South India’s Tamil food, from dosas to goat biryani, gets its moment in the sun via YouTube and New York City
- New wave of chefs want to show that Indian food goes beyond northern Indian fare of naan and chicken tikka masala
- South India’s rustic cuisine, influenced by centuries of cultural exchanges, features fresh produce and meat cooked with hand-ground spices and yogurt
Against the backdrop of lush green paddy fields, men dressed in traditional dhotis and striped shorts with colourful turbans slice meat, crack eggs and cook on makeshift stoves. Chillies, coriander and turmeric are ground fresh on a traditional grinding stone.
The YouTubers of the Village Cooking Channel are farmers-turned-chefs from a small village in Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu, in south India. They gained international popularity last year when they won YouTube’s “diamond play button”– a special recognition for crossing 10 million subscribers.
Five cousins and their grandfather Periyathambi started the channel in 2018. They have since been making cooking videos in the local language Tamil, but their videos have broken language barriers, and are popular across India.
What sets their videos apart are the bucolic locales and fresh produce such as fish, snails and crabs from field bunds and rivers. Outdoor cooking takes place against a backdrop of paddy fields, groves of coconut trees and flowing rivers. Their speciality is meat dishes, made in gargantuan cauldrons, with lots of spices and yogurt. Dishes on the menu include fish fry, mutton curries, raw banana chips, goat intestine fry and mutton biryani.
Arul Murugan, a software engineer in Chennai, who watches videos on the channel regularly says: “Most of us who have lived in villages in our childhood miss that life and the rustic food there. This transports me back to my grandparents’ home in the village.”