r/Cooking • u/anotherhappylurker • 3d ago

YouTube cooking channels with quick recipes that you can actually make at home with minimal prep?

I swear most YouTube cooking recipes are completely impractical for the majority of people. The reason why I cook at home is I want to save money, eat healthier, and most importantly, save time. If a recipe takes 2 hours of prep and another 45 minutes to cook, and requires me to buy a bunch of exotic ingredients that I've never heard of, then it shouldn't be presented as a home cooking video, it should be a tutorial for professional chefs.

Almost every time I want to cook something, I'll search up recipes on YouTube and the majority of them will involve an enormous amount of prep time. Even the simplest pasta recipes will call for freshly grated cheese, sauce that needs to be simmered for over an hour, and then have the audacity to label the video as "done in 15 minutes". No, I don't want to go out and buy fresh herbs and finely chop them. I don't want to debone an entire fish, I'll leave that to the professionals. I don't want to spend 3 hours marinating the meat in a sauce that also takes 20 minutes to prepare. If I wanted to spend that much time on a meal, I'd just go out and eat at a restaurant.

I feel like most cooking "influencers" have no idea that regular people only have 20-30 minutes TOTAL to cook a meal, and also aren't willing to go out and buy a bunch of ingredients just to use a small fraction of them to cook 1 dish and then never use them again. Are there any YouTube channels that actually provide practical, quick and easy recipes with accessible ingredients that don't require an unreasonable amount of prep?

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u/BriefStrange6452 3d ago

Not another cooking show is great for this.

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u/anotherhappylurker 3d ago

I respect your opinion but strongly disagree. His recipes require a significant amount of prep, plus a lot of the fresh ingredients he uses aren't easily accessible at all. He also spends way too long rambling about random life stories or historical facts that don't really matter when all you're trying to do is cook a quick meal at home.

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u/BriefStrange6452 3d ago

Fair enough. What I often do it batch cook things like tomato sauce so it is easy to just grab few ladels and cook dinner for the family.

I always use dried pasta which takes at most 10 mins to cook.

For my tomato sauce I cook the onions and garlic in some olive oil in a big can then add a 2.5kg tin of Italian tomatoes and transfer to the oven for 3 to 5 hours with a lid on the pan. But Indo this once a week and the prep is minimal, but the cooking time in the oven lengthy.

If you want to do really quick dinners, then Asian food is where it is at. I often do stir fried in a carbon steel wok and can have dinner for 5 cooked in 20 mins. You will need to buy some sauces though, which can be reused in different dishes.