The influence of a Sunday morning cooking show pales in comparison today to the reach of a chef sharing recipes on social media. One young chef who has become one the most trusted influencers in the kitchen is making an impact way beyond gaining views and followers.
Whether she’s letting you in on her secret ingredients or demonstrating expert knife skills, Tineke “Tini” Younger’s confident attitude mixed with her relatable personality and discerning food IQ have put her on track to become one of today’s most prominent emerging culinary voices. Her impact is translating into dollars–both in her pocket and others’.
Finding Food
A proud daughter of Frederick, Maryland, the 23-year-old had no clue she would ever become a chef, or what her future would hold. “I was a bad kid…I would set off stink bombs to purposely miss out on a test. And I had a little mouth on me too,” Younger tells me. “And I have a learning disability, so my grades weren’t the best.”
Younger’s life turned around during her Junior year of high school when she enrolled in a trade school culinary program. “It was finally something that clicked for me,” she says “I can’t sit in a classroom and just learn. I’m a hands-on person. I’m always talking with my hands too.” She was working at McDonalds around the time she decided she wanted to pursue becoming a chef, leading her to attend the Hospitality, Culinary and Tourism Institute at Frederick Community College.
While learning her way around the culinary world, Younger worked at a range of restaurants, but really found a sense of purpose working at The Wine Kitchen in Frederick. It wasn’t just the more upscale dishes served that spoke to her, but rather that half of the line cooks there were women, something she hadn’t experienced before, and still holds close to her today. “I want to show young women, you could also be a chef,” she says. “It’s not just a male-dominated thing. You could dominate it too.”
Gaining Notoriety
TikTok and Instagram videos became an outlet to share her knowledge, although she didn’t monetize on it despite having upwards of one million followers. “I was cooking in our really, really crappy apartment and [my now-husband and I]
were broke. We were selling our furniture to make rent,” Younger says. She was set to start interning at Disney World’s culinary program, but an unexpected phone call came that changed those plans. Casting agents saw her videos which led to her getting cast on Fox’s Next Level Chef with Gordon Ramsey.
“I’m just going to use Next Level Chef as my internship,” she remembers thinking. “I’ll ask as many questions as possible. My thing going in there was to learn.” She looks back fondly at the time she won the top dish of the day by cooking with cow tongue. “[The judges] loved it. They’re like, it tastes so authentic, has the right spice,” she says. “And Gordon was really going in. I was like, oh my gosh. Gordon Ramsey is literally eating my food and he loves it.”
Tini’s Mac & Cheese
Although she didn’t win Next Level Chef, Younger’s following surged while she was on the competition show, so she began to embrace the impact she could have through social media. Towards the end of 2023, her presence in the food space on social media was practically unavoidable when her mac & cheese recipe in the weeks before Thanksgiving started to go viral.
To make her cheese sauce, Younger famously makes a roux, followed by a béchamel and a mornay. It’s caused quite the stir in the comments, which has undoubtedly only resulted in more views for her. “Some people were like, there’s no need for [the roux]. But I’m like…you don’t need to add a roux to yours. I had people messing up the roux and then blaming it on me!”
Younger primarily learned French-style cooking in culinary school, so it’s the style that she got accustomed to before perfecting her own recipe. “I do think the most [common reason for messing up the roux] is that people have the heat too high. People don’t cook the flour out enough, so that’s where you make it gritty,” she explains.
And don’t get her started on the type of pasta needed for the best mac & cheese possible: Cavatappi. No questions asked. “Because [the cheese] gets all up in there,” she says in her video, which has more than 130 million views. So many people recreated her recipe that consumers had trouble finding it stocked on store shelves.
For the 13 weeks ending in November 30, 2024, while the pasta category was up 1.8% compared to the year prior, Cavatappi sales specifically were up 19%. And compared to 2022, the year before Younger posted her video, sales of Cavatappi were up nearly 50%, according to Nielsen data.
Mike Petrie, General Manager of Pasta at 8th Avenue Food & Provisions, which owns Ronzoni, tells me that sales of the brand’s Cavatappi have steadily increased this year too based on internal Nielsen data. For most of the months of November and December 2024, Ronzoni sold an average of about 78,000 boxes in the US, a 58% increase from last year and 34% from the year prior. Petrie notes there were outside factors like supply chain issues that impacted sales in 2023, but is confident Younger’s recipe likely had a big impact in the bump in Ronzoni’s Cavatappi sales in the past two years.
Tini’s Next Level
Younger is at the point where she currently makes her videos full-time. Several companies have partnered with her, including the popular apron brand, Hedley & Bennett, which sold out on the day it launched. Younger had a hand in designing it (you can tell from the Maryland blue crab patch) and is seen wearing it in many of her videos.
Over the summer for National Mac & Cheese Day, Younger partnered with Nestle’s Carnation for its first-ever limited edition flavor innovation, a jalapeño flavored evaporated milk (evaporated milk is a staple in her mac & cheese recipe).
Younger has become known for cooking comfort food, but she still misses working in more upscale establishments. Gordon Ramsey has become one of her inspirations and hopes to model her culinary career after his. “He has this very upscale restaurant and that’s something I want to do because I do want to show my skills,” Younger says. She also loves the art of plating a dish, which she often doesn’t get the chance to do on TikTok because her followers typically want to replicate her recipes. “I never thought anyone would want to recreate my recipes. So now I try to do a format that’s more educational.” That’s also why she tries not to use too much equipment. “Some people don’t have this $400 KitchenAid. So I try to make everything by hand to say, ‘hey, you don’t need this fancy machine.’”
“But then I also want to do a restaurant that’s comfort food, like if you want something quick and easy,” she says. There would certifiably be something with Old Bay seasoning on the menu, perhaps her Old Bay crab cakes. “I try to make it known that I’m from Maryland.” She imagines having a truffle mac & cheese on the menu of the upscale establishment, and her classic one in the casual restaurant.
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