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Getting smarmy about food posts is a classic contrarian move, but you're better than that.
The stigma around Instagramming your meals has let up in recent years, but the internet’s finest joy-haters still love to say that, actually, no one cares what you had for breakfast. Well, maybe they don’t. But plenty of people do. In fact, without food Instagram, we’d lose one of the few wholesome experiences the internet has left — and it’s likely that fewer people would be inspired to start cooking.
There are, to say the least, a lot of recipes online. Dozens of food websites, hundreds of blogs, and a YouTube clogged with tutorials can make finding a trustworthy recipe challenging. Sure, you could head to one of the big dogs, like Bon Appétit or the New York Times cooking section, but even those reliable sources house a few duds.
And as anyone who’s ever used a fancy recipe knows, ingredients can get expensive fast. (I like preserved lemons, but I dislike how my soul feels as I pay $8.99 for preserved lemons at Whole Foods.) If you want to expand your culinary horizons, you want to know — or at least have evidence that — the recipe you’re using is a quality one. And what better way to find out than seeing that another cook made and loved it before you?
Though plenty of grotesque food porn (e.g. the cheese pull) still exists online, the new frontier of food posting is all about the recipe. Cheese boards, homemade bread, a wider variety of soups each year: More and more, we’re sharing the food we make rather than just the food we eat. This trend goes beyond the gratuitous queso shots and yolk porn of years past — it’s more about the process, the craft. The glamour shot isn’t going viral; the cooking experience is.
Alison Roman, who’s responsible for at least three viral recipes at this point, often posts Instagram Stories featuring photos from people who made one of her dishes, Instagrammed the results, and proudly tagged her. Some of the photos look better than others, of course — not every chicken pic would be considered “food porn” in the classic oozy sense — but they’re wonderful all the same. Not only did someone try a recipe, but they also liked the experience enough to share it with the person who invented it. (Even if they forgot to roll The Cookies in demerara sugar.) The whole operation becomes less “this has to be visually perfect” and more “it’s cool that you made something.” The internet could use a lot more energy like that.
But the beauty of food posts isn’t just in the process. Seeing how someone made a dish has practical value, too — especially if you have food allergies or otherwise need to make modifications.
Ruthie, a 27-year-old actor and writer living in New York City, says that the homemade food she posts on her Instagram Story usually gets a lot of responses. (Her grid is reserved for restaurant meals.) “If I post a 20-story recipe, it gets a lot of views and people watch until the end. I would have expected them to bail after a couple slides,” she tells me via Twitter DM. “When I posted a recipe for the coconut soup I make when I'm sick a bunch of people (all women) said they tried it.”
Ruthie’s feed is also intriguing because she follows a very specific diet: She’s vegan and tries to avoid both wheat and sugar. “So I think even non-vegans are morbidly curious about my food,” she explains.
A rabid soup fan myself, I asked Ruthie for her coconut soup recipe. I won’t blow up her spot, but it’s the kind of recipe I knew I’d try as soon as I saw it: extremely riffable, with mostly pantry staple ingredients. That room for improvisation — use whatever vegetables you have, spices can vary as long as there are a lot of them — makes it perfect for the would-be home cook. Yes, it’s a specific set of instructions, but it’s also an education in a technique. Never made soup before? This is pretty much how you do it, no matter which ingredients you choose.
And it looks delicious. If I saw it on a feed, I’d DM Ruthie too. But Ruthie’s not a professional cook, nor a recipe blogger. If it weren’t for Instagram, no one would have seen the dish at all — especially not people who were unaware that they needed extremely powerful coconut soup in the first place.
That visceral reaction to an image is ultimately why food posts need to remain a staple of social media. The motivation — and the confidence — to cook can come from simply seeing that someone else did it, too. It’s not so hard after all.
Even if you're not a beginner, food posts still have tons of knowledge to offer. Scott Zalkind, who owns the hot sauce company Lucky Dog (you may have seen its Year of the Dog sauce on Hot Ones), says he's learned numerous cooking techniques from social media, including several that have had an impact on his cooking skills.
"I recently did a pulled beef in the crock pot and while I always used onions during the initial cook, I’d never laid them down on the bottom before," he says. I’d seen this suggestion on Twitter and it prevented the beef from searing (adding to the tenderness) and also better infused the flavor of the onions as they’d caramelized against the bottom."
"The internet and their denizen foodies are such a great resource," he adds. "Even as a food industry professional I learn on the daily."
The phenomenon isn’t limited to Instagram, of course. Adam, a 28-year-old warehouse manager who lives in the UK, says he’s a fan of creator Joshuah Nishi, or @nishcooks, who posts accessible, easy-to-follow food tutorials on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok. (TikTok, in fact, is a haven for this type of content.) Much of Nishi’s appeal is his cavalierness — even when he’s cooking “intimidating” ingredients like steak, he treats the process like no big deal. Anyone can do it!
“He makes it look so simple,” Adam explains. “He’s good for a young lad. Had me trying his recipes straightaway.”
So if you make your first burger or pot of ash reshteh or lasagna or mole? Show that shit off. It doesn’t matter if it looks perfect — if you were respectful of its origins, feel proud of it, and liked eating it, that's enough. Who knows? Maybe it will inspire someone else to dust off their long-neglected skillet and get cooking, too.
Just don't post unseasoned chicken. In that case I can't defend you.
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Topics Instagram Social Media
