Comedian and cook George Egg turned his kitchen into a stage with the launch of his hugely popular Snack Hacker social media videos, after his live cookery demonstration and comedy tour was postponed during the Covid pandemic.
Teaming up with his son Jem Ward, Egg’s pivot to social media proved to be a brilliant move – earning him over 100,000 Instagram followers, a hit podcast called Stuffed! and a cookbook deal.
“I noticed that there was an awful lot of cooking videos on social media which were shot from the top down where you could only see the food. There wasn’t a lot of videos which were very personality-led,” shares Egg. “I had this urge to perform in front of the camera, because I was supposed to be doing this tour which ended up being postponed and then cancelled because of the pandemic.
“I think, because of having the performing chops that I’ve got, I was able to, and certainly the feedback I get is, connect with people when I’m talking directly to the camera and being a bit silly.”
Known for making typically “trashy” foods gourmet (just look up The Snack Hacker’s Super Noodles and KFC ramen on YouTube), Egg hopes that his videos and unique recipes in his debut cookbook The Snack Hacker: Rule-Breaking Recipes for Cooks and Non-Cooks connect with everyone.
“If I look at the people who follow me on social media, there’s an awful lot of people with the word chef in their handle, even though a lot of the recipes I’m doing are, for want of a better word, a bit ‘trashy’,” he says. “But, if you stand back and look at the ingredients I’m putting in, they’re not frivolous. I’m not doing it just for the sake of it. I am kind of going, OK, what flavours will work here? What will actually transform this into something more interesting? And I think that the chef audience that I have sees that.
“So, I do tend to get a big chefy audience, but then also a lot of people who wouldn’t think of themselves as cooks or chefs at all, but who like to eat. My intention with the videos, and even more so with the book, is to create something that will appeal to cooks and non-cooks.”
A lover of food and flavour, Egg says he keeps his creative juices flowing by experimenting and through reading lots and lots of cookbooks.
“I think food is just one of those things where there’s no boundaries, there’s no limits,” says Egg. “There’s so many ideas out there that when you revisit them and go, well, actually, if I put that in a toastie… you can always put your own spin on it. It just feels like it’s one of those ‘creative arts’ that you can just keep going with.”
If you follow Egg on socials, you learn to expect the unexpected as his weird and wild flavour combinations both shock and delight his audience every time. For example, one of his all-time favourite recipes from the book is his infamous fish finger spaghetti recipe – a dish that, despite its seemingly odd combination, surprisingly hits the spot.
“It feels quite gourmet when you start with loads of olive oil, garlic, chilli, star anise, Thai fish sauce and tomato puree and then you just add chopped up fish fingers,” says Egg. “It really works though because the cod gets dyed a kind of pinky red by the chilli oil.”
The content creator’s debut cookbook has been designed and thoughtfully illustrated by his talented son Jem, who is a graphic designer, and as you flick through there are lots of pages of memoir and hidden easter eggs within it that add a lovely personal touch.
After Dad died, my son Jem and I cleared out the family house and I found loads of things that reminded me of my childhood. When I started writing the book, I realised how much of what I was rediscovering had a profound effect on the ideas I was coming up with
“Working with my son on this has been so much fun and I hope that the book is a lot richer because of the relationship that we have,” says Egg. “There’s lot of bits of biography in the book where I talk a lot about the food that you have when you’re a child, or the food that you’re denied when you’re a child and how that kind of affects what you crave later in life.
“My dad did most of the cooking at home when we were kids and was really into food – so that is where my passion clearly comes from. After Dad died, my son Jem and I cleared out the family house and I found loads of things that reminded me of my childhood. When I started writing the book, I realised how much of what I was kind of rediscovering and remembering had a profound effect on the ideas I was coming up with.”
A born performer, Egg’s love for theatre and the stage seeps through the cookbook’s pages, as it is laid out like a show.
“It starts with act one, then it’s got an interval that’s just condiment recipes, and then act two and ends with curtains. I wanted it to feel a bit like an Edinburgh theatre show,” reveals Egg. “I really hope that people a) do the recipes and b) are inspired by the recipes, and also come up with their own recipes and get in touch with me. Plus, I hope that the writing around the recipes resonates with people.”
‘The Snack Hacker: Rule-Breaking Recipes for Cooks and Non-Cooks’ by George Egg (Blink, £22).
#George #Egg #Snack #Hacker #urge #perform #front #camera
