From overnight oats to chaat-cuterie boards, 2022 was all about how to transition from that pandemic induced inertia to active routines, heading to work and entertaining guests again. And that’s exactly what these food trends show us so strap in for this delicious recap of 2022’s most viral food trends.
Overnight Oats
It’s the night before a long day and you know you won’t wake up on time but the tedious task of meal prep is haunting you. It is the last thing you want to think of after a hectic day, is meal planning! And that’s when overnight oats come to the rescue. TikTokers and Instagrammers have taken plain-jane oats and made it cute, quirky and easy to carry around. Chocolate banana, apple cinnamon and even tiramisu flavoured, oats won over everyone online for their easy customisation and stress-free meal prep. From gym-bros to college students, these protein rich overnight oats jars are what they swear by. All you have to do is soak your oats in milk, add your customisations and refrigerate overnight. Pro-tip? Add some chia seeds or any nuts you have in your pantry for a nice crunch!
Charcuterie supremacy
Different slices of cheese, cold cuts, olives, an array of nuts, dried fruits, a dollop of honey on the side and some crackers placed on a rustic wooden board—the classic charcuterie board. Charcuterie boards became increasingly popular this year. And more interestingly, people took to the trend because it was an activity in itself. Thousands of assembly videos, in an almost ASMR-esque style, flooded explore pages of social media. It also became a must have item for outdoor picnics and birthday parties. But charcuterie was just the tip of the iceberg—people on the internet have hopped on the trend in all kinds of ways.
Chaat-cuterie anyone?
Kamana Bhaskaran, a content creator based in San Francisco, wanted to put a desi twist to the charcuterie and holiday boards and eventually coined it as a chaat-cuterie board. She decorates her board with samosas, little bowls of chutney, chana, kachoris and some sweets. In conversation with ThePrint, Kamana said, these videos went viral because her main audience are South Asians, who work full time or part time and want to find easy and stress-free ways to entertain guests. “But this video prompted me to make more. And it went viral in such a different way, people told me that their aunties and uncles were sharing it on their WhatsApp groups! That’s when you know these aren’t one-time watch videos,” she said.
Bhaskaran pushed the envelope further with her take on a chai-cuterie board, a desi inspired holiday date night board, a desi taco board and even a Friendsgiving chaat-cuterie board with samosas decorated as turkeys.
Also read: Are you a picky eater? This UK study says the habit could be in your DNA
You butter be aware
The extension of the charcuterie board phenomena was the butter board. Users across TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat took their rustic boards, slathered it with gobs of butter and glazed it with sauces, honey, add some spices, seasonings or even fruit and placed pieces of bread to dip them in. Videos of extensive decorative butter boards are still trending with users adding a Christmas touch to it. And variety? That’s aplenty! You can get flower shaped butter boards, Christmas tree shaped boards and the flavours ranging from vanilla honey butter to goat cheese and fig.
While the trend has become popular and looks incredibly inviting, dieticians and health experts have raised concerns with the trend. Buce Y Lee writes about how the dark crevices of wooden cutting boards become the perfect breeding ground for bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Listeria innocua, L. monocytogenes, and Salmonella typhimurium.
So maybe skip this as the centre piece from now on?
Instant Chili oil Maggi
We’ve heard enough Maggi variations to develop a disgust for the friendly 2-minute instant noodles but this year Maggi got a massive revamp. Maggi noodles tossed in a searing hot chilli szechuan oil and garnished with some sesame seeds; is the snack we never knew we needed. Simple, easy and a good break from your anda cheese Maggi days.
The trend became an instant hit and it borrowed heavily from the dan dan noodles recipe that did its rounds on the internet all through this year. The Sichuan recipe just needs boiled noodles and a simple douse of hot sesame chilli oil, soy sauce and a bit of peanut butter. A simple toss around and there’s your quick savoury fix.
Cloud bread
Puffy cotton candy cloud bread loaf with pastel blue interiors was the most experimental viral recipe of this year. TikTokers and Instagrammers promised viewers cloud bread—a soft, quick bread made of egg whites, corn starch, sugar and food colouring. And baked in 25 mins? Who wouldn’t say no to low effort home-made baked bread that’s soft and as fluffy as a cloud.
While the popular bread is the most adorable thing to look at, multiple users have complained that taste-wise, cloud bread is just a sub-par eggy fluff that’s a one-time try at best. But that didn’t stop it from being TikTok’s Number 1 food trend of 2022.
Mini pancake cereal
The internet took the concept of pancakes and cereal and married them together for the cutest bowl of love that featured on Instagram. Out of all the food trends this year, mini pancake cereal has to be the most effort enduring breakfast in this list, but it promises to be the most wholesome treat. Mini bite sized pancakes are dunked into a bowl of cold milk and drizzled with a dollop of butter and maple syrup. While it isn’t most ideal for a weekday quick fix, it’s a sweet fun treat for a slow Sunday morning.
But users online didn’t stop there, they tested out mini croissant cereal, cookie cereal, mini donuts and even mini sushi cereal! We can all agree that this was where we had to draw the line. Sushi and milk…
Micro-cuisines get the spotlight
Ruth Dsouza Prabhu, a food journalist based in Bangalore observed an increased interest in regional food and micro cuisines. “During the pandemic, when people got stuck in cities and could not make it back to their hometowns, they were forced to learn how to cook dishes they craved from home, alone. There was a demand from the online world for every day regional cuisines and recipes,” she said in conversation with ThePrint.
Additionally, in the process of this, there was a lot more effort put into documenting recipes from micro-cuisines. Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, a writer and culinary chronicler, has an ongoing series on her Instagram page called #75DaysofSpice, where she discovers and lays out the different individual spices used in Indian cooking, be it stems, or barks of trees, shrubs, lichens and how they take different forms like pastes, purées, powders and so on. Ghildiyal’s series is a hit amongst her followers, for its detailed decoding of the way Indian spices are inculcated into Indian cooking and the manner in which it adds layers of flavours.
Ruth as well is working on a project to document Mangalorean Catholic cuisine, from A-Z, she offers all Mangalorean cooking terms you need to know.
“The pandemic has opened the world up to people. A lot of people opened up to micro cuisines. Ordering out always meant Asian or Italian, but now South Indians friends want to know how a Bengali fish curry is made, friends from North India want to know what podi to use for a curry. While the revenge dining out is definitely back, people are getting back into the kitchen, to try and experiment with this, ” Ruth added.
Also read: The good, the bad and the idli
Air frying and vegan carrot bacon
With an increased interest in diets such as veganism, plant-based foods, and adopting a more health-conscious lifestyle in general, folks have turned to air frying. And it’s become air frying galore. People on the Internet have discovered the potential of the air fryer and have managed to make almost everything in them.
For instance, what was 2022 without Tabitha Brown’s vegan bacon recipe? Yes, that’s right. Vegan bacon aka carrot bacon, promises to be exactly what it’s titled. All the goodness of barbeque-y, salty, savoury bacon but made with carrots and air fried.
But the air fryer experiments did not end there. Users have discovered how to make full-fledged breakfasts in them—like eggs on toast and fluffy frittatas.
Air fried corn ‘ribs,’ peanut butter and jam sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies and even mini molten lava cakes—all are air fried recipes that have taken the internet by storm.
What makes people spend big bucks on an air fryer? According to Pooja Shah, a freelance writer and lawyer based in New York City, this year especially, people are willing to spend money to eat healthy and make better eating choices. Moreover, pressure to purchase things like air fryers and insta-pots has a lot to do with the transition to a post-pandemic world and with people moving back into offices and other places of work. “Time is a commodity and when people have limited time, they want to make things that they know will taste good.”
(Edited by Ratan Priya)