Along with watching a lot of YouTube cooking shows, I’ve started to actually cook some of the stuff I watch. Below are some of my favorite things that I’ve made over the last couple years. The coronavirus lockdown has especially been a great time to experiment more with cooking since most of my favorite restaurants have been closed.

A lot of these are hybrids of various recipes I found on YouTube or other sites. In the future maybe I will start writing them into blog posts. Someday maybe I’ll even post it on Instagram like a normal person.

Beef Wellington

This was Christmas dinner in 2020. One of the most nerve-wracking things I have ever cooked, but it came out well. The recipe is mainly a mashup of the Binging with Babish recipe (from Mad Men) (no, I did not make my own puff pastry because even Babish says it’s not worth it), and the individual beef wellington recipe from Food Wishes. I also used the sous vide Wellington technique from Guga.

Chimichurri Flank Steak

Fun recipe for the summer. Flank steak marinated in chimichurri then grilled to medium rare. Very delicious, and also completely filled the backyard with smoke because of all the olive oil in the marinade. Recipe most closely based off of Guga.

Air Fryer Chinese-Style Pork Belly

One of my proudest inventions of quarantine, figuring out how to make a passable laowai immitation of Cantonese crispy pork belly using an air fryer. I’ve especially missed Asian restaurants during lockdown since I lack the skill, ingredients, and patience to make most of the foods I love from these places. I felt really clever figuring out how to make crispy pork belly until Taste Show came out with an even easier method for getting an even better result with the air fryer. Live and learn.

Thanksgiving Turkey

Adam Ragusea’s simple turkey recipe is the only turkey recipe I will ever cook for the rest of my life. It’s easy, straightforward, and produces an incredible bird in only about 3 hours cook time. The two tricks are using ghee on the skin to get a great golden color, and cooking the roasting pan on the stove for 30-45 minutes to give the dark meat a head start. Giving the dark meat a head start means you can blast the bird with higher heat for less time, which cuts down on cooking time and allows you to optimize for the white meat. My parents’ roasting pan isn’t suitable for being blasted on the stove, so instead I found myself cooking a turkey on our grill outside on a cold Thanksgiving morning. Fortunately the pan didn’t melt.