Need to know how to chop an onion, prep an omelette or assemble a towering three-tier wedding cake? Somewhere in the depths of YouTube, someone has made a video showing exactly how to do it.
Such as: Sorted Food – one of the biggest British success stories on the video-sharing platform (which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year). The channel was launched in 2010 by school friends Jamie Spafford, Ben Ebbrell, Barry Taylor and Mike Huttlestone (later joined by development chef James Currie), and now has a library of 2,500-odd clips that have attracted 2.9 million subscribers and well over a billion views. Eye-catching recipe videos are their bread and butter.
As are food trends, for which YouTube is the perfect incubator. “It used to be that trends would come from the top chefs then gradually filter down through the supermarkets to people’s homes over a few years,” says Ebbrell. Now, they “start at home, get amplified by social media and then end up in restaurants.”
But, which viral trends deserve their place in the mainstream and which should be banished to the food-waste bin? We served up 20 from the past two decades to Ebbrell to get his verdict.
Smoothie bowls (2000s)
These “very thick smoothies, designed to be eaten with a spoon out of a bowl”, titivated with fruit and seeds, were “very beautiful from the top down,” Ebbrell accepts, and “great for thumbnails on YouTube videos. But they made healthy food into a faff and went against the whole point of smoothies. When you spend hours creating the perfect ‘look’ for your smoothie, you’re essentially just playing with your food.”
Bubble teas (2010)
“Bubble tea came over from Taiwan and what made it so popular is the texture,” explains Ebbrell. The “bubbles” – tapioca pearls – deliver a “gelatinous vibe”, while the milky tea can be dyed “in endless colours, which is important in making things go viral on social media. So many foods are just varying shades of brown, whether it’s chocolate and coffee through to golden fried foods, cheese, or something creamy. Anything that isn’t brown does well.”
Naked cakes (2010s)
A favourite for weddings, these tiered sponges are coated in barely-there icing, to be decorated with fresh fruit or flowers: an easier and more forgiving method than most, argues Ebbrell. “As someone who isn’t good at decorating, I think it’s a nice way to make a wedding cake with a bit less pressure.
“As a trend they’ve had their time, but they can be a great showcase for good baking and good flavours. If I’m ever at a wedding and someone has a naked cake, I usually take that as a good sign. Just like on YouTube, wedding cakes are often a lot of smoke and mirrors: some are just iced polystyrene for show. With a naked cake it has to be done right.”
Nitrogen cocktails (2010s)
Cooled nitrogen or dry ice dropped into the glass makes the cocktail bubble and fizz, with tendrils of mist flowing over the rim. “It’s style over substance,” Ebbrell scoffs. “It adds flair but it doesn’t mean the drink is going to be good. Also, dry ice can be dangerous if you ingest it, so you have to wait for it all to dissolve before you can drink, which is annoying.”
Dirty fries (2010s)
“These came about in an era of excess,” recalls Ebbrell. “It was all about the biggest portion of the most epic loaded fries. Essentially that’s all it is: fries covered with cheese, or gravy, or sauce”. There’s plenty of scope for fusion flavours, however. “We’ve made Mexican-inspired dirty fries, and South Korean dirty fries with kimchi, gochujang sauce or hot honey. It’s really social and food should be something that makes you go “corrr, I wanna dig in and share!”
Cronuts (2013)
Created by New York-based, French pastry chef Dominique Ansel, cronuts (doughnuts made with laminated dough like a croissant) attracted round-the-block queues outside his bakery.
“We heard about them from our audience,” says Ebbrell. “People were begging us to show them how to make cronuts because they were selling out every day and no one could get one. So we made a “How to make a cronut” video and rode that wave.
“They’re not easy to make. For laminated dough you have to fold in the butter, chilling between each layer, then you cut it and fry it. And you need the perfect fry so that it’s golden and crispy but all those layers are cooked through. Nowadays they’re much easier to buy but [making one is] a weekend project if you fancy it. They are delicious and genuinely made food history.”
Spiralised food (2015)
“Some of our most popular videos on YouTube are when we review kitchen gadgets, and the spiraliser was peak kitchen gadget,” says Ebbrell of the kit that produces thin, ribbon-like strips of vegetables and fruit. “It did one thing, but it did it really well. [It trended] around the same time that there was lots of lean-and-green eating, so everyone was spiralising vegetables and using them in place of pasta or noodles. Spiralising increases surface area so if you put it into a saucy thing or dressing you get loads more flavour from your coatings, but it’s a faff,” he argues. “No one is using a spiraliser nowadays.”
Cauliflower steak (2016)
With the vegan movement came cauliflower steak: a thick slice, well seasoned and roasted. But, “it’s not steak!” Ebbrell fumes. “Cauliflower is an underrated vegetable”, he cedes, “but don’t call it a steak. It also causes food waste because people take a couple of chunky wedges out of the middle to get the ‘steak’ then all the other florets fall apart,” resulting in off-cuts that are just chucked out, he argues.
Cheeseburger everything (2016)
An evolution of the dirty fries trend: name a food and you could guarantee that someone was making a cheeseburger version of it on YouTube. There was cheeseburger lasagne, cheeseburger gnocchi, cheeseburger spaghetti, even cheeseburger sushi. “Foods that become popular [on YouTube] are familiar but with an added twist,” explains Ebbrell. The cheeseburger was the perfect candidate: “You can take the meat, the ketchup, the gherkin, and put all those components into something new.
However, he argues, “it felt like the dumbing down of food. The cheeseburger element obscured everything else. And some creators weren’t interested in telling you how to make these dishes. We know that people love seeing melted cheese being pulled so I think this trend leaned into that. It wasn’t about [cooking] food, it was about virality.”
Charcoal-infused food (2017/2018)
At the tail-end of the 2010s, activated charcoal was everywhere: in smoothies, burger buns, pizza dough, even lemonade. It was a way to stylise food by turning it completely black. There were even claims about its health benefits.
“We used it a couple of times and ended up getting loads of comments informing us that it can interfere with medication absorption, so it can be quite risky to some,” Ebbrell explains. “It was striking, and that’s why it was a trend, but it adds nothing: it’s flavourless and odourless. When you’re cooking, I think every ingredient needs to pull its weight and make the dish better than it was before and activated charcoal didn’t do that.”
Smashburgers (2019)
“Burgers are nothing new, so ‘smashburger’ is just an evocative word which applies to the process: you take a ball of meat, put it in a hot pan and smash it into the pan without shaping or moulding it,” explains Ebbrell. “It came about around the rise of street food markets where food has to happen quickly. If it’s got crispy bits around the edges that’s even better, because those bits go gnarly and take on a bit more of the fat or the seasoning.”
Mug cakes (2019)
Self-raising flour, caster sugar and cocoa powder heaped in a mug with an egg and some milk. Two minutes in a microwave later and you’ve got an approximation of cake.
“This was one of our first videos,” grins Ebbrell. “We were invited onto Channel 4 to show how to make them and we took the entire show off air when four mug cakes were put into four microwaves simultaneously and shorted out the studio. Whoops! You have to accept that a mug cake is never going to be great, but relative to the ease and speed with which you can have it, it’s brilliant. A dollop of Nutella gives it a bit of creaminess which is helpful.”
Cloud bread (2020)
“Another example that’s stealing and appropriating vocabulary and language,” argues Ebbrell. “It’s barely bread. Popular during Covid lockdowns and having various coloured versions, it’s basically meringue (egg white and sugar) toughened with cornflour. An odd process and texture. Mostly a waste of time. The sourdough trend (people keeping their starter and finding innovative ways to use the discard) was a better bread trend.”
Matcha (2021)
A green powder made from tea leaves that’s added to foods to change their colour and impart a distinctive savoury-sweet flavour, along with some potential health benefits.
“For colour, matcha stands out, but we’re also seeing a huge upward trend of Japanese culture across the board,” says Ebbrell. “We see [matcha] added to a lot of heavily sweetened drinks which aren’t very traditional but can be delicious.”
Insect protein (2020s)
Whether in powdered form or dried and fried to eat whole, insects have been billed as the future of food. “A couple of million people on the planet eat insects as part of their daily diet, but for us there’s an ick factor,” says Ebbrell. “However there’s serious potential for insect protein. It’s very sustainable in terms of farming; the challenge will be to overcome the fear factor.”
Truffle everything (2020s)
With people stuck indoors and looking for an unusual taste during the pandemic, takeaways started to put truffle on everything: pasta, pizza, crisps, chips and more.
“Done correctly, I really like truffle,” admits Ebbrell. “It has this elevated reputation, almost out of reach for us normal people, so when we get versions on fries with parmesan, or drizzled over a chicken salad, it feels more accessible.” Not all truffles are created equal, however. “White truffle is very seasonal, impossible to farm, and has a shelf-life of just a few days so it’s incredibly expensive and rare. Black truffle, which can be farmed anywhere, is cheaper and doesn’t taste as good. Often menus don’t make the distinction. As a chef, I love truffle but it shouldn’t go in everything.”
Vodka pasta (2021)
“This one is for students,” laughs Ebbrell. “You add a bit of vodka to your tomato sauce, flambé it (which looks great, everyone loves fire) and then suddenly you’ve turned a standard week night dish into date-night food. I’ve never truly understood it,” he says. “When you heat up the vodka you lose the alcohol, the vast majority burns off. I often put a splash of red wine into tomato sauce because it adds to the acidity, but vodka won’t even give you that.”
Girl dinner (2023)
Also referred to as “picky bits” or “finger food”, a girl dinner is about collecting whatever you can find in the fridge or cupboard, putting it on a plate and enjoying it as a single meal.
“This is basically a charcuterie board with a few odds and sods, isn’t it?” chuckles Ebbrell. “A catalyst to bring friends together to eat and socialise and hang out. What’s not to love? In Portugal, people buy tins of food, get some bread and just open their tins together; they have restaurants where the walls are lined with tinned fish and you pick a tin, some bread and a bit of garnish then you just eat it together. That’s girl dinner: you eat what you have and enjoy it without shame.”
Raclette (2023)
The Swiss dish of melted cheese scraped over boiled potatoes “gets you for a couple of reasons,” says Ebbrell. “The first is the smell of that molten cheese, slightly on the funky side – delicious. But also it has the cheese pull built in, and that is a recipe for online success. But with good reason. You can dip the most basic things into raclette: charcuterie, potatoes, bread, pickles – job done.”
Dubai chocolate (2025)
The product that took the world by storm, so much so that Waitrose limited sales to two per customer. It was created by British-Egyptian chef Sarah Hamouda who found herself craving her childhood favourite dessert, knafeh, and imagined its crunchy and creamy textures in a European-style chocolate bar.
“In many ways Dubai chocolate is the perfect storm of what it takes to make a food trend,” says Ebbrell. “It’s indulgent, it’s visually beautiful because it’s green from the pistachio cream inside, and it has an interesting crunchy texture – similar to filo or baklava – when you bite it.
“I love that you can have something which is traditional in one part of the world, in this case Middle Eastern knafeh – which is pastry usually served on cheese –, showcased in a whole different context. However, it also shows that [going viral has] consequences. Global supplies of pistachio are in trouble because everyone wants them to make Dubai chocolate. That’s the power of a food trend.”