On a platform dominated by trends that come and go at breakneck speed, one recipe has had TikTok users in a collective chokehold for years. In between birthing an onslaught of vodka pasta servings and enough “girl dinners” to feed a small nation, it’s the viral feta pasta that truly overran our TikTok feeds, though not every user was on board with the creamy and easy-to-make sauce.
That a seemingly innocuous recipe could inspire such heated discourse online is perhaps par for the course in TikTok-land, where something like the Roman Empire can quickly become the subject of a whole new meaning. So don your aprons and polish your silverware, because we’re offering an official explanation of the TikTok feta pasta trend.
TikTok feta pasta, explained
Created by Finnish food blogger Jenni Häyrinen in 2019, the feta pasta recipe — which was quickly coined as the “TikTok-pasta” — blew up across the world thanks to its simplicity and few ingredients. It was originally dubbed by Häyrinen as “uuni feta pasta,” which translates from Finnish to “oven feta pasta.”
While Häyrinen is considered the owner of the original recipe in Finland, fellow food blogger Mackenzie Smith is credited with bringing the popularity of the dish to the United States, and so birthing its popularity on TikTok.
While there are variations to the recipe — including the addition of protein or leafy greens — it usually only requires tomatoes and feta cheese, oven-baked to form a sauce that coats any pasta of your choosing.
An entire block of the Greek cheese is placed in the middle of an oven tray and surrounded by cherry tomatoes, olive oil, chilli flakes and basil (if you’re feeling fancy). So ubiquitous was the recipe that it caused a shortage of feta cheese in Finland, and saw millions of TikTok users flock to their accounts to share their variations on the dish.
A quick scroll through the recipe’s hashtag will show that, despite its popularity, the feta pasta recipe is divisive. Some chefs found the consistency of the baked cheese left a lot to be desired, while others thought the recipe could benefit from a few more ingredients. Even the appearance of the dish was criticised by some users, particularly for the clumpy sauce and the sourness of feta cheese.
On the whole, however, the internet — and even some actual chefs — seem to mostly agree that, when cooked correctly, the feta pasta dish is a winner. Feta had yet another viral moment on TikTok in 2023, when the cheese was used to make fried eggs. The brief attention span of TikTok means that food trends arrive just as quickly as they are forgotten, but the feta pasta renaissance was truly one to remember.