Jacques Pépin is an absolute treasure. Such a famous chef yet never a jerk to anyone.

Another favourite of mine is J. Kenji Lopez-Alt [1], or Kenji as everyone calls him . Really nice and non-pretentious guy. Tons of great advice for beginners. His cookbook even goes into details like how to stock and organize your fridge!

I think one of his most endearing qualities is that he doesn’t hide his mistakes. He leaves them in the video and talks about them and how to recover. Far too often we see TV shows about people making mistakes in the kitchen and getting reamed out by the celebrity chef or having a meltdown of their own.

Mistakes are inevitable in the kitchen, especially when you’re just starting out. Feeling really bad about it is a pretty surefire way to lose interest in learning to cook.

[1] https://youtube.com/@JKenjiLopezAlt?si=Ubk8CUrtb8jkL8h1

Kenji is great until you have misophonia and his mouth sounds get you and you have issues with how unclean everything he does is. But his videos are a goldmine for great skills, recipes, everything. It is very good if you have a little basic hygiene and food safety skills and do not pick up bad habits from him. The knife manufacturer he uses has been very, very good as well. I have a few of their knives and it's been wonderful.

The guy is a professional chef that has run multiple restaurants and teaches people how to cook.

Your standards for cleanliness might be unnecessarily higher, but don't you think it's a bit disingenuous to call his cooking "unclean"?

Dude straight up uses a sponge to clean up the fluids from raw chicken and wipes down his stove with it. He rinses with water and uses utensils after handling raw meat.

Why are you taking my observations personally? It doesn't make sense.

Sure, he's made mistakes, that doesn't make his cooking "unclean". Unless people are getting sick from it (and they're not), his cooking is fine.

And I'm not taking it personally btw, I just think it's silly to claim you know more about kitchen hygiene than a literal professional.

You don't have to be a professional to know that cross contamination is bad. Dude owns/owned(?) a restaurant and seems to struggle with it.

That's my gripe. I enjoy his videos on the whole. I wouldn't eat at his house or restaurant but I enjoy his videos.

I can't think of anything unhygienic I've ever seen Kenji do - do you have an example?

Doesn't (always) wash his hands after handling raw meat. Uses a sponge to wipe up raw chicken fluids and smears it all over the counter and stove.