Cooking · Beginner
Cooking Fundamentals
Technique instead of recipes — the layer underneath every dish you have ever failed to make properly.
- Lessons
- 37 lessons
- Total runtime
- 16 hours of video
- Modules
- 8 modules
- Optional lessons
- 18 optional
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About this course
Most people who say they can't cook can follow a recipe perfectly well. What they are missing is everything the recipe quietly assumes: how hot the pan should be before anything touches it, what "season to taste" actually means, why the chicken came out grey, and what to do on a night when there is no recipe at all. This course is about that missing layer.
It is arranged around technique rather than dishes. The first hour goes on the things that pay off in every meal afterwards — a knife you can genuinely use, a pan hot enough to brown, and salt applied deliberately rather than nervously. Only then does it move on to proteins, stocks and sauces, vegetables, and finally to cooking without a recipe, which is the entire point of learning any of it.
Three teachers, picked because they disagree in useful ways. Chef Jean-Pierre gives you classical French technique with fifty years behind it. Babish demonstrates a method cleanly and gets out of the way. Ethan Chlebowski explains the reasoning and hands you frameworks you can point at ingredients nobody ever taught you about. Where two of them cover the same ground, watch both — the overlap is where it sticks.
Around five hours of required video, and about sixteen in total. The optional lessons go deeper on knife work, stocks and onions, and add three whole-kitchen crash courses, a module on bread, and one on the science underneath why any of this works. Unlike most courses here, this one asks you to stop and actually cook between lessons. Watching someone else dice an onion teaches you nothing at all.
What you'll be able to do
- Hold and move a chef's knife properly, and break down an onion without dread
- Cook steak, chicken and fish to the doneness you intended rather than the one you got
- Season with salt confidently, tasting as you go instead of apologising at the end
- Make a stock and turn it into a pan sauce without looking anything up
- Roast and sauté vegetables so that people actually want to eat them
- Open the fridge on a weeknight and cook dinner from what is in it
Curriculum
37 lessons · 16 hours
Before You Cook
8 lessons · 3h 30m
- 01CompletedHow I Would Learn to Cook If I Could Start OverEthan ChlebowskiVideoThe thesis of this whole course, argued in one sitting: learn a small number of transferable techniques rather than a large number of recipes. Watch it first, because it explains why the rest is ordered the way it is.17m
- 02CompletedMust-Have Tools in the KitchenChef Jean-PierreVideoWhat you actually need, from someone with no reason to sell you anything. The short version is a knife, a heavy pan and a cutting board — but it is worth hearing why.16m
- 03CompletedPantry EssentialsBinging with BabishVideoA stocked pantry is the difference between cooking tonight and ordering tonight. This is the shopping list you make once.8m
- 04CompletedKitchen CareBinging with BabishVideoSharpening, seasoning cast iron, and keeping a board that will not slide. Dull knives cause most kitchen injuries, which makes this a safety lesson disguised as a maintenance one.7m
- 05CompletedLearn to Cook in Less Than 1 HourOptionalNick DiGiovanniVideoThe whole of this course compressed into an hour. Watch it first as a map of what is coming, or last as revision — it works either way.1h
- 06CompletedLearn How to Cook in Under 25 MinutesOptionalJoshua WeissmanVideoThe same idea, faster and more opinionated. Twenty-five minutes of the things that matter most, stated bluntly.24m
- 07CompletedTop Basic Cooking SkillsOptionalGordon RamsayVideoA full episode of his Ultimate Cookery Course. The technique is sound and the pace is brisk, which suits material you have already met once.23m
- 08Completed30 Must-Know Tips from a Professional ChefOptionalChef Jean-PierreVideoSmall corrections from this course's main teacher — the sort of thing a professional does without thinking and nobody ever tells a home cook.55m
The Knife
2 lessons · 1h 45m
- 09CompletedUse a Knife Like a ChefChef Jean-PierreVideoGrip, the claw, and the rocking motion. This is the single highest-return twenty minutes in the course — everything else gets faster and safer once your hands know what to do.22m
- 10CompletedHow to Cut the Most Common VegetablesOptionalChef Jean-PierreVideoAn hour and a half covering nearly every vegetable you will meet. Treat it as a reference to jump around in rather than a sitting — find the vegetable that defeated you and watch that part.1h 23m
Heat and Salt
11 lessons · 2h 51m
- 11CompletedHow to Salt Like a ProChef Jean-PierreVideoUndersalting is the most common reason home cooking tastes flat next to restaurant food. When you salt matters nearly as much as how much.14m
- 12CompletedEggs, Part 1Binging with BabishVideoEggs are the cheapest possible way to practise heat control, and they punish you instantly when you get it wrong. That is exactly what makes them the right thing to learn on.6m
- 13CompletedEggs, Part 2Binging with BabishVideoOmelettes and poaching. Make the French omelette badly several times — the failure mode teaches you more about pan temperature than any explanation.8m
- 14CompletedSteakBinging with BabishVideoThe searing lesson. A dry surface and a genuinely hot pan are the whole trick, and both are things people get wrong before the meat ever goes down.6m
- 15Completed5 Mistakes People Make Cooking Chicken BreastEthan ChlebowskiVideoChicken breast is the most commonly ruined thing in home kitchens. This is the diagnostic version — each mistake explains a specific way yours has been coming out dry.14m
- 16CompletedWhole Roasted ChickenBinging with BabishVideoOne bird, several meals, and the carcass becomes the stock in the next module. This is the most useful single thing to be able to cook without thinking.8m
- 17CompletedFishBinging with BabishVideoMost people avoid cooking fish because they overcook it once and never try again. It is faster than chicken and less forgiving by only a minute or two.5m
- 18CompletedMastering Cooking TechniquesOptionalGordon RamsayVideoSautéing, braising, roasting and poaching demonstrated back to back. Seeing the methods compared directly makes it much clearer which one a given ingredient wants.43m
- 19CompletedWhat I Learned in Restaurants That Made My Home Cooking BetterOptionalAndy CooksVideoMise en place, pan temperature, resting and seasoning in layers. Professional habits that transfer to a domestic kitchen without professional equipment.26m
- 20Completed50 Food Mistakes You Need to AvoidOptionalJoshua WeissmanVideoA checklist of the things that go wrong. Faster to fix a habit you did not know you had than to learn a new technique.21m
- 21CompletedThe Beginner's Guide to Cooking with SpicesOptionalEthan ChlebowskiVideoBlooming, toasting and when to add what, tested rather than asserted. Seasoning is the difference between food that is cooked correctly and food that is good.20m
Stocks and Sauces
4 lessons · 2h 31m
- 22CompletedClassic Chicken StockChef Jean-PierreVideoUse the carcass from the roast chicken. Stock is the base of most sauces and soups, costs nothing, and is the clearest example of technique turning scraps into an ingredient.10m
- 23CompletedThickening with RouxChef Jean-PierreVideoFlour and fat, and suddenly you can control the texture of anything liquid. Ten minutes that quietly unlock gravies, stews, mac and cheese and half of French cooking.10m
- 24CompletedSauces Every Cook Should KnowChef Jean-PierreVideoThe long one, and the one that changes your cooking most. Sauce is what separates a cooked piece of meat from a meal — and the mother sauces are a system, not a set of recipes.1h 9m
- 25CompletedStocks & BasicsOptionalChef Jean-PierrePlaylistVegetable, roasted chicken and beef stocks in more depth, plus the shortcut version for when you have not got nine hours. Optional — take it if stock becomes a habit rather than a chore.1h 2m
Vegetables
2 lessons · 1h 1m
- 26CompletedHow to Cook VegetablesEthan ChlebowskiVideoThe most neglected half of home cooking, treated systematically: which method suits which vegetable, and why boiling is almost never the answer.32m
- 27CompletedEverything About OnionsOptionalEthan ChlebowskiVideoHalf an hour on one ingredient, which sounds excessive until you notice onions start roughly seventy percent of savoury recipes. Optional, but it is the best demonstration of how deep a single ingredient goes.29m
Cooking Without a Recipe
4 lessons · 1h 42m
- 28CompletedCooking Without a RecipeEthan ChlebowskiVideoThe framework this course has been building towards: think in components and ratios rather than instructions. This is where the previous five modules turn into independence.19m
- 29Completed12 Ideas That Improved How I CookEthan ChlebowskiVideoSmall habits rather than techniques — the sort of thing you would pick up from working next to someone competent for a month.21m
- 30CompletedWeeknight MealsBinging with BabishVideoCooking on a Tuesday when you are tired is a different skill from cooking on a Saturday. This is the version that survives contact with real life.7m
- 31Completed30 Tips from a Professional ChefOptionalChef Jean-PierreVideoA closing sweep of accumulated professional habits. Optional, and best watched after you have cooked enough for the tips to land on something.55m
Rice, Grains and Bread
4 lessons · 1h 48m
- 32CompletedThis Video Will Change How You Think About RiceOptionalEthan ChlebowskiVideoVarieties, ratios and methods, tested side by side. Rice is the most commonly cooked and most commonly ruined staple there is.38m
- 33CompletedUnderstanding Bread Making Step by StepOptionalBaker BettieVideoKneading, bulk fermentation, proofing and shaping explained by what each stage is doing to the dough. Bread becomes reliable the moment you stop following times and start reading the dough.22m
- 34CompletedBreaking Down Bread — Understanding Bread BasicsOptionalAmerica's Test KitchenVideoThe tested version, with the variables isolated one at a time. A good second explanation of the same process.22m
- 35CompletedSourdough BreadOptionalBinging with BabishVideoThe harder version, including keeping a starter alive. A long project rather than an evening, and the most satisfying thing in this course to finish.26m
Why It Works
2 lessons · 1h 4m
- 36CompletedF Is for Flavor — Culinary Boot Camp Day 1OptionalJacob BurtonVideoA professional culinary-school lecture on how flavour is built — salt, fat, acid, heat and aromatics as a system rather than a list. The most rigorous item on this page.42m
- 37CompletedThe Best Way to Cook Food, According to ScienceOptionalSciShowVideoThe Maillard reaction, protein denaturation and what heat is actually doing. Knowing why searing works makes it much easier to judge when it has.22m
Credits
Every lesson in this course was made by one of these channels. Tubeversity sequenced them; it did not make them. If a course is useful to you, the people below are the ones who earned it.