Actress Paula Patton is perhaps best known for her starring roles in films such as Mission: Impossible β Ghost Protocol, Adam Sandler’s The Do-Over, and her doomed marriage to Robin Thicke. And hopefully, for her sake, it stays that way, because the 46-year-old went viral this week after sharing her “mom’s famous fried chicken” recipe that has people reacting with a mix of confusion and horror.
Patton posted the recipe in question on Instagram back on March 4, but for whatever reason, the internet is just picking up on it now. We were so close to never having to witness the culinary abomination, but sadly, it’s too late to turn back now.
“Fried chicken day!” Patton exclaims in the video, and things go off the rails pretty quickly. “Organic chicken, cleaned,” she says, though it’s generally not advised to rinse poultry as it can contaminate your kitchen with salmonella. Next, she introduces the ingredients, perplexingly starting out with avocado oil, when canola and peanut oil were right there, along with Lawry’s seasoning salt, organic pepper, organic paprika, and Frank’s RedHot sauce “for later.”
But things continue to go awry from there. Patton dredges her freshly cleaned chicken wings in Ziplock bags full of unseasoned flour before plunking them into the bubbling pan. What, you may be asking yourself, happened to the assortment of seasonings Patton introduced earlier in the video? Well, she sprinkles them on the chicken β as it’s frying in the pan.
Finally, Patton produces a finished chicken wing from the extremely compromised pan of avocado oil, which appears to be both half-burned and yet still pink on the inside. And didn’t she say she was making this for her kid’s school??
At any rate, the video has since blown up on Twitter after Olympic Bronze Medalist Ashley Spencer posted a clip on TikTok along with her reaction. “Paula Patton just ruined my day,” wrote one Twitter user, sharing Spencer’s video.
“Paula Patton really thought that insurrectionist fried chicken was about to be slapping,” quipped Jemele Hill. “Hate to see it.”
Another user called Patton a “biracial miracle” for managing to overseason and underseasoned fried chicken at the same time.
The GIFs and memes were also out in full force. One person used an image of a disappointed Charles Barkley to convert their disappointment of Patton seasoning the chicken while it was in the grease.
“When you show your granny that video of Paula Patton frying chicken,” joked another user.
“Every ethnicity around the world watching Paula Patton fry chicken,” tweeted another person with a shocked reaction GIF.
“When Paula Patton offers a wing,” tweeted yet another user.
Another user referenced Thicke’s public campaign to get Patton back in 2014 after she left him over a cheating scandal.
It’s unclear how Patton feels about the public reception to her fried chicken recipe, but seeing as she’s turned the comments off her post, we can imagine she’s probably not thrilled. Though maybe she can pick up a cookbook and chalk this up to a learning experience.