I use invidious, and if I can't because it's down or something, I use a FF extension called "unhook". I hadn't been on to youtube proper in a good few years, but with unhook, I can block everything (suggested videos of all kinds, comments, etc). I can re-enable comments by clicking on the extension in the toolbar and unchecking comments. Easy peasy.

You get almost a complete blank page and a search bar when you go to "youtube.com", and then when you search, you get the results. Just simple, really.