Are you able to make vegan ‘rooster’ out of flour? We take a look at three TikTok recipes

As much as TikTok has a bad rap for being kind of a numbing Gen-Z culture pit, I’ll say if you look in the right places there is a lot you can learn from the app. Often times I get lost in the trenches of “FoodTok” and find out how to cook things that either I didn’t know existed or that I couldn’t make at home.

Here are three foods that have caught my eye lately, how to prepare them, and my assessment of whether they are as good as TikTok makes them appear.

“Chicken” made from two ingredients

This is actually just a simplified recipe for seitan, a high-protein wheat gluten that originated in Asian cuisine centuries ago.

Mix the flour and water in a ratio of about three to one (I used 1 1/2 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of water) into a ball of dough and let it rest for an hour. Then knead and rinse the dough in water until it runs clear. Add a pinch of paprika, garlic powder, onion powder and salt and let sit for another hour. Then fry in neutral oil and bring to the boil and cover with vegetable stock for 45 minutes.

Is it good ?: I seasoned this pretty heartily so it had a great garlic chicken taste. But the texture was pretty gummy, almost like raw chicken (that might be because the vegetable broth I cooked it in evaporated in 30 minutes, not the 45 of the recipe). Having to let the wheat gluten sit for a few hours was a fairly time-consuming process, and I wouldn’t repeat it for a sub-par meat substitute. However, if this is something you want to try, I would recommend eating it in a sandwich – the presence of other ingredients to add texture would likely make this a solid meal.

Pesto eggs

This is probably one of the easiest recipes I’ve seen on TikTok: heat a tablespoon of pesto in a pan, then put two eggs in it and cook to your liking. The sizzling oil in the pesto helps cook the eggs and adds flavor to them during the process. You can serve the eggs on toast with ricotta or avocados or just eat them straight.

Is it good ?: Yes. If you like pesto and you like eggs then you will definitely enjoy this. I don’t think this cooking method is particularly groundbreaking – spreading pesto on a slice of toast and topping it with a fried egg would produce essentially the same results – but I think before I saw this TikTok, I wouldn’t have thought the ingredients to combine.

‘Don’t Mix It’ Cake

Are your dreams haunted by the “Don’t mix it” lady? Because mine are. For the uninitiated, Sophia Wasu (aquickspoonful) has built an empire of nearly 700,000 followers with her quick, easy “dump cake” -style recipes. Ingredients differ between different types of bases, cake mixes and fillings, but she always has one key step where she yells at you with gusto: “DO NOT MIX IT.”

I settled on one of Wasu’s most viewed recipes, consisting of: two packs of cinnamon rolls, a can of whipped cream cheese frosting, chopped walnuts, a box of cinnamon cake mix (NOT MIXED!) Topped with 13/4 cup butter thinly sliced ​​and in placed in a 9 by 13 inch pan, then baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Since I knew that my roommate and I definitely wouldn’t finish a whole tray, I cut the recipe in half in a loaf pan and baked it for about 30 minutes.

Is it good ?: I’ll admit, when I went into this recipe, I was scared. I worried how cute it would be if the heap of flour was boiling on top, and most importantly, the fact that Betty Crocker cream cheese frosting actually doesn’t contain dairy products (what’s in this biotech goop, I’ll never know). Other than that, it was … pretty good. Yeah, it was painfully cute. And yes, I winced at the bubbling pools of butter upstairs as I pulled them out of the oven. But overall I enjoyed eating it. I would best describe it as a cinnamon roll-filled coffee cake – pillow-shaped dough rolls on the bottom with a crispy, buttery sprinkle on top. If you’re in the mood for the occasional indulgence, this is it.

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