22 Instagram accounts that will make you a better chef
With recipes for a game-changing tomato salad, pastries with perfect lamination and sticky, soft dumplings.
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SOME PEOPLE just follow their friends and family. Some fill their feeds with preening influencers and reality stars. But only the most masochistic of Insta-addicts chooses to spend their working day staring and salivating over hovering shots of beautiful food. You are one of those people.
And we respect it. That’s why we’ve rounded up the very best food accounts on Instagram, for home cooks and hungry scrollers alike.
1
Georgina Hayden
Georgina Hayden is a cookbook author who for years worked alongside Jamie Oliver and now writes her own books with a focus on celebrating her Cypriot heritage. This means exciting plates of tahinopita, a Cypriot sweet cinnamon tahini swirled bun, or tava, a dish in which lamb neck, cumin, bay, potatoes, tomato are all cooked together.
2
Pophams Bakery
Cult London bakery Pophams – who now have sites in Islington and London Fields – are the page to follow for tips on perfectly laminated pastries and unusual toast toppings for an upmarket WFH lunch. Having now started making fresh pasta, too, their flavour combinations like oxtail ravioli with bone marrow, and braising liquor sauce with pickled beetroot and cavolo nero, look mouthwateringly good.
3
Hetty Lui McKinnon
Sydney-based Hetty McKinnon is a recipe author whose books, Community, Neighbourhood and Family feature hearty comfort foods and healthy bright salads. Her feed is packed with delicious dinner inspiration, especially Asian food given the focus of her new book is the cuisine of the East.
4
Noor Murad
Noor Murad is a recipe developer working in the Ottolenghi test kitchen, meaning that her page is filled with bright, flavoursome dishes and advice on how to throw them together. That means delicious plates like these tomatoes with “gingery garlicky limey fish saucey dressing” and “crispy fried ginger-garlic yumbits”.
5
Clerkenwell Boy
Anonymous food editor Clerkenwell Boy is arguably London’s top foodie Instagrammer, his account a roll call of the best dishes the city has to offer which gives followers tips about what they should order. He also features recipes on his account if your appetite is suitably whetted and you want to recreate the magic at home.
6
Salad for President
California food writer, chef and cookbook author Julia Sherman turns vegetables into plates of wonder that will stop you ever thinking a bowl of greens is boring again. Dishes, like this roasted broccolini over tahini sauce, sliced blood orange and crushed crunchy sumac seed cracker, make us believe salad really should run for president.
7
Momofuku
David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant empire in New York City makes authentic Korean food with a modern twist, and their Instagram account offers tips on recreating some of their dishes like the signature bo ssam or the perfect spicy pork and shrimp noodles.
8
Ixta Belfrage
Ottolenghi recipe developer and cookbook co-author Ixta Belfrage shares truly delightful plates on her feed, from this chicken with 15 cloves of black garlic slowly simmered down, to a step-by-step guide to making biang biang hand-pulled noodles on her Stories.
9
NYT Cooking
The very, very good New York Times cooking section requires a paid subscription, which means you can’t spend too long hopping around recipes before you hit the dreaded firewall. That’s why the NYTCooking Instagram account is so useful – letting you scan over a selection of food shots before you delve into a recipe.
10
Binging With Babish
Andrew Rea, better know as ‘Binging with Babish’, is arguably the biggest chef on YouTube, having amassed over 5 million subscribers in just 4 years. He specialises in teaching users the basics, as well as recreating dishes from famous TV shows and films. His Instagram account offers home cook tutorials, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at his life.
11
Cook House
Cook, restaurateur and author Anna Hedworth’s simple, stunning rustic meals are well-worth replicating if you have anyone to impress. Her taste in tableware is second-to-none, as well.
12
London Cheap Eats
It’s the week before pay-day and your belly starts to rumble. You simply can’t stomach another night of pasta and Netflix. There’s only one thing for it: a scroll through London Cheap Eats, which will deliver you to some of capital’s best budget restaurants and food stalls. Truly game-changing stuff for anyone with a fiver in their pocket.
13
Spoon Fork Bacon
Jenny and Teri are a food stylist and photographer duo with three cookbooks under their belt. They share mouthwatering images on their instagram with easy steps on how to recreate them at home. These Irish breakfast nachos made with waffle fries tell you all you need to know.
14
Food Minimalist
A calm oasis of clean plates, Lucia Lee’s Food Minimalist page specialises in easy bowl recipes and Asian-inspired dinners with plenty of flavour. We like her Shanghai-style noodles with salmon and spring onion, or this sautéed garlicky shrimp.
15
Food 52
Boasting a very impressive 1.8m followers, Food 52 posts the best recipe and food photography from their team of editors. In other words a mixture of different tastes and cuisines served onto your phone daily.
16
The Feed Feed
With nearly as many followers is the Feed Feed, another account (and website) fuelled by a community of cooks. Be wary of looking around the 4pm sugar slump.
17
Modern Honey
Self-proclaimed (and fair enough tbh) cookie connoisseur Melissa Stadler shares her recipes for red velvet, orange and white chocolate, ginger snap and caramel stuffed cookies to name a few. She also, as you can see, makes a mean fried chicken sandwich.
18
Joy the Baker
If you’re not particularly into baking don’t be put off by the handle. On her carefully curated account Joy shares recipes for plenty of savoury meals including Pizza quiche (a thing, apparently), french onion pasta and fish tacos. She’s also the mastermind behind the amazing Drake On Cake Instagram account.
19
Half Baked Harvest
Cookbook writer Tieghan Gerard has equal regard for dishes healthy and comforting. Her account shares beautifully shot recipes for dishes like superfood bibimbap with crispy tofu or her sweet potato gnocchi with rosemary parmesan sauce.
21
Vegan Ventures
If you’ve got the hang of cutting out meat during Veganuary and want to carry it on, or if you’re a fully fledged vegan already, this account will give you endless ways to reinvent the green stuff.
22
Chef Steps
While we’d never utter a phrase as hideously outdated as ‘man food’, Chef Steps greasy delicious treats such as fried chicken sandwiches and melted nacho cheese is a haven far away from health food. They’re run and operated by Joule, a kitchen equipment company, so all recipes have incredibly thorough and helpful details.
This article originally appeared in Esquire UK.
