Thanks for the concrete examples. Of course the drawback of getting concrete is that since my reasons for finding them uncompelling are also rather concrete and specific and don’t fit into any particular pattern, it’s not clear what conclusions to draw :-). But:
I already make pasta-bake dishes with different kinds of pasta, and I didn’t need to watch a multi-Michelin chef to tell me that was OK.
My bechamel sauces are already pretty simple.
I already try to use high-quality ingredients. (This is a thing that’s emphasized, e.g., in a lot of cookery books.) It may be that the likes of Bottura are better than I am at seeing which ingredients it matters more for, but I think I have reasonable intuitions for this already.
I already make pasta-bake dishes with different kinds of cheese, and again I didn’t need a multi-Michelin chef to tell me this. (If there’s a specific thing I learned this from, it’s probably the experience of eating a “quatro formaggi” pizza many many years ago. No multi-Michelin chefs involved there either.)
When I make pasta-bake dishes I already leave the cheese in chunks. Again, no multi-Michelin chefs involved.
I agree that the fact that he has his ingredients prepped before the start of each video is some evidence that mise en place matters even in non-restaurant situations. But (1) there are already plenty of cookery books aimed at home cooks urging you to bother with mise en place, (2) there are plenty of non-world-class cooking YouTubers who also get their ingredients prepped before they start / at the start, so you could learn the same lesson elsewhere, and (3) it shouldn’t be very strong evidence because another explanation is just that watching someone finding things in their cupboards doesn’t make very compelling video.
Maybe there is a pattern to the above: the things you say you learned from watching a master at work, I (and I’m fairly sure many others) managed to learn in other ways, which suggests (though of course it doesn’t prove) that the advantage of watching a world-class chef rather than a merely professionally-competent one is not very large. (It suggests it in two ways. First of all, if I learned those things from people less stellar than Bottura then other people can too. Second, if even I know that you can make a good pasta dish with a variety of different pasta shapes and cheeses, then it seems a fair guess that a large proportion of cooks much more skilled than I am also know that, which in particular means that most merely-competent-professional level cooks know it, which means you could learn it from them too.)
Let me mention two things I haven’t accounted for. (1) It may be that any competent cook could teach the same lessons but that they’re easier to learn from someone you know is world-class, because you find what they say more believable. That might be true, but if so I think it’s an individual quirk rather than something that makes world-class teachers much better. I don’t have any particular difficulty believing advice I get from merely-competent chefs, and I’m pretty sure that’s typical. (2) It may be that any competent cook could teach the same lessons but would also teach other anti-lessons, and that what distinguishes Bottura-level chefs is that they don’t have misconceptions to pass on. That might be true, but I haven’t so far noticed that when I watch Bottura (or Ramsay, who at least has been at something close to Bottura’s level) or read books by the likes of Keller or Robuchon I keep thinking “oh, gosh, that contradicts something I thought I knew from reading/watching lesser chefs”.
To be clear, I’m not rejecting the idea that one might sometimes learn more from watching a top-level chef like Bottura than from watching Binging with Babish (skilled amateur) or Bon Appetit (mostly merely-competent professional) or whatever. But the skill level of a teacher is not the only thing that determines the effectiveness of their teaching, and it seems to me that even if the only thing you care about in your cooking videos is how much they teach you (and not at all about entertainment, the illusion of getting to know a nice friendly person, etc.) a carefully thought out, well presented video from an ordinary professional is likely to teach you more than one of Bottura’s.
This is partly because I think Bottura’s are unusually bad in all respects other than his own skill. If someone put together a series where they went to the home kitchens of, say, a dozen Michelin-level chefs, talked to them for ten minutes about what they were about to make, did a single take using no more than an hour of the chef’s time for a half-hour video, and gave it just enough editing to not suck too badly, I suspect that would make very good YouTube content, it would teach viewers a lot, and I personally would probably watch the hell out of it. It wouldn’t need to be at Ramsay’s level of slickness or stuffed with jokes or anything. And my guess is that something like that would actually do pretty well on YouTube.
Hm, I think we agree about a lot of things. There are a lot of people I’d prefer to watch over Bottura for all of the reasons you said. But I like to supplement the other stuff with Bottura. Which, actually, sounds like something you also agree with.
I agree that all of the examples I gave are things that you could pick up, probably more efficiently, from other sources. But 1) getting the stamp of approval from someone like Bottura allows for a belief update that I think is larger than the update you can perform by hearing the sixth moderately skilled YouTuber preach it to you.
And more importantly, 2) there’s gotta be some “secret sauce” that distinguishes a master like Bottura from the rest! Which we agree on. So...
2a) I personally enjoy getting to observe him and trying to figure out what it is. Is this a quirk of mine? I’m not sure. I get the sense that it’s maybe 30% me being unusually interested in this, and 70% a thing that a lot of people would enjoy.
2b) Maybe the examples I gave haven’t hit the nail on the head in terms of me figuring out the secrets. Maybe none of the examples I have succeeded in this. But I suspect that over time you’d pick some of this “secret sauce” up, even if it’s moreso subconsciously/via osmosis. Mopping up “secret sauce” isn’t really the most practical goal for someone like you or me, which is why I spend more time watching Adam Ragusea, who is extremely practical and a great teacher, but as a supplement, I think it’s fun to spend some time seeking out the secret sauce.
And my guess is that something like that would actually do pretty well on YouTube.
I agree!
FWIW, after talking this through, with you and elsewhere, I’ve come to believe that Botturas YouTube channel is a pretty bad example of the larger point I’m trying to make in this post about the best frequently not rising to the top. Well, not necessarily “the best” and “the top”. Moreso about quality and reception.
I think a much better example is with his restaurant! Iirc from Chefs Table, he struggled for a while, and then success came very quickly after he received a good review or some magazine ranked him. So then, quality didn’t really change (food + ambiance + service + location + whatever else), but reception changed significantly. I suspect that this sort of thing happens all of the time, and that what abramdemski proposes about getting the right exposure and then benefiting from a snowball effect is a very plausible explanation.
Thanks for the concrete examples. Of course the drawback of getting concrete is that since my reasons for finding them uncompelling are also rather concrete and specific and don’t fit into any particular pattern, it’s not clear what conclusions to draw :-). But:
I already make pasta-bake dishes with different kinds of pasta, and I didn’t need to watch a multi-Michelin chef to tell me that was OK.
My bechamel sauces are already pretty simple.
I already try to use high-quality ingredients. (This is a thing that’s emphasized, e.g., in a lot of cookery books.) It may be that the likes of Bottura are better than I am at seeing which ingredients it matters more for, but I think I have reasonable intuitions for this already.
I already make pasta-bake dishes with different kinds of cheese, and again I didn’t need a multi-Michelin chef to tell me this. (If there’s a specific thing I learned this from, it’s probably the experience of eating a “quatro formaggi” pizza many many years ago. No multi-Michelin chefs involved there either.)
When I make pasta-bake dishes I already leave the cheese in chunks. Again, no multi-Michelin chefs involved.
I agree that the fact that he has his ingredients prepped before the start of each video is some evidence that mise en place matters even in non-restaurant situations. But (1) there are already plenty of cookery books aimed at home cooks urging you to bother with mise en place, (2) there are plenty of non-world-class cooking YouTubers who also get their ingredients prepped before they start / at the start, so you could learn the same lesson elsewhere, and (3) it shouldn’t be very strong evidence because another explanation is just that watching someone finding things in their cupboards doesn’t make very compelling video.
Maybe there is a pattern to the above: the things you say you learned from watching a master at work, I (and I’m fairly sure many others) managed to learn in other ways, which suggests (though of course it doesn’t prove) that the advantage of watching a world-class chef rather than a merely professionally-competent one is not very large. (It suggests it in two ways. First of all, if I learned those things from people less stellar than Bottura then other people can too. Second, if even I know that you can make a good pasta dish with a variety of different pasta shapes and cheeses, then it seems a fair guess that a large proportion of cooks much more skilled than I am also know that, which in particular means that most merely-competent-professional level cooks know it, which means you could learn it from them too.)
Let me mention two things I haven’t accounted for. (1) It may be that any competent cook could teach the same lessons but that they’re easier to learn from someone you know is world-class, because you find what they say more believable. That might be true, but if so I think it’s an individual quirk rather than something that makes world-class teachers much better. I don’t have any particular difficulty believing advice I get from merely-competent chefs, and I’m pretty sure that’s typical. (2) It may be that any competent cook could teach the same lessons but would also teach other anti-lessons, and that what distinguishes Bottura-level chefs is that they don’t have misconceptions to pass on. That might be true, but I haven’t so far noticed that when I watch Bottura (or Ramsay, who at least has been at something close to Bottura’s level) or read books by the likes of Keller or Robuchon I keep thinking “oh, gosh, that contradicts something I thought I knew from reading/watching lesser chefs”.
To be clear, I’m not rejecting the idea that one might sometimes learn more from watching a top-level chef like Bottura than from watching Binging with Babish (skilled amateur) or Bon Appetit (mostly merely-competent professional) or whatever. But the skill level of a teacher is not the only thing that determines the effectiveness of their teaching, and it seems to me that even if the only thing you care about in your cooking videos is how much they teach you (and not at all about entertainment, the illusion of getting to know a nice friendly person, etc.) a carefully thought out, well presented video from an ordinary professional is likely to teach you more than one of Bottura’s.
This is partly because I think Bottura’s are unusually bad in all respects other than his own skill. If someone put together a series where they went to the home kitchens of, say, a dozen Michelin-level chefs, talked to them for ten minutes about what they were about to make, did a single take using no more than an hour of the chef’s time for a half-hour video, and gave it just enough editing to not suck too badly, I suspect that would make very good YouTube content, it would teach viewers a lot, and I personally would probably watch the hell out of it. It wouldn’t need to be at Ramsay’s level of slickness or stuffed with jokes or anything. And my guess is that something like that would actually do pretty well on YouTube.
Hm, I think we agree about a lot of things. There are a lot of people I’d prefer to watch over Bottura for all of the reasons you said. But I like to supplement the other stuff with Bottura. Which, actually, sounds like something you also agree with.
I agree that all of the examples I gave are things that you could pick up, probably more efficiently, from other sources. But 1) getting the stamp of approval from someone like Bottura allows for a belief update that I think is larger than the update you can perform by hearing the sixth moderately skilled YouTuber preach it to you.
And more importantly, 2) there’s gotta be some “secret sauce” that distinguishes a master like Bottura from the rest! Which we agree on. So...
2a) I personally enjoy getting to observe him and trying to figure out what it is. Is this a quirk of mine? I’m not sure. I get the sense that it’s maybe 30% me being unusually interested in this, and 70% a thing that a lot of people would enjoy.
2b) Maybe the examples I gave haven’t hit the nail on the head in terms of me figuring out the secrets. Maybe none of the examples I have succeeded in this. But I suspect that over time you’d pick some of this “secret sauce” up, even if it’s moreso subconsciously/via osmosis. Mopping up “secret sauce” isn’t really the most practical goal for someone like you or me, which is why I spend more time watching Adam Ragusea, who is extremely practical and a great teacher, but as a supplement, I think it’s fun to spend some time seeking out the secret sauce.
I agree!
FWIW, after talking this through, with you and elsewhere, I’ve come to believe that Botturas YouTube channel is a pretty bad example of the larger point I’m trying to make in this post about the best frequently not rising to the top. Well, not necessarily “the best” and “the top”. Moreso about quality and reception.
I think a much better example is with his restaurant! Iirc from Chefs Table, he struggled for a while, and then success came very quickly after he received a good review or some magazine ranked him. So then, quality didn’t really change (food + ambiance + service + location + whatever else), but reception changed significantly. I suspect that this sort of thing happens all of the time, and that what abramdemski proposes about getting the right exposure and then benefiting from a snowball effect is a very plausible explanation.