Gwyneth Paltrow has sparked a surprisingly heated food debate after revealing her unusual and slightly bizarre dairy-free cooking hack on television earlier this week, and it has seriously divided people.
While appearing on the Today Show to demonstrate her turkey meatball recipe, the Goop founder shared that instead of adding cheese, she sometimes uses finely chopped rocket leaves as a substitute.
“If you want to avoid dairy, one trick that I do is I dice up arugula [rocket], and I put it in,” she explained. “It sounds weird, but it kind of adds like a nice texture to it, and it’s delicious.”
People quickly flooded social media with comments ranging from confusion to outright horror, with many insisting that rocket and cheese are definitely not interchangeable. Others joked that it sounded like the sort of substitution you’d make after discovering your fridge was completely empty. 😂
To be fair to Gwyneth, she never claimed rocket tastes like cheese. Her point was more about texture, particularly in dishes like meatballs where cheese is often added for richness and softness. Rocket does bring a peppery flavour and some moisture when finely chopped, although whether that’s enough to satisfy cheese lovers is another matter entirely.
And while the internet has wholeheartedly rejected the idea, it’s probably not the strangest ingredient swap we’ve seen in recent years. Plenty of cooks already bulk out meatballs with grated vegetables, spinach or herbs, so rocket isn’t completely out of left field.
Mel is the Senior Food & Drink Writer for Good Housekeeping UK, covering all the delicious new product launches that come her way, writing about food and drink topics, and curating gift guides for the best foodie products to buy. Alongside that, she can be found developing and creating cocktails for GH and holds her WSET Level 2 in Wine and Spirits. She was part of the Good Housekeeping Institute food testing team for over four years before moving over to the digital side, so knows a thing or two about great food products. You'll find her scouring the supermarket shelves in her spare time for new and exciting ingredients to experiment with in her kitchen.
