Cooking Meets Content Creation: My Journey With TikTok and an Electric Pressure Cooker

By Sudha Gurung Practical Action Nepal), Richard Sieff (Gamos Ltd/MECS), Rabin Shrestha (Practical Action Nepal) and Krishna Ram Duwal (Practical Action Nepal).

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Introduction

Nepal’s TikTok culture is unique, deeply embedded in youth culture and politically and culturally significant. Compared to Facebook & Instagram, TikTok has higher engagement in Nepal, particularly in terms of reaching younger demographics in both urban and rural areas. These groups are potentially important for clean energy transitions as they are often early adopters of new technologies, trendsetters, and decision influencers within their families. Despite this reach, social media – including TikTok – has been relatively underused as a mechanism to promote electric cooking (eCooking).

An opportunity to address this recently emerged when Sudha Gurung, a Practical Action (PA) Nepal field coordinator for the MECS-funded Sparking the Supply Chain (SC2) challenge fund project, was provided an electric pressure cooker (EPC) from the PA office to take home. A keen cook who likes experimenting in the kitchen, Sudha decided to also record and document the process of cooking with an EPC and share it on TikTok, with the aim of seeing how this approach might be able to engage with different demographics and groups that might have been less well reached by other promotional channels.

From kitchen hobby to camera frame

For this blog, Sudha talked through the process of taking her cooking hobby to social media. Sudha takes up the story:

“I filmed myself making three recipes that are close to my heart: pulao, biryani, and cake. With a little editing and a voiceover, I uploaded them on TikTok. The response was better than I expected: I got more than 1,000 views in just two weeks, which I know seems small in the grand scheme of the internet, but for me it meant more than 1,000 real people watched, learned, and engaged. Even though my videos don’t reach a huge audience yet, I know it’s only the beginning. Content creation takes time, and I am learning to enjoy the process while growing step by step. It was proof that, even with no professional filming skills and no editing skills — just my phone — I could reach people. And the best part? Those more than 1,000 viewers may have discovered that an electric pressure cooker is not just a rice cooker; it’s a multifunctional tool capable of everything from cooking biryani to baking a cake.“

TikTok Video Recipes:

Connecting with young audiences and supporting wider eCooking work

The response to the Tik Tok videos was promising: each received over 1000 views in two weeks, while demographic analysis revealed most of the audience were young people between 18 and 35 years old (Figure 1) with sizeable engagement by men and women (Figure 2). The videos and their audiences provide insights into how Tik Tok is used and consumed and suggest the platform has potential benefits as a means to promote eCooking. The short, snappy content also appeals to this audience and can make learning easy; recipes that might be difficult to explain can become understandable far more quickly. 

Although the videos started as personal content, they also supported the aim of the Practical Action Nepal and Himstar Electronics SC2 challenge fund project to accelerate EPC uptake in Nepali households – including by testing effective promotional strategies. The initial findings provide some evidence that TikTok may better reach and engage certain audiences than other promotional channels. TikTok videos may also be  more appealing to certain demographics due to being arguably more genuine and relatable, featuring ‘real’ people cooking real recipes in a real kitchen. While these videos may seem less like advertising or a staged promotion, they still represent a form of marketing for Himstar (whose EPCs feature in the videos and are promoted under this SC2 project), allowing audiences to see the product in action, understand its features, and view cooking results.

Could TikTok help eCooking adoption in Nepal and beyond?

While TikTok may have entered the SC2 project as a small-scale experiment, the experience suggests it could play a part within broader eCooking promotion strategies. The videos indicate that simple, home-produced content can reach young, engaged audiences, normalise the use of EPCs, and showcase real dishes in real kitchens in a way that may feel more authentic rather than overtly commercial. In countries such as Nepal where TikTok has a relatively large share of social media traffic, the findings point to potential value in working with content creators engaging on the platform to develop and explore opportunities for eCooking promotion.

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AI Disclaimer: ChatGPT5 was asked to review the draft version of the blog for flow, clarity, and consistency, and to suggest ideas for the conclusion. Results were then followed up by human checks and editing.

Image credits: All images are copyright of Practical Action Nepal and Him Electronics Pvt. Ltd. (2025).