Pittsburgh chef making homemade pasta going viral on social media
Ryan Peters went viral for simply making homemade pasta for his wife in 2020. The dish turned out really good, he said.
“For the next 64 nights, I made homemade pasta,” he said. “I became obsessed with it. I posted on social media. It became my thing, trying to make it better each time.”
In January, he took his pasta making to the next level — he decided to double the number of eggs in successive pasta-making sessions, record it, and then post it on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
All that doubling added up to 4,096 eggs.
Yes, 4-0-9-6.
“It was quite the undertaking,” said Peters, known as PetersPasta on social media.
He now has about 5.5 million followers across all platforms — 4.4 million on TikTok, 1 million on YouTube and 213,000 on Instagram.
The post with the 4,096 eggs exploded with 91.3 million views — 52.2 million on TikTok, 28 million on YouTube and 11.1 million on Instagram. The whole series has around 1 billion views, Peters said.
The West Mifflin resident is now making pasta videos full-time.
For the 4,000-plus-egg venture, he used donated eggs from Happy Egg Co., a free-range operation based in Arkansas.
“At its core, pasta is really simple — it’s either flour and water or flour and eggs,” Peters said. “When it’s that simple, you have to find the highest-quality ingredients. If you don’t, there’s nothing to hide behind. Happy Egg’s yolks are not only visually beautiful — they taste fantastic, which makes for a harmonious end product.”
Peters, a Reading native, has worked as a chef in fine dining restaurants. He started the pasta program at Iron Born Pizza in Millvale and the Strip District. He was a sous-chef at Fish nor Fowl in East Liberty.
In late 2020, Peters’ brother visited and told him about TikTok. Peters just had an Instagram account at the time.
“I was like, ‘what is this TikTok?’ ” Peters said. “I posted about making cavatelli (small pasta shells) for six seconds and it got half a million views. I thought I just got lucky, so I posted another video, and it got even more views. I thought, ‘There is something here.’ ”
He was tentative about doing this as a full-time profession — he and his wife just had a baby, and as a new dad, he didn’t want to jump into a career that might not be successful.
But then sponsors started rolling in, asking him to wear a certain apron or use a specific knife or try various sauces.
Happy Egg is also partnering with Peters to give a year of free eggs to two people. Whitney Fortin, vice president of marketing at Happy Egg, said via email her company came across Peters using its eggs in his content.
“Just like the rest of his millions of followers, we were mesmerized watching his videos and seeing his creations,” Fortin said. “Ryan understands the difference that a quality ingredient like our Heritage eggs makes. He is joyful, deeply caring for his community and yet doesn’t take himself too seriously.”
For the 4,096-egg pasta batch, he and volunteers hand-cracked and separated each egg. It took roughly 48 hours. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ and Penguins’ mascots helped Peters stir the 160-plus pound bowl of yolks into a mound of flour. The dough was kneaded into about 65 balls, which yielded about 300 pounds of pasta.
He donated the pasta to Light of Life Rescue Mission on Pittsburgh’s North Side, Second Harvest Community Thrift Store’s Community Free Fridge in Sharpsburg and Outreached Arms in Downtown Pittsburgh.
The egg whites were donated to a local bakery, and the shells were given to North Hills Community Outreach in Hampton for use in its garden for compost.
Bonnie DeMotte, executive director of Second Harvest, said the store partnered with Local Provisions in Fox Chapel, which made sauce and created individual pasta meals.
“It is such a wonderful thing he is doing,” DeMotte said. “We all have a mutual respect for food and the commitment to getting food to the people who need it most.”
Peters said, as a creator, making videos for the internet is great and fun, but “I wanted to make a bigger impact and give back to my community in some way.”
He wanted to feed people who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, which is “a small choice that makes a big difference,” said Peters, a graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Academy of Culinary Arts.
Would he double the eggs again, for 8,192?
“The short answer is no,” he said. “But I said I would stop a few times before I got to 4,096, and I didn’t. So you never know.”
Follow Peters on social media — Instagram and TikTok and YouTube.
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a TribLive reporter covering the region's diverse culinary scene and unique homes. She writes features about interesting people. The Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist began her career as a sports reporter. She has been with the Trib for 26 years and is the author of "A Daughter's Promise." She can be reached at jharrop@triblive.com.
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