The 13 Best (And Worst) TikTok Food Trends Of 2023 (2024)

The way we learn to cook has changed drastically over the past few decades. We may have grown up watching our favorite Food Network stars and exploring cookbooks about every type of cuisine, but these days the most innovative food trends come from TikTok. We can thank the clock app for introducing us to techniques, ingredients, and flavor combos that have revolutionized our own cooking.

Need an example? The baked feta pasta that took over TikTok in 2020 was still the second most popular recipe on our site this year. And now we find almost any excuse to incorporate baked feta into our meals, like in eggs, holiday appetizers, and even soup. Every time we take a bite, we thank the TikTok algorithm for bringing this genius idea into our lives.

There were plenty of new food trends that graced our For You pages this year. Some have the same inventiveness and longevity of the baked feta pasta. Others, however, shouldn't have gone viral in the first place. We've spent all year exploring and testing TikTok food trends, and we've had our fair share of victories and failures. So we can definitively say that the trends on this list are some of the best...and the worst of 2023.

Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments!

We love festive co*cktails at Delish. We’ve come up with exciting and inventive ways to shake up some holiday spirit, but we can thank TikTok for one of the best ideas yet: freezing a sprig of rosemary to make your co*cktail glass look like a snow globe. It’s genius. It’s easy. It’s got the longevity to appear in all of our Christmas co*cktails from now on.

Working with puff pastry can be a pain, with rolling, shaping, and painstakingly preventing the dough from becoming too warm. These upside-down tarts, though? Game changing. We love this trend so much that we made our own version inspired by cream of mushroom soup.

You know those adorably festive pre-cut Pillsbury cookies? We'd be content to eat them straight from the package, but a TikTok user upped the ante by using it as the base of a cheesecake. We tried (unsuccessfully) to recreate the magic, but we see a lot of potential for these cookies to grace more of our favorite desserts.

Jeremy Allen White is in the running for being the internet's favorite man this year, which means everyone and their mother was watching The Bear. This omelet from the show starred in one of season two's most viral clips, but it's so delicious that it stands on its own. Now, not all of us have the time to make a technically perfect French omelet in the morning—but we can add chips to any and all recipes from now on.

If we want to get technical, these cheesy, lacy potatoes first started going viral at the end of 2022. But its online legacy stretched well into this year. It’s easy to see why—these potatoes are almost too good. Crispy Parmesan potatoes now and forever.

Don’t get it twisted: we love salty and sweet flavor combinations. And, in theory, the viral McDonald’s hack involving two hash browns and a McFlurry doesn’t sound too bad. It’s like dipping fries in your milkshake, right? Wrong. This hack is a hot mess, leaving a trail of sticky melted McFlurry on every nearby surface. Hard pass.

Olive lovers, rise up! Dirty martinis are having a moment, so when TikToker Emily Eggers decided to use those flavors in an easy weeknight pasta, we lost our minds. We borrowed that inspiration to make a recipe of our own—and we can eat it over and over again without getting tired of it.

Thought we ran out of ways to cook with feta? Think again. Grace Elkus’s viral feta fried egg recipe is truly a revelation. Salty, melty, crispy, what more could you want? We’ve borrowed the technique to make other cheesy breakfast treats, like our cheesy frico fried egg tostadas.

This roundup would be twice as long if we included every single viral cottage cheese hack from TikTok this year. But one of the most mind-boggling was one that uses the polarizing product as a protein-rich base for edible cookie dough. We tried it and it was... fine. We’re just kind of sick of cottage cheese in general at this point. Let’s leave it in 2023, please.

Okay, okay. Girl dinner got old fast. The trend had a meteoric rise before being co-opted by cringey brand promotions and turning into fodder for highbrow cultural criticism. But that’s not going to stop us from nibbling on cubes of cheese and pickles for dinner. Girl dinner was a thing before it became TikTok famous, and it’ll be a thing long after its star has faded.

Fruit Roll-Ups experienced a revival in 2023 when a TikTok user made a cloyingly sweet burrito with the rainbow treat and vanilla ice cream. Our associate editor Allie Arnold tried it for science and somehow managed to avoid a mouthful of cavities. This cursed snack should never have gone viral in the first place.

We’re not the only ones who think the concoctions that end up on Watertok are a bust. It’s like when we used to make “potions” with random skincare products in our childhood bathrooms—but we can think of better creative outlets that don’t involve buying a small army of Stanley cups and ingesting a metric ton of aspartame.

Smash burgers are, bar none, the best way to eat a burger. But turning it into a taco? We're sold. This viral technique gives you all the crispy, golden brown edges you love in a smash burger but pairs it with a tortilla instead of a bun. We're looking forward to seeing how this trend evolves in the years to come.