Bon Appétit's Recipe for Botulism 👀🍿🧃

“…sorry to hear about your intense diarrhea. Stay hydrated ✌️❤️”

Apr 12, 2022

As someone who relies frequently on recipes online to guide my misadventures in the kitchen, I’ve also gotten a (hilarious) peek into the sometimes disastrous shenanigans that can happen when something goes wrong on the publishing end. A few years ago I was in the middle of a lake in a canoe on the 4th of July with a food writer friend when suddenly her phone started buzzing like crazy. Turns out there’d been a typo in her make-your-own jello-shots-in-strawberry-cups (or something like that) recipe post and people around the country were reporting they’d essentially made alcoholic Jolly Ranchers.

Turns out there’s a big difference between teaspoons and tablespoons. Whoops.

Anyway, yesterday I saw the below tweet and subsequent thread calling out one of Bon Appétit’s video creators for demonstrating an unsafe way of demonstrating how to make pastrami— which can lead to botulism. One follower commented, “hey I made the brisket recipe just as you described it and now I have absolutely atrocious diarrhea I mean mind boggling diarrhea did this happen to you after you ate it thanks”

There’s now a disclaimer on the video saying, “Although we all enjoy the discoveries that come with Brad's unique experiments in the kitchen, if you’re inspired to create your own version at home be sure to follow a tried and tested recipe so your preparations line up with food safety standards.”

This marks the second case of Bon Appétit posting a video featuring a recipe that could have actually been uh, to die for— which was covered by The Washington Post last year. I guess that’s a perk to being a generally uninspired cook, I’d never even consider trying out a recipe that involves canning my own seafood.

I feel like if you’re a food influencer and you find yourself responding in Instagram comments with, “…sorry to hear about your intense diarrhea. Stay hydrated ✌️❤️” it’s just… not a great look.

Tweets below.