Cooking Under The Influence

If you’ve never been interested in cooking, don’t think you’re good at, or have always wanted to learn but felt that it was too complicated, we’re going to let you in on a little (not-so-secret) secret: TikTok.

Trust us, the social media app isn’t just for teenagers and Zoomers.

When the pandemic forced the world into lockdown in March of 2020, something unique happened. Bored in isolation and forced to cook at home, an entirely new generation — young and old — discovered TikTok. While the Chinese-owned social media platform has been in the U.S. since 2018, it was mostly a space where teenagers could upload dance challenges or videos of silly pranks. The app, which currently boasts around 1 billion monthly active users, quickly became a place for people to share homemade recipes. Suddenly, people were becoming TikTok-famous for speedy cooking videos that other users couldn’t wait to replicate or add their own spin.  

Take, for example, viral recipe hits like Dalgona coffee, an ombre-colored drink made by whipping instant coffee, sugar and hot water into a frothy concoction and adding it to hot or cold milk or pesto eggs on buttered toast. Hot cocoa got even better with the creation of hot chocolate bombs (picture a bath bomb for your drink). Crowned by the crowd favorite: a creamy baked pasta starring a block of feta cheese and cherry tomatoes. 

Often referred to as “FoodTok,” one can easily go down a rabbit hole for hours watching lightning-fast tutorials, clever cooking hacks, bizarre recipes that are weirdly delicious, or even funny parodies on cooking. 

TikTok has made a major impact on food culture, from what we eat to teaching an entirely new generation to cook, and at the very least, it’s sparked a new interest in cooking. A major reason? There’s content for all cooking levels. While celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay have TikTok accounts, the app isn’t about featuring highly trained chefs, ingredient-intense and highly tested recipes, or the professionally produced videos of the Food Network. Quite the contrary, the platform is extremely approachable, drawing in real people making amateur videos of recipes and culinary tricks anyone can master.

“TikTok brought this relatability that’s never been there in traditional food media,” says Eitan Bernath, a 19-year-old who shot to TikTok stardom for his cooking videos packed with personality. “For many people who see my videos, they think, ‘If a teenager can do this, then I can too.’” 

Ready to give your cooking prowess a go? We’ve featured 5 of TikTok’s culinary stars worth a follow, each with their own panache and expertise.

Thanks to her expertise in traditional Chinese cooking and a fun, fast-paced video style that includes music, sound effects and cameos from her family, Vivian Aronson, AKA the “CookingBomb,” has racked up nearly 2 million followers on TikTok.

Born in China, Aronson garnered her culinary know-how from her grandmother, as well as her aunt and uncle who own restaurants in her hometown of Chengdu.

She now features mouth-watering recipes from her childhood on the social media platform, like her mother’s braised pork meatballs. 

“I want to show people the real Chinese food and culture that I grew up with,” says Aronson, who was shocked to find cream cheese in wontons sold at Chinese restaurants when she moved to the U.S. in 2005. “In Chinese cooking, we don’t use dairy or milk products,” she points out. 

Aronson, who was a contestant on Season 10 of Fox’s “MasterChef,” often pulls viewers into home life with her four kids in Minneapolis, sharing recipes she cooks for them, including daunting dishes like a whole fish. 

“I show my kids how to prepare it, they touch it and clean it,” she says. 

Expect videos offering culinary tips on making homemade kimchee, a two-ingredient chili oil, as well as how to appropriately season a wok, the latter which has gained a whopping 20 million views.

Aronson also takes followers on shopping trips to Asian markets, pinpointing which ingredients to buy and what to make with them. Her book, “Asian Market Cookbook” is out this December.

He’s only 19 years old, but Eitan Bernath is on his way to building a social media empire. 

Bernath became a TikTok star in just 24 hours in 2019, after betting his classmates that he could snag a million views with a video he called “”World’s Best School Cafeteria Check,” inspired by the “My Best Friend’s Rich Check” video going viral at the time. Spoiler alert — he hit that goal within hours, not only for mimicking a popular video but for focusing on school lunch, a topic of interest that resonated with the demographic of TikTok. 

He’s now amassed almost 2 million followers, thanks to his entertaining yet educational cooking content.

The New York-based digital star focuses on comfort foods and wants viewers to think of him as a friend in the kitchen. 

“The main feedback that I hear from my followers is, ‘I never wanted to cook or had an interest in it, but you made it look fun.’ My goal is to make cooking enjoyable,” says Bernath.

He fell in love with cooking at age 7, and by age 12, competed on the first kid’s episode of Food Network’s “Chopped.” More recently, Bernath solidified a spot as the principal culinary contributor for “The Drew Barrymore Show.”

The teenager continues to energetically zoom through a combination of original recipes — like a vodka lasagna that he dreamed up when he wanted to freshen up his longtime favorite dish, penne alla vodka — and testing silly viral hacks. His advice to those desiring to make it big on TikTok? 

“Change it up,” he says. “What worked a year ago may not work anymore, and you always need to try something new and diversify.” 

Pasta, drama and Dolce & Gabbana is exactly what you’ll get when following fashionable Italian beauty Nadia Caterina Munno on TikTok. 

Appropriately dubbed “The Pasta Queen,” Munno was born into somewhat of a pasta dynasty in Gragnano, Italy where her family began making fresh pasta in the 1800s and supplying it to large distributors. 

“I remember making pasta with my grandmother at age 5, standing on a wooden stool as she rolled gnocchi off the fork,” Munno says. “I can still smell the fresh potato wheat.” 

She’s rocketed to social media fame — 2 million followers on TikTok — by showcasing authentic family recipes such as lemon spaghetti, fresh ricotta gnocchi and a creamy peas pasta that went viral when Kylie Jenner re-posted it. 

“I want to create a pasta renaissance,” she says, adding that TikTok is a way of preserving those beloved classic recipes that “nonnas” often don’t write down. 

Munno’s videos are taped in her Tampa kitchen (which was custom made in Florence), and she introduces each recipe’s ingredients with her signature theatrical hair flip. “I dream in telenovelas,” she says of her flair for drama that stemmed from watching soap operas as a child with her aunties and grandmother. 

Stayed tuned: Munno is working on a book and a television show. 

Sam Zien is just a regular guy — speaking regular words (and a few curse words) — that any novice in the kitchen can understand. 

Known on TikTok as SamTheCookingGuy, Zien prides himself on demystifying cooking with no-fuss recipes. 

“For too long, people have watched chefs on TV make complicated things, so they think that they can’t cook. I focus on the simple, everyday stuff that anyone can pull off,” he says. 

Based in San Diego, the cookbook author and Emmy-award winning TV host masters grilling and smoker recipes starring burgers, sandwiches and chicken dishes. Some of his most popular (and genius) recipes are mashed potatoes fashioned out of potato chips and a creative buffalo chicken stir fry, his riff on a traditional buffalo chicken sandwich. 

“If you make it once, you’re going to make it again,” he promises. 

Zien offers hacks on often-intimidating techniques like poaching an egg, which he advises to do ahead of time (not when the hollandaise is burning on the stove) by using silicone poaching cups that can simply be popped into the microwave. 

If you can’t get enough of Sam on TikTok, subscribe to his YouTube channel and look out for his fifth cookbook out next spring.

The Miami food and lifestyle content creator, Valentina Mussi joined TikTok years before the pandemic struck, gaining a following for posting behind-the-scenes videos from local restaurants that showcased over-the-top food trends. 

But when eateries shuttered in March 2020, Mussi, who goes by the handle @sweetportfolio pivoted to developing her own 3-component recipes using ingredients she had around the house that could be prepared in the microwave or air fryer. 

She became a viral sensation for Whipped Strawberry Milk, her version of the popular Dalgona coffee using strawberry-flavored powder and milk instead of coffee.

“My followers are young, and they don’t drink coffee, so I started thinking about what the kid-version of coffee is,” Mussi says. “That was the breakthrough concept for me. Overnight, I had emails from different media outlets like “The Today Show” and Cosmo, asking how I came up with it.” 

The 22-year-old, who admittedly has a sweet tooth, recently wrote “The Unofficial TikTok Cookbook” which spotlights 75 recipes that went viral during the pandemic and includes her own boundary-pushing creations.

Expect more travel content from Mussi, who comes from an Italian-Colombian family, as she aims to jet-set around the world, sampling exotic foods.