What shoots a recipe out of a social-media influencer’s kitchen and into the digitally delectable stratosphere? Clever hacks and millennial ingredients du jour are key to recipes that garner hundreds of thousands – even millions – of likes and shares.
Colorado Matters Senior Host Ryan Warner learned the ins and outs of the virality of food recently when he and Broomfield cookbook author and food critic Allyson Reedy got together to dish about her new cookbook, “The Phone Eats First.”
Reedy’s new analog-meets-digital cookbook includes 50 recipes ranging from ice cube tray sushi and lasagna soup to boba tea custard toast and a homemade version of Little Debbie Cakes.
Even though Reedy is a food critic for the Denver Post and 5280 magazine, she admits she was skeptical of viral food before she started researching her latest cookbook. Her 13-year-old daughter helped her by pointing out the hot recipe influencers.
Delving into that virtual rabbit hole, Reedy found there are three things behind the most viral of viral recipes.
First: The food must be beautiful. It must photograph well. The gooey blob of cheese just on the verge of plopping into a bowl of soup from the Donut Grilled Cheese with Tomato Soup in Reedy’s book is a mouth-watering example of that. It’s important to have that money shot.
Second: It needs to involve a brilliant hack such as using ice cube trays to make perfectly formed sushi bites. Same goes for muffin tins. Stuff any food in a muffin tin and your chances of going viral skyrocket. Chopped sandwiches also go in the brilliant – duh? – category. Think about it; when you are eating a sandwich you are often struggling to get some of every layered thing in one bite. Chop it all up together and the problem is solved.
Third: It helps to be a food that people are attached to either through saturation in our culture or through nostalgia. Avocados and boba tea fit the bill for saturation. And the recipe for Cosmic Brownies in Reedy’s book brings on the nostalgia with a healthy sprinkling of colored candy bits. Nostalgia stretches all the way from grandma’s beef stew to ‘90s fast food taste-alikes. And right now, in this viral moment, anything French onion goes.
Compiling recipes for her cookbook taught Reedy just how much food influencers can affect our eating in the offline world – and expand our food choices to other cultures.
A good example is birria tacos (basically beef and cheese tacos with a meaty consommé dipping sauce). Before the COVID pandemic, hardly anyone had heard of them. When everyone had lockdown time to cook and share favorite foods on influencer feeds, Birria tacos went nutso. Now, they are served up at every street corner taco truck and in every with-it Mexican restaurant.
Boba, sometimes called bubble tea, is another example. Ten years ago, the sweetened tea made with tapioca pearls was unknown in this part of the world. Now, there are 5,000 boba tea shops around the country.
Reedy is okay with boba tea, but she had to try some not-so-good things to come up with 50 recipes for her book. Her rejections included Baked Feta Pasta (Awful!), Steak in a Jar (No! Just no!), and vegan cookies (Desserts need butter and sugar!).
She also subjected her family to many trials, both good and bad. The day she decided to cook three meals in muffin tins was a hit.
And that’s where Allyson Reedy and Ryan Warner decided to take up their viral challenge.
They prepared a concoction with pasta and avocado and stuffed it in muffin tins. Then they gussied it up with chile crunch and Cheeto dust.
Ryan ate three. Allyson had more control – or maybe more aversion — to avocado pasta.
Ryan and Allyson’s Super Viral Pastacado Muffins
Ingredients:
- ½ box (or 8 ounces) pasta, cooked (we used Barilla cellantani)
- 2 ripe avocados, mashed
- Chile crunch, to taste
- ¾ cup Cheetos (bonus points for Flamin’ Hot), also mashed
- Special equipment: muffin tin
Directions:
- Fill each muffin tin well with cooked pasta.
- Top with just enough of the mashed avocado to cover the top, then gently mix into the pasta.
- Spoon chile crunch on top and sprinkle with your Cheetos dust.
- Enjoy!
Be sure to like and share pastacado muffins on your favorite social media!
