Top 5 Bangla cooking channels on YouTube

We Bangladeshis love to eat and cook. However, with the increasingly busy schedule of urban life, we have started to forget our traditional recipes and heritage of delicate cooking.

That's why YouTube cooking channels have gained popularity in recent times. Thanks to them, we can now get recipes of Bangalee dishes, no matter where we are.

Such YouTube content became even more popular during the staying-at-home phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, when going out to eat or ordering food was not much of an option.

Here are our top five picks of Bangla cooking channels based on their recipes, content and popularity.

Panorama Cooking

Panorama Cooking joined YouTube in 2017 and a total of 426,000 viewers subscribe to the channel at present. The channel focuses on traditional Bangladeshi food.

What appeals the viewers most is that it showcases authentic recipes cooked in the outdoors by rural homemakers.

The channel's well-researched recipes, documentary style cooking videos and the settings are its strong selling points.

Panorama Cooking is a YouTube channel by Panorama Creators. The cooking videos produced by this channel are often broadcasted on various TV channels.

Village Grandpa's Cooking

This is one of the most interesting Bangladeshi YouTube cooking channels out there. The name comes from the chefs – three 70-plus brothers who cook for their village community.

They cook large and spectacular meals for children with special needs, and people who are physically challenged, old, or poor, according to the channel's description.

The chefs operate in two villages – Shimulia and Uttar Shampur – of Kushtia district.

The YouTube channel is run by a charity organisation called Around Me BD. The man behind Around Me BD, and Village Grandpa's Cooking is Liton Ali, a software engineer from Shimulia village, who runs an IT company in Dhaka.

The revenue which comes from the YouTube channel is "used to buy the ingredients and other necessary items for cooking and to pay four videographers, the cooks and around 50 people in all," Liton Ali, who started the channel in July, 2020 for fun, told Prothom Alo in November, 2020.

The channel joined YouTube during the pandemic and has already gained 1.08 million subscribers.

Shimulia village is also now popular as the "YouTube village".

Around Me BD has also started a campaign recently for donations for the meals.

Bong Eats

Bong Eats is a cooking channel run from India's West Bengal by Saptarshi Chakraborty and Insiya Poonawala. The channel aims to document the food of Kolkata. It started its journey in August 2016 and has 1.41 million subscribers as of now.

This is one of the cooking channels of West Bengal which are very popular among urban Bangladeshi viewers.

Videos are recorded in a well-equipped urban kitchen and West Bengal celebrities like Abhijit Banerjee, Sayani Gupta and others often appear in the videos.

Recipe narrations are available in both Bangla and English.

Banglar Rannaghor

Banglar Rannaghor is probably the most popular Bangladeshi cooking channel on YouTube at the moment. The channel started in April, 2016 and is run from Canada.

It has 1.42 million subscribers at present. The easy and fun recipes of both traditional and modern Bangalee dishes make it one of the first choices for new Bangladeshi cooks.

The videos are also very well-presented and visually pleasing. The channel also features recipes of delicious and healthy Ramadan special items.

The channel began as a "passion project by two young entrepreneurs and a very talented mom," according to the website of Banglar Rannaghor.

Aysha Siddika

The owner, after whom the channel is named, started this venture in December of 2015 as a hobby. However, her channel gained momentum in April 2017. Since then, she has posted hundreds of videos and currently 1.9 million subscribers.

The channel is run from Germany according to its description.

The chef shares various cooking tips and recipes of contemporary and traditional Bangladeshi dishes.