In the morning, the aroma of roasted, dried chilies fills the air in Ale Regalado’s kitchen. Content creator Ale Regalado stands at the stove, waiting for tomatillos to puff up on the comal, flipping them every few minutes until they’re lightly blackened on all sides. She pauses to pick up a tomato and hold it in front of her phone on a tripod so her followers can get a better look at its charred, sweaty skin. And that’s the recipe for Ale Regalado’s Tomatillo Salsa Roja.
“Something happened during the pandemic and I decided to start documenting the food I was making for my family on TikTok,” Regalado said, “and people started commenting and asking for recipes and asking if I could share them.”
Inspired by the praise and comments, Regalado began posting detailed recipe instructions and snippets from her personal life on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Her bilingual Reels have garnered a devoted following, and she now has over 600,000 followers on Instagram. TikTok 325,000 people Instagram — Her nostalgic twist on simple but delicious recipes keeps viewers excited for her viral albondigas de res and alambre (melted cheese with crumbled longaniza sausage, bacon, peppers, and onions). She encourages her followers to swap ingredients and add their own twists. “That way it’s not my recipe, it’s your recipe,” she says. And in the process, she’s creating her own version of a community.
Food has long been a means of preserving culture, traditions and family ties, to the point that many of us feel indebted to our family recipes as a way of strengthening intergenerational connections, a sense of identity and belonging. For many, family recipes, guided by the palate of their grandmothers’ cooking, are linked to authenticity and the idea that there is a “right” way to do things.
However, contrary to popular belief, recipes are not necessarily passed down through generations, and notions of authenticity can be exclusionary. The influences and struggles of migration, acculturation, family structure, food access, economic insecurity, and juggling work and family can cause the connection between recipes and cooking to be lost. “When I was growing up, my mother was both my mother and my father,” Regalado says. “She was a single mother, she worked two jobs, she was rarely home, and she never taught my sisters and me how to cook.”
via her Instagram account AlegThe 29-year-old creator is cultivating a space where home cooks of all skill levels can learn at their own pace, but perhaps more importantly, accounts like Regalado’s are dispelling the stigma and negative connotations within the Latino community towards people who didn’t learn to cook from their mothers., Or the grandmothers, who prove that their followers are not all living the same experiences, or less connected to their roots and culture.
Denise Favela is a recipe developer, content creator, and ethnologist specializing in Mexican and Mexican-American cuisine, primarily featuring dishes from vintage Mexican cookbooks on her Instagram account. Follow “I want to show that not everyone has recipes passed down through their family,” she says. Both of her parents are from the central Mexican state of Zacatecas; her mother is from Juchipilla and her father is from Moyawa. “When I look at cookbooks, there are so many recipes I’ve never heard from my mother. She just learned basic recipes with ingredients specific to her region.”
Favela says her goal is to take away the embarrassment of having to get a recipe, and on her social media pages she shares a variety of recipes, from regional dishes to vintage Easter platos inspired by Josefina Velázquez de Leon.Mexico’s first celebrity chef). We purposefully incorporate a variety of Mexican ingredients to spark more intersectional conversations about Mexican food, history and culture.
Her archival footage of her journey through favelas in Mexico is underpinned by questions and historical context. Similarly, a trip to the produce section of a Mexican market asks viewers how they cook with quintonils (amaranth leaves): “What quillites do you like?” She opens the comments to discussion, giving viewers the opportunity to share their personal culinary traditions, terminology, and experiences. As a result, she hopes, the narrative of how we share and receive recipes will shift, reinforcing food traditions that are borrowed, learned, and interpreted.
Presenting yourself on TikTok or Reels is always about meeting audience expectations. And for creators in the culinary industry, the concept of authenticity is something they have to deal with, including how they choose to engage (or not engage) with the term. Regalado purposefully avoids using the word “authentic” in her videos. “We all come from different parts of Mexico and we’re not all the same. There are so many variations of dishes, ingredients, and processes that are unique to each state,” she says. But she still gets criticism and harassment, posting comments that “they don’t make it that way” or “their family doesn’t make it that way.” This is an extension of the ongoing view that making something with different ingredients (and in some cases, ingredients that are simply not available where you live) is not authentic.
Anna Rios, nutritionist at Healthy Simple Yum, said: Instagram The account has garnered over 270,000 followers and promotes the idea that authenticity is an intentional act. Healthy, simple and delicious Rios is committed to subverting mainstream notions of “healthy” food, providing her followers with plant-based Mexican recipes (from tripe-like textured menudo with snow mushrooms to traditional taqueria meats like lion’s mane carnitas). “I want people to know that they don’t have to stop eating the foods of their culture,” Rios says. “These comforting, nostalgic dishes deserve to remain in our lives, and I love finding ways to make them more balanced and enjoy them more often.”
Rios explains that many of her patients are hesitant to see a nutritionist. “I’ve had people say to me, ‘I was scared to go in because I thought they’d just tell me to stop eating tortillas,'” Rios says. “It all comes down to people being misinformed, and it’s a constant battle.”
These encounters helped Rios become a voice in the community she’s building online: The proud daughter of immigrant parents, she has published two bilingual e-books. Introduction to DiabetesIt features 20 Mexican-focused recipes, meal plan ideas, and information on how to control and prevent diabetes and prediabetes. Healthy and simple Mexican recipesfeatures 30 plant-based recipes, including veggie-packed chickpea salad, rajas con crema and hearty soups, along with a full nutritional guide.
“These e-books are made with love for my Latino community and all people who love Mexican food,” Rios said. “It feels great when people reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, I have high cholesterol, and your recipes have helped me get better and taken me back to when I was 10 and eating tacos de barbacoa with my grandpa.'”
For some, recipes are a way to reconnect with the foods of their childhood. Billy Lewis recently discovered Regalado’s page after his partner sent him a recipe for content creator Aguachile via Direct. “I’m half black and half Mexican, and I was raised by a Mexican father, so I’m very familiar with traditional Mexican food,” says Lewis, who grew up avoiding the kitchen. “In the last seven years, when I moved out and started living on my own, I wanted to learn how to cook Mexican food. These are the foods that raised me, and I want to share them with the next generation of my family and friends.”
Shared recipes not only reinforce our eating habits, but also continually preserve them for future generations. One follower shared that he was nostalgic for the sopita his mother used to make for him as a child, and that he missed her cooking after she passed away. “He told me, ‘I watched your video and I was able to make that dish and it tasted exactly like my mom’s,'” Regalado says. “I was in tears when I read his comment. He was thankful for the recipe and for keeping his mother’s memory alive.”
“At the end of the day, it’s our heritage and our culture, and we have a right to reclaim it, even if it means relying on books and other sources, people outside of our family, to learn those food habits,” Favela says. Her most viewed recipe is Atole de Cempasuchil y Naranja, an aromatic hot drink that dates back to pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica and is typically thickened with masa or pinole made for the Day of the Dead. The recipe was inspired by the atoles Denise enjoyed in Michoacán, where she learned how to use herbs and flowers for flavoring. “Recipes are really important to me, and not just from my family,” Favela says. “I consider recipes I learned from others to be primary sources that document our history.”
Cynthia Rebolledo I’m a freelance journalist covering food and culture in Orange County and Los Angeles.
Karina Guevara I’m a freelance illustrator based in Austin, Texas.
