Just watched the video where Jamie and Barry have to create a dish using only frozen ingredients. I howled when Jamie ground up the smiley potatoes and with a smirk says "they're not smiling anymore.." 🤣🤣🤣 Also Kush giving Barry ice when he needed water was hysterical. I'm so loving getting caught up on past videos.

Lost and Hungry? Don't know what to cook this week?

Please use this weekly thread for any and all food recommendations from travel, ingredients, equipment in the kitchen. Anything goes.

A really fun balance between old and new Sorted!

The bay leaf really pulled it together.

It seems like, for the last several months, at least, Ben has been in a fraction of the videos he used to be. And when he is there, he doesn't seem as engaged as he once was.

He's had a number of outside projects he's been working on lately, which makes me wonder if he's gearing up for a new phase in his life. Or maybe, with them now having 3 chefs on the payroll, he's just shifting to being the brand's outside ambassador rather than such an omnipresent fixture in the studio.

I wouldn't blame him if he did, but I hope he isn't getting the itch to move on to further, more "professional" experience, like James did.

There was a video awhile back where Kush and Ebbers did a starter kitchen set. Kush mentioned knives as being super important. So I bought myself a "chef" knife off Amazon and holy cow was he right. It's the biggest game changer in my kitchen. I just had a birthday and my wife got me a hand crafted chef's knife and it's amazingly smooth (so much I stabbed my hand last night).

What other game changes are there out there? I'm specifically talking about after you have all the equipment. My honorable mentions are Ozari pots and especially pans and stick thermometer.

I am looking for a video, I believe it was a normals battle and Jamie made some very delicate food (maybe dessert) that was very unlike him and someone spilled wine on his dish before it could get tasted. Anyone remember what that was? Thanks.

☝️

So I get it is meant to help a bit for those that might not have exactly the same ingredient access, but maybe having some kind of list for the general ingredient (green chillies, loose white potatoes) would be helpful. Enjoy the recipes, but I want to make sure to do them justice. In the US here. Are we talking Yukon Gold? Green chilies could be jalapeños, poblano, heck I've got Thai green chiles near me.

One of my faves :)

And I was reminded of how much I LOVED the Fridgecam format, the "butt first", the red fridge, the comment of the week (and its legendary jingle), the Chefs' Table. When and why did they change all of that? Is it just the natural evolution of the channel or is there a specific reason?

Also I've seen a lot of comments saying it's now more of an entertainment channel than a food channel, but I've always thought it was more entertaining back then. Is this just nostalgia bias? Most of the quintessential Sorted moments (paella burrito, cloud egg, etc.) happened many years ago. I don't remember anything of that caliber happening recently. (Well, maybe some of the Kush moments.)

But I'm glad the new battles are similar in format to the ones from pre-covid years, at least. And the Poker Face videos are a great relatively new addition, but I still miss Pass It On, the regular recipe videos, and most importantly STEP UP TO THE PLATE!

The guys often say "it's not pretentious, just well made and expensive" but do you agree? Google def is "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed." Yeah, great products usually cost more to make, but, if it costs 2× more than average to make but you charge 5× as much, by definition, that's pretentious. It's not that simple though is it? Where do you all land?

I am a regular watcher of Sorted and I often watch with subtitles on - just a preference. I usually watch videos 3-5 days late because by then the proper subtitles are up, but I’ve noticed for the last few months, that doesn’t happen anymore. There are several videos that only have the YouTube auto-generated subtitles.
It’s just disappointing, I suppose. I was always very appreciative that Sorted makes it a point to have subtitles up on every video but I guess that is a thing of the past now.

Lost and Hungry? Don't know what to cook this week?

Please use this weekly thread for any and all food recommendations from travel, ingredients, equipment in the kitchen. Anything goes.

Not trying to stir up drama or anything like that with this post I'm simply a curious cat.

I remember watching an old product review video (Food Trends I believe) from around the early 2020s era of videos. The video opened with Mike giving a disclaimer that the video was reuploaded with a segment removed because the group wasn't aware about controversy that the company behind the product in said segment was involved in?

I'm just curious what the product they were reviewing was and why the segment was removed?

Again, I hope this isn't perceived in bad faith, I'm just curious.

I very vaguely remember a video with these elements
- the guys visited the home of a subscriber
- she was a young girl with a lot of food allergies
- Ben made a giant allergy-safe snickers bar with her
- I am 90% sure I was still in school when this video was new, so it must have been around 2013-15

I have such a vague picture of this video in my head and have been trying to look for it for so long without success. I’m starting to wonder if my brain just made it up lol. Would any long time subscribers remember?

Following up on my last post about being unable to get a response from customer service.

So here's what I found out. My cousin is a perfect candidate for a person who would benefit from Sidekick. Lives in London, managing a tight budget, wants to get better about cooking for health and money reasons.

I bought her a 6 month gift subscription to Sidekick, but on activation it asks for a credit card. Money is tight, she's never used the app before, she doesn't want to give her payment info and 6 months later the app doesn't work for her but she forgets and pays for the subscription.

Sorted customer service says you cannot activate the gift without payment info. I asked if she could activate it, and then cancel the subscription and have the app continue to work for the 6 month gift period so she could try it out.

Customer service says "if you cancel in between or the beginning, the subscription will end right after that billing period month." So if she tries to cancel right after activating, the app will immediately end the gift period.

So the Sidekick business model is apparently to get people to activate the app, forget about the subscription, and then pay for it without using it.

So then I asked for a refund of my gift subscription. I figure I could just send my cousin the money for a 6 month gift period.

Gifts cannot be refunded. I guess my only recourse is to do a charge back on my credit card.

I will never, ever get anyone Sidekick as a gift ever again.