How a food blogger in the UK is using Google AI to turn her passion for cooking into a flourishing business

An interview with Yu Mon Khin, founder of the pan-Asian recipe blog, Khin’s Kitchen

Growing up in Myanmar, with my Burmese-Chinese dad and Burmese-Indian mum, our dining table was always a vibrant celebration of cultures. Cooking was our family’s love language, and my dad would often make my favourite dumplings, which are still my go-to comfort food.

I moved to the UK to join my husband in 2013 and started to share the rich culture of food I grew up with by posting pictures of what I was cooking on social media. Friends and family members would ask for my recipes, but as I cooked by instinct, adding a teaspoon here or there, it was hard to write them down precisely. To help me, my husband started filming as I cooked and talked through each step, showing the measurements as I went along. We’d post the videos on social media, never expecting the widespread attention we got, with some of the videos going viral and more and more people following us. What began as sharing recipes on a personal page turned into my food blog, Khin’s Kitchen, named in memory of my dad.

Within eight months, people across the UK and beyond were visiting the blog to explore my pan-Asian recipes with 50,000 views per month and my passion project officially turned into a business. We started monetising through ads and views, and three years later, my husband closed his small takeaway restaurant to join me full-time. Of course, as the blog grew in popularity, so did the workload, and we found ourselves constantly running against the clock. A friend told me about Gemini and after some experimentation I realised it could be a much-needed research and brainstorming partner.

Gathering facts, writing recipe drafts, and checking spelling and grammar used to take so much time. Now Gemini quickly helps me find new recipe ideas, suggests missing practical details like reheating instructions or nutritional benefits, and refines my writing.

“Gemini easily cuts my research and drafting time in half, giving me more time to create quality recipes and videos and keep growing my audience.”

It also suggests new recipes to me based on previous ones that have performed well. For instance, Gemini suggested pan-fried chicken thighs as a twist on our popular honey butter chicken, and when I shared the recipe, it was an instant hit.

Additionally, Gemini helps with our visual storytelling and video content. My husband, a self-taught photographer and videographer, captures our recipe videos on camera while I handle the creative setup. Before shoots, I ask Gemini to generate image references for food styling, helping me visualise the side dishes, garnishes, or props to place next to a meal, such as setting a bowl of rice or decorative greens alongside a Chinese beef curry. After I write video scripts, it helps me shorten them to fit into a 10-minute video. I even use it to prepare for my video shoots by generating a grocery list before we record multiple recipes in a day.

“Streamlining our process with Gemini has really paid off. In just one year, our social media following has jumped by a million followers, our blog traffic has hit two million, and I’ve even started collaborating with three major household brands.”

The time saved allows me to focus on what matters most: testing new recipes in the kitchen, personally replying to reader comments, and spending more time with my 10-year-old son, who loves helping us clean up after video shoots. Looking ahead, my husband and I are preparing to expand from creating two recipes a week to four, launch our own line of signature food products like chilli oils, and publish a cookbook. Food has the unique power to cross borders and bring people together, and using AI allows us to share my family’s cultural heritage, warmth, and joy with more kitchens across the world.