The Show

It started as a Google Hangout.

In November 2013, a D&D group formed around a group of friends who met at the east coast convention Otakon was stagnating. Members were becoming too busy to make weekly commitments to play D&D, but much of the group remained hungry for something to fill their evening.

Tim (Kevin Spicy) dropped the idea first. 

In lieu of d&d who would like to watch me cook a thing?

And so it began. The D&D crew would hang out once a week and informally video chat and share their dinner-making.

Then, after 2015's Twitchcon and Twitch's release of the #Creative broadcasting channel, chefs could finally take their creative endeavors to the popular streaming site. 

So, the crew did. The first Cooking With Heat show on Twitch aired on December 4, 2015. What was our first recipe? Pizza.

By now, Brent (ChefBrent) was a member of the Cooking With Heat backstage crew, bringing his piles of new appliances and watchlist of Good Eats to the table. His vast knowledge of the tastier side of edible items was just what the group needed to turn a hangout into a cooking show.

At first, there was one camera coming from a Macbook Pro, pointed at the kitchen. But as time went on, they realized they needed additional angles around the room to capture the show as a whole. They added Stovecam and Countercam video feeds from our mobile phones.

The three were still doing the cooking show almost entirely inside Google Hangouts at this point, and completely without graphics assistance. The only graphics being created were the thumbnails we used for both the YouTube video and the recipe name inside the stream. AND the whole show was being run from a computer that was 2 rooms away on the other side of our small apartment.

Elli reached out to Twitch streamer StronkGamer and asked for some Cooking With Heat graphics and overlays. This was a real turning point in the production of the show, as Cooking With Heat finally took on some branding. It seemed like the show's production quality and technology was improving every month.

In July of 2016, Elli moved to a new apartment. One with a giant orange-y kitchen and tons of space to set up a cooking show. A new layout started to take form. One with more scenes, more cameras, better software, and even better equipment.

Starting in January 2017, the crew invited friends to join and act as a guests, following along with chat, asking the chefs questions about their process, and booting trolls. The PH16 community helps contribute to recipes on the Cooking With Heat website, as well as bring fresh new ideas for recipes to make on the show.

2020 brought many things, mostly bad things, but it also mean the very first Cooking With Heat SPONSORS! After sampling the product, Inseedious made the first promotional code available to CWH viewers! If you’re shopping for seed salsa, use the code ELLI at checkout!

Later in 2020, Insight Editions also made a promotional code for anyone buying any of their pop culture cookbooks that were regularly used on the show!