[dropcap size=big]T[/dropcap]he señoras and doñas of Mexico have discovered YouTube and their recipe videos are nothing but hits.
About a month ago, on August 17, a grandma from Michoacán named Ángela began uploading the most chill and appetizing cooking videos—complete with the sounds of kids playing in the background—to a channel called De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina, translated to “From My Ranch to Your Kitchen.” She's already got close to 7 million views. But the reason behind her smashing success goes beyond the usual aspirational cooking aesthetic that most recipe videos rely on. Instead, it offers those Coco-esque warm and fuzzy abuela vibes that resonate hard if you come from a family that has roots in Mexican ranchos, those places in rural Mexico that are often associated with nostalgia, simpler times, and humility.
Sure, you'll want to attempt to fry some puffy eggs in your kitchen after seeing how easy she makes those type of things seem but more importantly, by the end of the video, you'll want to hug her like she's your very own abuela.
De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina is only the latest example of authentic Mexican recipes coming from grandma's kitchen making a killing on YouTube. But Doña Ángela's videos are becoming so popular at such a fast pace that people from all over the world have started writing her offering to translate the videos into other languages, reports sopita.com.
Her show is as simple as her ranchito. Scenes show Ángela walking around her home, microphone cord visible in her apron pocket, and she picks fresh, beautiful ingredients for her recipe. She often explains how she picks a nopal or a tomato before she takes everything over to her outdoor wood-fired oven, which is still a very popular way of cooking in rural Mexico. There's a blackened comal built into the oven where she sets her veggies and chiles to roast, usually next to a big slab of masa that she's made herself from corn that she grows, picks, grinds, and nixtamalizes by hand herself. She'll throw the pan or the pot right next to them on the comal, add more than just a little bit of oil, like many grandmas lovingly do, and proceed to make the stuffing for a mouthwatering handmade gordita. All in her small but indestructible hands that we are positive has cured many ailments with the healing Mexican mantra: “Sana, sana, colita de rana.” (In Spanish, the translation makes absolutely no sense: “Heal, heal, frog tail.” But this awkward translation didn't stop from making a lot of us feel better after we scraped our knee or were in pain as kids.)
It's all more beautiful than there are words so thankfully there are these videos.
The videos are so cozy and humble that Ángela didn't even tell her hyper fast-growing audience her name until her September 9th video, which now has 1.2 million views. And she only did that because so many people started commenting on the videos asking for her name and where her rancho is. Her intro is always some variation of “Hola, mi gente!” Which is roughly the equivalent of “Sup, fam.”
And we're like, “Hola, abuela. Tengo hambre. Que va hacer hoy?”
