TikTok Is In Stitches Over A 'Blood Board'
If you haven't been living under a rock in 2022, you've probably seen or heard about a new viral trend that took the foodie community by storm. Yes, we're talking about butter boards. Some love them, some hate them, but it's a fact that communal butter boards are easy to assemble and don't require that much culinary knowledge.
According to The New York Times, a butter board consists of precisely those two things: butter and a board on which it's smeared or spread — everything else is merely a welcome addition. Softened butter is typically spread on a wooden board (sometimes it's a fancy marble board), and it's then garnished and decorated for the best visual appearance. After that, anything goes — from honey and edible flowers over figs and chili flakes to grated lemon zest and flaky salt — while bread on the side is a must. And to be honest, the results can be quite astonishing.
Butter boards were popularized on TikTok by food blogger Justine Doiron, but the invention is credited to cookbook writer and chef Joshua McFadden. However, The Guardian reports that butter boards were regularly served in upscale restaurants for years, but people on TikTok have noticed the trend pretty recently.
Interestingly enough, a typical butter board will cost anywhere from $6 to $32, but you can expect the prices to go up due to inflation and similar factors.
And now, there's a whimsical new type of butter board on TikTok, and it's called a "blood board."
What's is a blood board?
Yes, butter boards have popped up everywhere in 2022, but some people wondered how to follow it up. So what's next in the world of viral food trends? Well, user @mythicalkitchen has posted a video on TikTok with a possible new trend — blood boards. If it doesn't sound appetizing, it probably isn't. And for a good reason — the video is a parody of those omnipresent butter boards.
In the video, "different kinds of animal blood," such as whipped beef blood, are used as the foundation and smeared on a wooden board. The blood board is finished by adding sliced sundae, a traditional Korean blood sausage, along with crostinis "for a little crunch," a few herbs, and a splatter of fresh pork blood, with the accompanying "splat, splat, splat" shouts peppered in between.
As expected, TikTok is in stitches, with users commenting things such as, "I THOUGHT IT WAS NUTELLA," "crimeboard," and "The vampires are brawling for this."
Whether butter or blood, Forbes reports that eating smeared foods from a wooden board is not a smart move. Butter can get stuck in the board's tiny crevices, which are sometimes full of harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli, which can lead to stomach-churning sickness. So to be completely safe, you should "make sure that the board doesn't have any cracks." Or you can just skip the butter boards — in the end; it's too much saturated fat and calories for anyone involved.