Recent Posts

Drumsticks are my favorite cut of chicken to grill. The meat has plenty of flavor, which means the a good char is complementary rather than overwhelming. They are also much harder than chicken breast or steak to overcook; along with chicken wings, they simply don’t dry seem to dry out the way many other cuts...

Pictured above: the bowl of ice cream I ate immediately after writing this. If I told you that ice cream was healthy, would you believe me? What if I got more specific and said studies have shown that regularly eating ice cream reduces your chances of developing type 2 diabetes? What if I told you...

This time of year the grass is sweet and green, perfect for grazing, but it grows so fast the herd can never keep up. The trouble is that pasture isn’t consistent. After the spring flush — the wonderful period of prolific growth we’re in the middle of now — it will slow down, make seed...

Stir fry is delicious. Done properly, it consists of meat and veggies sliced paper thin, cooked in small batches in a screaming hot wok, then served and eaten immediately. The heat and the speed combine for tender meat and crispy veggies kissed with a lightly charred flavor that recalls the grill. And this is the...

Over the past month or so I’ve received a bunch of calls and emails asking me this. I’ll get the answer out of the way quickly: no, they are not. There are no mRNA vaccines authorized for use in cattle, at least not in the U.S. But the idea is clearly ubiquitous. The National Cattlemen’s...

“Carbon Positive by 2025!” reads a line of text on a carton of Horizon Organic Milk, a claim I’ve been seeing more frequently on the products of both large and small companies. Perhaps you have too. If so, I am here as the bearer of bad news. I aim to convince you that your default...

One beautiful day in late April during my senior of high school I made a plan with my friend Mark. During our next period we would ask our teachers if, considering how nice the weather was, we could go play frisbee for half an hour. While this line of argument did somehow spring him from...

In an increasingly homogenized food system, chartreuse stands out, both because it has three centuries of history and because it is bizarre. Compounded from a secret blend of hundreds of herbs, sugar, and alcohol, the liquor is sweet, pungent, bitter, and complex. Carthusian monks sworn to vows of silence produce it. Its story is interwoven...

When an alcoholic spirit is aged in a wood barrel, an interesting process takes place. Because wood is porous, over time a small amount of the liquid inside a barrel will pass through the walls and evaporate. This is an extremely slow, but over the course of years the amount adds up. While more water...

I read a recent report about Canadian super pigs with great interest. They sound pretty intimidating — a result of hybridization between wild boar and domestic pigs, these porkers are big and smart enough to survive brutal winters. They build snow forts. They are eerily smart. Their numbers are growing, and they will soon be...