Cooking shows in India have generally had a booming audience — from the likes of Sanjeev Kapoor and Tarla Dalal in the last millennium to the MasterChef series these days — India’s fondness for culinary shows knows no bounds. Now, a new craze has taken more than the culinary world and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi can claim to be behind the reputation of at least one of the pioneers.
The rise of YouTube and the availability of no cost/low-priced information in even the most locations have now birthed a new phenomenon — that of the village cooking show. Among the most current entrants to this list is Village Cooking Channel, which not too long ago hit pan-India reputation following it shared a video of Gandhi cooking mushroom biryani for the duration of his current election campaign in Tamil Nadu. The channel, which is run by 75-year-old Periyathambi and his 5 grandchildren, also hit the landmark 1 crore subscribers not too long ago.
Despite their glitz and glamour, the scripted shows normally leave the audience unable to replicate the dishes made on the shows, primarily mainly because of the unavailability or higher expense of the components applied or the lack of appliances in an typical Indian household. But these village cooking shows face no such complications. Their components are nearby, their utensils are nearby, their appliance will primarily be an open fire in the middle of a field. Often, the recipes that they show are common of that region and possibly go back hundreds of years. Add to that the simplistic and normally rustic tone of the cooking and there is the best recipe for results.
Village Cooking Channel is not the initially to obtain pan-India fame, having said that. A handful of years ago, 106-year-old Karre Mastanamma from Andhra Pradesh identified viral fame on YouTube following her channel went viral. Using classic cooking techniques and recipes passed on from generations just before, she regaled her subscribers with sumptuous dishes rooted in the area.
Similarly, Village Cooking Channel also makes use of recipes and techniques that go back in time — from octopus fry to lobster fry and mutton keema to even exotic winged termites. Speaking to IE Online, Murugesan, one of Periyathambi’s grandchildren, stated that they wanted to retain the raw tone of the village cooking and use only these products identified in the lakes and ponds of the village.
The simplicity of these village cooking shows has not only identified an audience in India, with quite a few locals who are settled elsewhere in the nation obtaining an outlet for a taste of home, but also across the world as Villifood, which has more than 1.5 crore subscribers, such as from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Bangladesh and quite a few other nations. The diversity of India and the myriad culinary delights that it presents also make these channels go viral. A Bengali sitting in New Delhi can very easily replicate what Periyathambi is undertaking in his personal backyard, even though a Malayali abroad can adhere to a fish recipe from a Bengali YouTube channel to attempt and get a taste of home.
Restaurants and bars getting closed on and off for effectively more than a year following the outbreak of COVID-19 and households stuck at home due to lockdown restrictions have only added to the reputation of these channels. And with quite a few keen to return to their culinary roots, this appears to be just the starting of a new cultural phenomenon.