Online chefs are seducing the internet with sexy cooking videos. Millions of people can’t get enough

Popular TikTok and Instagram chefs, like Donut Daddy and Cedrik Lorenzen, are creating salacious, intimate cooking videos that give fans a new way to explore desire.

Sometimes the videos start with a wink or a blown kiss. Maybe it’s followed by a shot of washboard abs, or a close-up of fingers mixing pasta dough. The men caress fruit, sometimes toying with a stem on their tongue. They rub ingredients with oil or salt, hands glossing over every curve and crevice. Every movement is heightened, a thinly veiled raised eyebrow at an audience who may or may not be watching for recipe ideas. Put more bluntly: The videos are meant to be a turn-on. These are not your regular social media cooking videos. Their stars are blatantly flirting with their audiences, tiptoeing the line between cringe and attractive. There is still an expertly prepared dish at the end, but the journey there is miles away from what other internet cooks might be doing. And the chefs in these videos are wildly, immensely, fantastically popular, with tens of millions of followers combined. Fans fill their comments sections with marriage proposals and jokes about suddenly being pregnant. Some viewers take their desire a step further: Anthony Randello-Jahn, the 32-year-old chef behind the Donut Daddy account (2.2 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, veiny forearms) has received semi-serious inquiries inviting him over, sometimes from couples. That these creators have seen such explosive and sustained growth may seem curious, especially at a time when young adults — both Gen Z and Millennials — purport to be having less sex. Women especially have seen a significant drop in sexual desire since the pandemic, studies have shown.