How long-form kitchen videos taught me care, confidence, and the appeal of a ₹3200 brass kadhai.
The first time I heard Nisha Madhulika’s voice, I was in my very tiny kitchen in my Bombay home, armed with misplaced confidence and one too many unripe tomatoes. My mother was out of town. The cook was on leave. I had guests coming for dinner and a vague memory that “khaman” was supposed to be easy.
I typed how to make soft dhokla into YouTube, expecting chaos. What I got instead was calm. A kind-faced woman in a beige salwar kameez, speaking slowly and gently, as if I were the only student in the room.
“Namaskar,” she began. “Aaj hum banayenge ekdam soft dhokla.”
Her voice was soft but authoritative. She didn’t assume I knew anything. She explained ENO like it was a sacred ingredient. She didn’t skip steps or cut to conclusions. When something was tricky, she smiled and said, “Thoda practice se aa jayega.”
I was hooked. Not just on the recipe, but on her pace. Her quiet confidence. The sense that I could, in fact, feed myself.
The Slow Burn of Confidence
In the years that followed, I cooked along with her and her YouTube cohort: Kabita’s Kitchen, Aarti Madaan, Hebbar’s Kitchen, BharatzKitchen (the original faceless, hyper-edited male food whisperer).
Their kitchens were real. Their vessels were scratched. Their measurements sometimes varied mid-video. But there was comfort in that. A refusal to perform perfection.
They taught me more than recipes. They taught me:
- That you don’t need twelve kinds of knives to make bhindi.
- That if your idli batter doesn’t rise, you pivot to uttapam.
- That care is a skill. Like all skills, it can be learned slowly, one video at a time.
The Rise of the Aesthetic Gurus
Cut to now. My subscription feed is full of sleek thumbnails and overhead shots. The lighting is soft, the kadhais are brass, and everything is shudh desi yet Pinterest-ready.
These aren’t your neighbourhood aunties. These are your aspirational best friends, aesthetic cousins, or occasional nemeses in the art of “simple” living. On Instagram, many well put together women deliver gorgeous reels with napkin folds, clean white counters, and gulab jamun arranged like museum pieces.
And I’m still watching.
They whisper the same promise Nisha ji once did, only wrapped in saffron-scented minimalism. I watch their vlogs while eating cereal. I copy their thali plating when friends come over. I buy that ₹3200 brass kadhai and convince myself it’s an heirloom.
YouTube vs Reels: The Joy of Not-Performing
Instagram Reels want you to feel something, quickly.
YouTube wants you to stay.
There’s something profoundly different about watching a 12-minute tutorial on how to make aloo kulcha without yeast, oven, or tandoor, versus a sped-up, musical “3 ways to use leftover roti” video on Reels.
One makes you feel like you’re learning.
The other makes you feel like you’re behind.
In a culture obsessed with hustle, these long-form videos feel like quiet resistance.
They aren’t selling slow living. They are simply practicing it.
What They’re Really Teaching
These women, and yes, mostly women – are doing something deceptively radical.
They are not content creators. They are guides.
They are not here to go viral. They are here to be useful.
They offer the kind of slow, accumulative knowledge that builds confidence without drama. They show care not as a performance, but a method. A way of being. A kind of devotion.
Grief, Eyeballing, and the YouTube Auntiverse
Amma making laddoos. No recipe card. No measurements. Just memory in her hands.
After I lost my mother five years ago, these women became something else entirely.
Not just instructors. They became stand-ins. Comfort. Familiarity.
I started gravitating towards Amma-like women. Agraharam Maami. Revathy Shanmugam, Lakshmi Cooks, Subbu’s Kitchen. Chitra Murali. Rakesh Raghunathan’s Amma. Women who wore sarees and said “thiruppi paaka koodathu” with gentle firmness.
It wasn’t conscious at first. I just found myself watching them more. I was drawn to the cadence of their Tamil, the rhythm of their chopping, the way they held a ladle like it meant something.
Amma would’ve been horrified, honestly. That I was learning rasam from YouTube. That I learnt nothing from her.
But the truth is, Amma was an intuitive cook. All instinct and eyeballing. A “handful of this,” “a dash of that,” “you’ll know when it’s ready.” And I wasn’t ready then.
These women gave me entry points. Precision. Repetition. A scaffolding to rebuild memory through method.
They didn’t replace her. But they helped me remember her kitchen, with a teaspoon, a timer, and a subscribe button.
Devotion, Reimagined
It’s been over a decade since that first dhokla.
I’ve forgotten the exact recipe. But I remember how it felt to be spoken to with patience. To learn without fear. To try, fail, and serve something anyway.
These women – Nisha ji, Kabita, the brass-kadhai vlogging gang, the Maamis of YouTube, they taught me more than food.
They taught me how to live in the quiet in-between.
They aren’t the loudest voices online. But they’re the ones I return to.
Not for content.
For company.
And later this year, you’ll be able to meet one of them too. My mother — or at least, her rasams, payasams, and kitchen logic — will make their way into the world through my upcoming food memoir, Upma and Other Traumas. A collection of simple, yet iconic recipes, accidental wisdom, and edible love.
Primalsoup 
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