Reel cooking: how Instagram reimagines recipe narratives

This article examines Instagram narratives through the content and strategies used in food-related reels, with a focus on recipes and their accompanying storytelling. Drawing on a dataset of recipe reels from diverse food accounts–including established media outlets, celebrity chefs, bloggers, and writers–the study explores how these accounts blend instruction for home cooks with enhanced auditory and visual elements. A multimodal discourse analysis reveals how traditional narrative structures (e.g. chronological order, complicating action, evaluations) are creatively combined with multimodal features (e.g. music, cooking sounds, text overlays, flexible sequencing, visual dramatization) to create a hyper-sensorial experience. This synthesis transforms short-form video reels into performances, reshaping how cooking is taught and experienced in the digital age.