Rachel Tepper Paley

11 Cooking Shows on YouTube You Should Be Watching

Rachel Tepper Paley

Thu, October 8, 2015 at 1:01 PM UTC

Nerdy Nummies reigns as the most popular baking channel on YouTube with nearly 5 million followers. On the program, host Rosanna Pansino whips up everything from pizza cake to sushi cupcakes to mustache candy pops. The common denominator is always cuteness, underscored by Pansino’s signature delivery. Nerdy Nummies’s audience skews young, although Pansino is in her early 30s. “They’re the youngest demographic that you can track on YouTube: 13- to 17-year-old females,” she told Food & Wine. “But the fan mail that I get in my PO box, they’re all from moms and from kids who are two years old, three years old, four years old. They’re like, “Hi, my name’s Ashley, I’m eight. Can you make panda face?” And I’m like, OK!” (Photo: rosannapansino/Facebook)

Jamie Spafford, Barry Taylor, Mike Huttlestone, and Ben Ebbrell make up Sorted, a YouTube cooking show that ranks among the site’s most popular with more than 1.3 million subscribers. The scruffy British foursome, friends since childhood, have a predilection for playful dishes like double rainbow cake and giant red velvet cupcakes, plus everyday like spinach and bacon gnocchi and red pepper risotto. As can be expected from a group of men in their 20s, there’s plenty of playful banter and pranks. It’s proved a remarkably successful formula: Last year, the *New York Times* reported that Sorted expected to rake in $3.5 million. (Photo: sortedfood/Facebook)

Barry Lewis was a culinary neophyte when, inspired by Jamie Oliver, he first started the YouTube show My Virgin Kitchen. He quickly earned subscribers with dishes like mashed potato bacon cheese balls, pulled pork ragu, and fluffernutter sandwiches. Also in the mix: giant food, tiny food, and taste tests of foods from around the world. His culinary idol eventually took note: Oliver featured My Virgin Kitchen on his own YouTube channel, which catapulted Lewis into the big time. Lewis’s YouTube channel now boasts more than a quarter of a million subscribers and he’s the author of a cookbook, *Dinner’s On!* More proof Lewis has gone mainstream? As of January, he’s the face of a campaign for the U.K. grocery chain Sainsbury called “Love Your Freezer.” (Photo: myvirginkitchen/Facebook)

Sure, Epic Meal Time might have sent shivers down Julia Child’s spine, but there’s no denying this show’s appeal. Since host Harley Morenstein and his friends uploaded the first episode in 2010 — it featured a pizza topped with burgers, chicken nuggets, and French fries smothered in melted cheese — the Canadian program has earned nearly 7 million subscribers and branched out into a line of merchandise and a television show on the FYI network, Epic Meal Empire. Even celebrities including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Oliver, Gabriel Iglesias, Stan Lee, and Tony Hawk have dropped by the YouTube show to gawk over superfluous bacon strips and Jack Daniels-spiked sauces. (Photo: FYI)

Johnson’s former life as an improv comic shows often in her YouTube cooking show, Hilah Cooking. If there’s a script, she frequently goes off it, working in quick little jokes under her breath. Dishes are straightforward and mainstream — think mac and cheese, Bolognese sauce, and twice-baked potatoes — but Johnson is quick with a curse word and doesn’t shy away from topics like “breastaurants” and the tattoo she got while drunk. (Photo courtesy of Hilah Johnson)

In the first episode of My Drunk Kitchen, uploaded in 2011, host Hannah Hart attempts to cook a grilled cheese sandwich while drinking her way through a bottle of wine she found in her sister’s kitchen. It wasn’t successful. From that improbable start, My Drunk Kitchen grew into a runaway success. Hart’s channel now has more than 2 million subscribers, who — and we’re just going out on a limb here — probably tune in for her goofy antics more than any actual cooking. (Photo: Robin Roemer/My.Drunk.Kitchen/Facebook)

Mamrie Hart’s wide-eyed, quick-fire delivery on her boozy YouTube show, You Deserve a Drink, has earned her just more than 1 million subscribers, and that’s not including the more than 400,000 subscribers on her other channel, Mametown. Hart’s appeal is in her willingness to totally *go there*, which means plenty of raunchy jokes and weird voices. Of course, she knows her way around a cocktail shaker, as proved by her new book, *You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery*. (Photo: Plume)

Australian baker and pastry chef Elise Strachan had dreams of opening her own cake shop when she first began filming tutorials for her YouTube channel, My Cupcake Addiction, in 2011. The shop never materialized, but the channel took off. Today it has more than 2 million subscribers. Strachan’s sugary creations include far more than cupcakes, from a rainbow Skittles cake to cake pops inspired by the Disney flick *Frozen* to a giant Twix bar. (Photo: cupcakeaddiction/Facebook)

Instagram celebrity-turned-YouTube star Laura Miller loves produce. A lot. In her early days, Miller gained fans by posing with things like a pineapple perched on her head or persimmons shoved down the front of her dress. These days, she’s the quirky host of Raw. Vegan. Not Gross. on the Tastemade video network. On the show, Miller walks viewers through meat- and dairy-free recipes like banana ice cream, cauliflower pizza, and coconut yogurt. Miller has yet to gain the cult followings of other YouTubers on this list, but she’s well on her way with more than 64,000 Instagram followers. (Photo: imlauramiller.com)

It might be unfair to call Laura Vitale a YouTube star at this point, since she’s been the star of her own television show on the Cooking Channel, Simply Laura, since 2014. But Vitale got her start on YouTube, and Laura in the Kitchen continues to command a massive audience (just under 2 million subscribers) with new videos uploaded on the regular. Vitale’s cooking style is mostly Italian — she was born and raised in Italy until age 12 — but there’s plenty of modern stuff in the mix from confetti blondies to baked honey teriyaki wings. (Photo: laurainthekitchen/Facebook)

Byron Talbott is among the few personalities on this list with a culinary pedigree. Before he snagged more than 870,000 subscribers on YouTube, Talbott worked under Thomas Keller at Bouchon Bistro in Yountville, Calif., and Gordon Ramsay at his now-shuttered restaurant in West Hollywood. These days, he’s a full-time YouTuber, filming how-tos for simple everyday dishes like grilled sweet and sour bass skewers and rigatoni with pesto. If you missed a step, not to worry — Talbott breaks down his recipes step by step (and shot for shot) on his companion website. (Photo: byron.talbott/Facebook)

Nerdy Nummies

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Nerdy Nummies reigns as the most popular baking channel on YouTube with nearly 5 million followers. On the program, host Rosanna Pansino whips up everything from pizza cake to sushi cupcakes to mustache candy pops. The common denominator is always cuteness, underscored by Pansino’s signature delivery. Nerdy Nummies’s audience skews young, although Pansino is in her early 30s. “They’re the youngest demographic that you can track on YouTube: 13- to 17-year-old females,” she told Food & Wine. “But the fan mail that I get in my PO box, they’re all from moms and from kids who are two years old, three years old, four years old. They’re like, “Hi, my name’s Ashley, I’m eight. Can you make panda face?” And I’m like, OK!” (Photo: rosannapansino/Facebook)

Food television is more scripted and predictable than ever, but the vivacious spirit of Julia Child — known just as much for her show-stopping beef bourguignon as her kitchen flubs — lives on in the funny, perfectly imperfect cooking shows of YouTube. Not even Julia would have seen this coming.

Above, we break down our favorite shows, from cutesy Nerdy Nummies to booze-fueled Drunk Kitchen to bro-centric Epic Meal Time. We’re not sure Julia would always be a fan, but millions of subscribers prove that the future of food programming is likely on the Internet.

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