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To me Adam Ragusea is precisely that. A honest to god „Real Folks“ Chef who makes meals like no other. And for a foodie, or dare I say a food/cooking aficionado like myself, he was godsend.

In the ocean of YouTube home chefs, celebrity chefs and wanna-be chefs, Adam Raguesa stood out by being no nonsense, poor man’s home chef that makes simple meals with simple ingredients and simple methods. Oh and wine. Lots of white wine, but I’ll get to that.

I can even safely point out to the video recipe that got me hooked on Adam Ragusea’s YouTube channel. It was the Broiled chocolate chip cookies recipe and I was intrigued and fascinated at the same time. Really? Broiling? Oh come on…. I thought to myself. And initially I thought that it was some wacky cooking experiment gone awry, but hey it was actually doable. And a couple of days later, I even made that same recipe and the cookies (the broiled cookies) turned out great.

Photo courtesy of Adam Ragusea

Who’d knew? You should definitely broil you cookies!

But the thing is… That’s the beauty of Adam Ragusea’s YouTube Channel. You can find simple and delicious meals and can basically make them in a pinch. They require little to no prep and they’re easy to follow. They’re meal recipes that contain basic ingredients that you most likely already have in your pantry or fridge and they’re done the lazy but effective way. A win-win in my book.

Adam’s well known for his generous use of white wine in his cooking, and granted he’s not the guy who likes precision, but that’s OK. It’s not a flaw per se, but an idiosyncratic trademark that just makes him unique. Yeah, you won’t find grams or milliliters in the recipes, but that’s because he’s not a trained chef. He’s a regular Joe (an ex-college professor tuned bad-ass YouTube-r) who likes to take short cuts in order to get perfectly satisfying meals. He’s basically you and me. Why bother with a 4 hours meal when you can do it in less than an hour- am i right?. Oh, and he won’t even bother with overtly complicated dishes that require 7 pots, 5 pans, and  a bunch of other expensive appliances. In fact… A dutch oven and a spatula is what you’ll most likely need for 80% of his recipes. What you will find in his videos are tips on how to get yourself out of a sticky situation and salvage a recipe that you somehow screw it up. Hey it happen to the best of us right? I’m sure that even Julia Child made some crappy chocolate cakes in her day.

Photo courtesy of Adam Ragusea

But wait. Recipes on skillet cornbread, chicken pot pie, pork chops and mac and cheese are not the only content on his channel. Oh no. There’s more. Being the educator that he is, he’s here to educate us on the molecular compounds of the garlic, the many exciting garlic peeling methods that you can use, the reasoning on growing your own tomatoes, and what the heck shortening is. Being born and raised in Southern Europe, I’ve never even seen a shortening in my life, so this video was fascinating to me. Most of his videos range in the 10-20 minutes length mark, and in some of them his family is even included. I particularly loved his dad’s Mac and cheese recipe. Shout out to his dad!

If you’ve never seen an Adam Ragusea video, do yourself a favor and do it. Immediately. You’ll thank me later. Oh, and if you even manage to whip up some of his recipes, even better. Let me know how it turned out, because I’m dying to talk about them. And Adam. And his videos. But you get the picture right?