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TikTok food videos are all about the visual. The cheese pull, the fork breaking through the crust and the snap of a crisp cookie.
And I’ll admit that when I’m skimming a cookbook, an arresting photo will make me stop flipping and start reading — the offline equivalent of clicking. The “noodle pull” photo for this chili oil noodle dish did just that when I came across it in “Caught Snackin’,” a bright, colorful cookbook released by the people behind the popular TikTok channel of the same name.
Get the recipe: Chili Oil Noodles With Steamed Bok Choy
These spiced, oiled noodles paired with lightly steamed bok choy result in a satisfying contrast of soft and crisp and spicy and mild — and the dish is ready in 20 minutes.
The noodles will make your tongue tingle, but they’re easy to tame by reducing the pepper flakes and switching out some of the chili oil for more sesame or vegetable oil. If you don’t have udon noodles, use your favorite long pasta. “You can replace the bok choy with anything in your fridge,” said Katharine Scott Payne, the content creator for Caught Snackin’, which released its first cookbook this year with 100 recipes.
The TikTok account was the brainchild of three co-workers at Uncovered Group, a marketing and social media agency in London. In April 2020, Lydia Vernon, Freya Matchett and Jason Tamou pitched the idea of starting a food TikTok.
The three co-workers, who have all since moved on, met over Zoom and decided to focus on foods they loved but couldn’t go out and eat due to isolating during the pandemic. You’ll find lots of hacks for making things like McDonald’s apple pies. You’ll see the English influence in quick-and-easy recipes for crumpets and trifle, too.
“It quickly became the fastest-growing food TikTok in the United Kingdom,” Payne said.
Payne, who came to work at Uncovered in September, said Vernon mentored her for about eight months, “teaching me the ropes before giving me her baby.” The women worked together on the cookbook, which features 100 recipes, more than 90 percent of them created for the book.
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“We wanted to show you can create proper dinner foods and still have that great fun element that’s on the TikTok page,” said Payne, who makes the food in a rented London apartment kitchen, working with a small team that comes up with recipe ideas and films the videos. Unlike the short-form videos, the cookbook provides ingredient amounts, cooking times and a difficulty scale that ranges from easy (the vast majority) to medium. That’s it.
“Our main thing is it’s got to be very easy, accessible and super fun,” she said, noting the account and the cookbook are aimed at Gen Z home cooks. “We focus on what people love. They love cheese. They love pizza and all the hacky things to do with that. They love puff pastry.”
On the TikTok page, which has 2.4 million followers, the focus is on snacking and desserts. You’ll find plenty of three- to five-ingredient recipes, lots of those cheese pulls and recipes that start with a store-bought mix.
The cookbook is just as vibrant as the TikTok, with brightly lit photos, over-the-top desserts and snacks, but it also features chapters for lunch and dinner with more substantial meals, such as ribs, shrimp and pasta bowls like these noodles.
“I honestly eat it two times a week,” Payne said of this chili oil noodle dish. “It’s perfect; you get home late from work, you can chop everything while the noodles are boiling and it’s done in minutes.”
Payne can’t help hacking even her own recipes: “I love adding a little bit of peanut butter. It makes it delicious as well.”
Get the recipe: Chili Oil Noodles With Steamed Bok Choy
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/06/06/caught-snackin-chili-oil-noodles/