I Challenged Myself To Cook Like Nara Smith For A Single Day And I'm Exhausted
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If you’ve spent any time scrolling on TikTok over the past few months, you’ve likely encountered videos posted by the model Nara Smith. I’m not ashamed to admit that her videos has become my ASMR comfort content. Nara is the wife of Tumblr poster boy Lucky Blue Smith, and she's has developed a considerable following for her home-cooked meals.
She’s also received a fair amount of flack. Critics consider some of her more ambitious projects (i.e. forming individual pieces of cereal by hand) to be absurd. The names she and Lucky chose for their children (Rumble Honey and Slim Easy) are also the subject of jokes. Some claim that her content aligns with the growing tradwife phenomenon—a type of social media persona that embraces traditional gender roles.
I don’t have enough time to unpack the sociological complexities of Nara’s lifestyle. But I can definitely cosign one of the most popular reactions to her content: she spends a lot of time cooking elaborate meals. Watching Nara Smith prepare her daily meals is like watching Meredith Hayden (a.k.a. @wishbonekitchen) work as a private chef in the Hamptons. Just when you think a meal’s over, it’s time to start cooking the next one.
But unlike Meredith, who cooks all day for a living and isn’t afraid to share how exhausting it is, Nara breezes through her daily cooking marathons with ease. There’s nary a wrinkle in her Ralph Lauren pajama set. Not a single flyaway from her perfectly coiffed bob. How does she do it all—and slay that hard?
As someone who cooks and writes about food professionally, I decided to cook as if I were Nara Smith for a day. I loaded up one of her more recent TikToks, ordered nearly $200 worth of groceries (not including pantry ingredients I already had), and ironed my own pajama set for the occasion.
Breakfast
Nara starts the day with two beverages. Her aversion to the taste of water is well documented, so she masks the taste by infusing her H2O with fun flavorings. In the video I followed, her daily water was mixed with cucumber and mint. I felt like I was at an upscale spa, but admittedly, it still tasted mostly like water. It’s a lot more effort to hydrate than what I’m used to doing. But compared to the rest of the recipes ahead of me, this water was by far the most straightforward.
Cucumber Mint Water: 7/10
The next beverage that Nara makes is freshly squeezed juice, namely an orange and grapefruit blend. I already had my own citrus juicer at home, so preparing this juice was pretty simple. And who can refuse fresh squeezed juice? I know I can’t. But if I had to manually squeeze each orange and grapefruit by hand, I’d probably have a different answer.
Orange Grapefruit Juice: 10/10
To round out the first meal of the day, Nara makes one of her most popular recipes: waffles. Her grain-free, dairy-free waffles are made with cassava flour and coconut milk and frequently make an appearance in her TikTok videos. It’s also one of her few recipes that's shared in full on her Instagram account.
I’m admittedly not a huge fan of grain-free products (give me the gluten!), but I was committed to honoring her recipes as written. Aside from the fact that cassava flour is extremely fine and leaves a cloud of fumes in the air, assembling the waffle batter was easier than I expected.
The topping for the waffles—a lemon- and maple-flavored wild blueberry compote—was also pretty simple to prepare. It was, however, extremely time consuming. How on earth does Nara have time to make an entire batch of waffles from scratch in the morning? And I’m sad to report that cassava flour is still not my favorite alternative flour. The waffles had a gummy, almost mochi-like texture. Which is cool sometimes, I guess. But is it what I want in a waffle? No.
Waffles: 6/10
Lunch
Another meal, another beverage. Nara pregames her lunch prep marathon by making a vanilla blueberry iced tea. She did not include any instructions on how to make it, so I winged it using hibiscus tea, vanilla extract, and some of the leftover compote from breakfast. It was tart, aromatic, and super refreshing. I have to admit, though, that I probably won’t make this drink again because it took too much time and effort.
Vanilla Blueberry Iced Tea: 8/10
My idea of a good lunch is something that I can assemble and eat quickly so I can keep going with my day. But to Nara Smith, it’s another opportunity to make the most time- and labor-intensive meal you can think of. The recipe she featured in the TikTok was a scallion, lemongrass, and fish sauce-spiked pork meatball. Nara serves it over a bed of vermicelli noodles, julienned vegetables, herbs, and a spicy nước chấm dipping sauce. On paper it sounds amazing. But it also means that there’s a lot of vegetable chopping.
I spent a considerable amount of time making and forming the meatballs, finely cutting the vegetables into matchsticks, and making my own dipping sauce from scratch. All in all, it took over an hour to make my lunch from start to finish. Admittedly, I went into the meal feeling tired and a little annoyed about how much work I had to do. But all of my frustration fell to the wayside after I took a bite.
These meatballs are so incredibly good. If you take one thing from my experiment, it’s that you need to attempt this recipe yourself. But I’d suggest trying it on a weekend when you don’t have to juggle all of your other responsibilities at once.
Meatballs 10/10
Afternoon Snack
After a full plate of waffles and a really filling lunch, I wasn’t exactly stoked to make a midday snack. But Nara swears by this recipe for whipped cream and papaya, so I had to try it for myself. To make it, you need to whip heavy cream into soft peaks, spike it with lime zest, and spread it in the cavity of a fresh papaya. Nara created this concoction after being inspired by her pregnancy cravings and describes it as tasting like “heaven.”
But I’m going to go ahead and say something controversial: this stuff is seriously gross. There’s minimal sweetness coming from the papaya and a small sprinkle of demerara sugar. It mostly just tastes like dairy. And after going through all that trouble to make a dairy-free waffle for breakfast, why are we eating a metric ton of heavy cream for a snack? I took a few bites, tried and failed to pawn it off to my boyfriend, then threw the whole thing away.
Papaya and Whipped Cream: 0/10
Dinner
The last meal of Nara’s day has many components, so buckle up. The star of the show is a spatchcocked and gochujang-marinated chicken, roasted over a bed of mixed vegetables. Then it’s all served alongside some yuzu garlic spinach. Try saying that five times fast.
The chicken itself was pretty simple, but I also am fairly well-versed in breaking down a chicken. For those who didn’t go to culinary school or don’t often work with whole chicken, this process could be considered difficult.
I tried my best to replicate her gochujang marinade using context clues alone. Mixing up a few ingredients and spreading it all over the skin was also straightforward, albeit very, very messy.
Nara thankfully spared me from having to make a separate seasoning blend for my roasted vegetables. All I had to do was toss the carrots, baby potatoes, and sweet potatoes with the leftover marinade. The root vegetables, alongside onions and garlic, became the bed for my chicken before it all went into the oven.
The yuzu garlic spinach was also easy to assemble while the bird was baking. I somehow had a bottle of yuzu juice already in my fridge, but lemon makes for a solid substitute if you can’t find it either. After about an hour, the chicken was cooked through and I was ready to eat.
The verdict? This meal didn’t really do it for me. The roasted vegetables were all wrong in every way: the sweet potatoes were mushy, the baby potatoes were underdone, and the carrots were so raw they still had a crunch. The spicy, gochujang-seasoned chicken skin tasted great. The meat underneath was definitely juicy, yet it lacked the seasoning I want from a roasted chicken.
I think I would have preferred it if I had brined the bird ahead of time. But that dinner took well over an hour to execute, and factoring in another day for brining would make this recipe more time-consuming than it already is. The spinach was fine; not bad, but not groundbreaking by any means.
Roasted Chicken, Root Vegetables, and Spinach: 6/10
I did it, y’all! I cooked like Nara Smith for an entire day...and I'm exhausted. I spent over five hours cooking, at least an hour doing all of my dishes by hand, and used three appliances in just one day.
I definitely admire Nara for taking the time and effort to cook like that every day. I can also, however, admit that I could never do what she does (at least without getting paid to do it).
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