I love YouTube cooking shows. Why yes, I do want to learn to make one of the burgers from Bob’s Burgers, and I would love to make my own crispy chicken sandwich without giving a single cent to the hate-group cafe known as Chick-Fil-A.
But I also have a major problem with a lot of the YT cooking community. There are a ton of channels that border on hustle culture bullshit and sell the same lies that useless finance gurus sell: this idea that you can simply make it big by the correct application of time.
Sure, it looks a little different. A plate of “cheap” food looks a whole lot better than whatever steaming pile finance bros want you to jump on. At the core, though, it’s the same setup for failure.
Let me explain.
The Process
Here’s what those videos look like. I won’t name anyone specifically, but for the sake of writing let’s say there’s a YouTuber who’s shtick is to create your favorite restaurant food, but cheaper.
That sounds great on paper. We all want to eat cheap and healthy, and I think there are certainly a ton of people who enjoy cooking enough to want to try it out for themselves. And hey, here’s this person who can show you step by step how you at home can make your favorite food! Awesome!
Yet, just like the last 20 passive income videos you watched, there’s so much left out that you never get the chance to really start. It’s only 5 dollars to make that Panda Express, and it only takes 9 minutes on video. It’s so easy even a child could do it, right? Everyone could just make their own food and Panda would be out of business by the end of the week?
Obviously, everyone can’t just make their own. Because the idea that you can just make your own dinner in 9 minutes for 5 dollars is a complete lie.
The YouTube Chef Lie
The first problem is that the costs are wildly, well, wrong. It does not matter one bit if the cost per portion is 3 dollars when you actually need to buy 30 dollars worth of groceries to make the portions.
I know there are YouTubers who do use the entire cost, and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, it’s still a lie. There are a ton of hidden costs to cooking at home.
Hidden Costs
First, the gas or electricity used for heat costs money. You don’t just get free energy, and while the cost of natural gas is fairly low, it’s not free. If you spend a dollar on an onion, then a dollar to caramelize it, it’s not one dollar caramelized onions. It’s two dollar caramelized onions, a 100% increase in price over what you’ve been told.
Two, there’s also cleaning products, water, and the trash bill to consider. Again, these are not major expenses, but they are also not free. If you go get a Crunchwrap Supreme at Taco Bell and eat it at the restaurant, you throw away the wrapper and you are done. If you cook it at home, well, there’s a couple pans, a plate, and some utensils that you have to wash.
Which brings us to number three, your time is valuable. This is perhaps the greatest sin cooking shows commit. They edit down the entire process to be a neat little 10 minute video, but you know what you don’t see? The time it took to clean the kitchen. The time it took to clean after cooking. The time it took to DO the grocery shopping. The mistakes and failures that cost time.
I’m not saying at all that most people can’t do it. I’m just pointing out that it’s the same mentality as the side hustle videos that tell you to just go get an incredibly demanding job in a saturated market in order to make extra money. If you enjoy selling t-shirts, by all means. If you enjoy cooking, so do I. Do it.
But if you are trying to save money and time in your hectic life, this aint it. And those hidden costs aren’t even the most annoying factors.
The Kitchen
No, to me the most annoying thing is that all these finance gurus had wealth to start with, and then simply allocated some wealth into projects that have minimal risks. They sell you the course that will make you millions, something that costs them NOTHING to produce and has zero consequences if it’s a lie.
Sorry, I mean that these YouTube chefs have years of cooking experience already, and kitchens that put most people’s entire house to shame. I don’t know about you, but my kitchen doesn’t have a giant endblock countertop to prep on. Or a six burner stove. Or an entire selection of esoteric tools that make every action a breeze.
This is how I perceive it.
How To Make A Fried Egg for $1
- Place a five dollar carton of eggs on your 300 dollar walnut cutting board. Be careful not to scratch your 3000 dollar marble countertop.
- Take out one egg. Since that is one twelfth the carton, you are really only spending 41 cents per serving. That’s cheap!
- Cut a slice of butter off the softened butter you keep in a ten dollar butter dish. The butter was five dollars or so, so really this is only like ten cents worth of butter.
- Put the butter slice into your 100 dollar stainless steel pan. You can’t use a cheap non-stick pan, that’s not what real chefs do. Make sure the pan is on your 5000 dollar Wolf range so that it gets adequate heat.
- Simply fry the egg. Sprinkle a little bit of truffle oil on the egg unless you are a knuckle-dragging moron who can’t afford anything.
- Watch your stock portfolio climb to the moon while the egg cooks. Don’t know how to invest in stocks? Buy my course for 499 dollars now and I’ll teach you how to click the buy button on my affiliated stock trader website and have exactly the same chance to become a millionaire as I do, but now I’ll be starting with 499 more dollars than you.
- Turn off the gas, and slide the egg onto a 40 dollar piece of stoneware.
- On a separate 200 dollar cutting board, use a 300 dollar knife to cut 13 cents worth of chives to sprinkle on top.
- Grab your 5 dollar egg fork, clap twice so the maid knows it’s time to clean the kitchen again, and enjoy.
That might be an exaggeration. For all it matters, though, there’s no meaningful difference between the exaggeration and reality. Both are equally out of reach for a lot of people.
The Hidden Truth
There are some really good lessons to learn, though. It’s not how to cook an egg, although that is a good skill to have. It’s about how the society we live in does not value your time and that hustle culture is toxic.
Finance Bros don’t exist in a vacuum. They are popular because people get fed garbage all the time, and these chefs promise them that there is an alternative. I will not fault anyone for watching a chef make a wagyu burger and dreaming of doing the same. I also won’t fault anyone for watching a “best passive income” video and dreaming of owning those passive revenue streams.
Because let’s face it; time is limited. Between a job that demands more than anyone could give, a society that judges you constantly by productivity, and a constant stream of never ending information that demands your attention, anything that promises to give you back a few minutes in your day is a wonderful dream.
There is no shame in being entertained by the fantasy of having more time.
What We Can Do
Don’t compare yourself to the lies, though. If you don’t have a full kitchen, there is zero shame in buying a premade meal. If you don’t have the startup capital to just spend a few grand on creating a web store, or hiring a ghostwriter to make you an ebook collection, or if you don’t have the time to start your own YouTube videos…
That’s ok. You don’t have to make your own Crunchwrap, you can spend that time playing with your cat. You aren’t less of a person just because society thinks you have to die working.
Cheers.
