Recipe Video Today

An addictive genre of quick, colourful cookery clips is gaining billions of views online, thanks to their step-by-step narratives and soporific effect – even if few follow the instructions

I t is past midnight and I sit enraptured by the drama of melted cheese. A moment ago, two hands had pressed a mix of broccoli and cheddar into a loaf tin lined with flattened raw chicken and sliced ham. At 1min 24sec, the tin is taken out of an oven that I never see. At 1min 48sec, as the hands use a knife and fork to slice into the meaty bake, the filling oozes and spills. From the morsel on the fork, a lurid string of bubbling cheese stretches across the shot. The next video starts.

I have lost count of how many “hands and pans” recipe videos I have sat through. Most are less than 90 seconds long and it’s easy to while away 20 minutes, even half an hour watching them. This video, for a broccoli, ham and cheddar chicken roll, from Buzzfeed’s food channel, Tasty, has been viewed 19m times on YouTube. The next video that bubbles on to the screen, for a cheesy courgette-and-aubergine bake, is from US food magazine Bon Appetit and has been viewed 3m times.

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Tasty launched in July 2015, specialising in recipe videos that showed, from an overhead angle, disembodied hands creating dishes. Quick, colourful and devoid of celebrity chefs or cultural references, the videos started appearing on Facebook feeds with virulent speed. Less than three years later, Tasty’s page has more than 93m followers and the videos have been viewed billions of times. “It’s a genre that has established itself really quickly, ” says Lucy-Ruth Hathaway, a food stylist and founder of Half Moon, a creative studio and consultancy for food brands.

The videos’ staggering popularity can be chalked up to two things. First, the launch of continuous autoplay on Facebook in 2013, which meant that one mint caramel Oreo cheesecake recipe would start playing as soon as the last finished. And once it starts, who has the willpower to break away before the finished product is revealed? More on this later.

Second, the videos rarely use words beyond the ingredients list to communicate the recipe. Including non-English-speakers opened the videos to a global audience. “There’s no personality attached to these videos, ” says food writer and cook Anna Barnett. “Onscreen personalities can be divisive, but with these you’re not buying into a person, you’re purely there to look at the food. It’s very democratic, there’s nothing polarising about them. And there’s no coercion either; no one’s going: ‘Isn’t this delicious!’ or ‘Wow, this smells amazing.’ In a way, these videos are very authentic to a recipe. And that authenticity is what people are looking for on social media; no one wants to feel like they’re being overtly sold to.”

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The roots of the hands-and-pan genre go deeper than BuzzFeed. “You could trace it back to the 90s, when food imagery underwent a transformation from being very staged and formal to featuring more closeup shots; suddenly you could see textures, ” says Hathaway. It became less about showcasing a perfect pudding and more about manipulating the viewer into imagining the feel of a cold spoon plunging into a hot, gooey chocolate lava cake. “You can see that same super-closeup technique repeated in most of these videos, ” says Hathaway.

In fact, it’s a trope that has spawned its own subgenres; a quick Google throws up multitudes of “grilled cheese sandwich being pulled apart” videos. “The videos are triggering something deep inside the pleasure centres in our brains. We don’t need to cook these things to get a sense of enjoyment.” Which probably explains why I have never met a single person who has tried to execute a Tasty recipe – I have certainly never tried one myself.

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The overhead angle came later. “As recently as seven or eight years ago, that style of shooting felt very new, ” says Hathaway. “It was pioneered by food bloggers because, in terms of lighting, it’s easy for an amateur photographer to create a really amazing picture at home – all you need is daylight.”

Hathaway says that hands-and-pans videos are fairly straightforward to make and much cheaper than a traditional setup with a chef; all you need is clear lighting and a good camera. “What’s more complicated is the editing. It’s not about what you’re filming, per se, it’s more about how you’re presenting certain processes. If you’re doing a ‘how to make pasta’ [video], you’d fold one tortellini, then the rest would appear in stop-motion on the tray one at a time, very quickly. You have to be good at choosing when to use these little tricks. They keep the videos engaging and fun to watch.”

They don’t hand-hold us through the minutiae of a perfectly clarified consomme. “They’re quick and not particularly explicit, ” says Hathaway. “In that respect, they’re exemplifying a more modern approach to home cooking. But they do still have a clear narrative – a beginning, middle and an end.”

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As a person who has spent many a frazzled evening watching one after another, I would argue that it is this gentle predictability that gives them such a soporific quality. “I think they share a lot of characteristics with ASMR videos, ” says Emma Barratt who co-authored the first peer-reviewed research paper on autonomous sensory meridian response. This is a sensory phenomenon in which individuals experience a feeling of deep calm and a tingling sensation in response to specific audio and visual stimuli; videos abound online, of (mostly) women whispering or paper rustling, all aiming to prompt this response. “In ASMR content, we often see people effortlessly carrying out tasks that require an amount of concentration, which also seems to be a factor here, ” says Barratt.

Nick Davis, senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, who worked alongside Barratt on the ASMR study, says: “Watching people produce things on video takes you out of yourself, but also gives you a focus.” That paradoxical sweet spot, where you are focused but completely passive, can induce a meditative state. “One theory is that, as babies, we spend a lot of time watching intently as others complete tasks, ” he adds. “Being put back in that position, of focusing on a task – particularly a nurturing one, like cooking – could have a very soothing effect.”

Hans-and-pans videos are not going away any time soon, as many businesses attempt to harness their uniquely hypnotic power. Rob Huysinga and Henry Milroy co-founded ice-cream brand Pan-n-Ice in 2015. “We always wanted the brand to be about more than just the product, ” explains Huysinga. “We wanted to create a personality that resonated with the Instagram, Gen-Z market.” To make their product, liquid ice-cream is poured on to a metal plate that has been cooled to -20C; as the mixture freezes, it is mashed together with ingredients such as jaffa cakes or marshmallows. Once set, the new flavour is rolled into scroll shapes using a metal scraper. Pan-n-Ice’s snappy, 60-second hands-and-pans videos showcasing this novel approach to ice-cream-making helped build a huge social following . “Our most popular video got around 25m views, ” says Huysinga.

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They are made simply, using a GoPro camera, but their impact and reach is almost priceless. “From reading the comments, a lot of people are there because of the videos, ” says Huysinga. “A few weeks ago, a customer came with his daughter and said that she waits for the videos to be released like they’re new episodes of The Simpsons; whenever we upload a new one, she gets really excited.”

The compulsion to find out what happens next wasn’t invented by Generation Bingewatch, it’s a deeply human desire that goes back as far as our ability to understand a narrative – although that’s probably the only comparison to be made between “BBQ chicken nacho poppers” and folkloric tales collected over centuries by scholars and authors. These simple videos don’t have much drama, but, as Hathaway points out, they do contain a story of sorts.So, you've mastered your talents in the kitchen. Now you're wondering how to make cooking videos to share your skills with the world like Jenné Claiborne's Sweet Potato Soul .

Cooking videos frequently take the internet by storm. People love learning new recipes and cooking hacks or just watching visually appealing cooking content. With some good filming techniques and excellent editing skills, you'll be able to join one of the most popular and growing internet trends.

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