New York Times Cooking app finds right ingredients to vanquish rivals

The most-watched YouTube video for the New York Times’ Cooking channel features chef and cookbook author Claire Saffitz carefully walking viewers through the steps of making the perfect croissant.

As she stands at the counter in the Times’ bright studio kitchen, she tells viewers not to be intimidated and that the reward is worth it.

“I’ve never had a bigger thrill than when I pulled out a beautiful, golden, puffy, gorgeous, layered croissant from my oven,” Saffitz says.

In less than half an hour, Saffitz navigates viewers through French cooking terms, cheerfully giving tips along the way, such as making sure to use cold, high-quality butter for that flaky texture. In the comments section, viewers gush. One refers to Saffitz as the “baking fairy godmother.”

With more than 5.1 million views, the croissant video is just one ingredient in the arsenal of NYT Cooking. Recipes have been a staple of the New York Times going back to the mid-19th century. But as the newspaper has pushed ahead with a digital-first strategy, NYT Cooking, which encompasses an app, website, YouTube channel and newsletter, has helped it stand out from, and even vanquish, the competition.

In an online era where TikTok is a driving force in food, and recipe apps have replaced culinary TV shows and cookbooks, the Times has changed its cooking offerings to better suit home chefs saddled with smartphones, shorter attention spans and fewer skills in the kitchen.

“Over time, we’ve tried to make the recipes more and more accessible,” said Camilla Velasquez, senior vice president and general manager of New York Times Cooking.

NYT Cooking was launched by founding editor Sam Sifton just over 10 years ago with a free, online catalog of 16,000 recipes drawn largely from the Times’ vast archive. Envisioned as a sort of digital cookbook, taking readers beyond the restaurant reviews that made up the bulk of the Times’ food coverage, the app allowed home cooks to save recipes, search for dishes by ingredient, and perhaps most importantly, leave comments.

That (usually) friendly interaction, combined with a popular newsletter, helped to develop a community and loyal following, allowing the Times to require a subscription for the service in 2017 and continue to grow.

Short, slick videos, camera-ready chefs and a visually appealing app designed for browsing and saving recipes have contributed to Cooking’s evolving success. The website and app attracted more than 456 million visits last year, according to data from the Times. Views on the NYT Cooking YouTube account soared 72% in 2024 from the previous year, with more than 4.3 million hours watched. Some 24,000 recipes are now available on the app.

Meanwhile, Food Network - a basic cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. - suffered a 26% decline in viewership between 2023 and 2024, according to Nielsen ratings. Cookbooks also haven’t been able to maintain the popularity they experienced during the pandemic and sales have dropped since 2022, according to book sales tracker Circana BookScan.

Perhaps most significantly, NYT Cooking has also supplanted Epicurious, one of the first cooking sites on the internet when it launched in 1995. The platform combined the resources of two stalwarts of cooking literature - Condé Nast’s Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazines - and was known for its popular Test Kitchen series and a cult-like following of some of its chefs, including Saffitz.

But a scandal over pay disparity and discrimination in 2020 that led to the resignation of its editor-in-chief, and a shift to a paywall in 2022 that enraged longtime fans who lost access to years worth of beloved recipes, left Epicurious vulnerable and NYT Cooking swooped in.

“She was the reason I watched Bon Appétit in the first place, now I have found her again!” one user commented on Saffitz’s croissant video. “I am pretty sure this is what pure bliss feels like. She is a treasure!”

NYT Cooking’s success is part of the New York Times’ broader push into digital media and its strategy of bundling popular content, including NYT Games and The Athletic, into news subscriptions to reach a wider audience. An all-inclusive New York Times subscription bundle costs $25 a month. A subscription to NYT Cooking on its own is $6 a month, or $50 for an annual plan.

The New York Times added 350,000 digital-only subscribers during the fourth quarter, helping bring total subscribers to 11.4 million. Revenue from digital-only subscribers increased 16% percent to $334.9 million.

“Bundle and multiproduct subscribers now make up approximately 48% of our total subscribers, well along the path to exceeding 50% by the end of next year,” New York Times Chief Executive Officer Meredith Kopit Levien said on the company’s latest earnings call in February.

As with most forms of media today, video is the driving force behind NYT Cooking reaching more loyal fans. In 2018, Cooking brought over two former staffers of Tasty, the BuzzFeed Inc. division made popular by its Facebook cooking videos, as part of its efforts to emphasize photography, video and other visuals to help people cook.

“Video for us is really something that works in so many channels,” Velasquez said. “People feel that they can cook by watching somebody else do it.”

The team takes a cross-platform approach and posts videos on its cooking app, YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok and X accounts.

The NYT Cooking app, which currently ranks #1 on the Apple App Store’s list of best recipe apps, began including short, looping vertical videos last year. The clips, embedded in select recipes or featured on the app’s home page, usually show a pair of hands completing each step of the cooking process, making it easier to learn how to slice and dice.

The Times also produces a collection of YouTube shows, including Mystery Menu, where chefs create dishes out of unexpected ingredients like Oreo cookies, coffee beans or string cheese. A Cooking 101 series features instructional segments with lessons on making eggs, chicken and other staples, and there’s also a scattering of short documentaries that give in-depth looks at specific New York eateries.

The cooking videos are often filmed at a spacious studio kitchen in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, about a 20-minute walk from the Times’ midtown headquarters. The pantry shelves are stocked with every spice imaginable as well as rows of drinking glasses and piles of plates. While the actual kitchen area sees subtle changes, like the placement of holly sprigs in winter or the addition of a new cookbook by a NYT chef to the shelf overhanging the sink, it’s supposed to look simple and unintimidating.

Scott Loitsch, the director of video for NYT Cooking and one of those who came from BuzzFeed’s Tasty, said the videos the Times produces are “more intimate” than the polished cooking shows on the Food Network. The team wants to make the chefs seem human and doesn’t necessarily edit out mistakes, such as a burnt dish.

“It’s a chance for us to say it’s okay if this happens to you it’ll still be good,” Loitsch said.

The Times publishes 75 recipes a month, sometimes pushing 100 around the holidays, according to Emily Weinstein, editor-in-chief of NYT Cooking and Food. While the offerings include whimsical selections like White Gazpacho with Watermelon Rind and easy staples like One-Pot Chicken and Rice With Caramelized Lemon, Weinstein said that subscribers typically gravitate towards classic dishes. A bolognese sauce from storied Italian chef Marcella Hazan was the most popular recipe of 2024. The recipe, which is more than 30 years old, has more than 3.9 million views.

Dishes that are challenging to cook are also tough to film. Recently, the team was preparing for a soufflé shoot, which can be tricky because the French puffed egg dish can deflate before it can be properly filmed.

“You just have to get that shot in that moment,” Loitsch said. “Otherwise, we’ve got to make another soufflé, which is never the worst thing.”