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Let
YouTube take you to culinary school
July 1, 2009
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Have
you dreamed about going to culinary school?
Or, are the in-laws dropping in for dinner and you want to
know – quick! – how to make one of their favorite
dishes?
Technology now makes it possible to get cooking lessons from
the pros – for free – without even leaving your
home. How? Think YouTube.
YouTube is an online video sharing site where people can post
their homemade videos for anyone else to see. Commercial businesses
can also post videos promoting a service or product, but most
of the videos you’ll find on this site were contributed
by people like you and me.
YouTube costs nothing to use, but you have to create an account
to be able to post videos. Anyone can view the videos –
for free – without being a member.
Cooking videos are typically short – one to two minutes
– though some may run as long as ten minutes. Like “on
demand” movies, you can watch and learn whenever you
have some time to spare.
Look on as Wolfgang Puck prepares a shrimp pizza or a non-celebrity,
expert cook demonstrates how to make Cuban black bean soup
using a food processor.
To start, pick a topic you want to learn about or a recipe
you would like to watch somebody make. At the YouTube web
site (www.youtube.com),
plug the key words into the search field.
A quick search of “Baked Alaska” turned up 25
videos. A search of “how to chop an onion” yielded
30 videos.
A search of “how to make lentil soup” turned up
84 videos.
Entering fewer words in the search field will yield more results.
Simply entering the words “chop onion” without
quote marks yielded 723 video links, including many recipes
in which chopped onion was a prominent ingredient.
Spending some time on YouTube can be a quick and convenient
way to learn basic cooking skills. View YouTube videos and
pick up tips for using equipment such as juicers, food processors,
slow cookers and woks, or watch techniques being demonstrated
such as cutting with a paring knife or sautéing vegetables.
Be aware that some commercial businesses place cooking videos
on YouTube to promote their products – knives, pots
and pans and the like. Factor that in when the guest chef
mentions the brand name of the piece of equipment she’s
using.
Seeing someone else work in the kitchen isn’t a substitute
for getting hands-on experience yourself, but having the techniques
demonstrated can be a big help. Watch three or four videos
to see how different people may use slightly different techniques
to slice a mango or operate a pressure cooker.
The approach works.
Several years ago, a young family member of mine landed an
opportunity to spend a few weeks cooking meals for guests
on a chartered sailboat in the Caribbean. With little prior
experience and only two weeks’ notice, she did what
any resourceful college student would do: She turned to YouTube.
She made a list of meals she wanted to learn to make and took
careful notes while watching experts make them
Was she successful?
Let’s just say she’s gliding along somewhere in
the British Virgin Islands right now, earning extra cash before
she starts graduate school in the fall.
Suzanne
Havala Hobbs is a licensed, registered dietitian and clinical
associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and
Management and the Department of Nutrition in the UNC Gillings
School of Global Public Health. Send questions and comments
to suzanne@onthetable.net.
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