CHENNAI: Many cooking enthusiasts follow popular Facebook pages like Hebbar’s Kitchen, Awesome Sauce India, Foodmate, and Tasty, which teach you everything from the basics of making sambhar podi to baking a three-tier cake… and all in under one minute. Naturally, these pages have thousands of followers. Hebbar’s Kitchen is not only known for its recipes but also for the thumb ring Archana has on her left hand in all the videos.
Archana and her husband Sudarshan, from Udupi, manage this page from Australia. “HK started as a hobby and later it became our passion-cum-profession,” smiles Archana.
Having celebrated a year recently, she says, “I not only post videos on my app and pages, but also step-by-step photographs and menus.”
Today, the page is one among the top six ‘most viewed’ Indian channels on Facebook and features in almost all health and food channels on Facebook. “I am from South India and it goes without saying that my speciality is South Indian cuisine...to be more specifi c, Udupi cuisine like bisibele baath, sambhar and rasam,” she adds.
According to Foodmate, managed by Chef Shejal Mittal, good food is everyone’s top priority. Launched in 2016, Shejal recalls her fi rst recipe video for cheesy bites and says, “We don’t have time to watch cookery shows on TV these days, and that’s when I decided to make a food video. Hence, my journey began.” Her videos to make curd sandwich and honey chilli potatoes got 500,000 and one million views respectively. Sharing a feedback, she says, “One of our followers proposed his girlfriend by making a dish from one of our videos. This cracked me up,” she winks.
A foodie by nature and a media professional, Lopa Mudra Mitra, channel director, Awesomesauce India, realised that food on social media would be a hit and started directing food shows. She joined Awesomesauce six months ago, and by then short cooking videos were already trending. She wanted to give it a twist. “I worked on the look and aesthetics of the kitchen setup for nearly a month. I was keen on giving my video a playful touch,” she smiles. The videos shot by Awesomesauce have no mention of the quantitites for each dish, we ask her why and she says, “It’s andaaza! Well…our mothers and grandmothers had no weighing scales,” she laughs “We don’t want our video to be texty and so we mention the measurements in the caption or comment section,” she adds.
The vibrant colours on their videos give it a desi touch and a sense of nostalgia. Lopa also has a funny comment to share. It read, “The nail paint and rings of the chef looks cool; do let us know where to get it.” CE spoke to a few followers too. Lavanya made a cheesecake after watching one of the videos. “It ended up looking like glue. Thankfully, it tasted decent or my mother would have barred me from using the oven,” she laughs.
Janani Ganeshan, feels cooking shows are more informative than these short videos. “TV shows explain the process step-by-step, whereas in these videos, one needs to scout the comments section carefully to get some extra information,” she opines. Gayathri Verma, who is a loyal follower of Hebbar’s Kitchen, has earned brownie points from her family. “I follow Hebbar’s because her ingredients are easily available in my kitchen. The recipes for malai kofta and panner butter masala are the best,” she smiles. Deeptha has had disasters while cooking in her kitchen, but she swears by these videos, which she claims “are helpful for beginners like me”.