The Friday Link for 6/30/23

Howdy all and I hope everyone has a nice Independence Day weekend.

Followers of mine will know I'm a cook. I like cooking.  When I got married my wife said she didn't cook a lot and was one of those people content with cold-cut sandwiches on a regular basis. I being the youngest of 7, being raised by an exceptional cook in my mom (and my dad was pretty good too), and growing up for part of my youth in an underappreciated Italian/Portuguese/Seafood food mecca of Rhode Island, I gladly stepped in.

Am I pretty good? I think I do okay, with far more hits than misses (but I do have my misses). You know what I'm not foolish enough to do?  Go up online and post cooking videos and act like I've discovered cooking itself.

There are a shocking amount of people who do post cooking videos, many of them missing far more than hitting. This is not about being judgmental about easy quick hearty American food cooking.  I love some of the channels dedicated to that style of cooking (SuperMommy and the Backwoods Gourmet are two of my favorites).  This is about people doing something like boiling water and warming up tomato sauce and reacting like they're Julia Child incarnate. 

Sometimes, when you see the list of ingredients you realize they are trying too hard to be the lowest common denominator cooking, and it usually is a mess.

Sometimes, it's clear they are intentionally trying to be jackasses, pulling a gag, and trying to get people to cook something atrocious that ends up being a culinary disaster.  The spaghetti on the counter video that was circulating a few years ago is a prime example of that.

Thank goodness for Chef Reactions.  I am late to this one, but I am not much on TikTok and that's where he's been huge. (2.4 million followers).

The chef (whose identity remains a bit of a mystery.  I didn't look too hard so if he doesn't want to be known, I'm cool with that) watches cooking videos and rates them.  Sometimes they are rated as good, most of the time they are rated as horrible, but he still will admit he would at least try a bite of many of them.  Most of all, he is freaking hilarious as he tears these monstrosities down. Seriously, at times I was laughing so hard that I had to stop the video for a few minutes.

Let's start with a video of him watching a REALLY bad cook.

Note, he swears, A LOT! If you are against that sort of thing, see you next week.

Here's him taking on some guy called "Dr. Food." The best part is Chef Reactions continually calling out the Doctor for saying he's making French cuisine when he's not even close!

The next one, sweet lord! I need a t-shirt that says, "Why is the egg in there?"

To prove he is not all negative, here is a video of him praising a chef video.  Once again, he does swear a lot!  

Finally a bit of a different video from Chef Reactions.  Occasionally he will go somewhere and review the food.  He did so at the numerous Disney Parks. He also gives some pretty good advice on visiting these parks and how to navigate them.  10 out of 10! 

He has A LOT of videos on TikTok.  Go enjoy him there. 

Have a Happy Independence Day and Happy Birthday America.

Make sure you stay up to date on your vaccinations!