NEW DELHI, Aug 8: Baking a cake in a coffee mug within a few minutes is not something everybody is familiar with, but a quick online search throws up plenty of such recipes, which delight cooking amateurs and seasoned chefs alike.
More Indians search for “How-to” recipes online and the country is pegged number one among those viewing cooking videos according to video sharing site YouTube, which lists food among its top five popular categories.
Homemakers, amateur cooks and professional chefs have also blazed ahead as some of the top global contributors of cooking content, says the site, which hosted some popular and creative cooking talent here recently.
Nisha Madhulika, 54, from Noida and Gayatri Sharma, 40, from Mumbai, both homemakers gained recognition for their cooking blogs and videos that have attracted wide viewers. They are among those listed by YouTube as ‘Top Chefs’.
Madhulika speaks in Hindi to showcases delicious vegetarian recipes in her video tutorials, which have over four crore views.
“My passion for cooking led to start my food and cooking website in 2007, and with help of my son and husband I started my YouTube channel in 2011. By doing what I love I have now created an identity for myself and my viewers tell me that am an inspiration for many homemakers in India,” says Madhulika.
The homemaker cites Gujarati dish Undhiyu as a personal favourite and her most searched recipes include “cooker mein cake”, “tawa pe pizza” and rasagullas.
Chef Sanjeev Kapoor, one of the better known names in the domestic food industry, Sanjay Thumma, best known as “VahChef” for his YouTube recipes channel with over 185 million views, as well as Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi, a professional chef with over 25 years of experience are among the popular celebrity chefs.
Based on watchtime, two of the global top ten YouTube food channels come from India. Similarly, four of the top ten most watched YouTube food channels in Asia are also from India, making domestic creators some of the top cooking content contributors on the site in Asia and around the world.
“Food and cooking videos are thriving on YouTube, with cooking content being amongst the top ten most watched categories globally. In India, it’s amongst the top five most watched categories,” says Gautam Anand, Director, Content and Operations, YouTube Asia-Pacific.
Anand says a 40 per cent year-over-year growth in viewership for food and cooking videos has been observed on the video sharing website.
Sanjay Thumma says he launched in 2007 a recipe channel, which demonstrates mainly Indian and some international food styles of cooking.
“I was in US, running four restaurants, but I wanted to do something that would inspire people to enjoy fresh home-cooked food. YouTube helped me to live the dream of inspiring people all over the world to enjoy homemade food” says Thumma.
While content in Hindi and English are popular, vernacular languages have also seen growth. Chef Gayatri Sharma for instance creates her content in Telugu.
Gayatri says she created her YouTube channel in 2008 to encourage people to make homemade food. She concentrated on tutorial videos intended mainly for students living in hostels who didn’t know how to cook.
Personally her tomato chutney is a favourite, tutorials on bread pizza and rosagullas are a hit among youngsters and women respectively.
As a source of cooking information and entertainment in the last year alone, India topped the world where people searched for “Recipes” on YouTube, followed by UAE, Qatar, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, US and the UK.
North Indian dishes rank at the top searched recipes followed by South Indian dishes, Chinese and Italian according to data compiled by the videosharing site for the last six months this year.
Chicken curries have been found to be the most popular followed by biryani, paneer curries and recipes for cakes and pizzas. (PTI)
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