Imagine it’s the Ileya or Christmas holidays when you and your family travel all the way down to your country hometown, where you’ll be treated to hearty meals cooked over an open fire using the freshest ingredients. The meats sourced from livestock - usually, some of the chickens and goats from your grandparent’s yard– and the herbs and spices sourced fresh from their personal vegetable garden.

This experience and more is what makes the gastronomy of rural communities across different parts of the world incomparable. And this is why there is a clear distinction between meals prepared in rural and urban communities. While modern gadgets might make meal preparation faster and more efficient, perhaps the idyllic scenery of the countryside and apparent absence of pollution makes the strain of cooking from scratch more appealing.

Dianxi Xiaoge might not be Nigerian, but her cooking videos are reminiscent of your grandmother’s cooking in your hometown. She might not use an oven, blender, food processor or some of the electrical utensils we’re used to, but the outcome of the meals she prepares for her family is satisfying regardless. For instance, in one of her most-watched videos, she made hamburgers for her grandparents who had never tried them before, preparing her own ketchup from scratch, and baking the buns without an oven.

Currently living in Yunnan, China with her family, Dianxi quit her job as a police officer in Sichuan in 2016, to be with her family when her father became ill. While brainstorming ideas on income generation, Xiaoge (whose real name is Dong Meihua), and her cousin started creating and sharing cooking videos on social media, inspired by internet stars like Papi Jiang. In contrast to the content that inspired her current career, she, however, chose to use ingredients and resources around her to recreate traditional meals from her hometown and mainstream recipes as in the viral hamburger video.

We’ve said it countless times that watching people cook is fact therapeutic, so whether it’s Kitchen Butterfly creating recipes from Lagos/Canada or a woman in faraway countryside China, the art of food-making is one that provides comfort for different people all over the world. And so, it’s no surprise that her cooking reminds you of your grandmother’s very traditional cooking methods.

With over 6 million views and 11 million subscribers on YouTube, Xiaoge plans to extend her cook beyond the borders of her village and explore cuisine from all over the world.

Watch some of her videos right here:

Lard-sealed Pork

Ham Recipes

Hamburgers