how to learn new things

or how YouTube taught me how to cook

Happy summer, everyone! And welcome to another edition of soy.

If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, soy is a monthly dive into food and the issues and stories surrounding it, especially when it comes to identity, history, community and labor. Subscribe for more:

I began writing this post in late March, but found myself paralyzed by a combination of personal upheaval and a nationwide assault on Asian Americans that frankly left me creatively and emotionally incapacitated. After a few months of recovery from burnout, a move and a much-needed vacation, I finally feel ready to create, communicate and connect again creatively. It’s been a reminder that we all need time, space and energy to be able to give.

I didn’t cook much this spring, in part out of exhaustion. I found myself drained of energy most days and wondered why, and then I would feel guilty for feeling depleted, burned out and emotional, very aware of my relative privilege compared to the victims of the Atlanta shootings and other hate crimes. I’m young, able-bodied, a U.S. citizen, college-educated, fluent in English and financially secure, working a sedentary corporate desk job rather than serving people everyday as a manicurist, massage therapist, delivery worker or laundromat clerk.

But that’s also the double-bind of the Asian American experience isn’t it? The lie that you are too proximate to whiteness to actually experience racism, so successful as a model minority that your existence itself disproves the existence of racism. That if people like you can make it, the so-called barriers that stand before Black, Latinx and indigenous folks are not real either. It’s hard for me to even claim these emotions I feel—this pain, anxiety, paranoia for my safety—when internal and external voices tell me that I’m not allowed to feel those feelings. That those feelings aren’t real.

Thankfully, I’m surrounded by friends and family who understand and support me, and I wish you all love and support when times are hard like they were this spring.

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In the last issue of “soy,” I wrote about my aversion to straying from recipes and the instinct to follow a guidebook when it comes to cooking. Although I do believe it’s important (and fun!) to learn how to develop your own techniques and palate as a cook, I also think it’s important to learn the rules before you break them. Especially when it comes to cooking food that isn’t of your own culture or heritage.

I spend a lot of time cooking, eating and thinking about Chinese food, because that’s what I grew up on and what I crave the most. At the same time, my favorite thing about cooking is how it gives me a direct window into other cultures and palates. From cooking Greek food, I’ve learned about the country’s proximity to the ocean and its people’s appreciation for simplicity and freshness. In making Korean food, I am able to appreciate the complexity and effort that goes into preparing a meal with a dozen different banchan, and it gives me a look into what’s historically been expected of women in families.

Like many people, I’ve learned how to cook food that’s foreign to me through cookbooks, which I adore for their physical quality and the personal stories. But writing a cookbook in English requires not just a proficiency in the language, but also the ability to translate intuitive, intergenerational knowledge into precise ordered instructions and measurements.

While that may be the way second-generation kids like me have learned to cook our traditional foods, that’s definitely not how our grandmothers did. My experience with grilling my mom and aunties for instructions on how to recreate their dishes has always been an exercise in futility: I’m much more likely to elicit a shrug than a specific number of cups or teaspoons. My mother straight up laughs at me every time she sees me pour something into a measuring cup; it’s just so antithetical to the way she cooks.

That’s why my other favorite window into cooking cuisines that aren’t my own is through YouTube. I recently finished Michelle Zauner’s incredible memoir, Crying in H Mart, and she expressed a similar awakening around learning how to cook Korean food through watching Maangchi videos. On YouTube, you can really learn how to make a dish the way someone’s Italian grandma made it, because that nonna is literally showing you how to do it. Even if she doesn’t articulate exactly how much salt or oil to use, her hands do the talking, and it’s also incredibly fun to watch.

Here are some of my favorite random YouTube channels that have taught me how to cook:

Mexican food: De Mi Rancho a Tu Cocina. I don’t have much context for this channel, but I know that it stars a wonderful older woman, definitely someone’s abuela, who cooks on an old wood-fired stove and uses a cheap white blender that reminds me that I don’t need a Vitamix to make great food. She has also taught me more about how to make delicious, simple Mexican food than any cookbook I’ve read. I love watching her grab a corner of a massive mountain of blue masa, roll it out expertly and throw it on the grill for an instant tortilla that she uses to scoop up whatever delicious thing she’s made.

Rural Chinese food: wild girl. I also have no context for this channel except that the eponymous wild girl lives in a part of rural Guizhou on a luscious farm filled with an array of edible plants, which she uses to cook heaping plates of food for everyone on the property. This is truly the definition of “from scratch,” and she is not afraid to pickle, ferment, butcher an animal or roast something on fire. The best part is there is never any dialogue or voiceover narration, and it’s almost like a cooking version of ASMR, as strangely meditative as it is educational.

Korean food: Maangchi. Like Michelle Zauner, I am also obsessed with Maangchi. She is just sunshine in a person, and I especially love watching her wash produce vigorously. She moves her hands in the same confident, no-nonsense way that my mom does, but the difference between her and all of our moms is that she explains everything step-by-step and very precisely. Thank you, Maangchi.

Cooking outside: Far North Bushcraft and Survival. This is random but also very much a part of my YouTube cooking journey. I don’t know if I’m the only one that harbors fantasies of throwing it all away and living in the woods, but I thrive on extreme off-grid living scenarios and vicariously watching people go solo winter camping in -20° weather. This couple cooks things on rocks, and if you watch their videos, you will feel like you’ve learned enough through osmosis to potentially survive the next apocalypse.

So those are a few of the channels I love. Please reply to this email or comment on this post if you have any other cooking YouTubers (or TikTokers!) you love. I’m very curious.

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And, finally, I’ve been doing a bit of food-related reporting at work lately, which has been fun and fulfilling:

• I led a live interview and cooking class at The Future of Everything Festival with chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco. Brandon just published a cookbook, “Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown,” which is beautiful if you’re looking for a window into fine dining Chinese American-style. We made a seared napa cabbage and sizzling fish—both delicious, stunning to look at and pretty simple to make (although the cabbage is a bit time-intensive).

• If you can’t get enough of Brandon, he’s also featured in a story I wrote for the May issue of The Future of Everything, which was dedicated to “what’s forever changed,” or the way the pandemic has altered our lives permanently. My article, the section’s centerpiece spread, was on the restaurant industry. The story started out being about expected things like QR codes and patio seating, but I ended up hearing a lot from chefs and restaurant workers about the pandemic-spurred reckoning around pay and labor practices. Amanda Cohen, who I interviewed, has been doing this for a while, but more restaurateurs are moving away from tipping and towards a blanket service charge that would be more evenly divided between front and back of house staff. I’m curious: what are your thoughts on tipping at restaurants?

• If you aren’t subscribed to The Wall Street Journal and can’t read the article, I also summed up its main points in a series of WSJ Twitter videos. Check them out here, here and here.

Again, happy summer, everyone! I’m writing this while outside and basking in the sun on my roof. I hope you are enjoying the sun too wherever you are.

P.S. Shoutout to my dear friend Serena Gelb for the newsletter’s beautiful lil’ edamame bean logo <3