David Remnick: 60% of the world's population uses some kind of social media. That's 5 billion people on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, and the like. 4.9 billion of them, I'm pretty certain, are watching cooking videos. Years ago, I got obsessed with Jacques Pépin on YouTube, and some of you may remember when I made crepes with him, remotely, via Zoom, right here on the program.

[cooking sounds]

David Remnick: Three-quarter of a cup of milk, voila, and just put half of it in the flour.

Jacques Pépin: About, yes. Mix it with a whisk, right? Let's see that whisk. This is a mini whisk. Wow.

[laughter]

David Remnick: Hannah Goldfield writes our column On and Off the Menu, and when she's not writing about food, she's watching recipe videos on TikTok. There are thousands of them, probably millions of them to choose from, so I wanted to see what she's into. Why are we so fascinated by watching other people prepare food or eat food online? Because I have to tell you a little confession here. Me, too.

Hannah Goldfield: [laughs] If I knew that, I think I would be a psychologist of some kind, but what I do know is that, yes, I'm the same. I find it soothing. I find it fascinating. It's a little bit of escapism, I think.

David Remnick: I don't, strictly speaking, cook, and I'm watching people cook.

[laughter]

Hannah Goldfield: I think it's fun to watch someone do something that they're really good at. I think it's a little bit like watching sports or something. You're watching someone at the top of their game, in some cases, although, as you'll see, some of the videos that I am highlighting today are about people making disgusting-looking food badly.

David Remnick: In fact, there's one that I watch, some guy, southern guy, who just goes in front of a grill and he slams down a stick of butter.

Speaker 1: Y'all already know, baby, hit it one stick of butter.

[slamming sound]

David Remnick: The outcome is bad-looking like it's a cheesesteak from hell, and yet it's mesmerizing.

Hannah Goldfield: [laughs] I think there's a lot of ASMR involved in cooking videos. The sounds are really satisfying, like the sizzle and the slap.

[cutting sounds]

Hannah Goldfield: The drizzle, there's a lot of aesthetic.

David Remnick: The pounding of the garlic, the whole thing.

Hannah Goldfield: Yes, exactly.

David Remnick: Hannah, you've got three food-related social media channels to share with us, and I think the first one is Hannah Neeleman, who posts as Ballerina Farm.

Hannah Neeleman: Hello. Okay, so--

David Remnick: What's her thing?

Hannah Neeleman: I [crosstalk] answer some of the questions that I got--

Hannah Goldfield: The reason that her handle is Ballerina Farm is she's a Juilliard-trained ballerina. She has eight children. One of them was born very recently. She lives on a dairy and cattle farm in Utah. That alone is just, I find, completely fascinating. She's living a modern-day little house on the prairie life.

David Remnick: You're not going to fall into her footsteps? Eight kids [crosstalk].

Hannah Goldfield: Probably not. [laughs] Yes, she's really into food and part of this homesteader lifestyle, which she gets a lot of flak for making it look like it's easier than it is, and people are always accusing her of like, "Well, you must have four nannies behind the scenes." She maintains that she has no childcare. At this point, I think the older kids take care of the younger kids.

David Remnick: No childcare, eight kids and she's cooking for a million.

Hannah Goldfield: She's cooking for a million, and she's making everything from scratch, and I do mean from scratch. If she makes lasagna, she'll make the mozzarella herself. She'll make the noodles herself. Then it's all these little jump-shot videos, so it looks like she's doing it in about three minutes.

David Remnick: How does she have the time? [chuckles]

Hannah Goldfield: That's the thing. Who knows?

David Remnick: TikTok is a little bit of an illusion, or Instagram, because it's all boiled down to no time at all. Lasagna must take her three weeks.

Hannah Goldfield: You would think, but everything looks easy. There's one clip, a recent one, where she's making Rocky Road ice cream.

Hannah Neeleman: I started off by making marshmallows. I used gelatin leaves and put them in cool water so that they could soften. Then we started on a syrup, which was honey, golden syrup, and sugar. We separated some egg whites from the egg yolks, started mixing those, and then I added the softened gelatin leaves.

David Remnick: Okay, time out. There's kids crawling all over the counter.

Hannah Goldfield: Always. That's part of it, too.

David Remnick: There's one strapped to her chest. I think she's pulling your leg. I think she's totally pulling-- I think she rents these kids.

Hannah Goldfield: I don't care, and a lot of people are angry about it, but I like the fantasy. I think it's delightful. They are raising cows on their farm, and she's constantly going out to the barn milking the cows, drinking the milk right from the pail.

Hannah Neeleman: Buttermilk, and it's so good. It's not cultured buttermilk as we're used to from the store.

Hannah Neeleman's Kid: Awesome, mom. Awesome.

David Remnick: All right, now who else do you like?

Hannah Goldfield: Ballerina Farm is mostly on Instagram. She has a TikTok account, but she's really big on Instagram. The people I like best on TikTok are a couple. Their names are Hailee Catalano and Chuck Cruz. They're both classically trained chefs. I think they both went to culinary school. She definitely did, at least. Then they worked in restaurants in Chicago. During the pandemic, they moved back to New Jersey. Their intention was to work in New York City restaurants, but the pandemic foiled that, so they just made cooking videos.

Chuck Cruz: Happy Friday. Hope everyone had a good week.

Hailee Catalano: Happy Friday.

Chuck Cruz: Today we're going to cook some dinner. We're going to make some Bánh mis.

Hailee Catalano: Yummy. Liver for the pâtés.

Hannah Goldfield: They have a very small kitchen, and they take turns using it. I think every other day, and they both have their own channels, but then they make dinner together every Friday night.

Chuck Cruz: It is liver.

Hailee Catalano: It is yummy.

Chuck Cruz: It's going to be good.

Hailee Catalano: Yes.

Hannah Goldfield: They'll have hamburger night or hot dog night, or they'll have Bánh mi night, or they'll do spaghetti and meatballs. It's pretty much familiar comfort foods, but they're making exceptionally delicious-looking versions of these things.

David Remnick: How many kids do they have?

Hannah Goldfield: They have no kids. They have a dog. [laughs] Which explains how they're able to do this every single day. They just seem like really nice people. They're almost weirdly nice. They both have soft voices.

Chuck Cruz: What was your favorite after-school snack? Right when you came from school, what did you eat?

Hailee Catalano: Oh, just microwaved cheese on tortilla chips and then dipping it in salsa.

Chuck Cruz: Pretty good.

Hailee Catalano: That was my favorite, or just pasta with butter.

Chuck Cruz: Nice, and peas, right?

Hailee Catalano: Peas, and frozen peas, that's right. That's right, I did tell you.

David Remnick: This is riveting, not since The Godfather, I think, have I seen such action?

Hannah Goldfield: It tends to be slow. I like that they're really chef-y, but not in a totally pretentious way. They keep all their herbs and spices really well organized, but they don't lord it over you. They've totally sold me on these things called chef's presses, which are-

David Remnick: What's that?

Hannah Goldfield: They're little metal devices that you put on top of a piece of meat in a pan to get a really nice sear on it.

David Remnick: Oh, yes. Right.

Hannah Goldfield: He especially uses it all the time and I keep thinking-

David Remnick: Lots of debate about that. I think you're not supposed to press down [crosstalk] [unintelligible 00:07:16].

Hannah Goldfield: Well, I trust him.

[laughter]

David Remnick: Because you saw him on TikTok.

Hannah Goldfield: Yes. Never tasted his food, but I can tell it's delicious.

David Remnick: If TikTok is banned, these guys are up a creek, no?

Hannah Goldfield: Yes, although they're all multi-platform creators. Actually, the next person we're going to talk about has spoken about this, and he has a YouTube channel and an Instagram account and posts stuff on X. I think he's figured it out.

David Remnick: Who is this?

Hannah Goldfield: This is a person whose name I do not know because he is anonymous, because he claims he gets daily death threats. [chuckles] His handle is called Chef Reactions. None of this is verifiable because we don't know his name, but he claims to be a veteran restaurant chef. I think he's Canadian based on his accent, but nobody knows.

[laughter]

David Remnick: You're nailing down his accent, but you have no idea.

Hannah Goldfield: He has an ever so slightly-- I'm like really, I'm trying to find out who he is. He also claims to be the primary caretaker for his 88-year-old grandmother, and this career as a content creator has allowed him to leave restaurants and just do this.

Chef Reactions: Okay, let's do it. Up and down. There's your first mistake. It should be up, up, down, down, left, right. No, it's not going to be amazing. You just ruined a perfectly good slab of ribs and some beans.

Voiceover: Grandma's hangover cure.

Chef Reactions: Grandma's hangover cure. Just going to out grandma for being an alcoholic. Just like that, yes?

[laughter]

Hannah Goldfield: What he does is he scours TikTok and Instagram for-- It's mostly the stuntiest of stunt cooking videos.

David Remnick: He's about to make dishwasher salmon, and he's got a baseball hat and big eyeglasses on.

Hannah Goldfield: He's not going to make it. He's going to comment on someone else making it.

Speaker 2: Make perfect salmon every time in your dishwasher.

Chef Reactions: Or just don't. You know what I mean? Is every other cooking apparatus not available to you for some reason?

Speaker 2: Then I use some fresh herbs like dill and rue.

Chef Reactions: Oh, hold on. [slurping sounds] Herbs and jarlic. Fantastic.

Hannah Goldfield: He's obsessed with 'jarlic', which is what he calls garlic that's been pre-chopped and jarred.

Chef Reactions: Fry it, poach it. Bake it. Steam it. Smoke it. Bop it. [crosstalk]

David Remnick: This is pure genius. Let's just, for the listeners, we have to-- On the right, a pair of hands is seasoning a side of salmon, putting some garlic on it, lemon slices, whatever, wrapping it in tinfoil and putting it in a dishwasher. On the left, the unnamed gentleman from possibly Canada with the eyeglasses and the baseball hat is commenting on how possibly nuts this is.

Hannah Goldfield: Yes.

Chef Reactions: Oh, man. I love Fruity Pebbles and I just know that--

Hannah Goldfield: There's another video here where he's making-

David Remnick: What's going to happen here?

Hannah Goldfield: -he's making a cake, or not. Actually, I don't know who's making the cake. [laughs] Making a cake with Fruity Pebbles in a crockpot.

Speaker 3: Making a delicious-

Chef Reactions: When she said, "Eww, what are you making?" She said it, like spelled E-W-W not O-O-H. $15 worth of eggs. Haha, eggs are expensive.

David Remnick: Okay, hold on one second. Stop the video. On the right we're seeing, what were those little--?

Hannah Goldfield: Fruity pebbles.

David Remnick: Fruity Pebbles.

Hannah Goldfield: Are you familiar with Fruity Pebbles?

David Remnick: I am, and what else is being poured into this crockpot?

Hannah Goldfield: Cake mix, eggs. It's like a steamed cake being made, but see, I like knowing that someone is developing a recipe for this totally bizarre-- There are thousands, if not millions of people making these weird recipes using--

David Remnick: In the Renaissance, people were painting ceilings and making sculptures.

Hannah Goldfield: Well, now we live in the world that WALL-E predicted.

[laughter]

David Remnick: Hannah, thank you so much.

Hannah Goldfield: Thanks for having me.

[music]

David Remnick: Hannah Goldfield is a staff writer and her latest piece is called 'Are We Living Through a Bagel Renaissance'? You can check it out at newyorker.com.

 

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