(cooking) A style of cooking that uses different types of food that are not normally eaten together to create a dish. [from 1980s]
2010 July 21, Sarah Maslin Nir, “Too Many Cooks? Says Who?”, in New York Times, page A20:
All around the garden and across the adjacent apartment, guests spooned, forked, chopsticked, speared and, above all, shoveled food of all sorts into their mouths and others’ at a monthly event called Chaos Cooking.
2011 June 1, Michael Hastings, quoting Natalie Sevin, “Give in to the green: Find your way to kale”, in McClatchy-Tribune Business News:
“I harvested a case (about 18 pounds) of kale and called folks over for a kale fest, asking everyone to bring a recipe and ingredients other than kale – chaos cooking style,” Sevin said.
2023 June 17, Erin Shaw, “What Is Chaos Cooking And What Does It Look Like In Home Kitchens?”, in FoodRepublic[1]:
With chaos cooking, almost anything goes, and it's more about ingredients and less about food cultures and traditions.
2023 July 25, Joshua Hunt, “Chaos Cooking Is Taking Over TikTok for All the Right Reasons”, in Food&Wine[2]:
Chaos cooking, before becoming trend-ified, was born from the long line of chefs who looked in their fridges and thought to themselves, "Yeah, I can make something with this."
