I was lucky enough to grow up with a lot of women looking out for me, spoiling me, and feeding me great food. I never really had a need to teach myself to cook, so when I went to college, it was all about what you might refer to as Top Ramen but what I call “Smack Ramen”’ cause it was so good it was a smackdown.

For this recipe, you’re doing a little bit more than just adding hot water and those little flavor packets to the noodles, but it only takes 10 minutes and is so easy that even Charles Barkley could do it.

Serves: 6
Prep time: 10 minutes
Total time: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS

3 cups|750 ml evaporated milk
3 cups|750 ml 2% milk
¼ cup|60 grams unsalted butter
6 (3-ounce|85-gram) packages chicken-flavored ramen noodles
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon hot sauce (preferably Tabasco or Crystal)
8 ounces|225 grams frozen chopped broccoli
1 pound|450 grams shredded rotisserie chicken (do yourself a favor and go with one from the store)
½ cup|60 grams grated Parmesan cheese
3 egg yolks (optional)

Pro Move: You’ll have leftover flavor packets after you make this, but save them for adding that smack factor to soup, pasta, eggs, what have you.

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large nonstick pot over medium-high heat, whisk together the evaporated milk, 2% milk, butter, two of the ramen seasoning packets, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, and hot sauce. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly with a spatula or wooden spoon. Be careful; evaporated milk scorches very easily and milk boils over quickly.
2. When the mixture boils, add all the ramen noodles and continue to stir for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the noodles are cooked through. Add the broccoli and continue to cook, stirring, for 1 minute more, then remove the pot from the heat.
3. Stir the chicken and Parmesan into the pot, followed by the egg yolks (if using) stirring them in quickly. Let the mixture sit, uncovered, for 2 minutes more before serving.

Put Away and Replay: Store the ramen in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat in a microwave on high power for 2 minutes, or until heated through.

Note from the Matts: Adding the egg yolks to the pot in the last step of the recipe makes the Alfredo sauce even richer. Make sure you stir them in quickly, so they don’t scramble.

Reprinted from “Shaq’s Family Style” Copyright © 2022 ABG Shaq, LLC. Photographs copyright © 2022 by Eva Kolenko. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Random House.

Get recipes like this and more in the Munchies Recipes newsletter. Sign up here.

Serves: 4 to 6
Prep time: 1 hour
Total time: 3 ½ hours

INGREDIENTS

for the hondashi:
3 teaspoons hondashi granules

for the tomato sauce:
1 (28-ounce|794-gram) can whole peeled tomatoes, passed through a food mill
¼ cup|60 ml extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon honey 

for the ragu:
1 pound|450 grams flank steak, cubed
1 pound|450 grams skirt steak, cubed
1 cup|140 grams pancetta, diced
1 cup|140 grams SPAM, diced
3 ribs celery, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 cup|250 ml extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup|225 grams kimchi, minced 
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 bay leaf
1 ½ cups|375 ml red wine
½ cup|125 ml mirin
½ cup|125 ml sake
¼ cup|60 ml soy sauce
3 cups|750 ml hondashi
2 cups|500 ml tomato sauce

to serve:
1 pound|454 grams fresh tagliatelle
kosher salt, to taste
2 cups|450 grams ragu alla bolognese
3 tablespoons Hikiwari nattō, plus more for serving
thinly sliced scallions, for garnish
freshly grated Parmesan cheese, to serve

DIRECTIONS

1. Make the hondashi: Combine the hondashi with 3 cups|750 ml water in a small saucepan over medium. Cook until the hondashi granules have dissolved and set aside until ready to use. 
2. Make the tomato sauce: Heat the oil and garlic in a medium saucepan over medium-low until the garlic just begins to brown, about 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt, and honey and cook until the raw tomato flavor is lost and the sauce has reduced slightly, about 25 to 30 minutes. Set aside until ready to use. 
3. Make the bolognese: Using a meat grinder with the largest die, grind the steaks and set aside. Without cleaning the grinder, pass the spam and pancetta together, then pass through a second time. Set aside. Without cleaning the grinder, pass the celery, carrot, and onion through, then set aside.
4. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high. Add the pancetta and SPAM and cook until the fat has rendered, about 4 minutes. Stir in the vegetables and kimchi and cook until lightly golden, about 12 minutes. 
5. Push the sofrito to the outer edges of the saucepan.If there isn't a light coating of oil on the pan, add a touch of olive oil. Add the ground steak to the middle of the pot to lightly sear, 3 minutes. Season generously with salt and add a few grinds of black pepper. Stir in the bay leaf, then cook, breaking up the steak to mix it with the sofrito. Cook until the meat juices have rendered and reduced, about 10 minutes, then stir in the wine, mirin, sake, and soy sauce. Cook until just evaporated, about 12 minutes, then stir in the hondashi and tomato sauce. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to maintain a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat is very tender, 1 ½ to 2 hours. Add a touch more water if the meat needs additional time. Season to taste and keep warm. 
6. To serve: Heat the ragu in a large skillet over medium-low (you can freeze what you don’t immediately eat!). Add the nattō and stir to combine. Keep warm over low. 
7. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to boil. Cook the pasta for 1 ½ minutes, then drain and toss into the saucepan with the bolognese. Add just enough pasta water to loosen the sauce if it becomes too tight. Transfer to a plate and sprinkle with scallions. Shave parm over to your liking. And you can always add more nattō if you like it funky!

Get recipes like this and more in the Munchies Recipes newsletter. Sign up here.

When I first saw the phrase “TikTok Pink Sauce” (thanks to Desus Nice’s tweet about it being “the new variant”) my mind immediately went to the pink slime panic from 10 years ago. Maybe someone went viral cranking out fleshy processed meat? Or, I thought, perhaps someone finally ate some slime influencer’s ill-begotten products.  

Pink Sauce is none of these things. It’s a condiment, made by a TikTok creator who goes by Chef Pii. She officially launched it as a product for sale on her website on July 1, and is selling it by the bottle for $20. 

What’s in it, and what it tastes like, however, are still mysteries. When asked directly to describe it in TikTok comments, she posted a video of a group of kids tasting it. One says it’s “sweet ranch,” and another says it’s “spicy.” 

 It has the look and consistency (from what I can tell based on watching dozens of videos of Chef Pii and others drizzling this stuff all over everything) of Pepto Bismol mixed with Thousand Island dressing. I love flavors and textures that many people find too artificial, unnatural, or otherwise disgusting, so I’m not entirely opposed. Maybe it’s good?

The trouble with Pink Sauce is in its controversial labeling, as many people on social media have pointed out. 

According to the ingredients label on her website, Pink Sauce contains water, sunflower seed oil, raw honey, distilled vinegar, garlic, pitaya (or dragonfruit), pink himalayan sea salt, and less than two percent dried spices, lemon juice, milk, and citric acid. The label on the site—which still lists the servings incorrectly—claims it contains 60 milligrams of sodium, three grams of carbs, four grams of fiber, 11 grams of sugar per tablespoon, and not much of anything else, despite having 90 calories per serving. 

One person on Twitter, who tried making the sauce herself, noted that it’s possible Chef Pii copied the ingredients list from a mayonnaise bottle instead of listing mayo as an ingredient. 

On TikTok, people are making videos stitched with Chef Pii’s videos, pointing out inconsistencies and errors in the labeling. One creator, @seansvv, said, “When someone gets sick from this, I’m scared for the person who gets sick and the person who owns this business,” before pointing out that “cottage laws” allow home chefs to sell products out of their own kitchens, without licenses, if the foods present a low risk for foodborne illness. These laws vary state to state.

They also point out that the hue of the sauce changes from bottle to bottle in Chef Pii’s videos, and in the early labels, she lists 444 servings per container—obviously an impossibly large number for the small bottles. Some people on Twitter speculated that this was an intentional choice, for “angel number” aesthetics, which would be so hilarious I hope it’s true. 

Chef Pii is addressing some of these claims as they arise, on her TikTok. She apologized for the 444 error, saying, “things happen, the grams got mixed up with the serving size,” and that there are 444 grams in the bottle, not servings—which makes slightly more sense.

In that video, Chef Pii says they are following FDA standards, but are currently in “lab testing.” In an earlier video, she addresses the hue question, saying that the color didn’t change, just the lighting. 

While she’s testing, Pink Sauce is trending on Twitter, mostly with people posting memes about how they or anyone else will surely perish if they eat the forbidden Barbiecore condiment. 

Chef Pii didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

It’s probably not advisable, in health risk terms, to eat homemade sauce of a bizarre hue made by a viral TikTok influencer and shipped around the country under dubious packaging safety practices. Especially when some TikTok stars have stumbled into creating homemade napalm. But to me, Pink Sauce has the same allure as putting Play-Doh or slime or erasers in one’s mouth, just for a little taste: you shouldn’t do it, but aren’t you curious? I definitely, probably would risk it. Like I said, maybe it’s good.  

On TikTok, anyone can become a master chef. And I mean anyone. You don’t need skill, expertise, or any regard for food hygiene standards to go viral. All you need is a camera, a batshit recipe and a little help from the algorithm. You must have seen that guy who made the smarties ice cream. His creation has nearly a million views. There are probably people at home making it right now. Good for him!

But why do dishes that would give Gordon Ramsey an aneurysm do such big numbers on the app? And if anyone can do it, why not me? To find out the answers to such questions, I spent five days trying to go viral on food TikTok. 

Before we begin, I should level with you: I’m a shitty cook. The most exotic thing in my kitchen is piri piri mayonnaise. If I’m going to succeed in the wild world of Pink Sauce and Lasagne Pizza, I’m gonna need a rebrand. With that in mind, I feed my details into a Chef Name Generator and wait for the results.

Goodbye, Jake Denton, culture writer… Hello, D’angelo Beef, gourmet chef? Okay! With my TikTok account set up and running, I’m ready to cook up a storm. I give myself five days to get big on food TikTok, because if it takes longer than that then maybe I'm not cut out for the viral life. 

500g potato smileys
500g double cream
3 cloves of garlic
1 tonne of cheddar cheese

On TikTok, we spit at tradition and guffaw at gastronomy. There’s no way a dish as boring as “dauphinoise potatoes” will spread like salmonella. What the national dish of France needs is a novelty twist – something fun, something yum, something processed and high in sodium. 

Frozen potato smileys are the taste of childhood. They’re cheap, delicious and good for your mental health. To cook ‘em D’angelo Beef-style, put your smileys in a baking tray, coat them in cheese, garlic and cream, then torch them in the oven for an hour and a half.

Some chefs will tell you to taste as you go, but where’s the fun in that? A Big Mac is always a Big Mac. No D’angelo Beef meal should ever taste the same twice. 

When I pull the dish out of the oven, it’s brown, crusty and bubbling like a swamp. As the old saying goes: the French live to eat, the English eat to die. Here goes… I hit record on my camera and stick my spoon into the molten mulch. Blergh. It tastes like childhood, but only if you spent your early years eating worms. 

Who cares about the taste? TikTok recipes are famously about the look. So what does everyone make of my meal? After 24 hours my video has six hundred views and two comments. Eat shit, Guy Fieri! We’re cooking with gas! 

1 jar of weenies
300g spaghetti
500g passata
1 stick of celery
1 red onion

Ahh, Nonna’s bolognese. Generations of Beef children have been raised on this hearty dish. The premise is simple: substitute cow meat (expensive, bland) for weenie meat (cheap, 72 percent real pork). In Italy, they call this a hate crime. On TikTok, we call it breakfast. 

Step one: chop your veg, chop your weenies and fry ‘em in oil. Step two: add your passata. Don’t bother with seasoning – each weenie is 28 percent delicious chemicals. Step three: cook your spaghetti. Step four: serve with mountains of cheese and rivers of hot sauce.

I try a forkful. It’s hearty, alright. Hearty enough to give you coronary thrombosis. Who am I kidding? It tastes like worms again. And my video gets the same number of views. Che cazzo!? Onto day three. 

1 Tube of Pringles
2 egg yolks
300g chicken

I’ve been tossing and turning all night (and not just from the weenies). I’ve only got three more days to come up with the best thing since cloud bread. 

I start scrolling TikTok for #foodspiration. If online chefs like @syllygirl can get millions of likes by breadcrumbing chicken inside a bag of Doritos, why can’tI do the same thing inside a tube of Pringles? I leap out of bed and set up my camera. 

To make D’angelo Beef’s ‘Pringle Chicken’, smash your crisps to smithereens inside the tube, then add your chicken and your egg yolks to the mix. Once the lid is secured, wave the tube around for two minutes. Imagine you’re making a meal deal cocktail for James Bond (shaken, not stirred). Finally, empty the contents into a pan. 

If this were an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, this would be the part where Gordon Ramsey called me a "useless potato head". My kitchen smells like a bomb has gone off inside a pub stockroom. Turns out stackable crisps don’t react well to heat. The whole thing is a finger lickin’ disaster. And my TikTok audience agrees. My third video gets just 79 views. I can hear Chef Ramsey’s words ringing in my head ("Texas BBQ!? It’s more like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre!"). Onto dessert. 

1 McFlurry
McDonalds Fries
2 scoops of vanilla ice Cream
Garnish with sprinkles, raspberry sauce, whipped cream

The Chipperbocker McGlory is the kind of sweet treat that looks type 2 diabetes in the eye and doesn’t flinch. It’s anarchy inside a posh glass. The recipe is simple enough: mix a McFlurry or a milkshake with ice cream, raspberry sauce, sprinkles, whipped cream and McDonald’s fries. 

The result looks impressive – I mean, it tastes disgusting – but it looks impressive. And over on TikTok, isn’t that what counts? After 24 hours my penultimate video has 17 views. Seventeen. For this?! Fuck it. There’s no correlation between the amount of effort I put into these videos and the amount of views they get. 

You wanna see something ugly? I’ll give you something ugly. I’ll give you something so ugly you’ll never want to eat again. 

Can of Spam
1 tomato
1 lettuce
1 slice of cheese
1 brioche bun

Do you like food that tastes like war? Then look no further than ‘The Spamburger™’. To cook this D’angelo Beef favourite, garnish your canned pork patty with sliced tomatoes, lettuce and ketchup, before serving between a brioche bun. If it looks like something that would be presented as evidence at The Hague, you’re doing it right. 

I take a bite – my tastebuds are confused. Burgers are supposed to be decadent and delicious. This one tastes like the Home Front. It’s not a meal I’d serve to a friend. It’s not even a meal I’d serve to a friend’s dog. I upload my last video to TikTok. 

So, after almost a week of blood, sweat and crippling stomach cramps, did I go viral? Not even close. I got five followers and 112 likes. But who knows? Maybe I was one ‘Mayonnaise Crumble’ or ‘Leek & Potato Shortbread’ away from online fame. If the last five days have taught me anything, it’s that TikTok’s algorithm is a riddle, wrapped in mysterious bacon, between two slices of particularly enigmatic bread.

Oh, and I probably shouldn’t be allowed near a kitchen again. Anyone for leftovers?

@snakedenton