The Best Episode of a Cooking YouTube show just dropped
I've been watching Sorted Food for years now. They're something of a "we need something to watch during dinner" fixture.
They're a London-based cooking YouTube channel with a big focus on education - especially around getting people who like food but find actually getting started an obstacle. The core group consists of a couple of Professional Chefs, and 3 "normals" who ostensibly don't really know how to cook properly - though after 15 years of doing this, they're a bit abnormal now.
They've released a handful of books, and the last few years have been focused around their Sidekick app - a helper that groups recipes with common ingredients to minimise food waste. The recipes are generally easy to follow and usually involve something you might not have tried before. It's genuinely very good, I recommend it whenever it comes up in conversation.
Another thing they love is a good video format. They have a number of long-running series - Relay Cooking Challenges, Food Location Quizzes, a bunch that don't have playlists for some reason, and the focus of this video - deciding if Ingredients are Pretentious.
There's something inherently enjoyable about making a judgement like "pretentious or not?" to me, and the format has been very successful. I recommend watching some, I guarantee you'll be angrily arguing with the video in seconds.
A few months ago, one of the normals came up with an incredible twist - what if one of the ingredients was a fake concocted in the studio.
One problem they've had for a while is that it's hard to see past the "social good," or whatever other marketing copy the product has, and just review the product itself on its own merits.
After that point, introducing just the possibility that one is fake causes them to question everything, even when there are no fakes on the table. They give much harsher, more honest opinions about the ingredients, and are always on the lookout for hints.
Now they've done it a few times, so they're a bit savvy to it - leading to the latest episode, a masterpiece imo.
I won't explain any more.
Watch a couple of the other linked videos (especially the first fake ingredients one) and just see reality crumble in front of these professional entertainers eyes.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.