I usually start with Food Wishes, Serious Eats, or the New York Times. Julia Child for French food, Just One Cookbook for Japanese food. Budget Bytes when the bank account is looking a little thin. Dessert Person when I have a lot of time and want to knock the socks off my friends.
More niche but I’ll mention the ramen_lord Book of Ramen if you ever want to make homemade ramen (or even just sprucing up instant ramen with authentic toppings).
I recently discovered IndianHealthyRecipes.com, his chicken tikka masala and chicken biryani have become regular favorites at our house.
I like JustOneCookbook for Japanese food. Most of the ingredients on her recipes are easily available. I've tried her recipes and they taste good. She also has recipes for ingredients that aren't easily available so you can make your own.
For Chinese I usually hit up the Woks of Life, but sometimes I just search the name of the meal and compare recipes, like with beer duck or more specific regional dishes.
RecipeTinEats is one of my faves. Tasty, wide range of dishes up my cooking alley, and a little more complex than BudgetBytes, which is my other go-to but for dead simple and cheap but not bad food.
This is such a good recommendation! I like BudgetBytes but find myself having to doctor up a lot of the recipes. I already see like ten things I want to try from RecipeTinEats.
The closest of that for me would be GialloZafferano. However I usually websearch multiple recipes for the same dish, to get a good idea on variation, so I don't usually rely on a single website or chef.
Probably not a lot of Indian cuisine fans, but my favorites are showmethecurry.com, vahrehvah.com, and Ministry of Curry, though I'm also fond of tarladalal and Manjula's Kitchen.
I’ma fan of Minimalist Baker. They specialize in meals with a limited number of ingredients that can be made in 30 minutes or less, often with only one bowl. They include meals for both vegans and people who like meat.
I've been cooking through Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi
At first I thought it was one of those "15 minute weeknight meals" books that are focused on skipping steps and ignoring technique, but it's the exact opposite. The recipes are fantastic and I've collected a nice pantry of ingredients I wouldn't otherwise buy.
Chef-wise I have a couple of Madhur Jaffrey books I use for curries, and then the flavour bible for cooking stuff generally that I'm comfortable with the base recipe for.
brian lagerstrom on youtube is in high rotation in my house. he came from kitchens and researches his recipes really well. my only quibble is that his delivery style is a little frantic but easily solved if you crank the video speed down to 90% or grab his recipes directly from his website
I watch a lot of Brian's videos but only recently tried to make a recipe. I'd agree that it's a bit fast-paced, but I prefer that to an extra long video with a bunch of filler.
As you say, it's best to just follow the recipe and check the video as you go for technique if needed.
The recipe(s) (beef burgers on homemade buns) turned out fantastic, despite my wife's attempt to sabotage the buns by preheating the wrong oven for a cake she was making.