J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer

Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by sondr3 on Friday June 11, 2021 @06:55PM (#27479503)

I agree with you in that I prefer written material most of the time, but for food I actually prefer video over text. Mostly because it allows me to see and get a feel for the workflow, the timings and such that are impossible to get across from just a recipe. Especially for baking videos have been great because when it says “should be tacky to the touch but not sticky” it’s always “how sticky is sticky, what is tacky, how do I know what it feels like etc” and seeing a baker doing it helps immensely. Once I’ve gotten a good grasp for the process though I far prefer using a recipe.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by ethbr0 on Friday June 11, 2021 @08:02PM (#27479998)

Watched for the first time just now. I love the PoV videos! It's really helpful to see just what the hands are doing, and no cuts.

The biggest gaps in written IMHO tend to be (a) things people do but don't realize they do, (b) things people do but assume everyone else already knows, (c) things people do more efficiently but don't think to mention (obvious example: use a cook time break to clean prep-ware).

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by glogla on Saturday June 12, 2021 @05:05AM (#27482936)

I have learned SO MUCH about effective kitchen workflow and organization from those PoV videos. It's a completely different kettle of fish than the fancy videos where you just see conveniently pre-cut stuff falling into a pot.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by ryando on Saturday June 12, 2021 @06:02AM (#27483221)

Those videos completely changed the way I drain pasta noodles, from dumping them into a strainer over the sink and losing all the starchy water to scooping them out with a spider and dropping them directly into the saucepan. Seriously upped my pasta game.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by rootusrootus on Friday June 11, 2021 @08:07PM (#27480029)

> I love the PoV videos!

I would much prefer a stable camera video. The PoV videos are unwatchable for me unless I take dramamine.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by jasonwatkinspdx on Friday June 11, 2021 @11:27PM (#27481241)

Do you think using one of the newer action style cameras that does horizon leveling would help?

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by kenjilopezalt on Saturday June 12, 2021 @03:38AM (#27482454)

I use a gopro 9 with the strongest stabilization setting. I haven’t tried horizon leveling yet but that’s a good idea to test.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by jasonwatkinspdx on Saturday June 12, 2021 @03:51AM (#27482516)

You continue to impress me with how you take what you do and your values so seriously. I honestly made the comment above with the intent to ping you with the suggestion after your current social media storm faded a touch. Thanks for teaching me how to feed myself better over the last few years.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by Gatsky on Saturday June 12, 2021 @07:37AM (#27483758)

Never ceases to amaze me who is on HN.

Thanks for all the steak science.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by zebrafruit on Saturday June 12, 2021 @12:27PM (#27485507)

Yeah this is a surprising one

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by rootusrootus on Saturday June 12, 2021 @12:44AM (#27481601)

Yep, anything that stabilizes the picture would help immensely. It's when the camera is panning around showing what he's looking at while my head is actually stationary that it triggers severe motion sickness.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by ethbr0 on Friday June 11, 2021 @08:12PM (#27480051)

Desktop, laptop, or mobile? I was watching on mobile, so had a stable reference for most of my field of view.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by bobf on Saturday June 12, 2021 @05:40AM (#27483108)

If you're interested in baking, I imagine you already know of Claire Saffitz - but if not, she was previously at Bon Appétit and now has a great YouTube channel on desserts/baking that your description of things like "tacky" vs "sticky" etc being more directly/usefully explained in a video context.

And yes, I 100% agree that Kenji has been an amazing culinary content creator, researcher, and resource for years. Look at his recipes and insights on turkey/prime rib/etc for holiday meals, noodles, cookies, and more as a few outstanding examples. He reminds me a lot of many of the best things about Alton Brown and Jacques Pépin - a scientifically/analytically fussy approach to cooking and baking, but in the right ways - not in the "fussiness without usefulness" (or without useful explanation, at least) route that many chefs take.

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Re:J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food i... by jghn on Friday June 11, 2021 @07:02PM (#27479548)

Fair point. If there's a new-to-me technique or something else tricky I 100% agree. As in sometimes I have the opposite complaint where even reading a recipe it's still unclear what I should be doing. For instance there are times when I finally see a recipe made on Americas Test Kitchen/Milk Street/etc I realize I've been doing it wrong.

I suppose what I'm saying is I want the text recipe first, and perhaps the video. From what I've seen on the Youtube channel the video is provided and sometimes the written recipe.

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