Doña Ángela in her rustic kitchen.
A grandmother who hosts a popular YouTube cooking channel has surpassed 3 million subscribers in less than a year and her modest cooking demonstrations have garnered nearly 174 million views.
Doña Ángela Garfias Vázquez, a 70-year-old native of Michoacán, launched her YouTube channel from a rustic kitchen in August 2019, cooking traditional Mexican recipes and winning instant appeal, attracting more than a million subscribers in the first two months.
De Mi Rancho a tu Cocina (From my farm to your kitchen), which offers cooking lessons using ingredients she gathers from around her farm, have appealed to people across the globe and her videos are now presented with English subtitles.
On Tuesday Doña Ángela, as she is best known, thanked her fans for their support. “My people, I woke up today with the great news that we are already more than 3 million on YouTube. I am very happy and grateful to all of you,” she wrote on Facebook, where she has nearly 3.5 million followers. “My family, my people, may God bless you, you have made me very happy because you are part of my new family. I love you very much.”
Last month, Forbes named her one of the 100 most powerful women in Mexico due to her global reach, alongside such luminaries as singer Natalia Lafourcade, actress Salma Hayek and Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.
Assisted by her daughter, Doña Ángela presents recipes that are humble and explore Mexico’s culinary offerings. Doña Ángela shows viewers how to make enchiladas, green mole, chiles rellenos (stuffed chiles), chicken soup and other classics of Mexican cuisine, all of which she cooks on a wood-fired stove.
She also gives gardening tips and uses traditional Mexican cookware, such as clay pots, pewter casserole dishes, the comal (clay griddle) and the molcajete, a volcanic stone mortar and pestle.
Fans were quick to congratulate the septuagenarian on her accomplishment with comments like “Through you, I keep remembering the tenderness of my grandmother who is no longer with me and “thank you for making us feel part of your family.”
Source: El Universal (sp), Sin Embargo (sp), Milenio (sp), Forbes (sp)
