Friday, June 08, 2007
Site Review: Rouxbe Cooking Instruction Video Site
Rouxbe (pronounced ROO-bee) offering an interesting online step-by-step videos of recipe preparations. I just viewed one of the recipes that doesn't require membership (which, after a month-long trial, runs about $50/year or $100 for a lifetime membership, though there is a sponsored version, which wasn't clear to me from first looking at the site). It was for a pan-seared cod. There are some great advantages to a video approach. With a close-up view of the procedure (and not some smiling chef trying to build more of a business platform) you can see critical details, like how finely to crush the coriander seeds. As new things come up, like a mention of Japanese Panko breadcrumbs, you can jump aside to see something about them, and then return to the main video. When getting ready to coat the cod in a Panko and coriander seed mix, all you have to figure out is how to rinse the fish and pat it dry. Everything else - including sprinkling salt and pepper on the fish surfaces, is in front of you, and you get a visceral sense of how much is enough, rather than using some prescribed amount that might not be a good match for the actual pieces of fish you have. Or you get to see just how brown the top of the fish should be before transferring to an oven.
There are some minor weaknesses in the recipes. For example, the cod one said that the fish goes into an over for five to eight minutes, depending on the thickness of the cod. They eventually do say how to tell that the fish is done, but it would have been smart to tell people to wait and that they'd see it soon. But that is criticism almost reaching quibbling.
Even if you are an experienced cook, you might find that you will learn a few new tricks. For example, in the cod preparation, the cook used the flat of a knife to crush olives, making it easy to remove the pits and then chop. Now there's a handy tip that I had never seen before.
I do think that the price is a bit high for this when currently they only have 83 recipes by my count, not including the various intermediary demonstrations, like how to cut a chiffonade, though if you can choose to watch some ads to get to the content, it's not bad at all. It's also tough to get a real sense of the site, and things aren't necessarily clear in the layout. For example, at first I couldn't find the list of ingredients; someone from the site had to point out that clicking a Print button would have given that.
However, I look at this as a first step to new types of cooking sites that will undoubtedly spring up. In fact, I had already planned a series of videos of how to make dough for my new cookbook's web site. This is giving me additional ideas, particularly in terms of integrating background music and using production to get a more useful result.
Apparently the people who run the site see it as an online cooking school, comparing the price in a favorable way. But, as I wrote back, video and even in-home materials aren’t enough, because there are a thousand and one things that someone won’t correctly get and that the teacher won't know without significant professional experience: short-cuts, ways of recovering from problems, tips about how to handle certain ingredients, someone there to correct when the student is doing something wrong, and so on. While video can be a useful tool, it’s not a replacement. However, overall the site is a worthy attempt.
There are some minor weaknesses in the recipes. For example, the cod one said that the fish goes into an over for five to eight minutes, depending on the thickness of the cod. They eventually do say how to tell that the fish is done, but it would have been smart to tell people to wait and that they'd see it soon. But that is criticism almost reaching quibbling.
Even if you are an experienced cook, you might find that you will learn a few new tricks. For example, in the cod preparation, the cook used the flat of a knife to crush olives, making it easy to remove the pits and then chop. Now there's a handy tip that I had never seen before.
I do think that the price is a bit high for this when currently they only have 83 recipes by my count, not including the various intermediary demonstrations, like how to cut a chiffonade, though if you can choose to watch some ads to get to the content, it's not bad at all. It's also tough to get a real sense of the site, and things aren't necessarily clear in the layout. For example, at first I couldn't find the list of ingredients; someone from the site had to point out that clicking a Print button would have given that.
However, I look at this as a first step to new types of cooking sites that will undoubtedly spring up. In fact, I had already planned a series of videos of how to make dough for my new cookbook's web site. This is giving me additional ideas, particularly in terms of integrating background music and using production to get a more useful result.
Apparently the people who run the site see it as an online cooking school, comparing the price in a favorable way. But, as I wrote back, video and even in-home materials aren’t enough, because there are a thousand and one things that someone won’t correctly get and that the teacher won't know without significant professional experience: short-cuts, ways of recovering from problems, tips about how to handle certain ingredients, someone there to correct when the student is doing something wrong, and so on. While video can be a useful tool, it’s not a replacement. However, overall the site is a worthy attempt.
