New & Now – FoodWatcher

Can Cheese Combat Climate Change?

The threat of climate change loomed large above Vermont’s 2022 Cheese Summit. I was invited to the event to taste and learn about local cheeses, made by the state’s eclectic roster of producers—and I did so, gladly. But as the weekend wore on, it became increasingly clear that, despite the event’s hyper-local focus, Vermont’s cheese producers are tackling a far bigger question: What will cheesemaking look like in a warming world? According to them, dairy just might be the thing that saves us all.

Thanks to their methane-rich belches, cattle are the largest producers of agricultural greenhouse gasses on the planet. Almost half of the land in the United States is used for livestock, and overgrazing of these areas leads to poor soil quality and decreased biodiversity. Meanwhile, the dairy industry has consolidated, replacing smaller farms and producers with corporate mega-farms. As organizations like Milk With Dignity and projects like Milked: Immigrant Dairy Farmworkers in NY State have documented, these systemic changes combined with falling milk prices have led to increasingly poor, unsafe, and hazardous conditions for farmworkers—especially those facing undocumented status.

87,000 Pounds of Ready-to-Eat Meat Products Are Recalled

Before you prepare pulled pork sandwiches or sausage and peppers for dinner tonight, check the meat in your fridge. Behrmann Meat and Processing Inc has recalled 87,382 pounds (nearly 44 tons) of assorted ready-to-eat pork and beef products, due to possible listeria contamination. The various meat items were produced from July 7, 2022 to September 9, 2022 and were distributed to retailers in Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri.

The list of ready-to-eat products includes, but is not limited to, pulled pork in BBQ sauce, blood sausage, cured pork hocks, bacon strips, beef weiners, smokehouse butterfly chops, sweet teriyaki beef sticks, boneless cured ham, pre-cooked bratwurst, bologna, and hot head cheese. The recalled products include the establishment number “EST 20917” inside the USDA mark of inspection. At this time, there have been no reported illnesses associated with the recall. A complete list of recalled products, including the lot numbers, can be found here.

Socca Is the Crêpe of the South

The French, by and large, do not eat standing up, though there are a few exceptions to this largely unspoken rule: the quignon of a warm baguette, torn off and consumed as the loaf is transported home. Petit gris snails, which, in Occitanie, are grilled over vinewood, flambéed with lard, skewered on metal picks, and shuttled straight into the mouth, chased with cold rosé. And then there’s socca, the three-ingredient chickpea flatbread of Nice, destined to be consumed hot and fresh as you wend your way through a local market.

Unlike wheat-and-egg-based crêpes or buckwheat galettes, which hail from northwestern Brittany, socca begins with a base of chickpea flour, water, and olive oil. Ladled onto an olive oil-greased copper pan as wide as the socca-maker’s wingspan will allow, it’s baked in a wood-fired oven, emerging crisp on the bottom and as tender as a good Yorkshire pudding within. And according to Niçois culinary historian Alex Benvenuto, it’s a specialty best eaten “seasoned heavily with pepper and very hot, and, of course, with the fingers.”

The Best Shelf-Stable Emergency Foods, Tasted & Explained

Floods in Kentucky. Fires out west. Hurricane season in the South. And with winter right around the corner, it’s time to consider how prepared you are for natural disasters. The CDC recommends Americans have, at any given time, at least a three-day supply of water and food that doesn't require refrigeration or cooking. That kind of cushion, said FEMA experts in an interview, can give you enough time to figure out your next move in the event of an emergency.

"If you're buying a case of soup or a big container of Jif peanut butter from Costco, you're prepping," said Eric Christianson of Nutrient Survival, whose company entered the so-called “emergency food market” in 2020. "A lot of people think it's about fear or panic, but it's about being prepared and being smart about it, especially if you have family, elderly, kids, [or] pets. You need to be ready."

Why Is Umami So Hard to Describe?

Chef Kevin Tien started cooking professionally 15-odd years ago, around the time umami, the pleasantly savory fifth taste, catapulted into the national conversation after scientists identified umami taste receptors on the human tongue. If you’d asked T…

As a Vietnamese kid growing up in Louisiana, Tien’s umami took such savory, nostalgic forms as bun bo hue (spicy beef and pork noodle soup) and bo kho (slow braised beef stew with warm spices and lemongrass), and that of Southeast Asian home cooking brimming with fresh mushrooms and tomatoes, and seasoned with fish sauce and MSG.

A New Purple Tomato Will Hit Produce Departments in 2023

Depending on your tastes, your favorite variety of tomato probably ranges from a red Beefsteak to a green Zebra to even a yellow Grape. One thing’s for sure: your go-to type of tomato probably isn’t purple.
But thanks to a recent announcement by the U…

But thanks to a recent announcement by the US Department of Agriculture, that could very well change within the next year. In a press release shared earlier this month, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service decreed that a genetically-modified purple tomato is “unlikely to pose an increased plant pest risk compared to other cultivated tomatoes,” and therefore “may be safely grown and used in breeding in the United States.”

This Is Why There’s a Fish Head on Your Rosh Hashanah Table

It was the moment we’d all been waiting for—or more accurately, slightly dreading: time to consume the fish heads. My mom picked them up from the fishmonger that morning, and they’d sat in a plastic, ice-filled bag on the counter, my siblings and I giving it a wide berth. Now, gleaming, silver-scaled and freshly cooked, they were being carried out on an intricate platter. With gaping mouths and glassy eyes, the fish heads took center place on our Rosh Hashanah table. “Dig in,” said my dad.

As a kid, I couldn’t quite get behind the practice of eating fish heads on Rosh Hashanah. I was awed and alarmed, unable to look away from the fishs’ glassy eyeballs, loath to take a bite. Usually, I’d take just a tiny forkful to fulfill my obligations.

Don’t Have a Cow But There’s a Major Butter Shortage

As we enter prime baking season, one essential ingredient may be harder to come by—and more expensive—than in years past: butter.

According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, the quantity of butter in cold storage recently hit its lowest…

As we enter prime baking season, one essential ingredient may be harder to come by—and more expensive—than in years past: butter.

According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, the quantity of butter in cold storage recently hit its lowest level since 2017, thanks to a combination of worker shortages and lowered dairy outputs across U.S. farms. As a result, the price of butter has skyrocketed, climbing 24.6 percent in the last 12 months. As the demand for butter increases during the holiday baking season, these tight supplies (and their accompanying costs) aren’t going anywhere.

Everything You Need to Know About Food52 Pantry

Sebastian Sardo isn’t a fan of whole wheat pasta. It’s hard to find a good one and even when you do, it’s not very good. So Sardo, the brand manager for Food52 Pantry, made it his mission to find a producer of delicious pasta that had the nuttiness and texture of whole wheat pasta with the pleasant taste and all-around appeal of regular pasta. The result is Food52’s slow-dried pasta, which includes bucatini, busiate, linguine, penne, pici, spaghett, and tortiglioni. These six items are part of the Food52 Pantry collection, which officially launches on Thursday, September 22nd.

From Our Shop

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Food52 Tomato Variety Pack $19.99

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Food52 Chocolate Variety Pack $49

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Food52 Flour Variety Pack $35

The collection is over a year in the making. Sardo joined Food52 after a six-year stint as a food buyer for Eataly USA. His first task was to narrow down a list of over 500 wish list ingredients to a handful that Food52 could source, produce, and sell in our shop. The result is 45 pantry staples including extra-virgin olive oil (an everyday version and one for those extra-special recipes), four varieties of flour (all-purpose, bread, cake, and pastry), three types of plump canned tomatoes, four kinds of California-grown rice, an assortment of balsamic and sweet white vinegars, oats, baking chocolate, peanut butter, coffee, and condiments. “We wanted to start with some foundational ingredients that can become part of people’s everyday cooking and go from there,” says Food52 founder Amanda Hesser.

Food52 Pantry Has Arrived! Here Are Alllll the Recipes to Cook & Bake ASAP

The Food52 Pantry is here! We believe that behind every good cook, there’s a great pantry, so we created a collection of the very best products. Think: five varieties of top-notch chocolate; canned Italian tomatoes grown on a co-op farm; hand-packed anchovies and thick tuna fillets; sweet vinegar; organic extra-virgin olive oil; and quite possibly the best dried pasta you’ll ever taste.

Once your pantry is stocked with these everyday essentials, it’s time to cook! The following recipes showcase our knockout products at their very best: anchovy crostini, Buttery Balsamic Chicken, 3-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies, and so much more.