5 Great Cooking YouTube Channels for English Learners
This is part of my series on YouTube channels for English language learners.
All of these channels offer great cooking tips and recipes, but they also have characteristics that make them ideal channels for food lovers that are learning English.
Let’s take a look.
For Beginners
Good For: Vocabulary
This channel is good for beginners because the recipe videos focus on visuals instead of written or spoken words. You’ll be able to learn food vocabulary by seeing different foods, spices, etc. next to their names.
Japanese speakers will also be able to see the names of the ingredients and instructions in both English and Japanese.
Good For: Vocabulary
If you want to learn a lot of vocabulary words, try Tasty Recipes’ videos.
These videos often have multiple recipes. The creators write out the names of all the ingredients, and they write out the instructions as well, which will help you learn cooking-related verbs like “mix”, “simmer”, and “bake”.
Note: Do not depend on these videos for grammar help.
Recipes are often written with a specific kind of grammar that is different from the grammar used in speaking or in other types of writing.
For example, I would tell someone “Preheat the oven to 350 degrees”. If I were writing a recipe, I would remove the article “the” and write “Preheat oven to 350 degrees.”
For Intermediate Learners
The channels in this section do not typically label the ingredients in their videos, so they may not provide the type of support that many true beginners need.
For intermediate learners and above, however, these videos will provide a nice middle-ground.
Good For: Keeping your attention
One of the hardest things about learning a language is continuing to study and practice it even when it gets difficult.
One way to stay motivated is by connecting your learning to something you’re interested in.
If you’re here, I’m guessing it’s because you like cooking, so you’re kind of already doing that.
Babish’s videos will help you take that a step further by showing you how to cook iconic foods from well-known shows and movies.
He even makes and tries the recipes that no sane person would even want to try, like the "cold cure" from Keenan and Kel, which contained hot sauce, chicken, mustard, and orange soda among other things.
Check out his channel and see what videos he has from your favorite shows.
Good For: …. also keeping your attention
I like the videos on this channel because they’re entertaining, but also because they’re direct and straight to the point.
No matter how interesting a video may be, listening to someone speak the language that you’re learning for an extended period of time gets to be EXHAUSTING.
These videos manage to fit a lot of really great, practical information into a short amount of time.
If you’re one of those people who likes to watch a video and practice your listening skills by trying to write out the things that you hear, you would probably enjoy the videos this channel.
Fun fact: the chickpea video above is the reason that I always have at least two cans of chickpeas in my pantry.
Advanced Learners
5. Munchies
Good For: Accents and regionalisms
This is one of my favorite cooking channels of all time.
In addition to the sheer amount of content that this channel has and continues to put out, it features chefs and recipes from all over the world.
If you’re an advanced learner wanting to expose yourself to different accents, regional particularities, and slang, then this is the channel for you.
It also features videos of different types and lengths. They have everything from four-minute-long how-to videos to 20-minute-long videos about ice cream.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve made the braised chicken recipe in the video above, and I definitely couldn’t end this post without sharing the video that helped me cook a decent steak for the first time in my life down below.
I hope the channels on this list help you improve your English skills and your culinary ones too.