If you had told me two years ago that I’d become someone who turns to a social media app called TikTok for recipe inspiration, I’d ask, “What’s TikTok?” But once I tried recipes like the baked feta pasta, the salmon bowl, or Drew Barrymore’s Pizza Salad, I realized TikTok is a playground for passionate chefs and home cooks (no matter the skill level) who are fixated on sharing creative ways to cook and eat well. Now, I can’t stop scrolling!
The recipes shared via TikTok videos are typically easy to make, require basic ingredients, and result in a super-satisfying dish (much to our shock and delight!). They range from classic meals to quick snacks, as well as aesthetic restaurant-quality plates and spreads.
Whether we saw them directly on the app or stumbled upon them elsewhere (I don’t know about you, but my text chains are filled with food videos!), these were the 10 viral TikTok recipes we saw, tried out, and can now safely confirm are food trends that are well-worth the hype.
Butter boards went viral because of how they can drive on many flavor avenues. Here's a version from our very own Associate Food Editor, Cory, that combines Buffalo hot sauce and ranch dressing to make one spread you won't be able to resist.
These Hawaiian pizza rolls from @moribyan are everything you’d expect them to be. They’re cheesy, garlicky, sweet, and salty — all balanced out by the herbs and tangy marinara sauce. The rolls stay soft yet get a little crisp on top, giving you the best contrast of textures in each bite.
It's almost as easy as making instant coffee. The texture sits somewhere between icy and melt-in-your-mouth creamy.
Contributor Tai Saint-Louis said it best in her recipe review: "The grated egg has a creamy consistency that, when blended with the avocado and Kewpie mayo, almost tasted like a deconstructed egg salad."
Besides being delicious and easy-peasy, the viral popcorn cake recipe is pretty, colorful, and a real conversation piece.
Nostalgia always wins on TikTok. This year, we went nuts over this recipe for Cosmic Brownies.
Off TikTok, Baked by Melissa is synonymous with their cute boxes of little cupcakes. On TikTok, the woman behind the bakery is an avid home cook who's gone viral for her everyday recipe ideas. Her green goddess dressing packs a serious punch. It's bright, herby, nutty, and creamy — making it a great companion to liven up the fresh cabbage and cucumbers.
Piononos are petite versions of pastelón, a layered plaintain dish similar to a Puerto Rican lasagna and popular across the Caribbean. Some pionono recipes use toothpicks to hold the plantain rolls together, but this recipe from user @deyadishes uses a cupcake mold, which we think is ingenious.
This viral cinnamon-roll hack — which floods canned cinnamon roll with a cascade of heavy cream — is too easy and too good. We aren't saying they put cinnamon rolls from the mall kiosk to shame, but we're not not saying that, either.
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