KING of CHICKEN LEGS / Using 100 Chicken Legs / Prepared by my Daddy

August 28, 2018 8:40 AM

The Indian Filmmaker Who Made His Dad’s Village Cooking a YouTube Sensation (Priya Krishna for The New Yorker). Jaymukh Gopinath cooks huge meals -- everything from 100 chicken legs to huge Prawn Masala and 15 KG Butter Chicken Recipe, and entertains millions around the world, as Village Food Factory on YouTube. Because he makes so much, leftover food is donated to local ashrams.

These clips are filmed by Jaymukh's son, Arumugam, who used to live in Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital, working as an assistant director on Tamil movies. He struggled to make a living there, so he moved back home and filmed his dad cooking simply because “I didn’t have to pay him.”

The channel attracted close to two million YouTube subscribers and has earned the family more than seven million rupees, or close to a hundred thousand dollars, in advertising revenue, allowing them to go from they have gone from renting a hundred-and-sixty-square-foot apartment to buying a seventeen-hundred-square-foot house.

posted by filthy light thief (10 comments total)

I've seen these videos many times and they're just mystifying. "OK, now we're going to make 1000 mud crabs." No narration, no notes, and even the name ("My Money My Food") is a cipher.
posted by 1adam12 at 10:26 AM on August 28, 2018

That's what's wonderful about them. There are a kajillion YouTube channels with "and now add the chopped onion... stir in the spices and let them brown..." type narration. This one is almost food ASMR filmed in beautiful settings. It's terrific.
posted by Lexica at 10:46 AM on August 28, 2018 [6 favorites]

The chicken leg video is just perfect
posted by not_the_water at 2:14 PM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed this. Thanks for posting.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 6:21 PM on August 28, 2018

Yeah, I love this too. Somehow this channel crept into my Youtube recommendations and I have been watching it but had no idea of the back story. Thanks for filling it in!
posted by Literaryhero at 9:54 PM on August 28, 2018

I've watched some of these before but never noticed that dad has an extra thumb.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 10:20 PM on August 28, 2018

Previous
posted by Kosmob0t at 10:30 PM on August 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've seen several of these, and if I put them on the TV in the living room the kids (7, 10 and 14) tend to stop in their tracks and watch the food being made.
posted by Harald74 at 12:16 AM on August 29, 2018

To be (un)fair to kids, many will stop and watch any moving videos, particularly when even a little bit tired. They might then complain, after watching 20-30 minutes of that thing, that it's not what they really wanted to watch, but they have no good answer as to why they didn't stop watching it. (Why yes, I am talking about my kids, how did you guess? ;))
posted by filthy light thief at 8:07 AM on August 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

Not sure if it's the same guy; i've seen VERY similar videos done by a similar-looking man where he cooks for all the kids at a local orphanage.

Edit: after further review the one I'm thinking of is Grandpa Kitchen but it's the same style of video, same type of cooking, and the guy even looks familiar.
posted by mrbill at 3:33 PM on August 29, 2018