‘Your mango peda (a sweet) looks delicious. Please share the recipe’, said my friend. I told her that she should check out XYZ Kitchen and find the recipe for mango peda. As this conversation ended, I realized that I have become more and more reliant on cooking channels to cook different dishes. And this was not just me.

Cooking channels have become increasingly popular amongst both middle-class women as well as the youth. My mother and many of her friends often spend their afternoons watching videos shared by various cooking channels on YouTube. Similarly, when I discuss and share food photos with my friends on WhatsApp, we also share names and links of cooking channels which can be followed.

The popularity of these cooking channels has only increased after the lockdown announcement on 25^th March by the Indian central government. In this quarantine period, social media was flooded with images of both celebrities and ordinary people cooking and posting different kinds of dishes. Most of them were inspired by online cooking channels. This leads us to ask the question – who is the audience of these channels? As this short essay will show, most of the viewers and consumers of these cooking channels are middle-class women.  

Food, Hierarchies and identity

Food has been intricately connected to questions of hierarchies and identity in India. What one eats, and what one does not eat is central to one’s social location. Consumption of food is governed by caste and community rules that are rooted in the notions of purity and pollution. Members of upper castes have been historically reluctant to accept food from those belonging to lower castes. This persists even today as reports of discrimination suggest.[i] It has not been easy to break the notions of purity and pollution related to caste that permeates through the boundaries of the kitchen, even in public places. Food is also integral as markers of class identity. A certain kind of domesticity and lifestyle, of which food is an important element constitutes ideas of middle-classness, social distinctions and gender. Our story of food channels in Lockdown times is illustrative of this.

Food and the middle class

With the liberalization of the Indian economy in the early 1990s, the relationship between food and class, too, has become prominent. This period has also seen the rise of the Indian middle-class as a crucial socio-economic category. Although the term middle class has been in use for a long time, considerable ambiguity persists in its definition.

Middle classness is a moral and ethical assertion to belong to a specific class, one made by many sections of the Indian population (Srivastava 2012).[ii] This claim of belonging to the middle class rests on qualities of merit, being enterprising, self-reliant and hardworking (Gooptu 2013).[iii] Membership of this middle class is associated with a lifestyle that reflects a definite type of consumption, possession of specific economic assets and self-consciousness of fitting in the middle class (Sheth 1999).[iv] Consumption takes many forms, and the relationship between consumption and ‘middle-classness’ is played out in the ordinary consumption of daily life.

This middle-class identity is explicitly performed in spaces like restaurants and shopping malls where food has attained a new kind of visibility. It is evident in everyday urban life, in the media and the host of new eating places, offering diverse cuisines in India’s growing cities and towns. These spaces have been mostly middle-class spaces and are exclusionary.

This identity of the middle-class that is rooted in consumption has also been at play during the COVID-19 crisis in India. Although restaurants and shopping malls were shut, cooking channels have played a crucial role in maintaining it. The period of lockdown has had different meanings for different classes. While the poor and the working classes have had to struggle to make ends meet, the Indian middle-class has been engaging in baking and cooking activities that demonstrate their culinary skills. Online cooking channels have aided them in this process.

Cooking channels and the construction of a middle-class identity

Online cooking channels have created a new community of middle-class who were ‘bored’ and had ‘free time’ during the lockdown. They depict culinary household tasks as enjoyable and creative, which the middle-class can engage in ‘for leisure’. Social scientists have argued that ideas of ‘free time’ and ‘boredom’ are middle-class concepts (Veblen 1899; Smelser and Swedberg 2005)[i] and cooking channels have played a crucial role in filling this void in middle-class lives.

‘The lockdown was a very difficult period to cook. My children got bored because they had to eat the same dishes repeatedly. In normal times, this does not happen as we have the option of going out once a week. It is then that I started watching cooking channels on YouTube. They have really helped me in making food interesting again. At the same time, I also developed a hobby, so it was easier to spend time,’ said Sunita[ii], a stay-at-home mother from New Delhi.

Many others like Sunita actively engaged in cooking and baking and recipes like Dalgona coffee and banana bread became popular as ‘quarantine dishes.’ Cooking and consumption patterns separated them from the working and lower classes and helped them claim to be a part of the middle-class. Food, thus, has a class character that creates and reflects existing social hierarchies.

In fact, there was a shortage of certain ingredients like baking powder, cream, and cocoa powder in the market because of their huge ‘quarantine demand’. Birina, a working professional in Guwahati, said that after the lockdown was enforced on 25^th March, her father had gone out in the first week of April to get cocoa powder and cream because she, too, wanted to experiment with her ‘baking skills.’ However, her father came back without both cocoa powder and cream as they were unavailable.

‘I was surprised that my father could not get cocoa powder and cream. But then I have seen so many photographs of cakes in my social media feed that it made sense. Everyone I know is baking,’ says Birina.

How did these channels become so popular? One of the reasons behind their popularity is that these cooking channels not only teach how to cook regular and simple dishes but also focus on making fancy items like cake and pizza at home.  In the past, cookbooks were important for shaping class identities. In the age of the internet, it is cooking channels that have gained increasing popularity. These channels focus on using ingredients that can be easily bought.

‘I like to learn to cook interesting dishes on YouTube. I now know that pizza can be made without yeast and an oven at home. It makes life so much easier. It would have been such a hard task finding yeast in Guwahati, that too during this time,’ says Neha, a working professional in Guwahati who started cooking only recently and credits cooking channels for her progress. ‘I stay alone, and during the lockdown, my cook also could not come. I have never been much into cooking but had no choice during this time. So I learnt to cook watching these channels and then I even made pizza one day.’

According to many of my respondents, the best part is that the ingredients used are fairly common and readily available. One does not need lasagna sheets to bake a lasagne and can do so with slices of bread.

‘I was craving for lasagna for a long time and looked up recipes online. Then I came across this channel which showed that it could be made with slices of white bread. I was so excited! I did not have to go looking for lasagna sheets!’, says Malvika, a self-proclaimed food enthusiast and teacher in Delhi.

Cooking channels, class and gender 

Cookbooks historically have targetted upper-middle-class women. Unlike cookbooks, the target of cooking channels is broader – it is not just upper-middle-class women. Its online mode has made it accessible to many people who find it easier to cook by following these channels. Some of the major consumers of these channels are the youth, both men and women, especially those who live independently from their families.

That cooking channels make the job of cooking look comfortable, attractive and creative help. Cooking as an activity anyway has been ranked higher than cleaning in the hierarchy of domestic work. In fact, feminist theorists have argued that although cooking and cleaning are primarily seen as women’s activities, more men engage in cooking than cleaning. While for women, it is mundane and routine work; when men cook, it is seen as a form of leisure or relaxation.

But even when men do cook, the cleaning is done by the women. Women were identified as the ones who are responsible for food provisioning, and their responsibility for cooking has been situated within a discourse of love and care (Cairns et al. 2010).[iii] Men are only seen as occasional cooks.

The cooking channels have encouraged and promoted this idea that cooking is easy, relaxing and therapeutic. The cooking channels help people feel that cooking as a task is within reach – it is achievable. The cooking channels know their audience well, and promote certain dishes as ‘easy beginner level recipes’. Many people who do not know how to cook find these channels very helpful. This idea attracts the youth, especially men, who live alone.

‘I had only recently moved out of the hostel and started living in a rented apartment. But as luck would have it, this crisis [referring to the COVID-19 pandemic] started. I could not find any household help and have solely relied on cooking channels to learn and cook my food. I got over my fear that I will burn down the kitchen. I got non-sticky utensils, and an induction cooktop and cooking do not seem so difficult anymore,’ says Ratan, a researcher in Delhi.

Anjan also echoes Ratan’s words. ‘I have never cooked anything, not even instant noodles before this lockdown. I was heavily dependent on ordering in, eating out and my cook. But because of the lockdown, none of these options was available. Therefore, I had to turn to cooking channels for help,’ says Anjan, a working professional in Delhi – who describes himself as a ‘reluctant cook’.

But what is interesting is that both Ratan and Anjan live alone. Similarly, the other men I spoke to who follow cooking channels live with friends or alone. Interestingly, none of the men who live with partners or families follows these channels. Most of them acknowledge that if they were living with their families or partners, it would have been their mothers or sisters or partners who would be doing most of the cooking.

Although the online cooking channels have a sizeable male audience, the idea that cooking is a ‘woman’s job’ has not changed much. In fact, if one looks at the impact of these cooking channels carefully, it is understandable that they are aiding in reinforcing the idea that cooking is a female task. Many channels show recipes that can be made easily by ‘working women’ and/or ‘working mothers’. There are also recipes for children that are endorsed to help the mothers in cooking. Thus, there is an assertion and reinforcement of the understanding that cooking is a female job.

Cookbooks, too, imbibe these ideas and gender traits and socialize women into the nourisher and cook role. Many cookbooks had also realized that women face the double pressure of both housework and outside work, and hence, they offer quick, easy recipes (Appadurai 1988).[iv] The cooking channels, too, play this role well of supporting the idea that cooking is a woman’s responsibility. Therefore, it is not surprising that women in India spend almost five hours per day doing unpaid domestic work, including a significant amount of cooking and cleaning. It is thrice as much time as Indian men.[v]

However, understanding the growth and popularity of these cooking channels cannot be complete without looking at the intersection between class and gender.  It is mostly the middle-class women who are watching these cooking channels. Food provides an opportunity to display one’s wealth and class status, and the women of middle-class households are generally in charge of this (Bourdieu 1979).[vi]

There is a lot of pressure on these women to cook and make ‘innovative’ and ‘interesting’ dishes to maintain their class status. This has also been particularly true during the lockdown. Sunita, the stay-at-home mother, whom I had mentioned earlier, for instance, said that her children would come and tell her that they want to eat ‘restaurant-type food’ at home because their friends were eating it too.

‘My children told me that they were bored with the same ghar ka khana (home-cooked food) and wanted to eat restaurant-type food. They had seen that their friends’ mothers were making Italian and Chinese dishes. So, they too wanted it. I had to browse through YouTube and find recipes for these dishes. It is a lot of pressure, and the lockdown has made it only tougher.’

Sunita’s words highlight the stress and pressure that middle-class women have had throughout the quarantine period – cooking ‘non-boring’ food. The pizza, the lasagne, and the cake differentiate middle-class food habits from the poor and the working class. Refined taste and presentation become necessary for sustaining the ‘middle class’ identity. And it is the women who have to retain this ‘distinction in taste’. And cooking channels became their aid in this particular pursuit. This is once again, similar to the role that cookbooks had once played – keeping the task of making food creative and innovative. Thus, the categories of gender and class interact with food to highlight the socio-cultural patterns in society.

Conclusion

Today, cooking channels are gradually taking over the place that once cookbooks held in society – promoting cuisines, developing a middle-class ethos and asserting and reinforcing the idea that cooking is mostly a female task. Both these identities of class and gender were at play during the COVID-19 global health crisis

Like cookbooks that acknowledged men only as ‘occasional cooks’ who only cooked out of compulsion; cooking channels also recognize men as ‘infrequent cooks’. Thus, although cooking channels foster and promote an idea of middle-classness, it is mostly the women who bear the brunt of maintaining it. Ideas of domesticity and refined taste – which have been generally seen and understood as middle-class characteristics – are strengthened by online cooking channels.

The study of food reveals socio-cultural patterns that exist in society. From production to consumption, these are social processes reflected in the activities and relations. This short essay highlights the role that cooking channels play in sustaining and displaying the middle-class identity. A closer look at patterns of food preparation, however, reveals that this activity is heavily gendered. Women are expected to know and perform the responsibility of cooking and learn new recipes that help show off their class position.

[i] A recent report about children and their parents refuse to eat the mid-day meals served in government schools, for the food was prepared by a member from a  lower caste, https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/governance/how-caste-is-marring-mid-day-meals-60898, accessed on 20^th January 2020.  

[ii] Sanjay Srivastava. “National Identity, Kitchens and Bedrooms: Gated Communities and New Narratives of Space in India”. In The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing through Ethnography, eds. Mark Liechty, Carla Freeman and Rachel Heiman (Santa Fe: School of Advanced Research Press, 2012), 57-84.

[iii] Nandini Gooptu. Ed., Enterprise Culture in Neoliberal India: Studies in Youth, Class, Work and Media (London: Routledge, 2013).

[iv] D.L. Sheth, “Secularisation of Caste and Making of a New Middle Class”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 34, No. 34/35, 2502-2510, 1999.

[v] Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. (US: Macmillan, 1899) and Smelser, Neil J. and Richard Swedberg. Ed., The Handbook of Economic Sociology. 2^nd Edition. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).

[vi] The names of all the respondents have been changed to protect their privacy and confidentiality. Further, their consent was sought to use their quotes in this piece.

[vii] Kate Cairns, Josée Johnston and Shyon Baumann, “Caring about food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen”, Gender and Society, Vol. 24, No. 5, 591-615, Sage publications, Inc, 2010.

[viii] Arjun Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 30, No. 1, 3-24, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

[ix] Press Note on NSS Report: Time Use In India – 2019 National Statistical Office Ministry Of Statistics And Programme implementation Government Of India, 29^th September, 2020, http://www.mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/press_release/PRESS%20NOTE%20on%20TUS-%202019.pdf, accessed on 1^st October 2020.

[x] Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, (Harvard University Press, 1979).