who aren’t super comfortable with making their own food, and it also explains a bit of the science behind why certain foods go bad.
Salt Fat Acid Heat Netflix series: If you haven’t watched Salt Fat Acid Heat and you want some food-based joy in your life (so... all of us?), I cannot recommend this show highly enough. In each episode of the series, Samin Nosrat, whose soul must be made of sunshine and olive oil, explains one of the four essential components of good food (bet you can’t guess what they are). This show has serious Chef’s Table-worthy cinematography, food from around the world, and the most lovable narrator I’ve seen to date. It’s the feel-good food series that everyone needs.
Ingredient by Ali Bouzari: This book is the holy grail of food science nerdiness. It explains why things taste good, how to make them taste better, and how to combine flavors. If you need an endorsement: the CIA (the culinary school, not that CIA) uses it as a textbook in their early-level classes. If that sounds super boring: I’ve been told it’s the one textbook that basically everyone enjoys.
Bon Appétit and Epicurious: We all know and love the Bon Appétit test kitchen videos, but they’re only a small part of what Bon Appétit and Epicurious (BA’s sister website) have to offer. Both sites turn out incredible articles and essays on all things food-related and food-adjacent. If you don’t want to spend the time digging through their websites, you can sign up for their email lists to get daily highlighted selections of articles and recipes. Their emails are by far my favorite ones to open every day.
Evan Williams My food media has been focused solely on the restaurants I frequented during high school. I follow #stlfood and if I’m feeling especially foolish, I’ll scroll through posts of waffle and ice cream sandwiches from Boardwalk, boxes of Strange Donuts, and scrumptious vegan Vietnamese food. It’s like being homesick at home.
Shyn Ru Looi Half Baked Harvest: Tieghan Gerard is a self-taught home cook who applies her own twists to simple and quick meals and desserts.
Hannah Chia: Hannah also is a self-taught home cook who strives to introduce veganized Asian dishes. She is currently in Taipei taking on a culinary course and working on her new cookbook which will focus on vegan Chinese dishes.
Thalia Ho: Thalia is an extremely artistic person. This is illustrated in her photography, recipes, and her Instagram posts, for that matter. She stresses a lot on aesthetics but her recipes are some of the best ones out there that are unique and incredibly tasty.
Buttermilk Pantry: Sara is a self-taught part-time baker and cook. Outside of her 9-5 job, she develops recipes and almost always puts a twist on classic recipes. Her IG stories always detail the process that she is involved in as well as the technicalities/science of baking.
Cameron BernsteinThe Forverts (A Yiddish newspaper) has a YouTube series called “Eat in Good Health.” It's a super homey (haimish/הײמיש) cooking show production filmed in Yiddish, with English subtitles for non-Yiddish speakers. A lot of the recipes are traditional Ashkenazi Jewish recipes coming from די אַלטע הײם / di alte haim / the old home a.k.a. Eastern Europe, many are foods one might make for the holidays in an Ashkenazi family, but they cook foods from other Jewish and non-Jewish cultures from around the world. As a Yiddish language learner, it's awesome to have this series available. It inspired my final project for class, where I translated my mom's pancit recipe with a short little story at the beginning a la internet recipe blogger, but in Yiddish.
Maya Osman-KrinskyAlimentum Journal is a little on the older side but is a literary magazine dedicated to food. There are beautiful essays that wax poetic about particular culinary experiences, poetry about traveling for culinary experiences, book reviews and recipe poems, as well as a news page and an art gallery.
Food Tank is a think tank dedicated to food systems, agriculture, and sustainability. It's a great resource for knowing what's going on in the food world on the ingredient-production side of things. Right now, there's a lot of content on how to support farmers through the pandemic, how to fight food waste when we're all cooking a lot more at home, and the goings-on around food policy at the moment. I'll be writing for them this summer, so keep an eye out!
Paige ResnickMaangchi: This woman makes me feel good when nothing else can. She is simultaneously sweet and impressively daring; wielding a massive knife like nobody's business as she slashes through four heads of Napa cabbage all while grinning ear to ear at the camera. I think a lot of people watch her youtube videos just for the entertainment value without actually making the recipes, but that would be a mistake. I used her recipe for kimchi and got some seriously fire results. Perfect ferment-y goodness. Her Korean fried chicken is also to die for.
Brad and the rest of the Bon Appétit Gang: I will never apologize for my obsession with the BA Kitchen. Watching Brad in his home kitchen is even better, although it kind of seems like either he's losing his mind in quarantine or he's just super high (or both).
Consider the Oyster by M.F.K. Fischer: M.F.K. Fischer is the OG goddess of food writing; she's incredibly knowledgable while still being approachable, not to mention witty and quite poetic in her description of everything from livers to shallots. Consider the Oyster is a short collection of essay-like chapters all about those delicate, salty, slurp-worthy bivalves. I blew through it in a day and had a serious craving for a half dozen afterward.
Anything Ina Garten posts on Instagram: We do not deserve her.
Scrolling through pages upon pages on heirloom vegetable seed websites: I wouldn't call this food media per se, but it's definitely taken up a lot of my time in quarantine. High Mowing Seeds has been my go-to.
Alyce OhJoy the Baker: Joy Wilson is a blogger/business owner based in New Orleans and everything I aspire to be in life. Her photos? Beautiful. Her style? Immaculate. Her vibes? Inspiring. My favorite posts of hers (Let it be Sunday) admittedly aren’t food-related, but I’ve been introduced to some good music, news articles, and general musings through them. She also happens to have a whole IG page dedicated to putting Drake lyrics on cake. Like, this is what I mean. Joy decides to make whatever she wants a thing, and it becomes a thing. All hail the queen.
Bon Appétit Foodcast: Many others have already pledged their first-born child to BA, but I’ve got to admit that I’m a fan of their podcast.
Neflix’s Chef’s Table and PBS’s Mind of a Chef docuseries: Oldies but goodies. Chef’s Table has gorgeous cinematography (Margot Young agrees), while Mind of a Chef introduced me to the brilliant Gabrielle Hamilton (her memoir, Blood, Bones, and Butter, is a highly recommended read).
The Stew podcast: This podcast hasn’t been active in nearly two years, but it’s got a great archive of episodes that I’ll listen to when BA is slow with their content. The Stew is hosted by LA-based DJ, Jason Stewart, and his buddy, Andre Canaparo, and covers everything from LA restaurants and famous food personnel to weekend cooking projects. The podcast is informative yet approachable, and actually makes me feel like I live in LA (because I don’t go to these places in real life, and now I’m wondering why I don’t take advantage of the fact that I live near one of the greatest food cities on Earth). Following quarantine, I’m definitely making some of their recommendations a reality.