Getting caught up in the mania that is the Food Network and Cooking Channel is really easy. You can have either channel in the background as you are working on other things.
You will hear about the restaurants cooking up local ingredients on those shows but what about those local growers.
Tastemakers is a 13-episode series running on PBS looks at those local growers. Host Cat Neville takes us all across the United States takes us inside to the growing practices so we learn what makes these food creators that much more special.
Fermentation, ice cream, oils, seafood, and cheese are some of the fun topics. We even find out about heliculture, a fancy word for snail farming.
In the first episode, we learn about seam butchery that follows the seams of the muscles to the bone. Traditional butchery has cross cuts that produce multiple muscle groups. Seam butchery isolates those muscles so that the meat is one muscle.
Seam butchery cuts costs by giving customer exactly what they want. Traditional butchery might produce tough and not-so-tough meat, so you have to choose between overcooking and undercooking a part of the meat.
"I'm Cat Neville and I've been telling the story of local food for about 20 years. In that time, I've seen the American food movement explode in tiny towns and big cities from coast to coast. In Tastemakers, I explore the maker movement and take you along for the journey to meet the makers who define the flavor of American cuisine."
Neville's presentation style is more of a guide letting the farmers and makers speak to their process. She is laid-back but speaks up when needed to guide the narrative. Neville follows the path of products with pleasant surprises.
In a tofu episode, we learn about okara, a byproduct from tofu making. Loyola University in Chicago studies how the okara can help out other growing processes.
Some episodes show more rural settings and then find restaurants that use the products. Other episodes are set in urban settings, such as an episode about a tofu company in Chicago and shipping containers turned into hydroponics in Boston.
The series has a wide variety of episodes. If fermentation or oils aren't your scene, you might be more into bread making or charcuterie.
The series showcases solutions that are rather incredible and awe-inspiring. Broken Arrow Ranch in Ingram, TX, harvests game on Texas ranches in a humane, sustainable way. They have a government meat inspector on site in a portable mini-lab that ultimately improves the finished product and reduces the suffering of the animals.
You can gather more information about the show and its episodes. You can also nudge your local PBS station to show the program if it's not on in your market.
photos credit: Tastemakers TV show
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