Meet the Windsor-area chef cooking up a huge YouTube following

Wil Yeung describes himself as "just some random guy on YouTube" — but with more than 500,000 followers, his recipes keep viewers hungry for more. 

"I always had this passion for food," the Windsor-area host of Yeung Man Cooking explained. 

Over the course of his adult life, he's worked as a teacher, a photographer and an entrepreneur, at one point running his own food product business where he created and sold various nut-milks in the Greater Toronto Area from 2015 to 2016. 

Around that time, he started filming his kitchen adventures while making his nut-milk products. That was the beginning of what would later become the cooking show he hosts now. 

After putting a pause on that business, he explained that he fell into a "crazy depression."

What eventually helped pulled him out of it was a decision to commit to making lunch for himself every single day. From there, he decided to start filming that effort at least once a week, eventually turning into Yeung Man Cooking.

He now posts two videos each week bringing new plant-based recipes to his viewers on a regular basis. Dishes like basil chickpea noodles, palak tofu, red Thai curry noodles — plus his popular chili oil recipe. He's also published two cook books.

Yeung regularly receives kind messages of gratitude and he explained that viewers have expressed to him that his show has helped them get through difficult times in their lives.

"Even though it's just a cooking show about food or cooking, it goes beyond just ... the food, that we do on the show," Yeung said. 

Reaching 500,000 followers is humbling and overwhelming, he said, but he looks forward to continuing to expand his reach and bring his viewers more recipes they're interested in. 

"The more people we can reach, the more people that can try these recipes, and hopefully could change their life."