What Recipe Trends During the Pandemic Tell Us About How America Cooks

As coronavirus continues to spread and affect millions in our country, consumers are spending more time at home than ever. In an effort to flatten the curve, local and national measures have gone into place including cancelled events, curfews and banned large gatherings. And while consumers were already avoiding public spaces like restaurants, bars and even work offices, certain major metropolitan areas are forced to take extreme measures. New York officially closed all restaurants and bars for a minimum of two weeks and San Francisco ordered a city-wide lockdown for the next three weeks, as of Monday.

Home all day with pantries and refrigerators stocked with food, consumers are cooking much more at home as we’re social distancing. During the week of March 8th, we saw our recipe network grow by 400,000 users. We did the math and, at these rates, we’re gauging that Americans are looking at an average of 1.9 recipes as they plan meals, a 6% increase in the amount of recipes viewed per session per user. 

Unlike holidays, where we see traffic increase due to users planning their meals and occasions a week in advance followed by a sharp day-of decline, the trend we’re seeing form due to coronavirus demonstrates that there will likely continue to be a steady demand for recipes. In fact, we’re seeing that users are looking at more recipes now than they do for Halloween and that each unique user is looking at more recipes than the week leading up to Thanksgiving, making coronavirus’ effects even more significant than one of the most major holiday planning occasions of the year.

So what exactly are the most popular recipes in this period of increased cooking?

What we’re seeing:

Back to Basics

Consumers are using this time at home to learn basic cooking skills and recipes, with How to Bake a Potato, Basic Homemade Bread, How to Cook Rice and How to Make Banana Bread making the top 25. 

Comfort Food

Needing some comfort among panic and daily updates, consumers are turning to hearty, homemade recipes like The Ultimate Chicken Noodle Soup, Classic Lasagna and Favorite Baked Spaghetti.

Oven Lovin’ 

A phenomenon known as “stress baking,” consumers in our network are increasingly baking desserts and entrees that require more time and effort than typical weeknight, stove-top dishes to both distract from the pandemic and pass the time. We’re seeing more baked dessert recipes like Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies, Italian Cream Cheese Cake and Easy Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and more baked entree recipes like Crustless Spinach Quiche, Baked Garlic-Butter Salmon and Classic Stuffed Peppers. 

“More consumers are responsibly choosing to stay at home, practice social distancing and slow the spread of coronavirus by avoiding crowded, public spaces. As a result, our recipe network’s audience is more engaged than ever and consumers are passing the time at home by browsing recipes,” said Joey Petracca, Chicory’s Co-Founder and COO. “Our top 25 recipes during this period show that consumers are actually using this as an opportunity to educate themselves on basic cooking and baking skills or using it as a tool to distract from the situation.”

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