The Viral Marry Me Burger Is Adorable But Wasteful

Viral "Marry Me" recipes are so named because these flavorful dishes are likely to garner a marriage proposal due to their immense quality. For example, the Marry Me Chicken recipe features a cream-based sauce containing garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, chili flakes, oregano, and parmesan cheese. This creates a potent yet well-balanced flavor profile sure to impress a paramour.

A burger currently making the rounds on TikTok also bears the Marry Me designation and mostly excels in terms of appearance. In the clip, the content creator is seen making a basic yet satisfying preparation of burger and fries, but with the added step of trimming each component with a heart-shaped cookie cutter. The potatoes, meat patty, cheese, bun, and even the lettuce get the cookie cutter treatment, which results in a cutesy, heart-shaped meal. Despite the aesthetic appeal of the dish, one can't deny that an alarming amount of food could be wasted by trimming ingredients into heart shapes.

@thedatenightkitchen

Marry me burger and fries #datenight #cooking #viral #heartshaped

♬ La vie en rose (Cover Edith Piaf) – 田东昱

How to make heart-shaped burgers responsibly

Not all viral Marry Me dishes are certified winners. Take the Marry Me Pasta that left TikTok feeling a little cold, eliciting quibbles over the ingredients and utensils used to create it. While Marry Me Burgers and the cute heart-shaped fries that come with them look perfectly tasty, concerns about food waste are bound to leave a bad taste in the mouths of many. This is especially true when you consider some crazy, unbelievable food waste facts. For instance, yearly food waste totals an estimated $1 trillion, and consumers in America waste around 100 billion pounds of food annually.

It's possible to incorporate the trimmings from Marry Me Burgers and fries into other meals if you're dead set on making this dish. For instance, cheese and beef can be fried up and used to top some homemade nachos when combined with pickled jalapeños and onions. As for the potato pieces, these can also be fried and incorporated into eggs for a hearty breakfast dish. One TikTok commenter even stated, "With the leftovers you can make a depressing meal if they don't accept."