This post contains 25 East and South East Asian cooks I think you should look at and then follow!
Being British Chinese, I’ve grown up eating a combination of food from where I grew up in Northern Ireland and the Chinese food my parents made. If we were lucky, we might eat out at one of two Chinese restaurants in the city. This was supplemented by our infrequent trips to Hong Kong (once every 2-3 years) to see my parent’s extended family, where I relished eating delicacies I couldn’t get back home.
I’ve slowly tried to learn what recipes I could from my mum, but they were still working the takeaway business when I left for university. There wasn’t much time to pass on knowledge or skills. Whilst I was able to take a couple of recipes from her, I largely learnt from other sources, after missing her food when I was in Uni halls. Such sources were very limited and hard to find. Since then, the world has changed but representation of East and South East Asian cooks and recipes in English is still low.
Here, I list a few accounts I follow for inspiration, some vegan (labelled with a (ve)), some not. There are also a few Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) style videos too!
If you have a resource you like using, please share in the comments!
Aki’s Japanese Recipes for Vegans (ve)
Akihiro Yasui runs this YouTube channel which demonstrates how to make various vegan Japanese dishes. His videos give excellent ASMR with English text descriptors.
Andrew in the Kitchen
I first met Andrew by following the #GBBOTwitterBakeAlong and we are now good online friends. Andrew’s bakes frequently utilise popular East Asian and South East Asian ingredients. His Instagram is worth a follow!
Autumn Kitchen / Autumn Baking Diary
Chiew See, a self-taught Malaysian baker, runs this Instagram account with her baking experiments and recipes. Individual Instagram posts contain the recipes for her bakes, which is also duplicated on her Facebook page.
Chez Jorge (ve)
Chez Jorge is set up by George L., who comes from Taiwan but came to America to study. It is a plant-based site with many recipes, most with an Asian slant on them. His videos on Instagram are very helpful.
Celestial Peach (ve)
Celestial Peach is run by Jenny Lau who has Hong Kong Chinese and Malaysian roots. She currently resides in the UK. The site aims to dispel common myths about how bad Chinese food can be and goes into ingredients and recipes you can try that are completely vegan.
Christine’s Recipes
Christine’s Recipes is an old favourite of mine from my student days. Christine Ho lives in Australia but has a Hong Kong background and her blog has been going on since 2008. Her recipes don’t just focus on Hong Kong cuisine, but these are the ones I am most fond of. She has written two cookbooks (bilingual), but I think these are restricted to sale in Hong Kong only. Her website does have a Chinese version too if you would prefer reading the recipes in that language.
Cooking in Chinglish
Cooking in Chinglish is run by Edwina who grew up in Taiwan and then moved to America in 2012. The site started in 2019 but there’s a good selection of Taiwanese specific recipes as well as other recipes.
Cooking Tree
A Korean baking channel with lots of cute bakes. The videos focus on the processes without music or narration, very much like ASMR. English text descriptions are provided at each step, but these may be American centric.
Cooking with Dog
Cooking with Dog stars a Japanese woman, affectionally named “Chef”, who loves to cook. Audio English narration is provided over her cooking videos. Chef was initially camera-shy, so her dog accompanied her and thus the name of the channel was born. Her cooking videos focus primarily on Japanese home cooking, but she also covers other cuisines.
Daram Table
A Korean baking YouTube channel with English translations, but these may be American centric.
East Meets Kitchen (ve)
East Meets Kitchen is run by American, Christina Ng, who is also a food writer and recipe developer. Her YouTube videos cover various Asian cuisines, but particularly Cantonese cuisine. She’s put together a book on vegan dim sum via the self-authoring website, blurb, which you can purchase.
Helen’s Recipes (Vietnamese Food)
Helen Le grew up in Vietnam, spending years in Singapore and Germany before returning back to Vietnam. Her YouTube videos focus namely on Vietnamese cuisine. She has also authored two cook books.
Hot Thai Kitchen
Hot Thai Kitchen is run by Pailin Chongchitnant, who was raised in Thailand before going to Canada for high school. Her website has many recipes, including, of course, Thai. She has authored one cookbook.
Just One Cookbook
Nami runs Just One Cookbook and has been doing so since 2011, producing her first videos in late 2013. She was born in Japan before moving to America. Most of her recipes focus on Japanese cuisine.
Kitchen Story
I discovered Kitchen Story when I was trying to create this list. In my attempt to find a good English speaking recipe resource for Cambodian food, I found this. Thida’s videos cover more than just Cambodian food, with her first videos being produced in late 2018.
Maangchi
Maangchi, aka, Emily Kim has a popular YouTube channel demonstrating many Korean recipes. She was born in South Korea and moved to America in 1992. She has been creating videos since 2007. The name, Maangchi, actually means “hammer” and is taken from a character she created in the online game, City of Heroes.
Mama Z
Mama Z is local to Manchester and is a Filipino street food stall run by Zosima Fulwell of Filipino heritage. Her blog contains a number of Filipino dishes which you can cook at home! You can also read my interview with Zosima!
Mary’s Test Kitchen (ve)
Mary Lin is a Chinese Canadian who become vegan after watching the movie, Earthlings, in 2011. Mary’s Test Kitchen is a compilation of various vegan recipes.
Nyonya Cooking
From their YouTube channel, “Nyonya Cooking is a community of home cooks sharing recipes from Southeast Asian homes”. Nyonya is a Malay and Indonesian honorific to refer to women of mixed heritage. The food covered in this channel ranges from all over South East Asia.
Omnivores Cookbook
Omnivores Cookbook is run by Maggie Zhu in 2013. She was born and raised in Beijing before moving to America in 2015. Her website contains Chinese recipes (including Chinese American dishes) and is very extensive with easy filters so you can sort by meal type, dietary requirement, cooking method and ingredients.
Peaceful Cuisine (ve)
Ryoya Takashima lives in Japan and runs Peaceful Cuisine, which produces amazing vegan ASMR cooking videos. He creates two versions of each recipe video, one with music and one without, so you can choose which most appeals to you. There are many videos which focuses on Japanese cuisine, but he also showcases other cuisines.
Red House Spice
Red House Spice is run by Wei who grew up in North West China before moving to Europe 10 years ago. She now resides in the UK. She has run 2 week culinary tours in China. Her site and YouTube channel namely focus on Chinese cuisine.
Seonkyoung Longest – Asian at Home
Seonkyoung Longest was born in South Korea and moved to America in 2009. She gained popularity after winning Restaurant Express on the Food Network. Her videos focus mainly on Korean food but she also takes her own spin on other cuisines.
The Foodie Takes Flight (ve)
Jeeca runs The Foodie Takes Flight with vegan dishes mostly focusing on Asian cuisine, particularly those from her Filipino-Chinese ancestry.
The Korean Vegan (ve)
The Korean Vegan is run by Joanne Molinaro, a Korean American woman who became vegan in 2012. I found her through Instagram initially, where her cooking videos initially enticed me in, but also her narrated videos cover topics outside of cooking. They are effectively micro-blogs from her life and the topics range from mental health to just little stories about life. The recipes on her site vary but they are all vegan. I am particularly fond of the ones on traditional Korean cooking.
The Viet Vegan (v)
Run by Vietnamese Canadian, Lisa Le, who turned vegan in 2013. Her site and YouTube channel contain a varied amount of vegetarian recipes with many vegan ones too! I particularly like her vegan versions to traditional Vietnamese dishes.
I hope you have found some interesting new East and South East Asian cooks to follow from this list! Let me know which ones you liked and leave a comment below for any East and South East Asian cooks you like that I’ve not listed!
(I’ve snuck one extra in for anyone counting! Pedant, haha!)
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