Blake Lively's Hairdryer Kitchen Hack Is A Germaphobe's Worst Nightmare
Where were you when you learned that Blake Lively dries cake icing, among other things, with her hairdryer? During an August 25, 2026, appearance on "This Morning," former "The Great British Baking Show" judge Dame Prue Leith had many germaphobes up in arms when she spilled the tea on having the Hollywood actor make a guest appearance on her own cooking and lifestyle show, including the unusual tactic she employed during their time together on the reality television cooking competition series. "Yes, and she dries the icing with a hairdryer," Leith told the hosts.
@thismorning Blake Lively defrosts food with a HAIRDRYER?! 😳 Prue Leith reveals the Hollywood star's rather unusual kitchen hack.
During Season 3, Episode 11 of "Prue Leith's Cotswold Kitchen," Leith and Lively started talking about microwaves. Lively shared that she didn't have a microwave at home "because it's too tempting to use it." Leith responded that she mainly uses hers for defrosting, and that's when the conversation took a turn. "I use a hairdryer for that," Lively declared. "When you don't have a microwave, you have to resort to that."
As one can imagine, Leith's revelation about Lively's unconventional kitchen hack sent hygiene-conscious viewers spiraling. "Hair is gonna be all over that food just like her little visit to her local bakery," one user quipped in the comments section. Meanwhile, another wrote, "Bleugh ... Omg could she be more disgusting." Even Leith, ever the professional, appeared perplexed by Lively's on-camera admission. "Novel use for a hairdryer, I must say," she noted in the episode. The hairdryer may just be the dirtiest thing in Lively's kitchen!
Blake Lively's kitchen hack puts raw meat squarely in the danger zone
So why exactly is Blake Lively's hairdryer kitchen hack a germaphobe's worst nightmare? For starters, hairdryers emit an uneven amount of heat, which puts raw meat squarely in the "danger zone." According to the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, this is anywhere between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. "When food cools down or is heated up to these temperatures, this can result in a large increase in microorganisms by 100 to 1,000 times within a few hours," food scientist Bryan Quoc Le explained to HuffPost in 2024. Simply put, just like you should never thaw meat on the counter, you shouldn't thaw it with a hairdryer. There are plenty of other safe ways to thaw chicken and other raw meats, like in cold water or the microwave.
Alas, what makes Lively's kitchen confession even worse is that her trusty hairdryer trick could be contaminating the food with particulate matter. In a 2021 study published in Environmental Science & Technology, hairdryers were found to be releasing ultrafine iron, carbon, copper, and even silver nanoparticles — all things you do not want on your food! "The penetration of silver nanoparticles is dangerous to consumers because they have the ability to relocate in the human body after digestion," Mengshi Lin, associate professor of food science, said in a 2013 article for the University of Missouri while discussing his research on how the toxic nanoparticles get on our food. "Therefore, smaller nanoparticles may be more harmful to consumers than larger counterparts."
Blake Lively is no stranger to kitchen critiques
Unfortunately, this isn't the first time Blake Lively's been taken to task for her kitchen prowess (or lack thereof). On August 23, 2026, a mere two days before her 39th birthday, she took to Instagram to show off a carousel of photos of her making a fanciful cake covered in pastels of pink, purple, and blue that she aptly dubbed the "candy chaos cake." While she was careful to turn the comments off, internet users still flocked to all corners of the internet to sound off. "With a side of hair," one Reddit user wrote, referencing the video of her decorating the cake while strands of her long, flowing locks flirted dangerously close to the confection. Meanwhile, another added the comment, "With a side of spit. She was using her mouth to blow some sort of sparkle sugar all over the cake," along with the nauseated face emoji.
To be fair, though, it appears that Lively did not give this particular cake her infamous hairdryer treatment. In the caption, Lively revealed that she only "loves whipped cream icing," and because of that, it "makes it a race against time to decorate and serve, makeshift rolled parchment airbrusher and all." Given that piece of information, if she had pulled out her trusty hairdryer to dry the whipped icing on this cake, it would've simply melted right off.