Nara Aziza Smith. Picture: Nara Smith/Instagram
My TikTok algorithm is fine-tuned to “easy recipes” and “African cooks and chefs”. The latest face that is flooding my feed is South African and German model, Nara Aziza Smith, who lives in Los Angeles with her model husband, Lucky Blue Smith, and their three children.
With a community of more than nine million followers, Smith is carving her own path as a content creator by putting her cooking skills at the forefront.
Who is Nara Smith and why we cannot stop watching her cooking videos?
Smith certainly knows how to captivate an audience. The viral cook pulls in millions of views on all her videos and motivates people to make home-made meals and snacks from scratch.
And even weeks after giving birth to her third child, she is wowing viewers with her jaw-dropping skills.
In her videos, Smith cooks for her family, wearing cosy loungewear and feather slip dresses, which is all especially soothing, thanks to her soft-spoken narration.
In a recent “Get Ready With Me” video on TikTok, the model detailed a few facts about herself.
As the eldest sibling of three, Smith was born on September 27, 2001, in Bloemfontein in the Free State, making her 22. Her mom is South African and her dad German.
When she was 3 months old, she moved to Germany with her parents. She grew up in the city and lived there until she was 18.
@naraazizasmith hi to everyone that‘s new or has been here since the beginning🫶🏽 #grwm #makeup #fypシ #chattygrwm #gettoknowme ♬ Chopin Nocturne No. 2 Piano Mono - moshimo sound design
Smith was signed as a model in Germany when she was 14. She once said in a video that she had met Lucky through her modelling career when she first moved to Los Angeles and, after six months, the two had married in 2020.
Smith has frequently said “cooking is her love language”. And that she loves to film videos of herself preparing healthy meals for her family.
A popular example is a recent grilled cheese lunch she made for her children. Rather than pulling a few slices of fresh cheese out of the fridge and pairing it with the freshly baked bread she made, she opted for the time-consuming route by making the cheese from scratch.
After prepping bread dough, allowing it to rise and bake, stretching out cheese made from freshly cooked curds, smashing some freshly made pesto and blending a hand-crafted garlic butter log, her toddlers “absolutely devoured” their meal after its 5-hour preparation time.
Like any good mom, Smith often takes requests from her children, which fall along the lines of most toddlers’ taste palates – a peanut butter and jam sandwich, cocoa puffs, pasta and so on.
But unlike most other moms or rather, humans, who would pour store-bought cereal into a bowl or slap some jam on freshly baked bread and call it a day, she takes things up a notch by making them from the start.
@naraazizasmith absolute perfection 🫶🏽 #easyrecipe #homemade #baking #toddlersoftiktok #grilledcheese #fypシ ♬ Me Cry - NGOTUAN NGUYX
Smith’s content is in many respects different from that of many other lifestyle accounts.
Though she seems to trend with every new TikTok video or Instagram reel, her content reaches beyond its usual scope, like the time she posted about baby names she considered in December.
In the video, Smith said: “Our kids have pretty unique names, so these might be a little out there," before diving into the names.
“Among them were Pear, Dawn, Pepper, Bubble – as a middle name, of course – and Cherry, a name that she says her husband did not love but viewers went wild over in the comments.
While some people are impressed by the complicated dishes she makes, others voiced their concerns about her lifestyle and online persona promoting the “tradwife” lifestyle.
Despite the difficult recipes featured on Smith’s page, her oddly calming voice-overs, paired with her expressionless yet flawless complexion, paint the narrative that her way of cooking is as easy as breathing.
However, many followers in her comment section are quick to point out that she is doing far too much for her toddlers.
Love her or hate her, she is here to stay.
For the time being, the world can keep up with her increasingly popular vlogging to find out what kind of grass-fed goats she will milk to craft her new infant’s home-made baby formula.
Let’s not forget about her bubblegum and cornflakes making skills, which left TikTokkers speechless.