Tasting The Process: TikTok Foodie Sensation - Cassie Sharp

But first things first , be sure you catch last week's episode with Chef Brian Jacobs of Liberty Smokehouse . He and Chef Justin are good people and their food next level baby , all right . Today's guest is social media sensation Casey Sharp . You've seen her home cooking skills on TikTok , ig and all the rest .

She blew up during COVID with millions , millions of followers and very entertaining food content . Well , now she's got a cookbook coming out in a couple of weeks . We'll get into that . Plus , cassie will be working on some dishes alongside of Jefferson today . Stay tuned , cassie is on deck .

I'm into quality made smoked fish dips and spreads , and I know you are too . Check out our friends over at Crab Island Seafood Company . One of my favorites is the Crab Rangoon . Visit them at crabislandseafooddipcom . And you know what ? Let me tell you something . That Crab Rangoon is special . I dot com , and you know what ?

Let me tell you something that crab brown groom is special . I actually made a pasta the other day and I put the leftovers ahead in it . It's really great , all right . So , jeff , you were like the .

You played mentor today with cassie , and I just want to say , obie , chef kenobi , pop the clutch and jump into pre-shift and may the sauce be with you , baby , let's , let's roll I appreciate that , all right .

Where it's still summer , it's 95 degrees out , 95% humidity and it's like an oven , so you've got to have some cold soup .

So we did this gazpacho , which is like the Castilian style , but instead of making it tomato-based , it was watermelon , and then layered it with some mint and some sweet peppers , cucumber , red onion and the maraschi pepper , so it had that sweet and spicy kind of mix . There it was cold . Yeah , we'll get to that in a minute .

And then the next dish was you know when , when you have a roasted chicken from either you made it yourself or you went to the market or Costco or Sam's , what are you going to do with the other half if you have it left over ? So I wanted to do something with a chicken sandwich .

So we did open faced a little smoked Gouda sourdough cause I'm still getting , uh , trying to perfect my sourdough . I did the sourdough smoked Gouda pickled onions . We had some bourbon maple syrup glazed bacon you can't go wrong with that and then , uh , the roasted chicken on there with the green , the micro greens . That was pretty spectacular .

And then we had a candy pecans too , which I know I'm not going to get the the little container I brought because john's already claimed it I think it's all gone already no , no , john's got a couple .

That's that fresh , that new of a puppy in house , in studio , and he's a cutie patootie not as a fruity patootie , but he's definitely a cutie patootie yeah , well , he's definitely cuter yeah , he is definitely cuter .

For . You know , we did this whole today was all different . You know it was for good , you know I'll I'll usher Cassie on in a second , but but ultimately this is what she does . She's not a professional cook , she's a home cook .

And today what we did was we did a challenge , basically in the same fashion as kind of what she does on on her , her channels , on Tik , tok and Instagram , and we had to pick five ingredients , you know numbered pick out of a bowl , random , and and luckily she had the bread , the chicken and then a few other ingredients .

We'll get into it , but I was really more interested in that today . You always do great , thank you . You always do great , thank you , always Like you're . We don't give you enough . I don't think we tell you enough how wonderful it is the job you do here . Thank you , the food and everything . Today you were a little outshined .

Collaboration was a huge component to just taking off and getting to the level that I am now , which is I'm so grateful for , and so I started . I was a kinesiology major in college and so I started trying to incorporate what I had learned into content .

So I would do , you know , guess , the sugar and fitness challenges , and it was good , but it wasn't great . I wasn't super happy . Like , long-term , if I were to look at the picture of social media , I would have been like I can't see myself doing this . For a long time . I'd always wanted to do cooking stuff , but I didn't know how to cook .

So that was where I was kind of coming from , and it was right around the time that I moved into my first apartment so end of 2020 , early 2021 . And I had kind of ventured a little bit into the healthy cooking scene and I was messing it all up . I mean , like it's really hard to cook with alternative sugars .

I don't know if you guys have ever done that , maybe it's just my lack of experience , but so I remember one time I made a brownie with alternative sugar and it was rock hard . My friends were literally beating it on the table and they called it the 10 commandments . So that was fun .

So I really went into this scene of cooking on social media with like a low bar of expectation and I , I joined this .

I moved into my first apartment and my mom kind of was sitting with me and I I kind of told her , like I don't really know how to take care of myself , like I don't know how to cook you know , for myself , I've never really had to do that before . And so she said , well , you know , and she wanted me to budget too . So she , she handed me $10 .

She handed me a $10 bill and she said , all right , make dinner with $10 . And so I said okay . And I said but you know what ? We should film this . My content creator brain , I had already been doing it for about a year now , and so we filmed the process of me making a very non-authentic Italian meal as I was sharing with Carl .

I went to the grocery store and I I saw that like okay , it had gained maybe like a few million overnight . It was great . And then I was seeing like , oh , every hour it was gaining a few million and it was just like snowballing .

It was , I mean , truly an incredible experience and that was when I realized I could do this , I could make content about learning how to cook .

So that's kind of where I present myself to you guys today , as a wannabe chef , a home chef , a self-taught chef and I use the word chef lightly , but I'm happy to be here and I'm just happy to get any opportunity to learn happy to get any opportunity to learn .

Today he did put on his mentor hat , right , yeah , choke , if you will , jeffrey , but but so I noticed that and I saw how you gravitated to that really well and I can see there might be and I'm just going to dangle it out there there may be some future content .

I honest to God , I was like my head was tilted to the side as I'm watching and I was like holding my chin and I was like oh my goodness .

So one of the biggest things when I was going and going through my apprenticeship and going through the ranks of being becoming a chef and just being a cook . I'd worked in this one place , at biscayne wine mart mart market . It was on 125th and stefan was the chef and teddy falco learned from him . So teddy was one of my mentors and I learned from him .

One of the things that his wife would always do is like watch your fingers . As soon as she walked away , I cut myself because she implanted in my brain watch your fingers . So I learned every time since then when somebody says be careful when you cut .

And now I just put my knife down and I walk away just a split second , maybe grab a drink of water , but as soon as you put that thought in your mind , guess what's going to happen ? You're going to cut yourself yeah , put the knife down .

Right , let's get into that a little bit , because I know that you , the whole day today you were like I saw your eyeballs were huge and it seemed like you were absorbing so much . Talk about that experience .

but just in producing my cookbook , which was a very do it yourself process , everything was , I mean , except for the binding and printing of the book , it was me doing the work . I mean , I , I was directing the photographer .

I don't think that the photographer that I used to take the pictures for my cookbook had ever really had that much experience with photographing food . So , you know , I was just going off of Pinterest pictures .

You know I had like a PowerPoint presentation of like every dish that it was going to be in my cookbook , in the order that I wanted to photograph them , and kind of some reference images , and then I just kind of let him do his thing . He , he did . You know he knows how to do object photography or and he did , he did a good job .

But then I see the process that you guys go through and I am flabbergasted . I mean , it was truly incredible to watch . I'm inspired and I think it's so important as somebody in this space to surround yourself with people that inspire you .

I want to go home and make some changes because if you look at my social media account , you'll see a bunch of thumbnails of people that I've met , of you know me maybe you know in the middle of cooking and maybe there's text on the screen and that's . You know my entire Instagram homepage .

You know it's my , my profile , so there's not a lot of food in the food influencers . You know social media profile . So I'm looking at this and I'm like I want to absorb as much of this as I can .

So I have a bunch of random ingredients cards and I fan them out like a deck of cards , you know , and I'm holding them and I'm picking an ingredient from that . So every single , and then , and then , you know , in my video it'll show up on screen this text that says five random ingredients .

So every single beginning , you know , thumbnail , is five random ingredients text on screen , with me picking a card . So it all looks kind of like it's the same video and I would love some variety in that sense .

So that's where it is challenging , because , yes , my audience wants to see me , but they also are interested in what I'm making , and so there's there's I guess it's a it's a tough line to walk , cause I I think it's good to showcase what you made and like today , you know , and I'm sure we're going to get into this too but I made something in the kitchen

and and I think if I had been in my house I would have not been very impressed with the pictures that I would have taken of it . But we took it into the studio and John worked his magic and it looked like it had been made by like a Michelin chef . You know , and I'll take credit for that . You know , I will take on be the Michelin chef , you know .

So your job is something anybody can do , John .

Plus you have to be creative you know , and and I think that's where a lot of people maybe miss the mark because the creativity levels the factor . You know , you see a lot of people's stuff online and , yeah , we're all kind of working , we're all taking a picture of the same dish , basically right , but everybody's stuff is very mechanical , it's very just .

It's there but there isn't any depth or layers . And you know , thank goodness that our iphones and android phones have , you know , know , filters , and you know , because if they didn't , we'd all be screwed Right .

And every time somebody comes in here , my first thing that I tell chefs is like by the way , it's probably going to be your one dish is going to an hour and they're like what ? I'm like it's an hour because there's x amount of shots that he takes just to build the , the front , the reference , and then he'll add stuff .

Like we were talking about the compartment plate that you guys will see when we do this one with the fish . It had like a three compartment plate to it and he started putting stuff around it to for the ancillary items , like he normally does , and he's like no , this is we have . We have structured chaos on the plate .

Then we're going to do chaos , chaos around now . This is not going to look good . And he scrapped it and started taking pictures . So it's not just . You know , anybody can do it . It's a lifetime of like a chef , we were saying to me he's like you know the science behind it .

Yeah , I got to do your high five , I would , I would . I would look at that and go this is a failure , but this is going to propel me to do better , right .

I think if we show the imperfections or what we didn't do , that didn't turn out the way we we wanted it , then people were like , oh , I see what he did wrong or I understand now , like I didn't . I didn't grasp the concept of her , her , spaghetti , her her noodles her noodle dish that she did God , and that's what .

Oh , you should have taken a picture of the coconut cream . Yeah , I know , I was gonna bring that showing the error and we don't really do that on the show . Here we put out a very polished product .

Is that it Really no thanks ?

It started to thicken and then it curdled it , it split , and I even said it just before . I'm like , oh , I wonder if this can be over whipped . Guess what ? Everyone ? It can be over whipped .

And then I mean it's an unfortunate part of recipe creation , as something that I've learned is that you make mistakes and you're like well , can't put that in my cookbook , you know , can't put that on my blog , and I just I think the world needs to see that , because I think everybody just assumes that these chefs and you know , anybody who makes even cooking

content online is just perfect . Every time , you know , they get A pluses across the board .

In the end , though , you're talking about , you're talking about just everybody's perception of perfection and how everybody puts perfection .

You know , even though they live , you know their home life is a dumpster fire , or you know there's nothing good in their life but , man , they didn't know how to put out some really pretty content that proves , or tries to prove , differently than what's actually happening . Yeah , and Cassie says no , no , no , no , no , I I'm going to put it all out there .

So you're right . So anyway , you said a second ago , like hey you know what ? I learned some stuff . I want to bring it back to the , you know , bring it back home , I think . I think you left some stuff here too that we might look at internally to .

You know , maybe not emulate but take from , and yeah , it's , it's a passion of mine , actually showing cause .

And I was noticing when I was starting to cook , you know , even with the healthy cooking stuff and I would make this , you know the 10 commandments um , brownies or whatever I , you know , my friends are all laughing about it I'm like dying inside because I'm like I just want to be good at this and I can't , and I don't know why I suck , you know , but this

is going to sound off topic , but I used to . I used to do ballet and , um , I used to be a dancer and something that one of my dance teachers said to me one time was the more that you are messing up , the more you're criticizing yourself and the worse you're going to perform .

So if you hyper fixate on the failures or the mistakes , then you're going to get in your own head .

It's kind of like what you were saying , right , if somebody tells you to watch your fingers put the knife down , walk away , because you are going to get in your own head , and so for me , it was turning off that part of my brain that needed it to be perfect and saying I want to share the story with these people and show them that they can do it too ,

because I represent the . I am the social media representation of the average Joe learning how to cook , and so and that's a joy for me and I've had such a great time showcasing my learnings to these people and I get people commenting on my posts wow , I really learned something from this . Thank you so much for sharing that .

Or people will comment and say hey , I noticed that you did it this way . Try this instead . You know , like one thing that I saw was hey , you should freeze your tomatoes so that you can peel . The peels will come off easier , or stuff like that , and I don't know . I just cringed , but it's , it's people .

I've created , a community that wants to share advice and wants to learn advice .

As you said , it's profound , you know it is , it really is because at the end of it , you know we're here , you get comments galore and , and you know we can all look at our social media or go or look in the comment sections of other socials and everything , and you see how the first thing people want to do is scorch you .

That's the first thing they want to do . They want to tear you apart .

I never want that , I don't ever want that , and and so what we put out and you can , there's plenty of what we do that you can rip apart , but I don't , you know , I feel like maybe it's time for us to just show the whole picture of it versus , versus our little bouquet that we put out like the perfect bouquet with you know that we aim to be perfect ,

not that we are , I'm not saying that , but you understand what I mean . Maybe , maybe that's something , because you know , comment we , we get a lot of likes and there's a lot of back chatter in our circle . You know we get , you know , between john and jeff and myself , a few others who were part of this thing .

There's a lot of side chats and it doesn't happen on on the social , which is crazy to me , but maybe we need to give them something to rip us apart , or something .

What I wanted to do say is like for , for , for instance , being a social influencer as a chef , and I'm going to talk to , I'm going to talk for , a lot of the chefs out there and we talked about it briefly when we were conversing , when you were on your way from texas to come into the studio being a chef .

We hear social influencers , especially when they're dealing with food . They don't usually have the , the cred , the credibility , and we kind of chefs in our own right have the ego and we're very whether it be jealous , envious or whatever it is . We want things to be put out there and emulate what's going on in the in the actual industry .

There's one guy I follow , young guy , and we've talked about him and I don't remember his name . He does a great job cleaning . He does , you know , things out of off the cuff and beautiful presentations and he gets done and I go now do it 200 times on a Saturday night .

That's where we kind of go in , but one of the things that you emulate , that I find , and that if any chef were to call me and be like , how did you have the social influence ? I'm going to put this right out there . You have passion . Passion cannot be taught .

If you were to come in my restaurant , you said , hey , I want to get a job and you have that passion that you do when you're producing and doing your content and the passion you had in here to learn . You're hired .

So any chef that looks at them and says to an influencer that doesn't have the passion , yeah , you have a right to then go after that person . But for someone that you get to know , then you see they have this passion and we're always talking about it can't be taught . Then leave you alone . Do your content , do the average Joe content .

Be who you are and show who you are . Congratulations , I mean , you've done something . You've found the right mix and the right seasoning and the right dash of this and the sprinkle of that to be who you are today . Kudos , kudos .

So when I , when I see somebody like you actually reached out to us , you know which was really awesome , by the way , thank you and I was , and I was like a rich because I get people always send me notes , hey , I'll , I'll let it be on there and I usually dismiss them honestly .

But I looked into what you were doing and I remembered you , actually from a few years ago . I mean , I've seen your , your content before and I was like , oh , this is actually pretty cool . And I'm like , man , she's , she's got healthy . You know , 13 million plus on on Tik TOK and on another 180 , whatever it is a couple hundred thousand on Instagram .

And I'm like , wow , that's pretty great and I'm already seeing , I look forward , you know . So I , I look at what you have to offer and I'm already piecing together like , okay , we can do this , we can do this , we can do this , we can do this on a forward motion , not just for this episode , like what we can do going forward . So then I get excited .

Well , what does she have to offer ? No man , no , no , no , no , no , no , no . Just tons to offer . But he didn't know . Look you up first . Even when I sent the link actually I did , did you ?

I'm the first one to say I was wrong . I judged the book before it's cut by , that's covered , without even turning the page the cookbook the cover man but here's the thing we there's a certain she was on the food network and she has her own tv show that we do not like as chefs .

We , yeah and when you see somebody come out like that and they say certain things that are wrong , you cringe and you just go what the ? Because they don't , they don't emulate what we do as a profession and that's what we get upset about , because our profession we have , like you know , we have certain things that we go through . There's a lot of turmoil .

We , we are perfectionists , so we have to get that out of our head . And I tell my daughter and here's for anybody out there you have to look at yourself as being the biggest cheerleader for yourself , because you have 13,000 comments and half of them are battering you because you didn't do something right .

If you're going to go through life that way , then you're just going to be sitting in a fetal position . You have to be that protector , your biggest cheerleader , going forward , because that's the only person you have .

It's you , and you have to be that way and you can meet people that are going to support you and mentor you to be better , but you have to be that person that goes out to seek that .

Like who would have thought that I would fly halfway across the country to be on the number one food podcast in America and be sitting here with you guys and a almost Michelin star chef ?

I mean I went from barely knowing how to take care of myself in 2021 , the beginning of that not knowing how to cook at all . Sharing my journey and through sponsorships and being a content creator , I've been able to build a life for myself through the support of my incredible following . That has allowed me to buy my first home at the age of 23 .

And I have a dog and an incredible community of people . And I moved , you know , across the country to to live in a different state that I'd always wanted to kind of live in or , you know , like I'd always wanted to move and experience a new place .

He was being his creative self , I was being my creative self .

There's a spark there , you know , and so I would say community , when I've been by myself and when I've been , you know , when I first moved to Texas and I was kind of trying to find my new community , I actually started surrounding myself with people who hated social media , like didn't like , like they would make fun of my like Cassie dance and like tease me

for it . But I think that it was actually like rooted in something , like they did not like it , and I felt embarrassed and so I I stopped making content for a year because I was like , oh , like , no , it's kind of weird , maybe it's kind of over with and done with . And you know I wouldn't say that that was the only reason .

You know there were , there were several reasons going into me kind of pausing on that and kind of pursuing a more of a corporate route of social media , kind of trying to understand the other side of it .

But you know , coming back into this , I I experienced some turmoil in my in my life , my day-to-day life , and kind of found myself with a lot of time on my hands . And you know , I'm with this incredible guy who was like you should go for this , like you should go back to this , like try it .

And he pushed me and he set aside so much time to help me prep everything , like so he could do all the behind the scenes work so that when I was cooking I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning up , I wouldn't have to worry about putting everything in the like little jars and you know everything , because with cooking content you have to be really careful about

the way that you show yourself pouring the ingredients and like , yes , you could use a measuring spoon , but like that's not as appealing or attractive , you want to use like a glass bowl or like a jar , you know .

And so he was , he was doing all that stuff for me and having that encouragement and then seeing , like , when my cookbook came out and everybody at my church came up to me and they were like , hey , congratulations on the cookbook .

You know like people are around me , are encouraging me to pursue my dreams , and I'm seeing it as a possibility now , and so short answer is passion . But what's what's the passion rooted in ? It's your community , it's the people who are surrounding you and encouraging you . You know , cause if you're doing it by yourself , you can .

You can be a one man show , but you might've even noticed the content that I was making last year . The spark wasn't in my eyes , cause I was doing it but I wasn't being supported . You know , now the spark is back and I'm surrounded by the right people and the energy is there and it's great .

And then she picked out , just ironically enough . I'm like , oh , you know , it'd be great if you got the sandwich , because we did the sandwich . First one was like lemon marmalade . The second one was chicken . The third one was like , oh my God , this is going great , micro greens . And the other one's like , oh my god she's if she gets the bread .

I'm like , oh , wow , she's got everything . So then I go so , can you add cheese ? Can you add the bacon ? Nope , I'm like , oh . And then you got pickled onions . I'm like , wow , this is um . And then , you know , you two talked and we're like , hey , well , I'm gonna take the pickle juice , put .

Well , I'm going to take the pickle juice , put it in the chicken . I'm like , well , the pickle juice is going to work , the lemon is going to really work . Yeah , this is going to really work . In my head of going through the flavor profiles and you did your little dance .

I mean Jeff was creatively inspiring me with what to cook and you were creatively inspiring me with the kind of video to make . Carl and John was creatively inspiring me in the kind of images that we could take with this . So I mean the takeaway today is like it's dense . There is a dense takeaway today .

I have an Eggo waffle every morning for breakfast and that is . I love that . I actually , for the 4th of July , I made like a strawberry reduction sauce syrup . I know right Sounds classy . I was very classy and I was very proud of myself . So I was , I was putting that on my waffles in the mornings and it was delicious .

But yeah , I would say , you know , usually I just started the series called meal prep Monday and so I made like homemade fettuccine Alfredo down to like the actual making the pasta , the macaroni , and I , um , and I made the cheese sauce , and you know all of that , and then I just ate that every day . And then I made , you know , a chicken noodle soup .

So then you know , noodle okay well

That's where , actually , that's where it actually started from Right China with the exportation or the with with the Italy , not Marco Polo , because everyone found out it's not Marco Polo who bought pasta back but it was somebody else that brought it back and introduce it to the Italians .

I'm not really sure , like I could maybe be a host of . You know a cooking show . You know a Netflix show ? You know something like that . I have a .

I have a feeling that it's going to be more social media , cause I just think , in general social media , there's so much more opportunity If you're your own producer , you know , when you start adding in the other producers and and overarching , you know , networks , that's where you , I think , might not be valued as much as you are , you know .

So , giving yourself the power . I want to be a boss , you know , and so I would love to have my own network and I would love to . Just , I would love to have a studio that I could cook in . That's not my house , you know . Separation of work and home would be great , yeah , that's fantastic .

Right , I know , as we're sitting in , you know a house to record this , I mean a studio , and yeah .

That was like hey , we want to make a cookbook with you and I kind of hesitated on it and I decided to email them back just to see what they had to offer . And they got on a call with me and we got to talk out what the whole process would look like .

And I realized like all the years of me learning how to cook and people commenting and saying you should have a cookbook and be kind of laughing it off Like yeah , that would be great . You know we're here now and so that was kind of the inspiration behind . It was just just my experience and like wanting to share .

I mean , like the title of my cookbook is trusting the process . It's something that is near and dear to my heart because over time , as I've made these videos and showcased my failures or my mistakes , I'll say trust the process , trust the process , trust the process , trust the process .

You know I'm trying to follow the recipe and I'm like this doesn't make sense and this is looking weird and like you know why is this turning into a brown liquid ? It's supposed to be a marshmallow . Like I'm confused . Trust the process , you know , and , and so that's been something that I've said . So trust in the process .

And then the subtitle is From Beginner to Gourmet , or it's A Beginner's Guide to Gourmet , and I just I love the way that that's put . I'm still figuring out the gourmet part , but we're all beginners in this together .

But I said I don't know what I'm doing , but I'm figuring it out and I think that that's an interesting angle for the podcast .

Slash creators slash Cassie Sherp C-A-S-S-I-E-S-H-R-P . So right now , I wish you could just look it up and be like oh , trusting the process , process by Cassie Sharp , but I don't know if we're there yet . Maybe on my next cookbook .

You can Google your name and it would be there , which I thought was incredible . I mean , that's the . You know the power of you know the Google machine . It's really incredible . You got to get back to that , maybe . Maybe we should do some series with your Padawan over here .

Or the best thing that I do , too , is like , when I look at certain items that are like meatloaf , like comfort foods , I'll Google Michelin star chef presentation and I'll look through what certain people are doing and kind of like , oh , I get it what they're doing and I can see how they're plating in the structure and everything that .

And then I kind of go on my own and kind of , oh , then I'm going to go this way . So , just , you know , don't think it's , I don't know . Listen , use social media the way it should be used . It's a background so that you can actually learn and see what other people are doing and you don't have to reinvent the wheel . It's .

Oh , I got it , so let me see , and I'll put my own little twist on it and turn on it .