Your Own Mini Cooking Show

Though these cooking shows may not be Barefoot Contessa or Ace of Cakes, they’re pretty darn good.

What I’m talking about is Rouxbe, a long-living but recently-excelling video-based cooking site. It’s part YouTube, part DIY site, and is a great way to get some help with cooking. You’ll have to create an account to really enjoy the site’s features, but it’s simple, free, and worth it.

When you choose a recipe (there are a large, growing number), it’s broken down into simple steps. For each step, at the bottom of the page, there’s an incredibly easy instructional method for doing it, whether it’s “Cook a chicken” or “bake the beans”. Ingredients are given, step-by-step instructions are right there, and there are also links to videos for “Drilling down” a certain tactic, which bring up detailed videos about how best to do a particular thing, like skinning almonds.

The best part of the site is the videos, though. The videos for each recipe show the dish being prepared, which helps enormously. You can see how large things should be cut, how they should be combined, what it should look like- it’s much more helpful than you might imagine. They’re well made, usually very short, and a great way to run through how the recipe is made. Recipes can be printed, or embedded in other sites.

Every recipe also has a community, in which people leave comments about ways to improve the recipe, things to be careful of, and little tips to make cooking easier. People are more helpful than I ever could have imagined, and the community at Rouxbe is great.

One feature I was a particular fan of is their process for making videos. Recipes are submitted and tested, and only the best ones are made into videos by the Rouxbe people. Though it limits the number of videos on the site, it ensures that the videos are good ones. It’s not an uncensored community, which might make some people mad, but I think it helps for a site like this one.

In addition to the recipes, Rouxbe offers a “Cooking School” to help you learn how to cook. You can learn how to deal with knives, how to choose salad greens, and also see features that are coming. Attend school here.

There’s also a shop here, but I don’t recommend buying their products- they seem more than a bit pricey.

Whether you’re a visual learner or a reader, a new cook or a fabulous chef looking for new recipes, Rouxbe is a great site (though a difficult one to pronounce). Check it out here. For a great sample of the features, go here.

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