Why Are Recipes Written Like That?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มิ.ย. 2024
- Roses are red,
Recipes are long,
Let me show you why that's not necessarily wrong.
(self-sponsored by dinnerwithbarkley.com)
Vids mentioned during the homework segment:
How to Follow a Recipe: • How to (Actually) Foll...
How to Make an Internet Shaquille Video: • How to Make an Interne...
How to Make a Levitating Hot Dog Cooker: • How to Make a Levitati...
🔗 Social Links 🔗
Support on Patreon: / shaq
Hand-made Ceramic Dinnerware: dinnerwithbarkley.com
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Watch live streams: internetshaquille.com/twitch
0:00-1:46 - What even is a recipe?
1:46-3:02 - Why are recipes like that?
3:02-4:15 - Surprise pancake recipe
4:15-5:01 - How To vs How I
5:01-5:55 - The Misanthrope's Take
5:55- 7:11 - Beware of Overcorrection
7:11-8:11 - War of the Averages
8:11-8:49 - Homework
8:49-9:25 - Ad for Barkley - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
i substituted watching this with commenting before viewing, and it turned out terrible!
oops/
I substituted watching this for u following the channel. Turned out great.
😂 this comment got me
Nah, the algorithm saw your engagement and loved it, I'm sure :)
Same! Unsubscribed!
based floppy flapper lover, he's just like me fr
fr fr
real
fr no cap
Fr got to that part of the video and immediately went to like the comment I knew would be here
based floppy flapper lover, he's just like me fr
I can overlook the life story recipes as long as there's a "jump to recipe" button at the top.
There's a site called "just the recipe" iirc. It extracts the ingredients and steps from any page.
justtherecipe
I’ve come to enjoy “print recipe” even more, puts a stop to ads and pop-ups!
@@mattfanofcats3262so like what the “Show Reader” button is to online articles, i like it!
You're skipping over details about how the recipe writer committed 2nd degree murder before deciding they needed to make chicken noodle soup to calm their nerves.
My fellow spinach choppers:
1 cup chopped spinach: the amount of spinach outside of a cup, when chopped, fills 1 cup.
1 cup spinach, chopped: the amount of whole spinach that fits in a cup, is then chopped up.
I thought I knew the difference until I read your comment, and I now realize that I in fact did not lol.
ur so smart
My fellow spinach enjoyers. Just throw it in there, eyeball it, it'll be fine
This is why recipes should also (if not primarily) include weight. Then there's no difference.
@@beanbag_VEVO
Weight works when the goal is to write to someone how to receive an exact outcome - this is the goal of some recipes, but not all. So many classic, traditional recipes are a process that uses the things on hand to make a nice thing (that may turn out differently every time). When that's the case, I don't want weight or volume measure, I want the recipe to say - "the amount of zucchinis you have that need to be used, but not so many that you have more that will 1/3 fill the pot you're using".
What gets me are all the ads on recipe pages. I’m blind and use a screen reader, and most recipes have been impossible to follow- literally my screen reader is unable to follow text in a way that makes any sense. Such a shame that accessibility has been sacrificed.
Sounds like you could really use an add blocker then. I can highly recommend Mozilla Firefox with the uBlock Origin extension, or just the Brave browser has a block built in it. I personally haven't seen an add in ages, I believe it can really be a quality of life upgrade in your situation.
You may wish to pay for well-made recipe sites like ATK or NYT. They’re much better than blogs, and supported by subscribers instead of ads
That's bananas! You should be able to find and follow recipes too.
Some of the sites are barely legible if you can see! Between the constant ads, a video player showing 5 second clips of a different recipe, and a newsletter subscription box, there's no room for the recipe.
If you are on a apple device, there’s a button you can press for a so called “reader mode”, which may help. If you aren’t, there is likely an alternative that I don’t know
If you're on desktop, get an ad blocker.
this is the nicest way of telling people that not everything is about them. thank you
idk if it worked when so many comments are some version of "here's the ACTUAL solution, according to my own priorities and lived experience" 😅
@@internetshaquille LEVITATING HOT DOGS???? ITS LEVITATING ANDDDD COOKING???????
Ok, but how does this relate to me tho?
But the people who think it's all about them are the people who insist on making me scroll past a bunch of SEO spamming about how their dead grandma taught them how to make a peach cobbler or whatever.
@@VantazDo you think there's a difference between the writer's "my own website, which I pay for the hosting and maintenance of and develop the recipes for (using my own ingredients) and write the content for, is all about me" and the reader's "this random strangers website, which I am accessing for free, should be built around my needs and preferences"?
I blame google for the enshittification of recipe websites. They reward recipe websites designed to expose you to as many ads as possible. Thank you for another excellent video.
Because websites wouldn't have ads if google didn't exist...
@@aolson1111 And your point is? Google is the largest advertisement service platform and search engine in the world by far. Google has a level of power and control they have over how sites look and feel because these sites want to show up at the top of Google's search list. No other search engine has that level of power.
Throw Meta into the mix and that's more than 50% of the market share of advertising with just 2 companies that covers what most people do online.
It's not about advertisements existing in the first place, it's the almost pure monopoly that Google has over how advertising on the internet works.
@@aolson1111I'm sure they would, but Google is like 90% of all internet ads. They're not a search engine or email or video hosting company or a phone company. They're an advertising company, and all those other things are just to harvest your data so they can sell you more shit.
@@aolson1111They would obviously, you know for a fact they aren't implying this. Most people know that Google has been worse with prioritisation of pages that can generate as much AdSense as possible, of course Google isn't the only company that's greedy, they are just pointing out how they are getting worse with it.
You chose to read this comment as uncharitably as possible
@@aolson1111Google runs the biggest online ad spamming service and encourages the entire web to spam ads with SEO. I would argue there would be a significant and noticeable difference without google being involved.
from personal experience, I can 1000% say with confidence that one of the main reasons I feel capable in a kitchen setting today is thanks to the deeply parasocial relationship the Bon Appetit test kitchen fostered with its audience from like 2018-2020. I watched every single long-winded and personality-driven video and learned a lot about cooking intuition as well as technique as a result! I think it's easy to dunk on mommy bloggers for doing basically the exact same thing but that weird sort of teacher-student bond and contextual information is really valuable, we just notice it less in a video format because it feels more expected of the medium. But they're essentially serving the same function, for two different demographics
To me the difference is more like First We Feast vs Bon Appetite. BA’s main component is still recipe development - the rest is the cohesion and trust you build with the developers. First we Feast however, is content first that is food related. When people complain about the mommy blogger “recipe developers”, they’re doing so because they’re expecting BA, but finding First We Feast. They both absolutely have their place, but if you’re looking for a recipe, you don’t want to stumble upon one of their competition shows - because while it may have a recipe, that’s not the point of the video.
I came here to see if anybody resonated with this feeling as well! i'm happy to see that not only did someone else, but at least a few!
(i dunno if i agree with the replier above me)
Me too 🥹🥹 I wonder if there’s a whole “class” of us out there whose cooking journey began with BA in those short pre-pandemic years 🥹🥹
@@ShynyMagikarp Why not? It’s basically different genres of recipe content. The breakdown or blame isn’t on any particular party. It’s in the communication of the product. Viewers should better understand which recipe content THEY want to avoid, and recipe writers might want to better consider the audience they’re writing to.
I feel the exact same way, back before... everything was revealed behind the scenes, there was so much I learned about the art of cooking itself from there. I distinctly remember being in awe at how much each of them had to teach not only in videos, but in the magazine itself.
WOAH ITS A LEVITATING HOTDOG
mined..... BLONE
@@internetshaquille I completely lost all of the content of your video when that wiped my brain-RAM.
U nailed that shit fr, this is exactly how I feel about levitating hotdog content
Nighthawkinlight does heaps of wild stuff
Just like me fr fr!
I love cooking videos with recipes listed in the description. The visual medium is great because I can (for example) see how hydrated a dough is supposed to be, and the presenter can explain the reasoning behind steps that might sound weird without an in-depth explanation. Once I've watched the video, I can just write down the measurements and cooking times and temps on a post it note and cook the recipe from memory, technique, and my senses.
100%. I’ll watch the video to digest the workflow, get the context and ways to adapt the recipe, and then screenshot the written recipe to follow later, remembering little details from the video.
This FOR SURE. Written recipes are the most convenient while actually making a recipe, but having a visual is so helpful when making it for the first time or just to reference if you’re confused on a step.
And, yes, while pictures are much easier on the recipe-writer and can still be a helpful visual, it simply doesn’t compare to a moving video where you can see exactly what to do and how things look.
I love you Chef John from Food Wishes
You also have less of a chance of running into that thing where the photo on the recipe page is a stock photo of a different dish.
I relate to this video so much. I was a math teacher for eight years and am now the math director for a K-8 school, and so many people, kids and adults, still have the misconception that math and teaching math is just about memorizing the steps needed to solve different types of questions and then doing it over and over again until you get 100%. That's only one small part of mathematics, in the same way that spelling is only one small part of being a good writer. Math, writing, cooking, they're all about learning to problem solve and think in different ways.
teaching is so ez u just read the lesson plan and teach that
@@internetshaquille dude you're so right, I've been overthinking it all this time
The problem is that's how math is taught. Kids are talked-at on how to do a few basic things, given hundreds of repetitive examples for practice, and then homework and tests throw out all kinds of absurd curveballs that they simply weren't taught.
They do, but that's more or less the prerequisite for any sort of meaningful mathematical accomplishment. And yes, that is a small amount of math, but good luck to getting to any of the rest of it without doing so.
It's a long standing belief that that sort of memorization doesn't lead anywhere, but it's not true. Build up a large enough corpus of that sort of stuff and you gain the ability to improvise. Imagine having to reinvent the wheel each time. One of the big mistakes that teachers make is giving the students too many options too soon without having a good reason for it.
this is why video is such a good medium for recipes. the description can have a list of ingredients and some instructions, while the video itself covers a broader scope including substitutes, and the reasons for doing certain things.
chinese cooking demystified does a fantastic job of this. they know they're making videos for a western audience who doesn't have access to local chinese vegetables and stuff, so they'll say "traditionally this dish uses X, which is good because it provides Y and Z, but you can substitute with A or B or any similar thing"
Gaining intuition when cooking is one of those things where once you’ve done, it’s hard to communicate with someone who hasn’t. And when you’re the beginner, trying to develop it seems like an impossibly gargantuan task. Following step by step recipes helped me gain some confidence but developing any kind of intuition happened because of help from my mom, trial and error, and whatever the hell i did to get my very specific recommendation algorithm to end up here and similar channels.
But that doesn't change that cooking is that easy. He even said so in the video without realising it "you're eating a grilled cheese with cannes soup". Not a difficult thing to make. But it's a dish none the less.
There is endless skill in cooking and intuition is an important skill. But for a ton of recipes if you just stick to the recipe you will get a tasty meal. You could have done better by diverting a bit to make it to your own liking sure, but you don't have too.
I wish the steps included the measurements. So I don't have to scroll up at every step
You may benefit from preparing your mise en place before moving on to the steps
After I make a recipe a few times, I'll copy it to a Google doc and do exactly this: merge the measurements into the steps
The part that always gets me is the estimated time. Maybe i don't cook enough but it feels like I'm always lagging behind
They lie about times so you're more likely to use their recipe (therefore clicking on their site and giving them the revenue).
It's only if you have already memorized the recipe and don't need to pause to check the next step
Prep time is never included in recipes. Kind of a scam but also people take vastly different times to cut veggies.
The smugness of online recipe creation is insulting. It assumes that you don't need to take time to wash the dishes at the end and that you've been honing in on the recipe for as long as they have.
Of course it takes the tiktoker 15 minutes to make lunch. You spent the whole day working on the recipe, possibly a whole week.
I usually lag behind too and I'm a pretty experienced cook. a lot of it can depend on your specific stovetop (mine heats really slowly), the amount of space you have (less prep space means more breaks to tidy and free up counter space) and things like that, before even getting to stuff like how fast you are at chopping. Things come smoother when you log enough hours to really understand your own space, tools, and skills.
I substituted ground mystery meat for buttermilk in your flapjack recipe and it turned out terrible! It was just like a weird clumpy mix of flour and meat when I made the batter. I decided to add pickled jalapenos as well. I cooked it for 30 seconds on each side (which was hard as they fell apart) as you showed but they were definitely too raw to eat. What are you trying to kill me?! I topped with maple syrup and it was somewhat weird, I would recommend hot sauce for most.
Overall 4/10 recipe
NGL pancakes with bits of meat and pickled jalepeño in there sounds pretty nice. Like a bread stuffed with meat but less steps. Nice and savory with a slight sweetness.
Obvs you'd need to add the buttermilk or other liquid back in tho xD
Edit: missing words added
Keep your own recipe book folks (digital or physical), I copy the ingredient list and transcribe the method to my own style/equipment/potential substitutions.
This is a really good idea that I want to get back to. I kept one for a few years when I was vegan but I stopped and I’ve cooked so many good dishes since then that I’ve forgotten about and wish I remember
Shout-out to the app Paprika. Cross-platform, imports from whatever site you point it at (even YT descriptions), built-in "add to grocery list" features, and you can export a clean PDF when your guests ask for the recipe. 10/10
Paprika 3.0 is a great app for this. Don't know how I ever lived without it
@@Gesepp95I love paprika, especially the option to scale up/down recipe ingredients
This is the way.
Context and additional (helpful, relevant) information certainly has a place in a recipe, and you may be right that there's a risk in losing these benefits with an "overcorrection" from the current problem of SEO- and ad-revenue-driven recipe drivel that dominates the field. However, I think the BIGGER issue is how these often bloated, often irrelevant paragraphs ahead of a recipe have poisoned the well and caused readers to skip them entirely, regardless of their content. "Overcorrection" won't actually cause any loss if readers have learned to habitually skip all extraneous text already, and that's precisely what poorly written ad-bait recipes are training us to do.
I've definitely run into recipes where the introduction contained useful information, like an okonomiyaki recipe that explained the difference between the two main types (so readers could know this is Osaka-style not Hiroshima-style), the ingredients you'll have trouble finding in most of the US and where to find them/reasonable substitutes, cooking tips like "use two pans, or a griddle if you have one, to cut your cooking time in half," plus a list of alternative toppings because okonomiyaki, much like American pizza, can be served all types of ways so the toppings listed in the recipe are just a good starter. Those were definitely useful for me and I followed some of that advice as relevant. In particular the two pans are crucial.
I have also read recipe introductions that are just there to fill up a page, and those are the ones I dislike. Talk to me not at me, I guess.
Agreed! I found a recipe for a chai latte and it opened with details about the ingredients and prep that made replicating (and customizing) the drink a breeze. I LOVE additional information like that!
What I don't like is having to scroll through a 3-page life story that's completely irrelevant to the dish itself. Though I better understand the reasoning now, at least!
Just a tip if you are viewing a recipe on a site, if you click the print option right near the ingredients it’ll open a new, entirely ad free page with JUST the ingredients and instructions. I like to do this when I preview a recipe to see super quickly if it seems like something I think I could make :)
I do this!! Except some sites have gotten smart/greedy and started putting ads on the print page. 🥲
ok but that hot dog was really cool
Yea idk about all that other shit, but the hotdog? That was pretty neat.
I switched to physical recipe books because my mom had a ton and it’s really nice when you don’t smear oil or something on your phone screen. I’m aware I’m a messy cook thank you ❤
Before my boyfriend, I felt how the woman in the video did. I follow the recipe and get decent to good food, just do the exact steps with no deviations unless you know the recipe and you're golden. Then I watched him cook. He asked me for SO MUCH information about every step. It never even occurred to me to check how long something needed to be cooked for, I just cook it until it looks cooked. I didn't realize that my cooking intuition is a learned skill and I felt like I just followed recipes until I watched him and realized "the recipe doesn't say x but I know we'll like it more if we do it" or "the recipe includes y but we don't like y so I'll just not use it, or use z instead". He never learned how to cook and never really watched cooking happen, meanwhile I often helped and basically was always in the kitchen during cooking. It was hard to be empathetic at first because it's so frustrating to be asked all these questions when the answer to every single one is "I don't know, it's not necessary to know that" or "it'll just look right" or "check the recipe". I think many people with cooking intuition developed it young enough that they don't even realize it isn't innate, and can't understand people who can't cook. Things like "You BURNED pasta? How???" when someone just followed the box directions (heat and time listed, but no instruction to stir).
The aggressive brag while over-enunciating “Hawaii” 😂
The point about using the wall of text to sense check whether or not someone should be trusted to tell you how to make a food is such an insightful moment. I wish I hadn't known EXACTLY which (whose) carne adobada recipe you were talking about.
You have a super sincere, authentic, and down-to-earth personality. The video's editing, scripting and videography are fantastic, and you even have a great voice. Super high quality video and channel. Thank you!
I’m touched 🥲
I've never been bothered by the background context for a a recipe, and like you say the personal how and why can be very useful. My problem is with the tendency to include very long and often not very interesting or not very relevant backstory before the recipe. There are actually some food writers where I consistently read the backstory before cooking their stuff, and it's generally because they do a good job keeping that backstory concise and interesting (and I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of these writers have had some stuff published where they would be getting an editor looking over their stuff). It's also matters a lot why I'm looking for a recipe. Sometimes I'm being very deliberate when searching for a recipe and I want to consider all the information before using it, other times I might just be looking to quickly jog my memory about something simple because I'm tired and don't have a reference cookbook on hand that I could check.
yeah, that's the ACTUAL complaint with these recipes.
i don't have an issue with the Serious Eats of the world that go into detail about how a recipe was developed and why, but the vast *vast* majority of online recipes are just filled with blogspam
like,, people are complaining about the useless fluff. not just that there's an addition being made at all.
I am a food blog is one of my favorites for this. They focus on various Asian foods and their narrative portions explain the recipe development process and sometimes provide cultural context which is rly interesting and helps you understand what you’re doing and why
Internet Shaquille is the only underpaid online chef that i trust.
Who are the over paid chefs you trust?😂
Mans got their own business going and ads in every video, I'm sure he's paid fair and square.
This is like a quintessential NetShaq video-every single detail is just astonishingly well-done and aligned with the channel's ethos.
Call-outs of things I especially appreciated:
- incredibly natural delivery of a dense script
- the timing of the Barkley ad with the call-out of sticking ads in recipes (1:57)
- the witty poem in the description
- the addition of subtitles at the most key points to establish tension in the viewer's mind
- the visual details (inserted comments, recipe cards, clips, memes, etc.) that add valuable or humorous elaboration without requiring the watcher to comb through them. The viewer doesn't have to spend more than nine and-a-half minutes with this video to make their time well worth it, but for those of us who are still desperate to always "get the joke", it's all laid out right there for us to pause and enjoy
- the brilliant mistake: "I could not bring ourselves" in the red flag recipe intro (5:15)
- the pop quiz and homework that are fun but also valuable opportunities to learn or retrieve (and thereby reinforce) knowledge
Questions:
- did you make the pancake recipe thumbnails just for this video? If so, kudos for the commitment!
- thanks for embedding the pancake video you said you'd never release as its own video. I kind of want to try following that recipe purely out of spite for the thesis of that chapter. I do not have any reason to buy buttermilk and have it lying around, but.....ahhh, now in some twisted way, I want to! Side note: I do have buttermilk powder-in general for baking, do you think it's comparable?
Other Miscellaneous Comments:
- I've been casual viewer for a few years and a fan for a few months now, but for the first time ever in my history of watching TH-camrs ask for engagement, I toggled the notification bell in response to a mention of it in the video. Seems kind of backwards, but hey, it only worked on me this time because of the trust this channel merits (and maybe a little reverse psychology, who am I kidding?).
- I already watched "How to Make an Internet Shaquille Video" and "Critiquing Your Recipe Video Scripts" and am kind of wishing for more content in that style...even if it's a 'How I' video instead of a 'How To", I think that learning from your approach to instruction is massively useful. I don't aspire to be any sort of instructional designer, but the attention to detail and optimization that permeates your work is inspiring for other disciplines too.
I'm sure I left out a lot of details, but I just wanted to call a couple out and say thanks! This is the kind of video that makes me happy TH-cam is a thing.
Buy the buttermilk. Use the remainder to marinade a whole chicken like Samin Nosrat does. Find yourself buying buttermilk more often to make pancakes and chickens with.
My favorite solution to this I've seen on some websites is having tabs built into the site itself. The couple times I've seen this, there's been one tab for the recipe itself with minimal tips and supplementary context, and one tab for the recipe development and story which can give a bit more of the "human element" and also let the reader know how and why certain parts of the recipe (including those tips included) are the way they are, while including even more in-depth advice. I personally think a three-tab approach could work wonders: one for the recipe, one for more in-depth tips and the hows/whys, and one for the background story for the recipe (when I was 4, my grandmother...), if there is one.
Amen! Skip to recipe button is GREAT! If I want more context then I can scroll up.
@@PASH3227 Skip to recipe is also great, but having to scroll back and forth is irritating, imo. Having separate tabs, with links between them, is great because you can go back and forth without ever losing your place!
Where have you seen the tabs? I use lots of different cooking sites for recipes, but I've never seen that. It sounds awesome!
@@frcShoryuken I think Bon Appetit used to do it, but stopped. Either that or they only did it on recipes with extensive background/tips sections. There was another site that I saw did it once, but it was a single time I had just looked up a recipe for something, so I don't remember the site!
Skip to recipe but it skips to just above the recipe on an ad lmao
One shortcut I use for recipe sites is to check out the print friendly version. Sometimes they are formatted like a traditional recipe card rather than a web site.
When he talked about using leftover buttermilk on pancakes I realized I don’t know how to manage the things in my kitchen and I don’t know what the hell is in my fridge most of the time
The trick to buttermilk is just to ignore the expiration date. If it still smells good and there isn't visible mold in the bottle, it's still good eating. If it's separated, just shake it back together. That stuff lasts for weeks in the fridge, much longer lifetime than fresh milk. When I used buttermilk a lot I would never buy it from the store. Just buy the cheapest whole milk at the grocery store, add a few tablespoons of buttermilk, and leave it out on the counter until it smells good. Of course, you have to either buy buttermilk or bacterial cultures to get that process started, but after that first purchase you can cut the price by 4x by just making it yourself from what you already have.
Everybody starts somewhere. I believe in you!
@@tissuepaper9962 Is buttermilk that expensive over there? Here regular milk is maybe 0.95€ / litre, and butter milk 0.99€/L. Not much point to doing all that home chemistry to save 5 cents.
@@8xottox8 Where I shop buttermilk is $6-7 for a half gallon, and the most inexpensive whole milk is rarely more than $4 for a full gallon.
Separate from the buttermilk issue, knowing what's in the fridge can be a lot easier to keep track of with a small white board or two on the front, listing the stuff in it, and whatever else you might need to know - expiry dates, or goal-recipes or stars for 'eat first', or whatever works for you
unfathomably based floppy flapper enjoyer, I smashed that like button harder than I ladled a massive dollop of batter into my humongous pan 😤
Lol!
I bought a rereleased edition of American Cookery, and what I found most interesting about the recipe instructions is they are the kind of instructions that could (maybe) promote intuitive cooking - the "maybe" is because it leaves everyone so much room to fail, but it also leaves so much room for someone to riff on a recipe. There's so little instruction that I feel spoiled today being able to watch someone on TH-cam. On one hand it was kind of refreshing in its low-techness to see how people cooked way back in the day, on the other I know I would run to Serious Eats for the same recipes and never treat the book as anything more than a curiosity.
I've used recipes from that era, and it's pretty weird and funny when you tell people the recipe says to bake it at "medium" heat, or sometimes without any heat specified.
The issue is that people need the experience and knowledge to riff on a recipe. For example, using shallots vs onions or lettting onions soften vs caramelise and how that affects a dish.
I've only seen like one or two of your videos but through your approach and what you have to say you come across like one of the most genuine and reasonable creators I've seen in a long time. Kudos to you.
Based floppy flapper lover, he's just like me fr
Read this exactly as he said it 😂😂
@@Adammagrath1same!
One of the things I used to like the most about Good Eats was that it wasn't just a recipe, it was a recipe, a history of the food and an exploration of one or two key ingredients. That way you avoid one of the classic cooklet complaints (CCCs for short) that "I bought this ingredient for a specific recipe and now it just sits on my shelf" well now that I know what Gochujang is I can use the big tub of it when I'm cooking up ground beef for mealprep or whatever.
Also I'm not sure what the issue is with the first tik tok. I think she was reacting, somewhat exasperatedly, with people who refuse to learn a basic life skill that is both easy and free to learn.
Is it, though? It’s only free if you never fuck up and waste food, and it’s only easy if you have the time or you’re doing really beginner stuff and learning excruciatingly slowly
@@Brent-jj6qi Mistakes are just happy accidents, even if the happy accident it learning not to do a thing again or learning when to hold back. And if you don't want to waste food, guess you're eating it anyway.
@@lainiwakura1776 you can definitely fuck up food beyond the point of edibility
she can't cook either she said she can only follow recipes
@@Brent-jj6qi Fucking up food beyond edibility is alot more difficult than people try to present it as. Like you really need to understand how badly you need to burn, overseason, undercook, etc. for something to be completely unsalvageable, and you grow your skills as you go.
First time viewer and I loved your nuanced take on this. I expected this to be a reaction style video by a comedian dunking on annoying recipes, and instead got a well thought out video essay from someone clearly in the food influencer community, on a topic I've never thought too much about. Thanks!
Before I was definitely the Just Get To It type, just ingredients and steps, but then you try to make something less simple(baozi in my case, haven't played around with dough much even less the super simple Asian-style ones) and you realize just how valuable all that extra information, little tips and etc... truly are.
recipes
-life story
-life goals
-future plans
-ingredients
-steps
-tips
sites with "skip to recipe" are a god send.
This video reminded me of a Tekken 7 combo video i watched, where the streamer was given money to execute a difficult combo the viewer wasnt able to to and wanted to see if it was possible.
In Tekken there is a way to describe combos by way of naming the buttons used, a recipe so to speak. But of course the buttons correspond to movements the character makes and therefore its not simply pressing the right buttons that gives you the combo.
The streamer pointed out how theres always a little trick that goes missing, when writing down the combo. Learning combos, or recipes, is not only about memorizing the buttons, but also about finding that trick.
You know what I hate about recipes online? Buttercream recipes that don't say how large of a cake it'll cover. I made a 12 inch heart cake for a friend and I had to make the buttercream four times because it only said a serving size and not a typical yield.
Who makes buttercream for one serving?!?
Recipe websites are only really like that in the US(and some european websites, but the US ones are shameless). Looking through recipe websites from other countries(thank you google translate), I always found that basic info is at the top(recipe cook time, prep time, ect) followed by the ingredients, and then the steps for the recipe. Then following that is a section(usually collapsible too) with tips, substitutions, variations, additional things you can add, ect. This final section is usually where you would find things like recipe author's life story(usually way shorter there too). And then comments.
agreed. i think (just my opinion) it's the tradition of cooking blogs or cooking books written by one person, the chef persona, of having one person have recipes for every kind of food imaginable (or, more modestly, of a certain kind of dish). in that case yeah, you do need to have a unique recipe with a backstory in order to stand out from the rest, for the reader to associate it with you.
more often than not the best places to find recipes, in my experience, are sites where regular home cooks can share their own recipes, which tends to minimize the absurd ingredients and walls of text. most important stuff at the top: cook time, prep time, ingredients list, then recipe, in which they offer the context necessary without making it into a whole rigmarole: "i make this for my kids every day"; "this one takes some time and prep, but worth it for a big day"; "you can substitute x for y or z if you don't have it". and also they have actual simple recipes!! second your recommendation.
My favorite is Chinese recipe websites like Meishij and Xiachufang where half the ingredients in most recipes have their quantity listed as "Appropriate amount".
@@Default78334that’s the true Asian way of cooking, just add a bit of something until it feels right😀
I always have this experience when I try and find a recipe and think maybe the americans know what they're doing with it. I check out a few sites, get frustrated over the amount of text and how long its taking me to figure out where the actual recipe is/ingredient list. then go to a danish site and its all fine and easy to figure out. its such a whiplash in how different things are done. I have wondered if its because a lot of times I think recipe sharing culture online here has been done by amateur's on forums.
I'm transitioning into instructional design and your work is such an inspiration!
I love you and your instructional design. I’ve been paying more attention in videos to how you keep it information dense without hypercutting it. Thank you ❤
This was a great essay! I hope it's successful for your art and your channel so that you continue to make more like this. As a creator, it's so important to look at the comments through the lens of "stated preference vs revealed preference". As you said, just because some people complain about calls-to-action doesn't mean they don't work.
I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to recipe websites and blogs, like the pop up video that moves around the screen and is not even related to the recipe, or when they don't tell you the yield of the recipe (should i expect this to be 2 portions or 4), but honestly, i just always go to the "jump to recipe" button. If it's something I'm not at all familiar with, I'll read the whole thing (mostly when dough is involved). I always figured the posts were long because they have to have something to put ads in between and for SEO optimisation. What is helpful for me is looking at the review score, number of reviews, and comments.
I also almost never follow a recipe exactly, and i usually don't make the same dish exactly the same way, there are always some minor variations to them. I also like when there's a video, and i can see what the food is supposed to look like at different stages.
We make yoghurt regularly, so I usually sub whey for the buttermilk in pancakes.They come out extra light!
Recipe page structure for happy users and less ad money:
Short title.
Intro context paragraph no more than 3 sentences.
The step-by-step recipe with embedded citations in it, to a comments/notes section below. (This way, people have the context of the instructions to make sense of why the comment/note content matters).
After that, you can then blabble on away about how these scalloped potatoes saved your marriage, the tragedy of Darth Plageuis the Wise, etc.
Have you heard of the High Flapjacks?
Would _you_ take happy users over more ad money?
@@TasteOfButterflies Me personally? I'd take neither, as I don't have a recipe website lol.
Dumb answer aside, different businesses have different priorities, and there are many ways to manage information spaces to meet those priorities.
But IF I had a recipe site, I'd experiment as much as possible with making users happy and catering to a niche audience, in the hope of buiding a devout enough following that I could introduce minimal, targeted ads to that niche.
Because it's a targeted, devout audience with mininal ad space I would try to get advertisers that are willing to pay me a premium for exposure to that targeted audience (as it will likely be their own target market) and tailored to what that audience would likely want to see/use.
Successful TH-camrs do this with sponsors all the time. Ads and SEO don't have to always be at the expense of UX, if they're considered early in planning your branding and business plan.
How about you?
@@oz_jones Never, is that a website? I googled it and got lots of THC infused recipes lol
I feel like pioneer woman does this well.
I like Serious Eats, the intros are usually about interesting things pertaining to cooking the dish, and the recipes are always solid. As a beginner its very helpful
You make videos of the most creative topics. I love your channel!
You are such a refreshing voice. Thank you so much for taking the time to make and share this
“The -Pirate Code- recipe is more what you call guidelines than actual rules.”
On their own, recipes are generally not copyrightable. The additional writing/images around the recipe provides something for the writers to attach copyright to and provide a small bit of protection from their work just being wholesale copied and posted elsewhere.
I’m one of those learners who not only has to know WHY I’m doing something, but seeing it done helps a lot.
The notes section on ingredients above the recipe is usually chock full of needed and useful information.
I'm always amazed by your discourse. You're so concise i'm always in awe of your precision and clarity. As a lover of language and expression of the self I really enjoy your content ❤ love from argentina ❤
Nowadays I buy dry buttermilk powder (very similar to the milk powder you've referenced for improving browned butter). Great for pancakes, salad dressings, and other one-off uses where I won't use a whole bottle of the fresh stuff.
I think a medium amount of extra info is good, similar to a youtube video with a little history about the dish as they cook, or a written recipe with a little info to gauge if they know what they're talking about as Shaq mentioned, as long as it has a "skip to recipe" button.
unequivocally the best primer section for any recipes are the ones Sally's Baking Recipes writes. there's a bit of fluff... but 90% of it is pictures of the process, tips/notes for proper execution, a video (if it's a more popular recipe), recommendations for potential adaptations, recommendations of related recipes/pairings, suggested equipment (with proper affiliate disclosure when applicable), and more of her expertise on show. plus the quintessential "skip to recipe" button. but Sally doesn't write out info that isn't actually useful to readers, and I love that about her.
That’s why I love old home/recipe books.
Recipes are well written, structured and short. But if you are unsure how to swap things out, technical details, what a sirloin is, which mushrooms will assassinante you dinner date or different ways to fold the napkins for setting the table. It’s all there as well, but it doesn’t clutter the recipe.
They also keep the autobiography short and at the first/ last pages.
Ngl, I'm very happy to read about the background to a dish, the techniques used to make it, how they developed, even the author's personal experiences with that dish. What I'm not here for is a miles-long humble-brag about taking a yacht to Cancún were we had the most delectable tacos el fresco and you gotta believe me y'all, they were divine. So to start, we need some fresh fish. Just make sure you use fresh ingredients from whole foods, I had a bad case of the runs on our trip, probably because you just know those street vendors ain't washing their hands. Anyway, my father in law Joseph had the most wonderful anecdote about his time in the navy and since we were on a yacht, well, i just had to write it down so I could tell y'all right now. It all started in 1947 when...
How dare you make me watch a tiktok
I think you mean Vine
as though youtube shorts isnt worse
@@OsirusHandle Oh I fuckin hate short, reels, anything that copycat'd tiktok is objectively one of the worst formats of video Ive ever seen.
@@Mr6Sinner vine and snapchat were the ones that inspired the trend, especially vine
@@OsirusHandle Im specifically speaking to the vertical-only video and the insane choice to leave the UI visible while the video plays.
Not to mention the lack of a scrub bar.
You’re the best Shaq. Your videos warm my heart
I'd add that there can be a gulf of a difference in quality for the text before a recipe. Some place, such as Serious Eats, talk about how different ingredients, techniques or variables can impact the final recipe, which really helps me understand which parts of the recipe must be followed to a 't' and which ones I can sort of glance at as I whizz past.
And then there are also recipe sites where a clear majority of the text is rambling about anecdotes about a dishes history or how it emotionally impacted the author. I understand that, for some people, this might help build the parasocial relationship you mentioned but for me it's just a lot of noise getting in the way of me making the recipe. And if there is some useful information sprinkled into the anecdotes and reminicing, it's getting skipped with the rest of the noise.
based floppy flapper lover he's just like me fr
I feel called out on my freak behaviour
Recipe blogs also have the narrative sections without a "jump to recipe" button specifically to prevent bots from scraping their recipes and essentially stealing their work by reposting their recipes on other sites with their own ads
Mr. Shaquille, your videos are always so we written and a joy to watch. Thanks again.
(P.S. thank you so much for your pozole video. I impressed my date with that dish!)
Personally this is why I love videos like yours and Chinese Cooking Demystified. Both channels mix a bit of technique, ingredients, and context
That cynical sequence was REALLY cool to me. (I have no production background. I just thought it was cool.) The part where things you mentioned appeared as you said them -- really smooth and effective. You're doing a great job!
The number of times you simply replied "Knife" to the same question just reminds me I'm not cut out for viewer engagement lol. Thanks for helping me find some compassion for the recipe writers and cooking noobs
Yes, chef. Thank you, chef. As a career cook, I really dig your channel. I also really like watching other people cook. Good job.
based floppy flapper lover he's just like me fr (i saw the thumbnail and remembered i had leftover pancake batter in the fridge and i was munching on my own double stack of floppy flappers when 3:48 rolled around and i was validated in my personal sphere of maple-y deliciousness)
Thanks Shaq. I like how in the bread baking world, the recipe is never confused for its "formula" which is scrubbed of any notion of actual doing. Incidentally, my mother has never passed on any recipes to me since she insists she doesn't cook with them.
Great topic for a video. I don’t use cook books enough bc I’m such a TH-cam addict but I think they still reign supreme for people who like cooking. They’re clear, concise, easy and less messy to follow than referring to your phone. They also still seem to have better recipes than free ones online.
I'm really happy that your pottery biz is going well. Congrats!
The girl is right, even though it’s just a grilled cheese and canned soup some people claim they can’t even do that!
I mean, I used to know someone who nearly burned their apartment down trying to boil pasta coz they didn’t realize they needed to out water in the pot and just left the dehydrated spaghetti from a package in a pot over an open flame unsupervised for like 30 minutes, so I definitely believe some people can’t or at least shouldn’t cook. For safety reasons.
Edit: its worth noting this happened at least 3 separate times before they realized what was going wrong but only because someone TOLD THEM you need water to boil things. They also tried putting out a grease fire with water more than once. Also tried to cook soup in a can in the microwave IN THE UNOPENED CAN and put things wrapped in foil in there too. They never managed to figure anything out until explicitly told why what they were doing kept resulting in fire and not food.
Frankly the most amazing thing is how they managed to never hurt or end anyone or themself in the process. Bear in mind this was a whole entire adult. Like near 30. Not a kid, not a teen, not a college kid. A whole independent adult.
So yeah no some people definitely just are not cut out for it.
Find it in ur heart to empathize with other people’s limitations
Agree-she is definitely write. How hard is it to read directions? Like cmon
@@internetshaquille We both know "I'm bad at cooking" is the way some people convey that they just don't give a shit about cooking. You lumping perfectly able-bodied and sound-minded people in with those who legitimately can't cook for whatever reason, just so you can continue to make some strained point, is duplicitous.
She is right, though she expressed it in an entirely unconstructive way. I could say the same for you, though.
Maybe I should be more thoughtful of those who need to stir drama to keep their channels alive?
@@internetshaquilleNo
i love recipe blogs that the post is mostly instructions with the recipe but i don't like the ones that are just fluff about the person's life or a funny thing their toddler did that you really had to be there for. my go to's are always woks of life and smittenkitchen for this reason, the main post is instructions, and some story about how they came upon the recipe (woks of life is mostly about a family reconnecting with their cooking heritage and its great!)
Oh my goodness you are the best cooking channel on TH-cam! Thank you!
Bro your videos are always awesome. Thanks!
Haha, that was an amazing shout out to NightHawkInLight's video at the end. I love both cooking and chemistry/physics, but i wasn't expecting to see them in the same video (even for a joke)!
Love NightHawkInLight, too!
At the very least make it obvious where the basic steps are, because I've only got 2 hours to make cupcakes from scratch and I've never baked before. I don't have time to read a tragic backstory for a fantasy novel.
Shaq you did it again, you maniac! You made me think about my preconceived notions! I already conceived them!
Also, I want to give a HUGE shout-out to recipes and creators who will give explanations about ingredients that you're less likely to have worked with from a Western supermarket. Chinese Cooking Demystified is the GOAT for this. Because they'll also give you substitutions and say what's nice to have and what's totally necessary.
Excellent video! I made a cookie recipe from a website years ago, my husband loved it and asks for it often. Problem is: the recipe is gone! I started writing down in a recipe book, all the recipes that I like. I don't mind a few ads sprinkled in but the pop up ads, email list pop ups, and embedded videos that pause whatever I am listening to, have made me look at recipe blogs way, way less.
i love how bro insists over and over that he will never make a flapjack video with details of how he’d do it, and immediately does it
in detail too!
Bro. You are really good at this.
Love your channel. It’s both about recipes but also intellectual and philosophical.
Thoughtful content thoughtfully presented. And my family loves the tortilla warmers I got them, btw!
love this vid!! Honestly I find the whole “recipe site makes you read their entire life story before getting to the recipe” meme to be kinda outdated. What I see more often and what I have far more of an issue with are 1) the relentless fucking ads making a lot of recipe blogs impossible to read and 2) over-explaining the recipe for SEO purposes before getting to the actual recipe text. Ie, it feels like every single recipe blog will introduce their recipe and then include a bunch of unhelpful bs like “well, first, what IS an omelet? Let me explain the history just so I can pad out the post and get more hits on google.” I’m not talking about genuinely helpful headnotes as Shaq mentions, but text that just kinda rehashes the main points of the recipe over and over until you get to the actual recipe card.
Anywayyyyy a godsend for me has been an app called Just the Recipe that allows you to input a link and just see the plain text of a recipe, no ads or filler at all. Highly highly recommend
Seriously, I don’t need to know your life story to cook fajitas.
I've had culinary Dunning-Kruger on my mind a lot recently. That setup segment really spoke to my experience perusing r/Cooking...
I found it interesting to not see any comments mentioning copyright - as that was my understanding about where the trend for having personal stories accompanying recipes came from. A recipe in itself doesn't have copyright, but you can protect your specific version of a recipe that has personalised details.
based floppy flapper lover, he's just like me fr fr 💯
I have a solution... what if we cut out the 15 paragraph life story stuffed with keywords and AdSense placements before the actual recipe... and then print out the remainder into a convenient hardcopy... a "cooking book" if you will...
I love how even when you promote your own brand, it still goes at the end. Blessings to you and your family.
Acknowledging that floppy flappies are based. Also acknowledging that cooking is not easy or intuitive. I have understood cooking for as long as i can remember, BUT that is because I started helping my parents in the kitchen at a very young age. As I got older I was able to take cooking classes for more advanced stuff. I am very privileged.
Also thank you for catering to the vegetarians in your audience. I am one of them and appreciate the gesture.
You know it's going to be a beautiful day when you're blessed with a Netshaq video in the morning.
And it's 9:27? I'm salivating.
Thanks for linking the levitating hotdog cooker video - that's a life saver!
Probably reinforces your point but when I had to go gluten free, my relationship to intro blog sections completely shifted. All my accumulated knowledge was useless, and instead I found myself reading and valuing the preamble. Learning and understanding why the author made particular ingredient or technique choices, and what textures I should expect was so useful when relearning to bake under new rules.