We Turned Our Kitchen Into a 4K Multicam Livestream Studio
Three 4K cameras between the stove and the cutting board. A live stream off the countertop. My mom on the phone from Colombia. Here is the gear list and the recipe.
You do not need a studio. You need a kitchen and a reason to show up.
We proved it. We set up three 4K cameras between the stove and the cutting board, ran a live stream off the countertop, and I cooked sudado de pollo while my mom watched from Colombia. The gear passed the test. The sudado was even better.
Two things came out of that shoot, and a lot of you asked for both. The gear we used to build the kitchen studio. And the recipe for the sudado. Both are right here.
Here is what is inside: the kitchen studio and why we built it there, the full gear list, how to start for $200, and my sudado de pollo recipe.
The point was not the kitchen. It was the permission.
For a long time, Stephen and I believed our content had to look a certain way. White backgrounds. Controlled shots. Everything perfect before we hit record. That belief slowed us down for years.
So lately we give ourselves permission to make whatever we want, however we want. This kitchen studio was that. We did not wait for the perfect set. We used the room we cook in. We let our youngest run one of the cameras. She got some very creative angles. We kept them.
That is the whole message. You do not need better gear. You do not need to feel ready. The ideas in your head and the dreams in your heart were put there for a reason, and nobody is expecting perfection. If you keep waiting for the time, the time will pass. You start where you are, because where you are is the right place to start.
The kitchen studio (two setups, same gear)
We built two setups in the same kitchen with the same core gear.
Setup one: a two-camera live podcast. The brain of the whole thing was the YoloBox Extreme. One camera was a YoloCam S7, which I used as my reaction camera. The second was the OBSBOT Tail 2, controlled from Stephen's phone, tracking me around the kitchen with AI tracking so I never had to think about staying in frame. We sent the output into our computer and into the live room we built on Podcast YourWay.
Setup two: a three-camera cooking show. Same lights. Same YoloBox Extreme as the brain. This time the YoloCam S7 became an overhead shot on my cutting board. The YoloCam S3, which is tiny and has magnets on two sides, clipped straight onto the oven hood and looked down into the boiling pot. The OBSBOT Tail 2 tracked me as I moved. Every camera recorded in 4K to its own isolated track.
[ IMAGE: the overhead S3 shot looking down into the pot on the stove. Alt text: "Overhead view of sudado de pollo simmering, filmed by a YoloCam S3 magnet-mounted to the oven hood" ]
That overhead shot of the pot and the cutting board was the one I had been dreaming about. If you have ever wanted a cooking show, an art channel, a craft channel, an iPad-drawing channel, anything where people need to see your hands work, that little S3 on the hood is the shot.
A note on the YoloBox Extreme. It became my favorite piece of gear on this shoot. It is a recorder, a camera switcher, and a live stream machine in one box. You can plug in multiple 4K cameras (we used three, it handles more), record each one separately to the internal drive or a flash drive, adjust your camera settings right from the screen, build scenes and graphics, and broadcast straight out of it. Battery powered if you want. I plugged mine in, because the battery made me nervous, and that is allowed too.
The full gear list
Everything we used is below. These are affiliate links, so if you grab something through them it supports the channel at no extra cost to you. Thank you for that.
YoloBox Extreme (the brain)
YoloCam S7 (reaction and overhead)
YoloCam S3 (the magnetic one on the oven hood)
OBSBOT Tail 2 (AI tracking)
Neewer lights (the Bi-Color 18 inch and the BR13s we use for everything)
DJI Mic Mini (clear audio for under fifty dollars)
You can start for $200
Here is the part I want you to hear. You do not need all of it.
You can start with the YoloCam S3 for around $200. That is enough to start making content. Add the DJI Mic Mini for about $47 if you want cleaner audio, and you are making content for around $250. Add one light, our favorite is the Neewer BR13, and you are set.
Our full setup with lighting came in under $3,000. The everything version was still under $5,000. And a lot of us spend more than that on hobbies without blinking. You could cancel a streaming service or two and cover the whole thing. I will not say which ones.
My sudado de pollo con maduro
Now the recipe. Sudado de pollo is one of my favorite Colombian dishes. It is a chicken stew with a quiet little sweetness from ripe plantain. It is the kind of food that makes you call your mom. I did exactly that mid-shoot, hands covered in cilantro. "Mami, mira lo que estoy cocinando." She lit up.
One real-life note from the video. We could not find a ripe plantain at the store that day, so we used sweet potato instead. It worked beautifully. Use what you have. That is sort of the theme around here.
[ IMAGE: the finished sudado in the pot or plated with rice and avocado. Alt text: "Finished Colombian sudado de pollo con maduro served with white rice, avocado, and lime" ]
Serves 4 to 6
Ingredients
2 to 3 pounds bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large white onion, sliced
4 green onions, chopped
3 ripe tomatoes, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sazon completa (optional)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 pound Yukon Gold or red potatoes, cut into large chunks
1 very ripe plantain (maduro), peeled and cut into 1 inch rounds
2 cups chicken broth (homemade or a natural broth is best)
Up to 1/2 cup water, if needed
1 generous handful fresh cilantro, chopped
Instructions
Season the chicken. Season generously with salt, pepper, cumin, and the minced garlic. If you have time, let it marinate 15 to 30 minutes.
Make the guiso. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy pot over medium heat. Add the white onion and green onions and cook 3 to 4 minutes until softened. Stir in the tomatoes and cook another 5 to 7 minutes, until they break down into a rich sauce.
Add the chicken. Nestle the chicken into the guiso. Pour in the broth and bring to a gentle simmer.
Cook the potatoes. Add the potato chunks around the chicken. Cover and cook about 20 minutes.
Add the maduro. Add the plantain during the last 15 to 20 minutes. It should go soft and creamy while holding its shape, sweetening the broth without making it taste sugary.
Finish. Cook until the chicken is tender, the potatoes are soft, and the broth has thickened slightly. Stir carefully so the plantains stay intact. Stir in the cilantro and taste for salt.
The secret to that hint of sweetness. Use a very ripe, black-speckled plantain. As it cooks it slowly releases its sugars into the broth, giving you that classic Colombian balance of savory and a little sweet. If you want it more noticeable, add an extra half plantain in the last 15 minutes, or stir 1 to 2 teaspoons of brown sugar into the tomatoes as they cook.
Serve it with steamed white rice, sliced avocado, lime wedges, and Colombian aji.
A note on the broth. Use homemade or a minimally processed chicken broth instead of bouillon cubes. Bone-in chicken builds a rich broth on its own as it cooks. Simple ingredients, deep comfort.
Come create with us
That is the whole thing. The studio that fits in a kitchen, and the stew that makes you homesick in the best way.
If this gave you even a small push, that was the point. You matter. Your ideas matter. Your dreams matter.
We go live every Wednesday at 11:00 AM Eastern on our platform, Podcast YourWay. Come yap with us. We have a lot of fun, and we cover live streaming setups exactly like this one.
By the way, if you want help designing a studio that fits your space and your goals, that is what we do. Start with Podcast YourWay. Then start.
