Adam Liaw: ‘Cooking has become this chore. It is a function of brainwashing of convenience food culture’

‘Food’s all about context. Anyone can combine two things in a pan, but the why you do it and where it’s come from is, I think, just as important’: Adam Liaw. Photograph: Bec Lorrimer/The Guardian

In a peaceful patch of Sydney’s north shore, Adam Liaw is unpacking his conflicted opinion of TikTok recipe videos. Specifically, the trend of recipes from amateur cooks going viral on social media; of who gets to position themselves as the expert on a dish, and what that robs us of.

“You’ve got millions of people who tune in to learn how to cook something from somebody on social media who is literally making it for the first time. So it’s the blind leading the blind a bit there,” he groans. “If you’re making a dish for the very first time and you don’t understand the cultural context of it, then you’re trying to teach it to literally tens of millions of people – that, to me, is not ideal.”