Celebrity Chef Recommendation

Jamie Oliver: The Gateway to a Culinary YouTube

It’s 7:00 AM in North America, and millions of people are getting ready for work. The coffee is brewing, mothers and fathers are getting their kids ready for school, and young twenty-somethings have hit their snooze buttons for the last time. As people begin their day they turn on their television and they see Rachael Ray doing a cooking segment on Good Morning America. On the Today Show, Matt Lauer engages in witty banter with Mario Batali as he quickly throws together a five minute Italian chicken dish. In the end, the food these cooks have produced looks appetizing, but you have neither the time nor the attention span to make that dish at home. As people dash off to school and work the quick five minute segment they saw on GMA is nothing but a fleeting memory.

As a cooking novice in college, I remember thinking that these morning television segments and a full subscription to the Food Network were my only resources to learn to cook. After a brief moment of memory loss, I recalled that the internet was invented to make access to information inexplicably fast and easy. When I began to peruse YouTube for answers, I stumbled upon Jamie Oliver.

Whether you are a novice, or an experienced cook I highly encourage anyone to use Chef Oliver’s FootTube channel for cooking tips, proper preparation methods, and hundreds of tasty recipes. I love this channel because the videos featured explain how to cook meals fast, with extreme clarity. Oliver’s style is rustic and creative, and his recipes allow room for error. His food is colorful, fun, enticing, and diverse. From Indian to Italian, Vietnamese to classic British pub food, this channel is a hub for people who are passionate about what they eat and the way they cook it. As an athlete, a student and a food enthusiast, I was searching for someone who was able to deliver fresh exciting food that was healthy. Many of the recipes featured on this channel were created with Jamie Oliver’s nutrition team. Thus, the viewer can learn how to cook while simultaneously understanding what this food, (whatever it may be) does to help benefit different parts of the body.

Oliver’s lessons are geared towards the pressure, time constraint and stress of everyday life, and his videos are particularly helpful for families wishing to save money. Most importantly however, the chef himself is passionate about the food he is cooking and the audience he has retained. Oliver describes his cooking in such a way that the audience members can practically smell the sautéing garlic, and feel the tactile crackling pig skin crunch in their mouthes. I’m unsure if it’s the accent, the homey decor of his kitchen set, or the beautifully colored organic produce (or perhaps all three combined), but cooking with Jamie is a wonderfully complicated experience. You are relaxed, enthralled and excited by hunger at the same time. I often watch mesmerized as he turns a bowl of what I would deem boring, lumpy Scottish porridge into a morning masterpiece.

I encourage readers to go and visit this YouTube channel for yet another reason. The channel serves as a gateway to other cooks and chefs on the internet, each with his/her own personal spin on cooking tips, traditional recipes and more. Often, Oliver features other chefs and cooks he finds to be helpful and inspiring in his videos. FoodTube is part of a massive online community of other professional and non-professional cooks eager to learn from each other. From Oliver’s culinary hub, I have personally discovered dozens of other chefs that were equally as creative and helpful as Jamie himself. I highly recommend more home cooks to use this online resource, and the internet in general to improve their cooking skills. Outlets such as YouTube and Pinterest can help to take your ordinary fifteen minute chicken and rice to the next level. Healthy food does not have to be as boring as a bowl of cardboard-like bran flakes, and Jamie Oliver’s channel is proof of this.

To find out more PLEASE visit FoodTube https://www.youtube.com/user/JamieOliver , and for more culinary advice stay tuned for next weeks article on TriForce!

Lauren Vella

#Nutrition #Tip #Theory