10 Of The Most Popular YouTube Cooking Channels

When it comes to cooking shows in the Internet age, no platform has been as big for creators and chefs alike as YouTube. TikTok and Instagram might be the place to go for short-form clips, but YouTube offers viewers something more, and something deeper, with longer videos that both showcase food and demonstrate how it's made from start to finish. It's not just people who are learning how to cook for the first time who watch YouTube videos by their favorite creators, but even professional chefs turn to the platform to improve their skills, speaking to the sheer breadth of information available and its ability to educate and entertain simultaneously.

In the social media game, though, it's all about numbers, and some channels have managed to absolutely dominate the platform by combining cooking and education with sheer watchability. Some channels, like Binging with Babish and Tasty, have skyrocketed to success due to their snappy, but informative videos. Others, like Aja Kitchen and Village Cooking Channel, give watchers a window into different food cultures, achieving enormous figures while doing so. Even some of our favorite professional chefs have turned to YouTube, and folks like Gordon Ramsay have become some of the biggest vloggers around.

What does it take to earn almost 30 million subscribers on YouTube? Just ask Aja Kitchen, a YouTube channel that was created in 2021 and has grown to extraordinary proportions. With 29.6 million subscribers as of January 2026, Aja Kitchen has become one of the biggest channels on the entire platform, and it's done so by posting almost entirely wordless videos using an ASMR style to demonstrate traditional Indian dishes, both sides and mains.

Aja Kitchen showcases village-style cuisine, and in each video, the meals are prepared primarily by a grandmother and grandfather duo (with "aja" translating to "grandfather" in the Bhojpuri language). Other family members also frequently appear in the channel's videos, helping their grandparents make dishes like chicken kabobs, cauliflower fry, and chicken curry. The videos are simple, but beautifully produced, and they have both a calming and an informative quality that leaves viewers feeling both more educated on the styles of Indian cuisine and basking in the glow of the family on screen. The wordless style also means that the videos are accessible to people all around the world, which no doubt has contributed to Aja Kitchen's huge success.

When a professional chef pivots to becoming a content creator, you know you're in for a treat. This is exactly what Joshua Weissman did in 2018. The line cook decided to turn his hand to making YouTube videos while still working full-time in a restaurant, making videos that were both educational and watchable. Almost a decade later, and it looks as though he made the right call: He's now one of the most-watched food YouTubers on the website, with well over 10 million subscribers.

Weissman's videos are wide-ranging, and no matter what you're in the market for, there's something for everyone. On the more technical (and fermented) side, his videos on kimchi and sourdough bread provide a step-by-step guide on how to tackle these slightly daunting dishes, and have gained millions of views each. If fast food recreations are your thing, Weissman's got those too, turning his hand to making Popeyes chicken sandwiches at home. More recently, Weissman has also started creating travel videos, jetting around the world and trying dishes in places like Japan and China. All of his work features his punchy, but friendly, presenting style, which feels accessible but not patronizing.

The beauty of websites like YouTube is that they can provide a glimpse of a completely different culture, and allow viewers to immerse themselves in a new world at the tap of a button. Perhaps no channel embodies this better than Village Cooking Channel, which boasts a mammoth 30.1 million subscribers as of January 2026. The channel profiles the day-to-day lives of the residents of Chinnaveeramangalam, a village in Tamil Nadu, India, and the family meals made by five cousins and their grandfather, with the latter, M Periyathambi, being an acclaimed and respected chef in the area.

The family gives international visitors to their page a look at the meals made by and for the village, as well as some of the more unique and celebratory aspects of Indian life and culture. The resulting videos are pretty incredible, and rack up some serious views. One video, showcasing a mutton biryani from start to finish, begins with the preparation of several full goat carcasses, which are then roasted in a pot, before being combined with the rice and vegetables. This video has had well over 230 million views alone and is a testament to the desire for knowledge about cooking practices around the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a time when a lot of people were considering what they were doing with their lives, and a period when all of us were spending a lot of time on our phones. The combination of these two things meant that we saw an influx of content creators, particularly chefs, who saw an opportunity to show off their videos on the internet. One such chef was Cherith N Silva, a Sri Lankan chef who founded Wild Cookbook in 2020. In the space of just a few years, Wild Cookbook has not just become the biggest YouTube channel in Silva's home country, but across the whole world, and as of the time of writing this article, it now boasts 10.7 million subscribers.

Wild Cookbook's earliest videos showed Silva cooking in the wilderness, combining the natural beauty of Sri Lanka with his excellent food. Now, the channel's content is diverse and wide-ranging, frequently featuring Silva's desire to try far-flung dishes. His videos showcase his travels to places like Turkey and Australia, but there are also a lot of clips demonstrating how to make simple dishes like seafood fried rice. Silva has since converted his online success to the physical world, and in November 2024, he opened his own restaurant in Colombo, appropriately named Wildish.

Honestly, does he need any introduction at this point? Gordon Ramsay is arguably the world's most famous chef, and that's down to the building of his hugely prolific media empire. When he's not appearing in one of his many TV shows, though, he's turning his hand to YouTube, and Ramsay maintains an absolutely massive presence on the website. As of January 2026, the British food mogul had almost 22 million subscribers to his channel.

We don't doubt that name recognition helped boost those numbers, but what also likely did it was the sheer amount of content that Ramsay offers. There are over 2,000 videos on his YouTube channel, featuring almost anything you care to name. He has hundreds of videos of everyday recipes, from which viewers can learn all sorts of cooking tips, such as Ramsey's trick for cooking with wine. He also uses the channel as a crossover tool for his television empire, with clips from shows like "Kitchen Nightmares" and "Next Level Chef" making frequent appearances. Ramsay also posts plenty of videos featuring his celebrity pals, who often join him in cooking challenges. You want it? He's got it.

If you want to learn to bake from scratch at home, there's no better place to start than YouTube, and there's no better YouTuber to watch than Rosanna Pansino. Pansino is one of the most recognizable faces on the website, and having started her channel back in 2010, she's a food YouTuber who's managed to stay relevant and successful as the site's evolved and changed. She's also scored some enormous hits in the process: Her video showing folks how to make a Frozen princess cake is now one of the most-viewed on YouTube, with over 232 million views. In January 2026, she had almost 15 million subscribers.

Pansino's biggest videos often feature her combining her baking prowess with her ability to make kid-friendly desserts. As well as her Frozen creation, she's also made Minecraft candy pops, My Little Pony cupcakes, and a Captain America cake. Interestingly, the creator is also unafraid to speak up against other YouTubers, who she feels may be using their success to mistreat others. In 2024, Pansino publicized the complaints of various contestants in MrBeast's show "Beast Games," who had messaged her citing unsafe working conditions.

Although YouTube is traditionally the home of longer-form videos, with short-form finding its home on Instagram and TikTok, it doesn't mean that snappier videos can't find success on the platform. Creator albert_cancook is proof of this. The handle for Albert Niazhvinski, a Belarusian creator who moved to the United States in 2016, albert_cancook's videos are distinguished by their lightning-fast cuts, taking viewers through his creations at a rapid pace. The food that Niazhvinski creates is also often intentionally pretty bold, which has no doubt helped his massive viral success and subscriber count (27.8 million as of the time of writing this article, in case you were wondering).

Niazhvinski doesn't just make speedy videos, though. He also has a range of longer clips showcasing his cooking, which may well be slightly more appealing to YouTube's general viewer base. Having said this, the food he makes in these videos is also quite out there: One clip shows him turning 33 Big Macs into a pizza. Needless to say, this isn't a channel where you'll learn classic cooking techniques, but it's definitely entertaining.

Andrew Rea, creator of Binging with Babish, is one of the best-known food creators on YouTube, and for good reason. His ascent to internet fame is largely down to the fact that he makes accessible, informative, and entertaining content, which keeps the focus on the food he's creating and the techniques he uses to cook it. His videos are technical but user-friendly, with high production value that allows them to stand out from the pack. Oh, and they're all narrated by Rea, whose dulcet voice has a calming, reassuring quality, while you're tussling with your latest food endeavor.

It's no wonder that Binging with Babish had 10.5 million subscribers at the start of 2026, and we predict that it'll get even bigger as the years go on. Rea's ambitions to grow his platform are clear, and an investment from the Made In Network in 2024 will only serve to bolster this further. Honestly, we hope that it does: We need more content like his "Every Way To Fry Chicken" video, which effortlessly breaks down the food science, like the cooking temperatures for fried chicken, while simultaneously being very watchable.

There are food channels, and then there's Tasty. The Buzzfeed-created YouTube channel is, we would argue, the source material for countless food creators today, who have modeled their speedy styles on this channel's tone. Starting in 2016, Tasty quickly took the online world by storm, changing how we consume and what we expect of online food content. A decade later, and it's remained huge, with 21.6 million subscribers.

You can immediately identify a Tasty video by its shooting style. Its clips typically have a POV format, showing a recipe over a series of quick cuts, backed by a soundtrack of smooth, funky jazz. More recently, Tasty has started to move away from this trademark vibe and into more long-form content, and it now focuses on guiding viewers through how to make classic foods like tiramisu or on the benefits and drawbacks of different cooking methods. These videos, however, still have that snappy, bingeable feel that viewers love. The heyday of BuzzFeed may be past us now, but Tasty's going nowhere, and we don't doubt that it's going to continue growing over the coming years.

YouTube is the place to go if you want to see chefs create things you never could at home. One of the best to do it is Amaury Guichon, whose chocolate and pastry creations have dominated the platform over the last few years. Guichon, a prodigious pastry chef turned YouTuber, has amassed an enormous following on the website, now boasting 22.3 million subscribers, as of January 2026.

Take one look at Guichon's videos, and you can see why he's become so popular. The chef combines his incredible knowledge of desserts with a real sense of what will do well on the internet. In one clip, he makes a crate of apples, with each apple made out of pastry, and the crate itself made from caramelized white chocolate. In another, he forms a sushi boat, with the boat again made from white chocolate and the sushi pieces constructed with vanilla rice pudding. Each video is a little like watching an artist at work, and while they may be unashamedly extravagant, it's hard to turn away. It seems like Guichon's found his true calling.