By Brooke Rees | Staff Writer
Scrolling through my YouTube recommended page, I’m struck by the amount of content related solely to food. Want to watch someone make a giant burger? There’s a video for that. Ever wondered all the ways (and I mean all) you could cook an egg? YouTube’s got you covered. The range of videos is astronomical, with channels devoted entirely to recreating foods from your favorite video games (Nerdy Nummies) or watching someone struggle to cook while intoxicated (My Drunk Kitchen).
While I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a “foodie” or “food-blogger” (I have yet to master the art of food styling for Instagram. This is the only thing holding me back), I’m definitely eating this content up. Pun absolutely intended. And I’m not the only one. Food related channels like Buzzfeed’s Tasty and Bon Appetit garner millions of views each month. According to Social Blade, Bon Appetit alone has brought in over 77 million views in the last 30 days. Move over cat videos, there’s a new sheriff in town and they know how to make the perfect scrambled egg. So, what’s driving this sudden uptick in viewership, and who is the audience? One source reports that 71 percent of the viewers are between 18 to 34 years old. This means that millennials, and whatever the heck we call our generation, make up the bulk of the viewership. That’s not necessarily groundbreaking news. This age range already consumes a ton of digital content for entertainment purposes, in contrast to older age groups who use YouTube, but in very different ways. For example, I finally taught my parents how to access YouTube (and use tabs, can you imagine a life without tabs?), but they are not using it as a form of anxiety-fueled-procrastination-entertainment like I do. My dad watches tutorials on fixing cars (cause he’s a man) and my mom uses it for music.
So why does our generation find food videos so appealing? Several sources imagine that YouTube food videos offer practical tutorials for those seeking to advance their skills. While I think that makes sense for channels like Bon Appetit, I rarely find myself in need of crafting a 3-foot slice of pizza like that found on Buzzfeed Tasty, lest of course my friend Hagrid shows up for dinner. What’s much more likely driving these views, in my opinion, is simple: star power, baby. Using Bon Appetit as a case study, viewership is driven by their ability to bring in “traditional” celebrities from the film, art, and music world for their “Back to Back Chef” series, but they also create celebrities out of their own professional chef hosts. I find myself watching these videos far more for the chef’s unique and marketable personalities than for the actual food they create. Personally, I am a Claire Saffitz stan through and through.
Bon Appetit’s series strategy is genius, allowing each chef to show off their unique strengths and quirks. For instance, in “Reverse Engineering”, chef Chris Morocco uses his super tasting abilities to recreate an entire dish only from taste. As mentioned before, my babe Claire Saffitz hosts the hugely popular series “Gourmet Makes” in which she recreates popular snack and candy items. The difficulty of Claire’s series (what devilish magic makes PopRocks?) builds a sense of community amongst the subscribers, allowing us to all root for Claire’s success while remaining in awe of her type-A brain. The bingeing potential on a platform like YouTube creates overnight super fans, and this popularity in turn allows these “YouTube famous” chefs to also occupy spaces usually reserved for traditional celebrities. For instance, Claire was recently featured on an episode of Jimmy Fallon and several chefs answered “Ellen’s Burning Questions”.
In short, I am a fan of YouTube Food videos and if anyone wants to buy me a strangely overpriced Bon Appetit apron, I will not refuse. My next main question: Are those recipes actually any good? Over the course of my winter break, I set out to test the test kitchen, and let me tell you, it did not disappoint.
Let me preface by saying I am not at all a professional chef, but after watching so many videos I feel I could at least do as well as Remy from Ratatouille. I mean, he was a rat, and I am a human with opposable thumbs and a slightly better hygiene routine. That being said, I took my winter break to forge into this territory of untold adulthood skills and start using my kitchen more. I had cooked previously, but usually with my mom close at hand and never at school. After a close call with a popcorn bag freshman year I have an unreasonable fear of setting off the dorm fire alarm and having to do a walk of shame like Cersei. Don’t worry, I am not currently seeking therapy for this problem. The first recipe to tackle: Claire’s cherry cobbler.
This was hands down the most delicious dessert I have ever baked and ever consumed. I decided to go with the cherry cobbler, because besides making the actual biscuit topping, making a pie filling was not all that unfamiliar. For some reason, I also decided to be a cherry purist and use only fresh cherries instead of the ready-to-go frozen ones. This, dear reader, was both a mistake and also totally worth it. After two hours of de-pitting cherries by hand, even if the cobbler turned out absolutely sucking, I would still have sworn it was amazing (and it was, I swear). I did not have a cherry pitter, but instead used a technique in which you shove a metal straw (a win for turtles!) through the cherry and it plucks the pit right out. By the end of this process, my hands were stained red and Lady Macbeth would have had a fit at the sight of them. The rest of the dish was fairly simple, and I discovered that it’s surprisingly easy to make sweet biscuits. After a few hours of prep work and another hour in the oven, the moment of truth had arrived. Paired with Claire’s suggestion of vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream, that first bite was heavenly. The chunky sugar and savory bite from the biscuits added such a nice textural element and combined well with the amazing cherry/almond flavor. I was in love! I will definitely be taking orders to make this cobbler for anyone interested, but I will also definitely charge a lot. College is expensive, especially if I accidentally burn down the place.