The hiss of oil meeting a hot pan and the scent of sizzling portobello mushrooms filled Jester’s basement kitchen. A dozen hands moving in a chaotic rhythm, chopping, stirring and filming as someone yells, “You just poured boiling water in the trash can!”
This isn’t a restaurant or a cooking class. It’s Pumped Up Cooking, a community cooking show on Instagram designed to bring people together over food. Founded by freshman business majors Zubin Sawhney and Piyush Chintalwar, the show began their high school senior year as a way to meet everyone in their graduating class.
“We come from Allen, (TX), so we (had) a really big high school, and we wanted to meet every single person we could before we left because it felt wrong to graduate with so many people that we didn’t know,” Chintalwar said. “We basically went through our Instagram following list, clicked on a random person’s name and DM’ed them ‘Hey, do you wanna cook?’”
A spontaneous idea soon turned into a tradition — guests picking a recipe, shopping for ingredients and spending hours cooking together. When Zubin and Piyush graduated and arrived at UT, the two decided to bring their recipe for connection with them.
“Allen was a big school, but (UT) is just so much bigger,” Sawhney said. “Coming to Austin gets a little intimidating. There are so many people, but Pumped Up Cooking was a comfort zone where we for sure knew how to make friends.”
Anya Bhuta, a statistics and data science freshman, joined Pumped Up Cooking as a recurring guest earlier this year. She said by the end of filming, guests don’t just remember the meal but the friendships made.
“It’s always a spontaneous time for hanging out with friends and meeting new people, or eating good food,” Bhuta said. “It could be anything, sometimes they even go to restaurants and film there, it’s not just that they make the food. They also experience food. So it’s always a good experience, no matter what.”
While Pumped Up Cooking may feel like another student org designed to bring people together, Chintalwar said that the connections they find are deeper.
“I feel like cooking is such an intimate activity,” Chintalwar said. “Every time we cook with people, we learn so much about them that you can’t do at coffee chats (or) info sessions.”
Sawhney and Chintalwar said they hope to expand their show, reaching even more students. Pumped Up Cooking’s most recent episode featured a collaboration with Kupid Dating Show and host Evan Rama, with two teams competing to cook a better dish to win over a girl.
After collaborating with Kupid Dating, Chintalwar said he hopes to reach other UT influencers, and one day, Arch Manning.
“We also wanted to find a way where we can expand Pumped Up Cooking that could help different organizations (and) communities to get to know more diverse people,” Sawhney said.
Though some guests discover Pumped Up Cooking through Instagram, others stumble in through mutual friends, staying for stories shared over gingerbread house contests. Regardless of how they get there, on a campus of 50,000, one thing is clear: a good meal goes a long way.
Dining and Cooking