Leon Carter

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Niche

Old-school Southern and soul food cooking tricks from Mama's kitchen

Audience

Home cooks in the US who grew up with, or want to learn, Southern and soul food and the old-kitchen reasoning behind it; titles lean on Mama and Grandma nostalgia. The Jul-Aug videos aimed at viewers curious about African food, cooling and remedy traditions. Inferred from titles, descriptions and the about text; there are no audience statistics.

Avatar

• Realistic avatar
• A photorealistic middle-aged man with short dark hair and a grey goatee, in a black buttoned Henley with a striped tea towel over one shoulder, shown from the chest up in a warm rustic kitchen with jar shelves; he usually points at or holds the dish. Face, outfit and set repeat across the avatar and all 10 thumbnails.

Format

One dish or kitchen habit per video: a familiar cooking failure as the hook, the old Southern method in stages with the reason for each step, a subscribe pitch in the intro, a closing question about the viewer's family kitchen; a PDF guide link in some descriptions.

Content pillars

• Old-school Southern and soul food techniques
• Family-kitchen traditions told through Mama and Grandma
• Thrifty cuts and leftovers (chuck eye steak, bacon grease, pickle juice)
• Food-history explainers (spaghetti with fried fish)
• Earlier series: African ancestral food, cooling and remedy lists (Jul-Aug)

Title patterns

• STOP [doing X] — Try This Old Southern [Trick/Method]!
• NEVER Make [X] the Same Way Again — Try This [Style] Trick!
• Mama Poured [X] in Her [Dish] — Most People Throw It Away
• Mama Taught Me This [Dish] Trick — Here's Why She Always Added [X]
• [N] Banned African [Food Secrets/Home Remedies] Scientists Now Say Were GENIUS

Thumbnails

Same man at left in a black Henley and striped towel, usually pointing at the dish on the right; 2-4 word caption in white and yellow caps (some in a red box) with a red underline or arrow; jar-shelf kitchen, often with a 'Southern Cooking Made With Soul' sign.

Their thumbnails, most viewed first

• 
  6.12K views (opens on YouTube in a new tab)
• 
  5.45K views (opens on YouTube in a new tab)
• 
  5.34K views (opens on YouTube in a new tab)

Why it works

• The 3 most viewed videos (5.2k-5.7k views) all came out Sep 2-7, right after a switch from African-topic lists that peaked at 701 views
• Two title openers cover 12 of 13 Southern videos, incl. the 5 most viewed overall: STOP/NEVER [do X] (8), Mama/Grandma [did X] (4)
• A backstory persona (learned from Mama, Grandma and church cooks) in the about text, titles and openings frames each trick as inherited knowledge
• In the two sampled videos, the intro pitches a subscribe and the close asks about the viewer's family kitchen, promising answers shape the next video
• High output on the new topic: 13 Southern videos in 36 days (Sep 2 to Oct 7), about 2.5 a week, 11-20 minutes each

• StoreEbookleoncartercooks.netlify.app · About page · 4 of the last 25 descriptions (opens in a new tab)

• Aunty Odessa63 subs · African American soul food history and old Southern cooking tricks
• Earlene Tatum3.35K subs · Southern soul food: cheap cuts, barbecue and old kitchen tricks
• Jada Kennedy1.09K subs · Southern comfort food recipes and old-fashioned kitchen tricks
• Ida Bell Cooking373 subs · Soul food recipes 'the Black way', told by a church-kitchen cook
• Mama Taught Marisol194 subs · Mexican kitchen tricks passed down from Mama: rice, tacos, soup, potatoes
• Teresa Campos9.13K subs · Spanish-language Mexican home-cooking tricks and traditional recipes