‘I fell in love with cooking as a kid’

As a kid, he thought his mom had a superpower to make people smile with her cooking skills. “I aspired to be like her and have that superpower too. So, when I cooked pav bhaji for the first time and all my family members had a smile on their faces, I knew I could have it too,” reminisces Chef Sanjyot Keer, Founder, Your Food Labs (YFL), adding that he fell in love with cooking then and there and his cooking journey took off. Today, the 30-year-old entrepreneur is also a digital content creator – YFL is a robust community of food lovers with over 12 million followers and a whopping three billion cumulative views across platforms. 

Born and brought up in Mumbai, it was during Partition that his maternal and paternal families took refuge in Mumbai (then Bombay). “You will always find a bambaiya touch to my dishes as I love the street food of the city,” says Chef Keer who started his digital content creation journey after completing his Hotel Management in International Hospitality Management from ITM IHM, Mumbai, an affiliate course from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh from 2011-2014. Thereafter, he worked as a food producer on MasterChef India Season 4 for the MasterChef Extra Class series with renowned chefs like Sanjeev Kapoor, Vikas Khanna, Ranveer Brar and Saransh Goila. 

Conventionally, Indian parents want their kids to take up a high-profile corporate job and have a secure future. On what was his parents’ reaction when he told them about the decision to become a chef, he says, “Definitely, this profession wasn’t looked well upon. As a kid or even now when I look back and think about this notion of becoming a chef, a lot of people were confused or were confusing kids. If a boy wanted to become a chef, they were told that girls cook in kitchens and when a girl wanted to become one, they told her only men cooked in commercial kitchens. It was always that parents wanted their kids to take up conventional careers and found vague reasons to stop them from taking up cooking as a career option.” Keer adds that he was lucky because his parents supported him from a young age. “They were always there, getting me ingredients, pots and pans, and whatever I wanted. Even when I chose to become a content creator, they supported and encouraged me,” he says. 

Throwing more light on YFL, Keer shares that it started accidentally in 2016. “I started my career on a very good note as in my initial days I got the chance to be on the sets of MasterChef India Season 4 as a food producer. After that, I took a sabbatical from cooking since we were going through a rough phase financially in my family. I started working with my dad which was completely different from cooking and culinary arts. During that time, I missed food, was depressed and unhappy as I couldn’t cook anymore. That is when I decided that I will do something about it on weekends,” he says. 

After an approval from his father, Keer started making videos and Your Food Lab was born. “The idea was to share with world whatever I could do with food on weekends and share it with the world. I went on to make a lot of videos and started uploading them on Facebook and YFL was an instant success. Since then, I have never looked back,” he avers. 

Most of the recipes on YFL are easy to do and don’t require any equipment or expensive ingredients. “You can cook 95 per cent of recipes with ingredients at home and that is how we made the idea of simple recipes achievable and executable at home,” Keer avers, adding he also wanted to make Indian food look presentable. “We make food look very different, appealing and comforting with production quality and attention to detail. This aspect was not looked at before when food was presented. We have set a benchmark in the last six-seven years,” he adds. 

On the learnings when one works with experienced and renowned chefs like Sanjeev Kapoor, Ranveer Brar and Vikas Khanna, Keer says, “Working with anybody or listening to anybody and their experiences, you get to learn the best aspects. With Chef Ranveer Brar, I learnt being sincere in whatever one does because whenever I do something, I’m very sincere at it. In fact, Chef Brar told me that sincerity should be my middle name. I remember a small conversation with Chef Sanjeev Kapoor where he told me to understand the ingredients, talk to them and understand them. Back then, I didn’t get it but later understood that one needed to have a connect with the ingredients. It was great interacting with Chef Vikas Khanna too. When I used to stand in front of all these three chefs, I used to have a fan-boy moment and was star-struck. I used to just try and imbibe and take in whatever I could.”  

The young chef says he sees himself doing much more in the space of culinary arts and food in the next five years. “I want to teach kids how to make content, build a community and cook. I plan to build D2C companies and introduce my own products. I also want to do a couple of series on OTT platforms. I just completed a web series, Chef It Up! and it had over 15 million views. I aim to create jobs so that I can support more families. And most importantly, I wish to do something in the space of fighting malnutrition and hunger in our country,” says Keer who is, at present, doing some trials for Til Gudh Ke Ladoo for Makar Sankranti. 

QUICK TAKES

Ingredient I avoid laying hands on in the kitchen during cooking.

I love ingredients and try and experiment with everything. If something is consumable and is one which I relate to, I use that in my cooking.

A dish I cook but don’t like eating myself

I don’t think there is anything which I cook but don’t eat.

My first guru.

My first guru are my parents and grandparents. All the lessons I’ve learnt in life are from them. 

First dish I cooked.

Definitely Pav Bhaji!