The 'Sink Salad' Trend TikTok Just Can't Get Behind

Though the idea of a sink salad might not be the most appetizing, it is essentially just referring to a hearty salad that includes an assortment of ingredients. Also known as a "garbage plate," it is an easy meal to throw together before completing your next grocery run and buying a large number of ingredients.

Though there is no specific recipe for sink salads, lettuce, deli meat, and onions are typical ingredients (via Eat Drink Love). Guy Fieri uses pancetta in his, along with Gorgonzola for cheese and sliced kalamata olives (via Food Network). When combined, sink salads are great tasting, balanced meals full of protein, fats, and fiber that can also be easily customized according to dietary restrictions. But some TikTok users have brought their interpretation of the "sink salad," to the extreme, causing lots of users to react poorly all over the Internet. Below are just a few examples.

To the disgust and shock of many, some people are literally creating their salad bowls in their kitchen sink. One particular TikTok user, Alex Duncan IV, created a video reacting to a "sink salad" that has gained over 200,000 likes since it was posted in late 2022. Captioned, "This can't be real," the video showed the chef preparing the meal in their double basin sink, including pouring the sauce all over the pasta in the left bowl, with the vegetables lying in the right.

At the end of the video, Duncan made the comment, "Because who doesn't like sink germs with a side of pasta?" One user, @familyofmixednuts, agreed in the comments of the video, stating, "That's a salmonella salad." Other users commented on the sheer size of the salad, as it took up two entire sinks. "I'm so mad they wasted all that food. Lol," wrote @ecirclex.

Other users have made similar reaction videos to other sink salad recipes, such as @coffeeislife35 and @debofromdamuscle, expressing the same level of surprise towards the salad's extreme mass and unpracticality.