4 Viral Kitchen Recipes Tested (End of 2025) – Are They Actually Worth Making?
From time to time, you lot send me a fresh batch of viral kitchen recipes that are doing the rounds on TikTok and Instagram, and rather than drip-feeding them across multiple videos, I bundle a few together and put them properly to the test.
Some of these recipes look genuinely clever. Some look like they’ll collapse the second they leave the app. And a few feel like they exist purely to cause arguments in the comments.
This time around, I tested four viral kitchen recipes to see which ones are actually worth making — not just for the visuals, but for flavour, practicality, and whether you’d ever bother doing them again.
You can watch the video above or here on YouTube if you prefer.
Deep Fried Pickles (With Cheese Escapes)
The first recipe was deep fried pickles wrapped in wonton pastry. Straight away, I hit a snag — I couldn’t get the same large wonton wrappers used in the original video. Instead, I dampened four smaller wrappers together to make one larger sheet, which actually worked better than expected once fried.
Cheese was where things got interesting. A lot of comments on the original clip mentioned the cheese not melting properly, so I tested cheese strings first. Predictably, one of them escaped mid-fry. Mozzarella, however, behaved perfectly and gave that proper melty centre you’d want.
Since I already had the setup going, I also deep fried a Mars bar using the same wonton pastry. Completely unnecessary, but undeniably fun.
Verdict:
Enjoyable as a novelty, a bit messy, and not something I’d rush to make again — but far from a disaster.
The Viral Egg Fry (Oil or Water?)
This recipe caused a lot of debate online. The original video makes it hard to tell whether the egg is being fried in oil or cooked in water, as it looks suspiciously clear.
Given I’ve already tested viral egg boiling before, I went with frying — and honestly, it turned out really nice. Once broken up and cooked through, it’s basically an omelette with a slightly different method.
I did push it further by trying a full breakfast version with egg, hash brown, smoked bacon, sausage, and tomatoes. It worked, but it was massive overkill and lost what made the original appealing.
It doesn’t really benefit from the Instagram-style “slice it in half for the reveal” either, but as a simple idea, it holds up surprisingly well.
Verdict:
Keep it simple and it works. Overcomplicate it and it loses the point.
Masher Turtles (And a Bread Grenade)
This was easily one of the most enjoyable recipes to make.
Using a potato masher, you squash a sandwich flat, cut out a turtle-shell shape, then use spare bread to make the limbs. Inside goes cheese and tomato sauce before cooking.
Once I realised how forgiving the method was, things escalated. I made a hand-grenade version filled with hot sauce (dyed green, obviously), which created a really satisfying crispy seam and two distinct bread textures once cooked.
It’s silly, creative, and actually works — which is exactly what a viral recipe should be.
Verdict:
Ridiculous in the best possible way. Fun to make and surprisingly effective.
Hot Toddy Drink (One Tasted Like a Shoe)
The final recipe was a hot toddy, with some disagreement online about how it should be made.
The version using boiling water, lemon, cloves, cinnamon, honey, and whisky was genuinely good. Warming, balanced, and exactly what you’d expect.
Replacing the water with black tea, however, was a mistake. I’m not a fan of black tea at the best of times, and this version tasted like someone had steeped a shoe in hot whisky.
Verdict:
Stick to boiling water. The tea version can quietly disappear.
Final Thoughts
Not every viral recipe deserves the hype, but this batch was better than expected overall. The masher turtles were the standout for creativity, the egg fry worked when kept simple, and the hot toddy proved that tradition usually exists for a reason.
If you enjoy this kind of testing, I’ve also put more viral recipes to the test here, where I tried four TikTok recipes earlier in 2025.