The 27-year-old says the dish in his latest Instagram video, spaghetti all’assassina, is supposed to be burnt, after followers teased him about singed recipes.
Brooklyn Beckham has answered online comments claiming he routinely burns his food, posting a clip of himself cooking the Italian dish spaghetti all’assassina. The 27-year-old shared the video on Instagram, showing him making the sauce and then cooking raw pasta in the pan. His caption read: “For all the lovely comments about me always burning my food this pasta is supposed to be burnt soooooo.” The dish is traditionally cooked until the spaghetti develops a charred crust.
The video and the reaction
Mr Beckham, who has called himself Peltz Beckham since marrying Nicola Peltz in 2022, gave his followers a thumbs up as he tasted the finished dish. Some commenters criticised the absence of fresh garlic and his use of jarred tomato sauce, though many said it looked appetising.
One commenter, Roxana, wrote: “Those who don’t know, spaghetti all’assassina is a typical plate in Puglia region of Italy, and this is a quite good representation of the recipe. So calm down everyone, it’s delicious.”
Why the pasta is meant to be burnt
Spaghetti all’assassina is a speciality of Bari, in Italy’s Puglia region. Unlike conventional spaghetti, it is cooked directly in a frying pan with tomato sauce, which lets the strands form a dark, crispy crust. The charred texture and spicy flavour are central to the dish rather than a sign that it has been spoiled.
The technique differs from ordinary pasta cooking. Instead of boiling the spaghetti in a large pot of water, the cook adds tomato broth gradually, in a process similar to making risotto. The pasta fries against the hot pan between additions of liquid, producing crunchy edges and a concentrated tomato flavour.
The recipe dates back to the 1960s and is widely associated with the restaurant Al Sorso Preferito in Bari, where it is said to have been created in 1967. There is a distinction between deliberate charring and burning the sauce. The spaghetti should develop caramelised, crispy patches, but the tomato sauce should not turn bitter from excessive burning. That, the source says, explains why some viewers see the dish as burnt while others recognise it as an authentic preparation.
A previous pasta row
Mr Beckham has previously drawn criticism over another pasta dish, for which he used seawater in the recipe. That video was filmed aboard a yacht in 2025, before he publicly cut ties with his parents, Sir David and Victoria Beckham. He was seen scooping the pasta water from the sea. Commenters were horrified, partly because of concerns about the state of UK waterways, although he appeared to be in the Mediterranean at the time.
Cooking ambitions
In 2021, Mr Beckham launched an eight-episode online cooking series, Cookin’ With Brooklyn. The former photographer met chefs including Nobu Matsuhisa, Nancy Silverton and Roy Choi, taking inspiration from them for a dish they then prepared together. His latest video continues a longer-running attempt to build a public identity around cooking.
At the time, he said he found cooking “therapeutic and really calming”. He said: “I always have so much going on in my head, I’m always stressed about something, but cooking, especially doing something like making fresh pasta, making stuff from scratch, is the one thing I’ve found where I don’t think about absolutely anything else.”
He added: “It’s just me, the food, the plate, and whoever I’m cooking it with: my friends, Nicola, Nicola’s family, my family.” He said: “I just enjoy making people happy.”
