Food TikTok: The thrills and chills of our new way to cook
Feta cheese is selling out everywhere. It’s also the No. 1 search term on Instacart, the grocery delivery app. “If you’re under, say, 30, you know exactly what was cause behind all of this,” said Elise Taylor in Vogue.com. Recipes for baked feta and pasta have gone viral on TikTok, with the hashtag #fetapasta racking up more than 650 million views. The spark came in late January when U.S. food blogger MacKenzie Smith, sharing a Finnish blogger’s recipe, posted a TikTok video to spread the idea: Simply bake cherry tomatoes and a block of feta in a sheet pan with oil and garlic, then stir into cooked pasta. As The Washington Post put it, “A low-effort recipe for pasta with tomatoes and cheese—what’s not to love?” Millions of people are now making the dish, and this certainly won’t be the last time that TikTok changes the way we eat.
Food TikTok can be many things, said Hazel Cills in Jezebel.com. Users of the platform post short videos to share surprising food hacks, Coca-Cola pot roasts, and attempts to re-create Taco Bell’s complete menu at home. The viral popularity of certain TikTok dishes, such as SpaghettiO pie, feels driven by horrified fascination rather than sincere enthusiasm. But whatever the attraction of a particular recipe or hack, the rise of “FoodTok” comes at a moment when the industry that previously produced our food celebrities “has never felt more broken.” Americans living through a pandemic apparently don’t need star chefs or even relatable domestic doyennes offering them advice. “Watching FoodTok feels like watching how people actually cook and eat.” Yes, FoodTok can be disgusting at times. “Most of all,” though, “it is democratizing.”