What is Chaos Cooking?

There are few times in life when we feel comfortable embracing chaos. Ideally, our schedules, homes, and email inboxes are fairly organized, as are our kitchens. But a growing food trend focuses on welcoming a pleasant amount of mayhem into your meal plan. 

With more than 1.8 million views on TikTok as of mid-August 2023, those who have adopted #ChaosCooking say it now “seems to be the only type of cooking I do these days” and promote “chaos all the way!”

Everyone from award-winning restaurant chefs to those just dipping their toes into cooking basics can benefit from a little chaos cooking. It’s becoming such a popular and widely-embraced concept, that the term even arose in a plot line on the remarkably popular Hulu comedy and drama The Bear.

But what is chaos cooking, exactly, and why are so many people talking about it? Read on for the dish

Chaos cooking has existed for decades—long before the idea was given its signature nickname and hashtag last year. Since the pandemic began, cookbooks like New York Times Cooking: No-Recipe Recipes, How to Cook Without a Book, Cook-ish, I Dream of Dinner (So You Don’t Have To), and Dinnertime SOS have been inviting home cooks to get more comfortable improvising, rather than sticking to an exact game plan to the 1/4 teaspoon.

At its core, chaos cooking involves taking the ingredients that are already inside your pantry, refrigerator, or freezer and tossing them together to whip up something much greater than the sum of their parts. Essentially, it’s cooking a recipe without one, and it’s a savvy way to cut down on food waste.

Now that it has a name, chaos cooking takes this mix-and-match philosophy and adds another element: freedom. Rather than feeling fearful that you might mess