How Ranveer Brar became my culinary godmother

As a child, I loved watching my mom cook. At three, I’d keep her entertained with endless chatter while she prepared meals. Once, she even let me ‘make’ fried rice: cooking it entirely herself from ingredients I had simply grabbed from the refrigerator and letting me feel like I had contributed greatly. At 11, I attempted to surprise my family with sunny-side-up eggs. No one told me how much salt to use, and my family put up Oscar-worthy performances pretending to enjoy the salt rush while praising my culinary skills. By the time I was 16, when a friend asked me for ginger tea, I generously added a three-inch piece of ginger. To this day, she compares my chai to how she imagines poison would taste.

My mom, like many Indian mothers, expressed her love by feeding me delicious food she had cooked herself. Growing up, her cooking was so good that I voluntarily ate all the veggies children and adults usually fear—tindli, lauki, karela—you name it (yes, you can turn fussy eaters into food lovers). Later, when she retired from the kitchen, she hired a cook and she trained her well, and I was never expected to develop any culinary skills. So I got comfortable with not having to do it myself.

It was only when I got older and decided cooking was a good life skill and potential hobby to cultivate, that I realised just how out of my depth I was. I tried following online recipes, but my dishes kept turning out like those ‘what I ordered versus what I got’ memes. I felt like many chefs left out important bits or overestimated the audience’s cooking skills.

That was until I stumbled upon Ranveer Brar’s recipes—they were so easy to follow. No, this isn’t a paid promotion, but Mr Brar, if you’d like to pay me in home-cooked meals, I’ll gladly accept.

My culinary godmother

It was during COVID, when I was staying with my nani and desperately missing my mom’s winter-special gajar-matar ki sabzi, that I first turned to Ranveer Brar’s YouTube videos—and got hooked. There is something very relaxed about the way he guides you, it immediately puts you at ease. Between jokes and stories about the origins of the recipe, he makes the most complex, multi-layered recipes feel like a breeze. Unlike many other chefs and home cooks on YouTube who may skip a few steps for brevity, showcase complicated methods, or even Westernise classic dishes (Biryani cheese balls? No, thank you), Brar keeps it wholesome and homely.

Watching his video on gajar-matar ki sabzi transported me back to my childhood as he spoke about stealing pieces of red winter carrots while his mom was cooking, which is exactly what I would do too. He advised that winter dishes should always have plenty of ginger—and sure enough, this vishesh tippani made all the difference. And then, just like my mom would say, Brar said, “Mere hisaab see, har kisi ko sardiyon mein 200 baar…nahi toh kam se kam do baar gajar-matar ki sabzi khaani chahiye (According to me, everyone should eat gajar-matar ki sabzi 200 times or at least twice during winter.)”

Soon, every time I decided to try a new dish, I’d go to YouTube and type its name in the search bar along with Brar’s. I went on to try his recipes for pyaaz pakode, gajar ka halwa, and egg curry, with each dish turning out to be great. Somewhere along the way, cooking started to make me feel good–I loved that I was creating something from scratch. And when the results turned out well, my confidence soared.

I remember the day my nani stepped out for a health check-up early in the morning, and I wanted to have a hot stack of aloo parathas ready for her for breakfast when she returned. Enter, who else, but my culinary godmother, Ranveer Brar. He broke the process down into easy steps, all while chatting up a storm. And his tips? Pure gold. He suggested adding a bit of besan to the wheat flour for extra crispiness, ensuring the filling matched the dough’s consistency, and skipping onions to extend the shelf life of the stuffing.

It’s these tiny nuggets of wisdom that I came to cherish. I was introduced to the concept of radnaa—Punjabi for slow-cooking paratha on a low flame to achieve that perfect balance of crispy and soft. And somewhere in between, I learned how India once relied on the humble purple yam before the potato—brought here by Dutch and Portuguese traders—waltzed in and stole the show with their unbeatable crispy and creamy textures.

For someone who was just starting out in the kitchen and living off YouTube tutorials, his videos made me feel like I could hold my own, not just in the kitchen but perhaps in food conversations too. And now, whether it’s a stuffed paratha or a tikki, I know that radnaa is the game-changer.

Burnt masalas to delicious food

The ghar ka khana staple that was next on my list? Rajma. A dish my nani has mastered to a point where she’s contractually obligated to send a dabba to everyone she loves. I asked her for her recipe and tried cooking it. And failed—spectacularly. Somehow, my nani left out details that novices like me wouldn’t know, such as how to know when the tomatoes are cooked and that I must keep stirring the masalas so they don’t burn. She clearly overestimated my culinary skills. I did burn the masalas. It was a disaster. With the level of experience our moms and nanis come with, they sometimes, just eyeball it. I’m yet to crack the code to ‘swaad anusaar’, does that mean one teaspoon or a fistful?

Once more I enlisted the help of my trusty godmother. I watched his rajma recipe, understood the techniques, and combined them with my nani’s method. The next attempt? A smashing success. Even nani approved.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I know how to cook now, but I do feel a lot more confident following a recipe—and not just Ranveer Brar’s recipes anymore, either. His tutorials have given me the foundation and confidence to try out more complex options from other chefs and cooks. I’ve also learned to take concepts from one dish, draw parallels, and apply them to another similar dish I want to make. And if that’s not progress, I don’t know what is. But more than anything, this process has helped me own my relationship with cooking—I don’t need to cook, but I like knowing I can if I want to—whether it’s a time-honoured family favourite or just sunny-side-up eggs.