Like many Olds, I discovered TikTok after the pandemic struck and I faced untold weeks/months of effective house arrest. It was so soothing to watch videos of guys feeding cactus pads to giant desert tortoises, kids doing goofy dances with their parents, and adorable gay couples lovingly pranking each other.
You may or may not know that TikTok has its own little niche communities. There’s Twilight TikTok, Welsh TikTok (no really), gaming TikTok, etc. And, of course, there’s food TikTok, where people share food hacks, shots of food being prepared on street carts and food trucks, and step-by-step recipes, which have resonated the most with me. They are part of a subgenre of food TikTok that are instructive, rather than performative, in nature.
Among the recipes I’ve found on TikTok have been for Jjajangmyeon, grilled chicken gyros, and these amazing blueberry biscuits. When I saw that video, I immediately opened up my HEB app and placed the ingredients in my basket for my next curbside order. I had to have them.
Biscuits have been my bête noire in the kitchen for some time now. Every time I attempt them, I am disappointed in the results, whether I’m attempting rustic drop biscuits or fancier buttermilk ones. This recipe is the closest I’ve come to achieving my Platonic ideal of buttermilk biscuits, and I think the secret is in the lamination. The only thing I would do differently is cut them a little thicker.
Look at those layers!
If I hadn’t come across that video on TikTok, would I have achieved biscuit nirvana? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I, a fairly competent and experienced baker, had given up on biscuits until that video popped up on my feed. And now I feel empowered to make biscuits again.
Food TikTok has also opened my eyes to how much I take cooking, for myself and for my family, for granted. I didn’t get much cooking instruction growing up (as I’ve mentioned here before, my grandmother was kind of a *shocking* cook — and not in a good way — and my mother followed in her can-opening culinary footsteps). As such, I was well into adulthood before I started cooking from scratch. I remember feeling like the fanciest woman on earth when I made salmon and asparagus for my spouse early in our relationship. (I later learned that he loathes asparagus and choked it down out of politeness.)
But food TikTok has made me realize that my ability to cook nutritious meals for my family from scratch is a privilege. Even though I’m self-taught, I have had the time and the resources to learn how to cook salmon without making all the albumin ooze out the sides, the best uses for the Instant Pot, and how to get my kids to eat broccoli without them acting like I’m asking them to ingest rat poison (roast it). What’s more, my kids are also privileged in that I have endeavored (with varying degrees of success) to teach them how to cook so that they can eventually take care of themselves.
That’s where the work of empowering struggling cooks/eaters gets more immediate, and higher stakes. TikTokker domesticblisters made me aware of this dynamic with a series of videos in which she provides recipes for people who don’t know how to cook or how to start, or who are struggling with depression or other mental illnesses. They are recipes for and from compassion:
Pot roast in the crockpot (this one brought me to tears)
She also explains, in a very ASMR way, that the simple act of eating when you’re depressed or grieving is a win. She punctures people’s hangups about food and fatphobia via extreme closeups of “fattening” foods (she sis a big fan of The Fuck It Diet).
I reached out to domesticblisters (AKA KC Davis), and she graciously agreed to answer a few questions, which is unbelievably generous considering she’s a SAHM to a toddler and a 7-month-old.
A licensed LPC, Davis joined TikTok back in April and accidentally went viral when she posted videos of her chaotic backyard filled with toddler toys, and one with a humorous voiceover about how to put a baby to sleep. But the tipping point came when she decided to serve realness about cleaning an “overwhelmingly messy” house.
I titled it "to all the mental health warriors and parents" and mentioned depression and ADHD as a reason why people can sometimes end up with very messy houses they are too overwhelmed to clean. It spread like wildfire with the mental health community and someone asked me for a similar one on [doing] dishes. I replied and did one and it blew up even bigger than the cleaning one. […] From there I continued to make videos normalizing mess and mental health problems and continued to gain followers like crazy.
She decided to start posting recipes/cooking videos when a 17-year-old girl commented that she struggles with cooking because everything she makes is inedible, with a voiceover about being kind and not snobby about food, because “it just feels good to take something out of the oven.”
so much tiktok cooking and cooking shows/videos/blogs in general focus on the "aesthetically pleasing" aspects of cooking and are geared towards people who already know how to cook. But not many people were just showing people how to feed themselves. There is a lot of ground between eating from a microwave and following a 9 step recipe with 16 ingredients. I learned that ground from my mom but I realized not everyone has a mom to teach them.
These videos bring into relief, for me, anyway, how damaging our privileged attitudes about food and cooking can be. When we get precious about food, we are potentially inflicting damage on people for whom just making a baked chicken breast with a side of broccoli is an intimidating prospect, never mind making a special trip to the farmers market for pasture-raised chicken and locally grown vegetables to make picture-perfect coq au vin.
I’m not sure how much longer I’ll stay on TikTok; not because of the back-and-forth over its imminent demise, but because the head of Oracle has troubling connections to Donald Trump. (Of course he does; it’s crooks all the way down.) Here’s hoping I find a few more recipes to add to my repertoire until I delete it.
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