Viral TikTok Recipes vs. The Capsule Pantry: Courgette / Zucchini Butterbean Bowl

How to adapt (and improve) TikTok food

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Afternoon (or indeed, morning) all. I made a boo-boo with last week’s mailout. I send out a free recipe once a month and Wednesday’s citrus pork carnitas recipe was supposed to be last month’s freebie. But I forgot and put up a paywall.

My bad.

The paywall has been removed, so whether you are a free or paid subscriber, you can get hold of the whole recipe now. Check it ⏬

Citrus Pork "Carnitas" With Salsa Roja (paywall removed)

Now, on to today.

When it comes to food, I see TikTok as both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because food is HUGE on the platform. The hashtag #TikTokfood has been viewed over 43 billion times. And anything that gets people cooking is good by me.

But after watching viral food video after viral food video — and subsequently making a few of them — I’ve realised that they may look great and most of the ideas they’re based on are solid. But they inconsistently follow through in the taste department. 

Alas, many are a casualty of SMALL, a concept we talked about the other day on my other Substack Simple and Straightforward - Social Media Abetted Lightweight Living.

Everything looks amazing. But sometimes it lacks substance.

That’s where The Capsule Pantry comes in.

One of our main goals here is to teach you how to adapt recipes to make them your own. I want subscribers to look at a recipe and say I could totally improve this recipe by adding this or that.

Or

I don’t have this ingredient but I do have another, and I know that will work just as well.

You can do this with TikTok recipes as much as you can with any other.

Today, I’ll show you how. I’m going to take a viral TikTok food video — one that I made and adapted in my kitchen a few nights ago — and show you how to a) make it your own and b) dial up the flavour.

The recipe is Sophie Waplington’s creamy garlicky courgette and butterbean bowl. It’s been viewed over 1.6 million times. For the purposes of this Substack, I’m going with courgette rather than zucchini because Sophie is British (and so am I).

Have a quick watch of this:

@sophsplantkitchenCREAMY GARLICKY COURGETTE AND BUTTERBEAN BOWL 💚 @sophsplantkitchen The BEST way to cook courgettes imo, low and slow so they caramelise beautifully along with the whole garlic cloves to melt into the sauce. Ingredients and method on my insta page 💚 #courgette #healthyrecipes #beans

Tiktok failed to load.

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So what are we going to do to customize this dish?