John Armand{{Cite web, url=https://twitter.com/foodwishes/status/934215380599312384, date=24 November 2017, accessdate=24 November 2017, title=Middle name Tweet Mitzewich (born July 11, 1963), more commonly known as "Chef John", is an American

chef A chef is a trained professional cook and tradesman who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation, often focusing on a particular cuisine. The word "chef" is derived from the term ''chef de cuisine'' (), the director or head of a kit ...

known for publishing instructional cooking videos on the blog and

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...

channel ''Food Wishes'', with over 930 million views on his channel.

Career

John Mitzewich graduated from

Paul Smith's College Paul Smith's College is a private college in Paul Smiths, New York. Paul Smith's College offers associate and bachelor's degrees. Its 14,000-acre campus is one of the largest college campuses in the world. Approximately 1,000 students attend ...

, New York, in 1983. He received an Associate of Applied Science Degree, with Honors, in Culinary Arts/Chef Training, and was also honored as the school's 1983 "Outstanding Chef Training Student".{{cite web, url=http://americanfood.about.com/bio/John-Mitzewich-36296.htm, title=John Mitzewich, publisher=, accessdate=23 January 2017, archive-date=15 June 2009, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615073046/http://americanfood.about.com/bio/John-Mitzewich-36296.htm, url-status=dead He has held various positions throughout the restaurant industry, including Executive Sous Chef at the Carnelian Room, Sous Chef at Ryan's Café, and Garde Manger at the San Francisco Opera. Mitzewich was a Chef Instructor at the California Culinary Academy in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

for five years before leaving to focus on teaching people to cook online. He has a partnership with the online food network Allrecipes.com, and has published a cookbook for Paragon Publishing, ''America's Family Favorites: The Best of Home Cooking''.{{Cite web, url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/13/MN3S1H3GJS.DTL, publisher=

SFGate The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

, date=13 January 2011, author=Stacy Fins, accessdate=2 March 2011, title=YouTube viewers turn chefs into unlikely stars In 2011, he was awarded Best Home Chef in a Series by Taste TV.

YouTube

Perhaps uniquely among Internet food writers, each of Mitzewich's recipes is split between the blog and the video instructions on his YouTube channel, with the exact written ingredient amounts and background information about the recipe being posted on the blog, and the method for preparing the recipe not being written but instead explained through the video on YouTube (which otherwise does not typically describe the exact amounts of all ingredients). He has noted that this allows him to get "paid twice" from the advertising on both sites. As of January 2023, Mitzewich has over 4.3 million subscribers to his YouTube channel with over 980 million views. Mitzewich has a content partnership deal with YouTube.

Style

A differentiating aspect of Mitzewich's videos on YouTube is his way of filming. He deliberately keeps himself out of the shot, only displaying utensils, ingredients and his hands. He records the narration later. His narrations are always done in a wandering and almost singing tone of voice, with one rhyming wordplay joke per video. A unique aspect of Mitzewich's cooking is the inclusion of powdered

cayenne pepper The cayenne pepper is a type of ''Capsicum annuum''. It is usually a moderately hot chili pepper used to flavor dishes. Cayenne peppers are a group of tapering, 10 to 25 cm long, generally skinny, mostly red-colored peppers, often with ...

in almost every recipe.{{cite web , title=Homemade Podcast Episode 3: Chef John on Family Recipes, Fulfilling Food Wishes, and Finding YouTube Fame , url=https://www.allrecipes.com/article/homemade-podcast-episode-3-chef-john-mitzewich/ , website=Allrecipes , access-date=20 November 2021 , language=en He describes the addition of the spice as giving an "extra touch of the heat and bringing the unique tastes of the dishes forward".{{citation needed, date=July 2021

References

{{Reflist

Career

YouTube

Style

References

Further reading