Sam the Cooking Guy

Sam the Cooking Guy is Sam Zien, a San Diego cook with no formal training who became a television host and then one of the most popular cooking personalities on YouTube. His videos are shot in his home kitchen with his sons behind the camera, and they are loose, funny and deliberately unfussy: “Addressing the meat” and “First bite” are the chapter titles in almost every episode.

Burgers are his strongest subject. His two “Best Burger I’ve Ever Made” videos, a take on In-N-Out’s Animal Style and its sequel, are among his most-watched, and the second one went on the menu at Samburgers, the burger restaurant he opened in San Diego. He has also built a long line of homemade fast-food remakes, each billed as way better than the original: the Big Mac with wagyu, McRib sliders, the Filet-O-Fish, In-N-Out’s 4x4, the Baconator, the KFC Double Down, the Popeyes and Chick-fil-A sandwiches and Burger King’s Original Chicken Sandwich.

The rest is pure indulgence and fan requests: a twenty-pound bacon cheeseburger for two million subscribers, a butter burger stuffed with compound butter, a deep-fried bacon double cheeseburger, a Kevin Bacon burger, beer can burgers stuffed with mac and cheese, a French dip burger and a Japanese burger technique he calls life-changing.