Poppy O'Toole: I enjoy calling out body shaming trolls

Chef and presenter Poppy O’Toole has opened up about the body shaming she has experienced by trolls on social media.

"People talk about weight all the time, whether it’s on me or anyone, but my goodness, I’m just a chef, I didn’t think I was going to have to be talking about body positivity, but here we are, because I want it to be better for everyone," says the BBC’s Young MasterChef judge, who rose to fame with potato recipes on TikTok.

"It’s not constant, but sometimes it’s: ‘She should put the potato down and pick up a salad’," she says. "Literally, I’m just trying to make some nice recipes, yeah I have a double chin – deal with it."

The 30-year-old has never been shy about clapping back at trolls though, using her Instagram platform of 1.1 million followers to call out the behaviour.

"I’m really lucky and privileged to have this sort of platform so I don’t want to be silent on things.

"Luckily I’ve always had a very healthy relationship with the way I am, the way I look. It’s just like, why is your opinion even here? So I’m going to call you out on it, which I do quite enjoy.

"It’s probably the easier route to be like, don’t reply, delete the comment. But that comment could hurt somebody else, and those people need to know that they can’t do that."

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Hailed the Potato Queen, Birmingham-born O’Toole shot to social media fame during the Covid pandemic, after working in restaurants since she was 17, later in Michelin star kitchens (7am starts and 11:30pm finishes).

In August 2020 she was made redundant, but that month a video she made on crispy cube potatoes went viral on TikTok and launched her online presence, followed by her series ’25 days of potato recipes to get you through a second lockdown’ in November that year.

"Potatoes are such an accessible food, and everyone’s got a comforting [memory] behind it, whether it’s your mum’s mash or the best chips from down the road or roast potatoes your nan used to make. So I just tried to make them as gorgeous as they deserve to be," she says.

Now with 4.4 million TikTok followers, O’Toole’s chef life is in front of the camera rather than in the hot, fast-paced kitchens where she spent most of her 20s. "There’s something quite exciting, the thrill of the adrenaline of making sure the service goes well. And there’s definitely a strange amount of pressure which doesn’t need to be there.

"Sometimes you do kind of sit back and go, look, we’re just making food. It’s literally just food."

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In a couple of the places she worked she was "the only girl in the kitchen", she says, and from there, "did actively look for restaurants that had a higher number of women in the kitchen, because having a mix of people actually makes everything better.

"And it’s definitely changing, slowly but surely, because, I think especially women, we’ve all had enough. We’re not getting shouted out anymore."

Now O’Toole has three cookbooks under her belt, including her latest – Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cookbook.

"If the pandemic never happened, I don’t think I never, ever left my job, so I’m super lucky to be in this position," she notes.

Potatoes, as it happens, are great in a slow cooker. O’Toole recommends making dauphinoise (a French dish of layered sliced potato with cream) in there. "It’s a little bit more relaxed than the usual dauphinoise. You can throw everything in and leave it to do its thing, and it means you can make loads of it as well – everyone wants more of the potato side at dinner."

Alternatively, "Before you go to bed, line the slow cooker with foil, put some cubes of potato in, just chuck them in. You can put bits of sausage, bacon, pepper, onion… leave it on and in the morning, especially for a weekend, you have this lovely base for a delicious potatoey breakfast. You can serve that up with a fried egg on top or baked beans."

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Just as air fryers have been having a social media moment, O'Toole says she noticed the slow cooker trend take off on TikTok – and unlike in the past, it’s year-round. "It’s a piece of equipment I think everyone has in the back of the cupboard, and I’ve done the same thing as everybody else, once a year when it starts to get cold I get it out and use it."

But now, "It’s had a renaissance. It’s really come back in, and that kind of reignited my love for it.

"You kind of think of it as your nan or your mum getting the slow cooker out. But this is young families and young people doing it."

Slow cookers – which cook food on a low temperature and for a long period of time, even overnight – have a lot of practical advantages when it comes to time and money saving.

"As soon as I know that I’ve got people coming over, it’s going on because it means that I have less prep to do, less washing up, and I can feed loads of people," says O’Toole. "It’s so good for families, you can batch cook and freeze it and defrost it when you need to.

Plus, they’re more energy efficient than a full oven – "I think they’re a bit underrated."

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As well as the soups (think laksa and French onion soup) and slow cooked meats (like beef bourguignon and lamb shanks), there are some things in her latest book you might not expect can be made in the kitchen device, like extra silky two-hour hot chocolate or the TikTok trend for birria tacos (O’Toole has a turkey version).

Despite her many years in fine dining, O’Toole’s TikTok fame taught her "the way that people want to eat at home and the food people really need.

"Everyone is looking for ease and tips and tricks, whereas in Michelin restaurants we’re always looking for that level of serious perfection. It has to be elevated to a certain point to make it different from what we can get at home.

"At the end of the day, everyone just loves delicious home-cooked food."

Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Slow Cooker Cookbook by Poppy O’Toole is published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Photography by Haarala Hamilton. Available now.