Where the Robots Keep Losing. Food automation has gotten very good at the boring parts. Machines can portion dough to the gram, keep a fryer at exactly the right temperature, and repeat the same motion…
Mohammad Amiri on UnsplashSaffron is the stigma of a purple crocus, and every flower carries exactly three of them. They come out by hand in the hours after the bloom opens, because sun and heat…
Written Into the Rulebook. Most food law covers safety and labeling. A smaller set of rules does something odder, freezing an old production method in place so that a famous name belongs only to producers…
Leah Newhouse on PexelsYou take a big gulp of your milkshake, and you feel it—that ache shooting all the way up to the top of your head. What is that? Well, you know what it…
When Dinner Smelled Like Fall. Fall at Grandma's house always announced itself from the kitchen before you even bothered to walk in. Apples came home by the bag, root vegetables filled the pantry, and the…
Grandma Didn't Need Another Gadget. Modern kitchens are packed with gadgets promising to save us from all the little jobs that eat up time during meal prep. Well, we hate to break it to you,…
The Ground Does the Work. Putting food in a hole sounds like something you'd do to get rid of it. For most of human history, the ground doubled as one of the most reliable cooking…
A Healthier Lunchbox. We know: packing lunch for your kids can be a headache. You want to cater to their individual tastes while avoiding anything too sugary or unhealthy, while also making sure you maintain…
Your Health Inspector Would Faint. Every culture had to figure out how to keep food from spoiling long before refrigerators existed, and some of the solutions meant putting bacteria, mold, and even insects to work.…
