“Smiles are contagious. Happiness is contagious. Attitude is contagious.”
Food is also contagious.
In 1990 a woman from Mississippi, named Robin Chapman, made a simple pot roast. She put a beef chuck in the slow cooker, topped it with a packet of dry ranch dressing mix, a packet of dry “au jus” gravy, some butter, and a few pepperoncini, left the setting on low, and walked away.
The recipe, with its unlikely ingredients, would eventually become known as the Mississippi pot roast, and one of the most popular recipes on the web. Although slow at first, more people began sharing images of this roast in droves on all major social media platforms. Today this has been pinned over one million times.
Any student of Jonah Berger‘s, professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of Business, would know that the recipe’s novelty factor was the initial reason people shared it, but ultimately it was its practical value that made it go viral. Mississippi Pot Roast, “the roast that owns the internet”, proved itself to be superbly delicious and useful, especially on weekdays when cooking is more time-sensitive, which in turn encouraged people to recommend and share it with friends and strangers alike. You see, unlike the modern social media antagonists (1850’s version of Know-Nothings ) who use the internet to take out their anger and frustration on random strangers, a lot of people use the digital world to help each other out. Despite what it may look like at times kindness is still a thing.
Mississippi Pot Roast is precisely what one might anticipate, a tangle of soft and luscious beef with a low vinegar zip from the pickled peppers. But we use less butter and as you might expect, we upped the heat with jalapeno pepper rings. Cook our recipe with a side of blue cheese mashed potatoes, which in my humble opinion, is to die for.
Enjoy your meal and pass along the recipe to your neighbor.
