Mastanamma only uses fresh, basic ingredients and equipment. Photo / YouTube
Mastanamma only uses fresh, basic ingredients and equipment. Photo / YouTube
As breakout YouTube stars go, a 106-year-old great-grandmother from Andhra Pradesh, one of India's south-eastern states, was an unlikely one.
Yet that is precisely what has become of Mastanamma, whose cooking videos have now amassed 300,000 subscribers and 52 million views, reports the Telegraph.
Filmed by her great-grandson,K Laxman, and his friend, Srinath Reddy, the videos show Mastanamma making recipes from watermelon chicken and emu egg fry to snake gourd and milk curry and bread omelette, via plenty of traditional recipes.
Mastanamma, who has no birth certificate but is supported by her family in her claim to be 106, cooks while sitting in a field, peeling the vegetables with her fingernails.
She uses only the most basic implements, cooking in big metal pans over a simple stove and slicing food with an old Indian knife known as a ''Bonti'', whose blade curves up from the ground in front of its seated user.
Her repertoire extends to Western dishes too. One video shows her making french-fry-style chips, with a little more seasoning than you'd get in a McDonald's restaurant. Another shows her making chicken burgers with slices of melting cheese.
Mastanamma, who used to work as a chef in her son's hotel, is said to have been puzzled at first by YouTube but is reportedly delighted to learn that her recipes are being enjoyed by so many people.
She has outlived her husband and four of her five children, and in a video in which she tells her life story she says she was married at 11, never went to school and used to carry 100kg bags of rice on her back.
