How TikTok's "Cucumber Guy" Created the Summer's Best Recipe
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Logan Moffitt talks about his favorite vegetable and why he loves MSG and adds it to everything.
Logan Moffitt/Allrecipes
If you’ve eaten an entire cucumber in the past few weeks, it was probably thanks, at least in part, to TikTok. Twenty-three-year-old Logan Moffitt, dubbed “cucumber guy” or the more royal “cucumber king” among his loyal followers, has made the generally underrated vegetable the star of the summer with his straight-to-camera videos where he makes increasingly creative (and always easy) cucumber salads, shaking them vigorously in quart-sized plastic deli containers. With a following of 5.3 million, Moffitt definitely has made “cool as a cucumber” much cooler. We caught up with the Ottawa-based cuke-fluencer to find out a little more about the man behind the mandolin.When did you start cooking, and what drew you to the kitchen in the first place?I grew up watching a lot of different cooking shows on TV, kind of just in the background. And, you know, I've always been around cooking, like in my household, but with the rise of social media I ended up watching a lot of different home cooks on YouTube. So I was very online, learning.As for the food itself, I was a swimmer, so I had a huge appetite. I was constantly hungry and wanted good food. So I kind of taught myself to cook so that I could give myself the good food that I was craving. What is it about cucumbers specifically that you love so much?I've loved them since I was a child. They've been my favorite vegetable since I even had a favorite vegetable. I think cucumbers are popular right now because they're just such a diverse vegetable. They go with a lot of different flavors. They’re really refreshing and pretty cost-efficient as well. I think there are so many aspects to cucumbers that make it very easy for them to be popular.Before tapping into this cucumber moment, you created other kinds of content on TikTok. Why do you think the kind of videos you’re making now resonate so much with viewers? I think the reason why my new format is so well received is because it's very simple. It can apply to all levels of home cooks: Advanced and beginner cooks can watch the videos and not be overwhelmed by a million different steps or complicated ingredients. It's kind of just stuff that we all know and love, especially cucumbers. And it's presented in a way that's very digestible.Are there trends that you can call out over the past few years that you personally have really loved?The bell pepper and cream cheese and everything bagel seasoning—I thought that one was so awesome and delicious. Nature’s cereal is pretty cool, too. I've noticed a lot of these food trends that blow up tend to be fruit and vegetable-related, especially the ones that I'm interested in. @logagm The iconic salmon cream cheese bagel cucumber salad hehe ♬ original sound - Logan Let’s talk about your recipe development process. How do you go from idea to video?With the cucumber videos, I brainstorm by looking at pre-existing foods and think about if they actually go with a cucumber salad. For example, recently I was scrolling on TikTok and saw someone making jalapeño poppers, and I was like, hey, that would be really good as a cucumber salad. And same thing with a salmon/cream cheese/lox-bagel cucumber salad. It just came into my mind, the combination on a bagel. So, yeah, I usually just look at other foods and try to make them into a cucumber salad.Do you test the recipes before you go straight to camera? I'm thinking about your wasabi fail. That felt very spontaneous, but do you do any kind of recipe testing before you go on camera?No, I never test. The videos are always my first reaction, so that's why I hit the wasabi one. It was kind of unexpected. I had made a wasabi cucumber salad two weeks before, and it was not wasabi-ish enough. I thought it was weak. So the next time I added lots of wasabi. But, yeah, I guess I was wrong.When you add MSG, you always say, ‘MSG, obviously.’ How did that phrase come to be?When I made my first video and said, ‘MSG, obviously,’ that was just me interacting with my followers because they would have known that I use MSG all the time in a lot of different things, and how much I love it. But then it grew to be this thing that actually did a lot of good, right? Because it nudged people to think twice about their opinion on MSG.
Logan Moffitt/Allrecipes
What's been the most surprising part of your cucumber era?I think the most surprising part is just that I was just playing around on the first video. I just turned the camera on, and I was like, ‘I'm just gonna make my video about the cucumber,’ because it's true, sometimes you need to eat an entire cucumber, and, it's just so surprising how much my little sayings have resonated on social media. I see so many people daily saying, ‘Sometimes you have to eat an entire cucumber,’ or, ‘MSG, obviously,’ and I think it's so cute to watch so many people being so interested in cucumbers, because I love cucumbers as well. I used to eat one cucumber a day, but now I've moved on to two, two and a half, because I have so many ideas. My notes app is full flooded with ideas for cucumber salads. And all from eating the whole cucumber!I think it's the coolest thing ever. Honestly, I've been on TikTok for four years now, and I’ve seen so many food trends come and go. I can't believe I stumbled upon a food trend and have been such a big part of it. Do you see an end to it all at this point? Right now I'm just trying to make as many cucumber salad videos as I can. Because, you know, if I keep sharing, more people can try cucumber salads. Read the original article on All Recipes.
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