Cooking shares the connective thread of music and travel. Like a good song or a colorful postcard, recipes are shared through friends and generations. Unless you were a fan of rumaki. This sense of community explains why cooking videos have sprung up on YouTube, Chowhound and other Web sites. People are hungry to share their secrets. But can you learn to cook through YouTube? I found it somewhat difficult.
It’s not like those early morning cable TV workouts where you simply roll out a mat in your living room and count along with young women in bikinis doing calisenthics along South Beach.
Cooking through YouTube requires the viewer to step up to the plate and keep his or her eye on the ball.
“Cooking on YouTube is an emerging trend that’s heating up,” said YouTube spokesman Spencer Crooks from YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. “A vibrant community is sharing recipes and exchanging techniques. Chefs interact with the viewers where people leave comments. There’s a single place to turn for everything from knife techniques to cooking an omelet in a Ziploc bag.”
I made jambalaya for my YouTube experiment. Cajun cooking allows for improvisation, great background music (Clifton Chenier, Lil’ Band of Gold), Mountain Dew chasers and good companionship.
I used my 1984 version of Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen cookbook as a safety template. I embellished with my own ideas and stuff I found on YouTube. This was like re-configuring the Louisiana Purchase.
I came across the three-part series “New Year’s Eve Jambalaya Cooking” on YouTube. It was not very inspiring. The kitchen appeared to be a mess and the droll woman in the background sounded like she was stoned, calling the chef “dude” and asking, “What’s going on here now?”
The worst part was that most ingredients were not introduced. The video’s saving grace: posts by viewers suggesting to add chorizo sausages, pork, blackeyed peas, kidney beans, stock, carrots/onions/ chickpeas and so on.

suntimes.com