TikTok Chefs Take ‘Food Porn’ Literally
Between food prep videos and food fetish videos exists a type of sensual cooking video that redefines the term “food porn.”
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Have you heard the one about the chicken crossing the road? Yes? Hm. What about the one where the chicken gets its cavities absolutely violated by the fingers of a sexy Swiss TikTok influencer? Well, let me tell you all about it.
@cedriklorenzen Wanna be my Sunday roast? #winnerchickendinner #bakedonthate #roastdinner #keepitreal #roastme Description: Classic Roast , pea mousse, glazed honey, carrots, sweet potato, & roast jus. Tips & Tricks: Slow & steady roast over a longer period is much better vs fast & furious. Old age rule states chicken should be cooked to a minimum of 74°C/165.2°F. However, with better equipment & modern food safety approach, you can actually cook it at a much lower temperature, yielding a juicier chicken FYI.
Between food prep videos and food fetish videos exists a type of sensual cooking video that redefines the term “food porn.” Watching them feels perverse and naughty: Poultry gets punished, rising dough gets digitally stimulated, and pepper is ground in such a way that my repressed Catholic self wants to yell, “Leave room for the Holy Spirit!” It’s hard not to watch these videos and feel absolutely scandalized at what the algorithm has dished out onto my feed. Though, if the comments are any indicator, loads of folks are welcoming such content. Hungry for it even.
“The way I filmed these videos is [by getting into character as if] I am someone’s significant other,” TikTok user Cedrik Lorenzen told me in an interview.
In one of these carnal culinary TikToks, Lorenzen—a Harlequin handsome Swiss-Australian home chef whose videos regularly surpass two million views—prepares a Sunday roast. You’d be a chaste fool to think he’d simply put a chicken in the oven, steam the peas and carrots, and call it a day. No, in this video the hunky chef practically reenacts the plot of Fifty Shades of Grey, spanking the uncooked chicken and fingering the peas out of their shell, all while his chiseled abs are on full display.
The videos skirt the rim of the wet and messy (WAM) and sploshing food kinks, even borrowing the kinks’ hashtags; but they don’t fully resemble the erotic focuses of those fetishes, which are more about feeling aroused by being covered in food products like custards or baked beans. Instead, these videos seem to strike at a desire to be indulged by a fervently attentive house-husband, one who’s going to sternly demand you kick your feet up on the couch while he sears you a steak. And if you don’t, if you’re a bad girl, he might just punish you.
Lorenzen, while arguably the most popular horny TikTok chef, is one of many. There’s Curious Iris, who hashtags her content with #sapphiccooking; Chef Jay Lyon, a private chef in Miami, who seems to spend less time in front of a range stove than he does erotically feeding women grapes. These videos don’t have an erotic subtext, they just have text, and it’s the kind you’d find in the Adults Only backroom of a bookstore. “If you were here right now, I would be already eating you out,” the caption of one of Lorenzen’s videos reads.
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The finished products in these videos often do whet your appetite and more than just erotically. If I didn’t see fingers penetrating every cavity of the meal, I’d certainly be inclined to ask for a bite. “You’re violating some health and safety codes,” Lorenzen says his commenters often remind him. “But that’s just part of the fun.” In one video, he plunges a finger into the bowl of chocolate cake batter; in another, while making Eggs Benedict over a glazed donut, he gleeks over the dish and into the sink. Often, Lorenzen pauses to look over his shoulder and wink at the viewer.
The chef and content creator, who currently lives in Switzerland, plans to one day open up his own restaurant or hospitality business. There, he clarifies, he’ll follow the health rules. For now, his kinky kitchen vignettes are a way to build a loyal audience. While some users are intent on warning him about cross-contamination, there are certainly a lot more comments along the lines of “I’m pregnant with chicken nuggets” after watching him tie up a raw chicken like a BDSM porn star.
@cedriklorenzen I wanna be your weak spot #donuts #storytime #saucydough #naughtyson #wheresmommy #wettiktok #desserttiktok #fyp
“A lot of the accounts that are following me are people that are very interested in food,” Lorenzen says. “So it’s not just the sex appeal.” While I have no reason not to believe him—and there are a lot of comments on the videos expressing how delicious the end products look (they do!)—it’s clear that most followers who choose to comment are definitely invested in the sex appeal of his work. “Cryin but not from my eyes,” writes one commenter on a TikTok showing the chef filling up a cannoli in a way that could technically get someone pregnant. “Googles how to become fruit,” writes another on a video where Lorenzen is absolutely going to town on a papaya.
And what might seem like quick steamy meal prep takes between eight and 12 hours of filming inside his home kitchen, Lorenzen explains when I ask how the sausage gets made (before it, you know, gets defiled). In a refreshingly sex-food-positive reveal, he insists all foods can be sexy under the right lighting. “It really comes down to, frankly, just how good your camera is and how good your lighting setup is,” he says. Inspiring.
While I would imagine a papaya lends itself to sensuality more than say, a Caesar salad, what I have learned through horny food TikTok is that every piece of food can be wildly, explicitly, even graphically sexual. So if you have an appetite for food, for sex, or for both, there’s a special corner of TikTok waiting to take your ass to dinner.