Commentary

Epicurious Says #cookit

In the age of food pornography, when it’s perfectly normal to take pictures of your perfectly presented dishes in restaurants and post them on social media, it’s easy to forget the humble home-cooked meals which still make up the majority of the average American diet. “Are we not tasty and nourishing too?” they seem to cry out, “Is it so shameful to be easy and inexpensive? Where is our moment of social media glory?”

Okay, maybe I’m spending too much time with the quiche. But Conde Nast’s Epicurious is setting out to right this historic culinary wrong with a new social media campaign and experiential event called #cookit, inviting participants to share photos of their own home-cooked meals, however no-frills and lacking in crème fraiche they may be, as long as they’re proud of it.

Eric Gillin, executive director at Epicurious and head of product for CN’s Food Innovation Group, explained: “You see people all the time Instagramming their food, but you should do that at home too. We want to see what people are making for breakfast or dinner -- show us the sandwich that you love, your brunch, your playoff spread, your dinner, lunch, nachos, whatever.”

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Epicurious is re-tweeting and re-gramming posts with the #cookit hashtag, and promoting the event with media appearances including the Today Show and messages on Allure, Wired, Golf Digest, Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue and Grub Street.

In today’s event, Epicurious editors are hosting a cooking class where they’ll show 50 lucky ticketholders the key to the “super nachos” in anticipation of Super Bowl 50 at The Brooklyn Kitchen (while also dispensing specialty cocktails and DIY at-home kits). Judging by the nachos on display on the Today Show earlier this week, which somehow integrated bacon and potato skins into the iconic dish, thus finally solving one of the most vexing questions of snack science, “super” is no exaggeration. Now if we can just get some chicken wings in there…

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