Elderly food vlogger more famous than El Chapo
Doña Angela cooks in her messy little kitchen in Michoacan, Mexico, her daughter-in-law films it and her son uploads it to YouTube. Within a month: 2 million followers. What is the secret of this abuelita?
She doesn’t have a gleaming stove, but a cooktop with scratches and stains because it has been used for years. She doesn’t cook in a professional studio kitchen, but in her own little wooden kitchen, where she is sometimes drowned out by clucking chickens and screaming children. She doesn’t use high-tech kitchen gadgets, but old earthenware pots and enamel saucepans. And yet doña Angela’s video channel, De Mi Rancho a Tu Cocina, where she always wears her kitchen apron, is a huge hit on YouTube. The rough-and-ready videos in which she shows how to make tacos, gorditas and caldo de pescado are devoured by hundreds of thousands of foodies every day.
Now with subtitles too
Fortunately, thanks to her online success, the videos are now subtitled in English. But even if you don’t speak Spanish, Angela’s videos are easy to follow. The dishes are rather straightforward, after all. The senior vlogger simply taps eggs on the edge of the stone countertop, and picks up the green peppers from the grill with her bare hands. According to experts, that is the secret of Angela’s success: it reminds a younger generation in particular that good cooking has nothing to do with the latest technological gadgets in the kitchen, Michelin-starred masterpieces or complex recipes. And who wouldn’t want a grandmother like Angela?
A point of criticism: the food processor
Publicity? Angela doesn’t do that. It took a radio station two weeks to reach her for an interview, and she hardly responds on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Except when someone criticizes her kitchen: it is certainly not dirty, she says, but well-used. Naturally, there is some soot on the wall behind her because she cooks over a wood fire, but she cleans the kitchen every day. She is also criticized for the modern blender she uses to make sauce. Not in a traditional mortar? Everyone in Mexico uses such a modern gadget, Angela responds, and it actually tastes just as good.
