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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by scotu on Friday June 11, 2021 @06:28PM (#27479259)
I sincerely think you missed the last 3+ years of anything he did (I don't know how he used to communicate before) because if there is one thing I cannot say of him is that he's a food snob.

He is opinionated, but explains why he does things (often offering a scientific reasoning/experiment), especially if he's not following the traditional way, he seems to give context on what would be more traditional, and is quick in communicating "but you do you"...

Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by prpl on Friday June 11, 2021 @06:42PM (#27479411)
You are right, I stopped caring around that time (~3 years ago). That said, the science explanations are occasionally wrong.

If you like science of cooking you might enjoy Cooking Issues/Dave Arnold quite a bit more. I generally prefer Dave's cut of the jib.

Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by tptacek on Friday June 11, 2021 @07:43PM (#27479875)
Dave Arnold is amazing and is probably a better HN food follow than Kenji (they're both great, but Arnold is distinctively HN-y, and also a truly idiosyncratic character.)

But Dave Arnold's slogan is "you're an enemy of quality", a title you can obtain by doing almost anything differently than he might, including not precisely measuring the displacement of ice and water before mixing a G&T. He calls things "garbage products" all the time. He is far, far more opinionated than Kenji is.

If Dave's opinionated demeanor isn't a problem for you, then opinionation (is that a word?) isn't really your problem with Kenji.

I highly, highly, highly recommend Arnold's book, Liquid Intelligence.

Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by dadrian on Saturday June 12, 2021 @04:42PM (#27487292)
I like Dave Arnold’s “Liquid Intelligence”, but I cannot stand his podcast. Comically, I don’t really like Kenji / Serious Eat’s written content, but his YouTube channel is great.
Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by prpl on Friday June 11, 2021 @08:45PM (#27480258)
Dave is 95% theatrics (faux shock jockey?) and usually those are around technique (though sometimes a food is inseparable from technique) so maybe I am more forgiving in that scenario.

Cooking Issues is fundamentally a podcast about failures and attempts first and foremost, so it tends to skew a bit more towards scientific method I suppose.

Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by tptacek on Friday June 11, 2021 @08:55PM (#27480323)
Respectfully, I think you're wrong about this. Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ZsYUPkXQ8

Skip to around 13:30, at the marker "Hose discussion becomes rant" (I assume Nastassia wrote that). He's not kidding. (He's often kidding about "enemy of quality", but sometimes he isn't, and it's a far blunter thing to say than anything Kenji has said.)

I love him so much.

Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by scotu on Friday June 11, 2021 @07:18PM (#27479677)
> the science explanations are occasionally wrong

what science isn't :)

I'll take a look at your recommendation, thanks