YouTube star and food fanatic Hannah Hart is combining her passions for cuisine and history in a new series for BuzzFeed’s Tasty on Facebook Watch.
The eight-episode show, “Edible History,” premieres Sunday, May 19, at 8 a.m PT, on BuzzFeed’s Tasty Presents show page on Facebook Watch, with episodes released weekly.
In each episode (7-12 minutes each), Hart, who rose to fame with her popular YouTube series “My Drunk Kitchen,” talks to food historians and recreates ancient recipes using techniques and tools from that time period — including a 2,000-year-old cheesecake recipe and tamales from the time of the Maya civilization.
“I’ve always had curiosity about the people who created the recipes,” Hart told Variety. “We thought, what’s a fun way to combine my love of history with my love of f—ing around in the kitchen?”
Tasty has grown to become BuzzFeed’s biggest property on Facebook, with nearly 100 million followers. After building viral popularity with its trademark the top-down recipe videos, Tasty has expanded into longer-form content with original series like “I Draw, You Cook” and “Eating Your Feed,” housed on the Tasty Presents page on Facebook (4.2 million followers) as well as Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube.
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For Tasty, its pact with Hart brings a well-known internet personality into the programming mix. Her show is part of BuzzFeed expanding the franchise into new areas — and, ideally, to keep viewers watching video for longer periods of time (and generate more ad revenue). BuzzFeed also has made its core Tasty recipe videos longer: Originally, they were in the sub-60-second range, but now run 5-10 minutes (or longer).
“Edible History” was produced at BuzzFeed’s L.A. studios, and show Hart prepping the old-timey recipes with the Tasty top-down shot.
In the premiere episode, she recreates a 700-year-old lasagna. “The lasagna episode was pretty shocking. What ends up being made was almost like a desert,” she said. “Lasagna as it was first created, it was not this heaping saucy cheesy thing.”
Other foodstuffs on the menu: cheesecake, croissants, ice cream, tamales, burgers, wonton, and pretzels. “The croissant also really blew my mind. The shiny, flaky quality of the croissant didn’t come until much later,” said Hart. “What I made looked like a hard biscuit.”
Hart, who is repped by UTA, has penned several best-selling books, including her memoir “Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded.” She’s appeared in films “Camp Takota” and “Dirty 30” and had her own show on the Food Network, “I Hart Food,” which aired in 2017. She’s also teamed up with Ellen DeGeneres’ Ellen Digital Network for “A Decent Proposal With Hannah Hart,” in she helps orchestrate larger-than-life marriage proposals.
Watch the teaser trailer for “Edible History”: