Spend any time scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, and you’re bound to encounter videos showcasing truly nasty food creations. These aren’t your typical cooking fails; they’re epic culinary disasters, often intentionally designed to be hilariously bad. These nasty food videos, filled with epic food fails, have become a viral sensation, captivating audiences who love to watch – and hate – every cringe-worthy moment. Like the infamous “Italian pasta trick” video that recently circulated, these clips are pure, idiotic fun.
The Infamous “Italian” Pasta Disaster
Cooking “hacks” supposedly “learned in Italy” often serve as prime examples within the nasty food genre. In one particularly egregious instance, a self-proclaimed “home chef” decided to pulverize an entire box of store-bought pasta in a blender, transforming it into what she called “pasta flour.” Her culinary ambitions didn’t stop there; she then proceeded to craft “fresh pasta” from this questionable flour, rolling out thick, ungainly strands of “fettuccine.” The final touch was a generous smothering of jarred pasta sauce.
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The resulting dish was, predictably, an unappetizing mass resembling a plate of slimy slugs. Despite “Grace’s” dubious claim that it tasted just like authentic fresh pasta, viewers were far from convinced. The food was clearly inedible, yet the video inexplicably went viral, amassing over 12 million views on Facebook, alongside tens of thousands of reactions and shares, and more than 100,000 comments.
Even with my professional culinary background and experience in recipe development for palatable food, I find myself strangely entertained by this culinary carnage. There’s a bizarre fascination in its sheer, unadulterated stupidity.
This pasta fiasco is just one example in an endless stream of #foodfail “cooking” videos flooding social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. (LinkedIn seems to be the sole refuge from this trend.) This particular video landed in my feed thanks to a chef friend who couldn’t resist commenting, “This is not fettuccine, linguine, or anything remotely Italian.”
One might expect a culinary professional dedicated to creating edible recipes to be offended by such culinary atrocities. However, there’s a certain “so-bad-it’s-good” charm to these videos. Perhaps it’s the audacious level of diabolical stupidity that makes them so compelling.
The Viral Nasty Food Recipe Formula
These nasty food videos often adhere to a predictable formula. They typically feature a young woman in a nondescript kitchen, slowly narrating her way through a “recipe.” An off-camera voice, presumably a friend or partner, chimes in with encouraging “oohs,” “aahs,” and leading questions. The kitchens themselves often resemble generic AirBnB rentals or staged homes, contributing to a bland, almost sterile aesthetic reminiscent of a generic Discovery Channel set.
The “recipes” themselves frequently involve some variation of layering ingredients into a casserole dish—or, in truly chaotic instances, simply dumping everything into the kitchen sink. Processed cheese, copious amounts of pasta or chicken (or both!), and jarred spaghetti sauce are staple ingredients, culminating in a baked concoction presented with a grand, often disastrous, “reveal.”
Intentionally Awful: #Fail by Design
A TikTok video from @mchasfun, showcasing the “Ultimate Fall Mac N Cheese,” perfectly exemplifies this intentionally bad recipe model.
@mchasfun Ultimate Fall Mac N Cheese #cooking #crazy #receipe #pumpkin #fall #halloween #cookingonabudget #funfood ♬ original sound – MC Has Fun
The video commences with MC emptying two boxes of dry fusilli pasta into a hollowed-out pumpkin. This is followed by a can of Bud Light beer (carefully presented to the camera), half a brick of Velveeta cheese, and an excessive amount of shredded mozzarella and cheddar cheese from a discount supermarket. This deliberate showcasing of low-quality ingredients is another hallmark of the intentionally disastrous “cooking” video.
The creation is then crowned with pepperoni rosettes (“I like Hormel because they’re just really salty”), crescent roll dough, and canned tomato sauce. She even takes a moment to demonstrate how to craft these pepperoni rosettes. A final dusting of fake Parmesan cheese precedes its entry into a 400°F oven for 30 minutes.
One doesn’t need to be Gordon Ramsay to foresee the inevitable outcome, and that’s precisely where the entertainment lies. Viewers are acutely aware that there’s insufficient liquid for the pasta to cook properly. We are all collectively anticipating the nightmarish “big reveal.”
True to expectation, @mchasfun doesn’t disappoint. Upon cutting into the pumpkin, the camera reveals cheese that remains stubbornly unmelted and—unsurprisingly—pasta that is resolutely uncooked. The clinking sound of the hard pasta as it tumbles onto the plate is almost audible.
The Allure of Awful: Nasty Food and Engagement
Nasty food videos are explicitly designed to showcase dishes that no reasonable person would willingly create, let alone consume. (Although, as the saying goes, “one person’s disgusting is another’s delicious.”) Food, in this context, becomes merely the medium for a form of low-brow performance art.
Their primary purpose is to generate views, comments, and shares. If these videos elicit disgust—and it’s perfectly understandable if they do—the most effective response is simply to keep scrolling. Resist the urge to engage in any way, perhaps even utilizing the “hide all” option from the offending account. Any interaction, even pausing to watch, inadvertently fuels the phenomenon.
We inhabit an attention economy, where even appalled eyeballs hold significant value. Alternatively, one could adopt a more lighthearted approach, mirroring my own: appreciate them for what they are – the “culinary” equivalent of a Jackass stunt.
