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Tadka with ASMR: How Sanjyot Keer’s comfort cooking goes viral
Sanjyot Keer’s food videos turn even everyday sabzi into art. It’s why we’re hooked, even those of us who can’t cook
Grandma picked her recipes from Tarla Dalal, tweaking them to create new family favourites. Mum and dad tuned in to Khana Khazana, marvelling at Sanjeev Kapoor’s knife sets, avocados and other new-fangled delights. Millennials turned to food blogs, trudging through lengthy chef backstories to eventually reach the recipe.
What’s everyone doing these days? On Instagram, naked men are assaulting food in the name of cooking, and telling people that brinjal is actually bad for us and chicken contains worms (It isn’t; it doesn’t). Influencers are doing 10-second reviews of 10-course dinners. Trad-wives are pretending they made Thanksgiving feasts on their own.
So, it’s no surprise that when a video by Sanjyot Keer pops up, we tend to linger and listen. Most of his clips feature himself, preparing simple versions of familiar Indian dishes, with a voiceover that makes everything sound easy – even dhaba-style cashew masala. The videos look professionally shot. The background music is always appropriate. His cooking channel, Your Food Lab, has 62 lakh subscribers on YouTube and 3M followers on Instagram. This is apart from the 268K followers he has on Instagram. Keer is only 32, but he’s been doing this since the Facebook era of 2016. It’s like the world’s finally caught up with him.
Mint to be
Keer grew up in Mumbai. His father cooked too. But it was as he watched his mother and his paternal grandmother prepare meals for family and guests that he fell in love with food. “Whenever my mother cooked for people, they used to have these big, bright smiles. I used to think she had a superpower, to make people happy. And I wanted the same superpower,” he says.
So, he started off in the home kitchen, went to culinary school, worked in restaurants and focused on building his superpower. By 2015, he was food producer for MasterChef India, learning about camera work and presentation even as he took charge of the pantry. And, as so many journeys go, he decided to cook for the cameras a year later.
The goal was clear: To document recipes so chefs a century from now can track how a certain dish was cooked. The eye on the future unwittingly shaped the view of today – people loved how simply and elegantly cooking scenes unfolded for them. One video, for chole bhature, crossed 1.5 lakh views. As with Spider-Man, he’d found both great powers and great responsibility.
Mix and mash
Among the thousand-odd videos on his YouTube channel is one featuring a chicken pickle and another for paya (goat trotter) soup. They’re recipes he learnt from his grandmother. “And because she was from Rawalpindi, she taught me a version of pindi chole which is unique to that region,” he shares. It features no onions, no garlic and no tomatoes. And a whole lot of ghee.
Oddly enough, the worst comments he gets on his videos are about the way something is cooked. “I feel like people are too strict with food,” he says. “They say ‘You don’t know how this is made’, ‘This is how it’s made here, come here and see’.” His video for a chicken biryani recipe has over 6,500 comments, mostly positive. Though there’s the odd “This isn’t how we make it in Pakistan,” or “Try Kolkata biryani next time.” It doesn’t bother him. Most claims of authenticity are a lie – Indian food is too old and too varied for there to ever be a single definitive recipe. “Even if I’ve uploaded it,” he says, laughing. “A recipe is always inspired from something.”
Taking whisks
Keer shoots all his videos in his pristine kitchen, one of two in his home. It’s his pride and joy. “I’ve painted and designed it myself, and selected everything down to how each plate should look, which bowl to use, what kind of a mixer grinder or pans I’m using,” he says. “I’ll go to extents people cannot imagine. If I like a pan, I’ll order it from France if I have to.”
He makes it a point to bring out the good stuff for everyday use, encouraging viewers to use their best things too. “I love Japanese knives. The craftsmanship and attention to detail that goes into making them is incredible,” he says. One of his knives is made by Takeshi Saji, a legendary blacksmith from Japan, who’s now in his 90s. “I treasure it.” And yet, it shows up in many videos.
But he’s also aware that he has the luxury and privilege that much of his audience doesn’t. He didn’t always have a straight answer when people asked him where they could get the equipment he was using in a video. “Sometimes those things were very expensive, sometimes they were custom-made, sometimes bought when I was travelling to Germany or Japan or somewhere,” he says. So, he started his own kitchen equipment brand, YFL Home, to make things easier for viewers.
And he knows full well that not everyone watching is actually cooking. “Some people consume food content for entertainment, some watch it to learn new recipes, some can’t cook but watch and share the recipes with their families or partners,” he says. “But some reach out to me and say my videos have helped them with their depression and anxiety because they find it soothing,” Keer says. That’s worth more than his prized knives.
Taste test: Foods that unlock core memories for Sanjyot Keer
Mango pickle. “It reminds me of my grandmother making namak ajwain (salt and carom seed) parathas for me, with that pickle. It is a blessed meal; you don’t need anything else.”
Pav bhaji. “It’s the first ever recipe I cooked as a kid, when I was about 12. My father used to return from work, and honk below the building. My sister and I would run to the balcony, and he’d ask us what mummy had made for lunch. If we said ‘dal’, he’d take us to have pav bhaji on the street and kala khatta sharbat after that. It was magical and I wanted to recreate that.”
Misal. “As a kid I was one of the core team members organising Ganpati festivities in our housing complex. Preparations would start two months in advance. Every day we’d eat misal for brunch, breakfast, lunch, dinner, because we’d be out the whole day. I still go once a week to eat this green-pea misal from a place near Mulund police station.”
From HT Brunch, December 14, 2024
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