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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Will Alterna-Meats Stupefy Smart Ovens?

One of the benefits of using a connected oven like the June is the fact that the built-in HD camera automatically recognizes the food you’re cooking. Throw in a salmon and the June recognizes it, and helps you cook it perfectly. Even if it doesn’t automatically recognize a food, the touchscreen UI is clear enough that it’s easy to navigate homescreen > seafood > salmon in just a few taps.

But when I was making Beyond Burgers the other night, and the June thought they were regular beef burgers, it occurred to me that the coming wave of alternative, plant-based proteins is going to make things more complicated for the June, and any other appliance that either recognizes your food and/or has pre-set cook functions.

Beyond and Impossible burgers look and even “bleed” like beef burgers, which will bring up a couple of issues for smart cooking appliances. First, the device will have to develop new means for detecting what is placed in it. A fake meat patty will look a lot like a traditional one, yet different from other plant-based patties (like a black bean burger) — how important will it be to automatically tell them apart?

Second, not all “veggie” burgers are made the same. There is a “Veggie Burger” setting on the June, but that is more of an old-school Boca burger. I reached out to June to ask about how it will incorporate items like Beyond and Impossible, and this is what a company rep emailed me back with:

“We do think that Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger will have their own Cook-Programs in the future because of their different composition of protein (Beyond Burger being made of a mixture of pea protein while Impossible Burger is a mixture of wheat protein, potato protein and heme).”

And that’s just burgers! Just about all of the animal proteins we eat now will have a plant-based analog soon enough. Just has its mung bean-based “eggs.” Seattle Food Tech has its wheat-based “chicken nuggets.” And Good Catch is creating plant-based fish.

The June has already made moves to become more of an iPhone-like platform with the recent addition of the dedicated Whole Foods button on its touchscreen to automatically cook items from that grocer. If June creates separate settings for Beyond and Impossible, how far down that rabbit hole will it and other appliance makers go? At what point in popularity does fake salmon need to get before June puts resources into a specialized cook program? And how many brands, each with their own cook program and accompanying on-screen instructions, will June have to include?

Yes, there is probably no greater measure of my privilege than me fretting over how many buttons I’ll need to tap when cooking my plant-based burger in my expensive connected oven. But this isn’t entirely just a thought experiment either. Sales of plant-based foods boomed last year, hitting $3.3 billion, and plant-based meat alternatives are only getting better and cheaper. Any appliance company that makes guided cooking apps, cookware or appliances will have to keep one eye on the market and adapt now to an increasingly diverse plant-based food future.

Seattle Food Tech Raises $1M, Will Ship its Plant-Based Chicken Nuggets this Month

Seattle Food Tech, a startup that creates plant-based “chicken” nuggets, has raised a fresh $1 million in capital from investors including Liquid 2 Ventures, Sinai Ventures Fund, Uphones Capital and VegInvest (h/t Food-Navigator). This brings the total amount raised by Seattle Food Tech to $2 million.

Seattle Food Tech separates itself from other alterna-meat companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible in a few ways. First, the company uses a specialized means of production to better replicate the texture of “real” chicken nuggets through a combination of wheat, oil, chicken flavoring and more. The company says it can implement this manufacturing at large scale production.

Large scale production is important, as unlike its competition, Seattle Food Tech is not going after the consumer market and instead targets commercial customers like school and hospital cafeterias. As my colleague, Catherine Lamb wrote earlier this year:

By opting not to sell their nuggets as a CPG, Seattle Food Tech would be able to offer them at roughly the same cost as meat — around $2 per serving. Lagally says that eventually, once they get their volumes up, they might consider putting their products in large grocery stores, such as Walmart and Costco.

Since the time of that article, Seattle Food Tech’s B2B go-to market strategy remains a smart one as competition in the fake meat space has certainly become more fierce. Next year Beyond Meat will go public, and Impossible will bring its heme-burgers to grocery store aisles. Beyond is already rapidly expanding its product line, and by sticking with institutional customers, Seattle Food Tech can sidestep costly marketing battles with better funded companies.

That strategy seems to be already paying off. Even though Seattle Food Tech has only been around for nine months, the company said in a press release that it will start delivering alterna-nuggets to select customers this month.

We had a chance to taste Seattle Food Tech’s nuggets at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit show here in Seattle, and they were actually pretty good! You can check out the company’s Founder and CEO, Christie Lagally in this video from the Summit, talking about the future of meat:

Plant-Based, Cellular & Sustainable: Exploring The Future of Meat

SKS 2018: These 4 Things Are Defining the Future of the Grocery Store

Mike Lee, founder of food-concept hub Alpha Food Labs, kicked off his Smart Kitchen Summit presentation this morning by talking about cars. Specifically, concept cars that never actually made it to market but were, according to Lee, “a reflection of the aspirations of that time.”

Food is the new Cadillac, it seems, and Lee sees his company as “food’s answer to the concept car.” Alpha Food Labs creates food-centric products that, while they aren’t available on the market right now, could very well wind up on the shelves of retail stores in the future. So he was the perfect fit for a talk at SKS on the future of the grocery store.

Onstage, Lee outlined four trends that are currently shaping the grocery market, and how they’re essential to the future of this sector:

1. Innovation. Specifically, innovation around “creating a frictionless experience for the customer.” Whether it’s delivery via self-driving cars, same-day pickup, or smart labels, new developments are ultimately meant to “chip away at everything that isn’t the core experience,” according to Lee. In other words, new concepts and technologies are meant to reduce any steps and inefficiencies that stand between the customer and the product they want. Think Amazon Go with its cashier-less payments; a model others are now trying to emulate and build upon.

2. Experience. For grocery stores, the future of the physical store is in how successfully companies can turn brick and mortar into a real experience for customers, rather than just a building where shopping takes place. He likened this evolution to movie theaters, who had to change their strategy after the rise of Netflix. Instead of keeping the same creaky chairs and dirty floors, many theaters have begun to offer things like specialty drinks and reclining chairs — things Netflix can’t digitize. Grocery stores will need to use a similar plan of attack for physical stores.

3. Productivity. The idea of where we grow food is changing and redefining the idea of local. Consider companies like Gotham Greens, who grow produce on rooftops of restaurants, making fresh greens easily accessible and cost effective at the same time. Lee also cited cellular agriculture (“cell-ag”) products like cellular meat, which might eventually be “grown” in the basement of restaurants.

4. Personalization. “Personalization is eating everything,” said Lee. For the first time in history, teens spend more money on food than on clothes; a fact that underscores how important food has become the way many people express their identities. Lee referred to dietary preferences as “food tribes.” For example, Paleo is more a lifestyle adopted by a group of people than just a diet. He predicts we’ll see much more of this as consumer products on grocery store shelves continue to evolve.

Check back for more posts throughout the day, and follow along for a steady stream of updates on our Twitter and Instagram feeds.

Beyond Meat’s Sausage Patties are Amazing, and a Smart Play for Breakfast Business

The first thing fans of Beyond Meat (of whom I am one) should know is that the company knows their product is hard to find and they are working on it. Beyond Meat just brought on a second production facility in Missouri to help fill the empty aisles at your local grocery store (except for you, England — sorry!).

The second thing fans of Beyond Meat should know is that its forthcoming sausage patty is, to this writer, the best product the company has created so far. It’s still in development with no announced release date, but after tasting it at the Beyond Meat R&D facility in El Segundo yesterday I’m convinced this product is a game changer in the alterna-meat category. In fact, I think it could bring in a whole new line of business for the company. But more on that in a minute.

Inside the Beyond Meat HQ, you can see the real science behind fake meat. PhDs in lab coats run samples of pea proteins through microscopes, while others try to replicate aromatic meat molecules from the plant world, while still others put patties in a machine that replicates chewing (or biting — two very different things) to test for elasticity. The team there is constantly iterating and running tests to make its plant-based products more meat-like.

Beyond breakfast is served
(photo: Chris Albrecht).
The flavor test to see how people identify sweet, sour, salty and umami
The triangle test, where people try to pick out the one that isn’t llike the others
The Beyond brats, while delicious were a little too perfect
The Beyond burger piled high
Meat-like texture
Frying up the fake sausage

The Beyond Meat tour featured a stop in its kitchen, where the company’s chefs whipped up some their burgers, brats and sausage patties for me to try. These were high-end creations piled with truffles, carmelized onions, pickles, and a variety of delectable sauces. And while all were delicious, the sausage patty really stood out.

Made from peas, mung beans, brown rice and sunflower seeds, the patty faithfully recreated the experience of eating a sausage biscuit from McDonald’s. And I mean that as high praise. It had nice peppery tones that gave the patty’s flavor some depth, the right color and smell, and a crust that gave it that slight crunch. To be honest, it’s a much better simulacra than the Beyond brats, which, while good, were over-engineered to the point of feeling synthetic.

Getting the patty right isn’t just about flavor, though. For Beyond Meat it also means entering into a new category: breakfast foods. Right now, the company offers plenty of options for lunch and dinner; the addition of the sausage patty could lead to people eating Beyond products multiple times a day. (Perhaps a Beyond sausage patty would go well with some JUST plant-based eggs in the morning.)

The Beyond rep didn’t provide a timeline for the patty’s release, but my guess is that it probably won’t be until next year, given that the company is still wresting with its existing supply issues and expanding availability for its sausage brats line.

For fans of Beyond Meat though, the wait will be worth it.

No Substitute: Three Ways Science is Putting a New (and Improved) Spin on Sugar

Though companies have come up with various sugar substitutes over time, none have overthrown the king (and those substitutes might create their own problems). If you can’t beat ’em, you may as well use science to get down on the molecular level and join ’em.

Companies around the world are using various techniques not to replace sugar, but to change the way the substance is made or processed in the hopes of creating a better type of sugar. One that can be incorporated into the products we know, love, and crave, but doesn’t require as much of the sweet stuff.

Quartz has a story out today on DouxMatok, an Israeli startup that is combining sugar with food-grade silica to create a “sweeter sugar.” Evidently, sugar isn’t very good at hitting our taste buds, so food makers cram products full of it to attain their desired level of sweetness. A straightforward reduction in the amount of sugar in a product, then, is difficult to do without sacrificing taste.

DouxMatok gets around this by leveraging silica, which has lots of nooks and crannies that sugar molecules can fill. The sugar-packed silica diffuses more efficiently on our tongues, so food companies can use 40 percent less sugar in their products, without sacrificing the taste. The Quartz piece included a metaphor to help explain:

“Imagine 100 people in a house, each one holding a spoonful of sugar. If you ask them to go from room to room and then deposit the sugar into a jar, some will inevitably drop and spill sugar along the way. This is essentially what happens when you bite into a slice of normal cake. Now imagine one person in the house holding a sealed plastic bag containing the same amount of sugar. They’ll likely get to the jar without spilling any of it. The silica DouxMatok uses operates like the plastic bag.”

The startup just announced a partnership with European sugar company, Südzucker, to manufacture and commercialize Doxmatok’s sugar reduction process.

But Douxmatok isn’t the only company noodling with sugar molecules. Earlier this year, Nestlé unveiled a new sugar reduction technology of its own. They created a process of spraying sugar, powdered milk and water into hot air, which made the sugar develop microscopic holes. When this hole-y sugar hits your tongue, it still tastes as sweet — but all the holes means there’s less of it.

Nestlé debuted the new sugar structure in the Milkybar Wowsome (only available in Europe), which had 30 percent less sugar than comparable bars. The company said back in March that if it catches on (read: fools people well enough), the company will expand the technology into more chocolate brands.

Nutrition Innovation, on the other hand, is taking less of an atomic approach when making its traditional sugar replacement: Nucane. Instead, the company applies near-infrared scanning to raw sugar cane coming into a mill to alter the processing of it (crushing, washing, drying, etc.).

The result of these altered processing techniques is Nucane, which keeps minerals like calcium and potassium, which occur naturally in sugar, but has a lower glycemic index than traditional white refined sugar. Nutrition Innovation says Nucane provides more sustained energy after consumption compared to a sugar spike. Bonus: it can be swapped into existing recipes 1 for 1.

Nutrition Innovation entered into an agreement with Australia’s Sunshine Sugar to sell its Nucane to industrial sugar buyers, and the product is currently being tested by different companies around the world.

Ideally, these new scientific approaches to sugar will live up to their promises and spur even more innovation and investment. If we’re able to enjoy all the sweets with less sugar, the result would be pretty sweet.

Catch Video from the New Harvest Cultured Meat Conference

You can tell a market sector is heating up when it gets its own conference. Cellular agriculture, which includes cultured meat (or lab meat or clean meat or whatever you want to call it) is definitely getting hotter as people gather today and tomorrow at the New Harvest 2018 conference over at MIT.

New Harvest is a non-profit advocacy group for the advancement of research into products like cultured meat, and its conference bills itself as “the world’s first conference dedicated to cellular agriculture.” If you are at all interested in the future of cultured meat and alterna-proteins, this looks like the place to be, with a tremendous lineup of researchers and exhibitors.

Startup activity in the cultured meat space has been downright frothy. Memphis Meats, Mosa Meat, JUST, Aleph Farms, and Supermeat are all working on cultured meat, and even traditional animal protein giant Tyson is getting into the lab meat space with its investment in Future Meat. And that list doesn’t even include the plant-based meat companies coming to market like Impossible and Beyond Meat.

Cultured meat has also caught the eye of the government, with the FDA recently holding a public meeting over what to call cultured meat (as well as the agency’s intent to crack down on which products can be called “milk“). Traditional ranchers and farmers have a beef with these upstarts who want to label their products, well, “beef.” This debate is just beginning, and conferences like New Harvest help push the conversation and research forward to move cellular agriculture from the lab to our tables.

If you can’t be in the Boston area for this weekend’s conference, you can check out video from the talks here. I should note, the video is broadcast via Periscope and the quality is definitely not HD. We’ve embedded a sample below, and you can check out all the talks here courtesy of the Cultured Meat and Future Food podcast.

Got Milk? Are You Sure? Labeling Debate Moves on to Plant-Based Drinks

It looks like the debate over what we label cultured/lab grown/clean “meat” will not be isolated to the deli case. If the comments made by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb today are any indication, there will be another drawn out battle over what we label as “milk.”

Speaking at the Politico Pro Summit today, Gottlieb said that his agency would start more strictly enforcing rules over what can be marketed as “milk.” This could potentially be bad news for companies behind plant-based milks such as soy and almond, etc..

Just last week the FDA held a public meeting on what to label lab grown meat, spurred on in part by complaints from the US Cattleman’s Association which believe only products derived from animals born and raised should be labeled “beef.” The public meeting was a move by the FDA to get ahead of the debate as lab-grown meat is not available commercially yet.

Gottlieb’s comments today reflect just how far behind the curve the FDA is when talking about or enforcing regulations regarding “milk,” as plant-based varietals are pretty well entrenched in supermarkets right now. In fact, non-dairy milk sales have shot up 61 percent since 2012, and new “milk” varietals keep popping up: cashew milk, quinoa milk and even something like Perfect Day is on the way, which makes true milk from yeast.

Much like the cattlemen, dairy farmers are none too happy with these upstarts getting labeled as milk. Last week, 37 state farm bureaus and other agricultural associations sent the FDA a letter rebuking the agency for not enforcing its guidelines when it comes to labeling milk. Among the complaints was that “Plant-based beverages are not held to the same ‘Standards of Identity’ and yet they share in the benefits of using the term ‘milk’ on their packaging.”

Standards of Identity is a key phrase here, and one that Gottlieb mentions in his talk. It’s the rules set out by the government to define what a product is (how many tomatoes need to be in a product to make it “ketchup,” etc.) Gottlieb mentions that in the FDA’s standard of identity for milk, the regulations say it needs to come from a lactating animal. “An almond doesn’t lactate,” he said jokingly.

Gottleib said that up until now, the FDA had not been enforcing its own standard of identity, but will start doing so. But before he can do that, he has to go through some bureaucratic hoops like notification and public comment. This process, Gottlieb said, will probably take a year and he concedes will most likely result in his agency getting sued by those behind plant-based milk, which could extend the process even further.

Though he made the almond lactation quip, Gottlieb seems to understand that the fight over milk is going to be a tough one. He points out that while the FDA has a definition of what milk is, so does the actual dictionary, which Webster’s defines as:

  1. a : a fluid secreted by the mammary glands of females for the nourishment of their young
    b (1) : milk from an animal and especially a cow used as food by people
    (2) : a food product produced from seeds or fruit that resembles and is used similarly to cow’s milk, coconut milk, soy milk
  2. : a liquid resembling milk in appearance: such as
    a : the latex of a plant
    b : the contents of an unripe kernel of grain

You can watch all of Gottlieb’s comments on milk in a queued up video here.

Milk, it seems, will be yet another area of our complicated modern lives that will become controversial and force us to pick sides (I’m Team plant-based MILK all the way!). And it surely won’t end there. As science creates new methods of recreating existing foods (meat, fish, milk, yogurt, ice cream…), established players will fight to hold on to their dominance and do what they can to thwart disruption.

What do you think? Are you pro soy milk, or would you prefer a soy-derived non-dairy beverage?

Finless Foods Raises $3.5 Million for Cultured Bluefin Tuna

Today cultured seafood company Finless Foods CEO & Co-founder Mike Selden wrote a piece on Medium announcing that they had closed a $3.5 million seed round. The round was led by Draper Associates, with participation from Softmatter VC, Blue Horizon, Hemisphere Ventures, Yakumi Investment and more.

In the piece, Selden wrote that this invesment would bring them “to the end of our initial R&D phase,” and give them “the tools necessary to move into production pending the closing of a Series A.”

Finless Foods uses cellular biology to grow fish (and, eventually, other seafood) in bioreactors. They’re doing similar work to Memphis Meats or JUST Foods, but are focused on fish instead of meat. Wild Type is another startup using cellular agriculture to develop seafood (specifically salmon) grown outside the animal, and similarly raised $3.5 million a few months ago.

The company got its start in the legendary IndieBio accelerator program in 2017, where they created the first fish product grown in a lab. They later got investment from Hatch, a Norwegian aquaculture accelerator, as well as Hi-Food, an Italian company focused on sustainability in food.

Their first product will be bluefin tuna, a species which is threatened with overfishing. They plan to bring it to market by the end of 2019 — and with this funding, they just got a lot closer to that goal.

FDA to Hold Public Meeting on Cultured Meat

There has been a lot of activity and investment in the lab-grown meat, or “cultured” meat space in the past year. Enough so that it has attracted the attention of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which announced today that it will be holding a public meeting about cultured meat technology next month.

For the uninitiated, cultured meat is animal tissue grown in a lab setting. It’s typically made through the use of starter cells from the animal, which are then developed in some kind of medium (often fetal bovine serum) in a bioreactor, then scaffolded to provide shape or texture.

Ethical and environmental issues with raising animals for slaughter and consumption have driven much of the competition and advancement in the cultured meat space, with Memphis Meats, SuperMeat, Future Meat, Aleph Farms and JUST among the leaders of this new type of food.

While it was once ridiculously expensive to grow meat in a lab, the large number of players and technological developments in the space are bringing that price down, and it seems that the FDA wants to be fully prepared before cultured meat makes it to the grocery aisle.

A meeting entitled “Foods Produced Using Animal Cell Culture Technology” will be held on July 12 in College Park, Maryland. From the FDA’s site:

The public meeting will give interested parties and the public an opportunity to comment on these emerging food technologies. Specifically, the agency is asking for input, relevant data and information on the following questions:

  • What considerations specific to animal cell culture technology would be appropriate to include in evaluation of food produced by this method of manufacture?
  • What kinds of variations in manufacturing methods would be relevant to safety for foods produced by animal cell culture technology?
  • What kinds of substances would be used in the manufacture of foods produced using animal cell culture technology and what considerations would be appropriate in evaluating the safety of these uses?
  • Are the potential hazards associated with production of foods using animal cell culture technology different from those associated with traditional food production/processing?
  • Is there a need for unique control measures to address potential hazards associated with production of foods using animal cell culture technology?

In a statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., and FDA Deputy Commissioner Anna Abram said that they want to “help foster dialogue regarding these emerging food technologies.” It went on to assert the USDA’s jurisdiction over cultured meat because, well, cultured meat is food, after all.

In reaction to the FDA’s announcement today, The Good Food Institute, which helps promote the work being done on clean meat, released a statement of its own saying “We are heartened to see that FDA is engaged in thinking through how clean meat can come to market under the existing regulatory framework. We are also encouraged that the FDA commissioner has acknowledged the benefits of clean meat, including animal welfare and environmental impacts. The United States has a robust food regulatory regime that is more than capable of ensuring that clean meat is safe and truthfully labeled.”

Speaking of labels, the FDA said this meeting will also include what we should actually label lab-grown meat. Cultured meat has raised the hackles of traditional meat producers who do not want the waters of what we consume muddied. Earlier this year, the United States Cattlemen’s Association filed a petition with the USDA asking for beef labeling requirements. The Cattlemen were specifically asking that “…any product labeled as “beef” come from cattle that have been born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner, rather than coming from alternative sources such as a synthetic product from plant, insects, or other non-animal components and any product grown in labs from animal cells.”

If our recent “Future of Meat” meetup in Seattle is any indication, the public meeting next month promises to be a rousing event, and more importantly, the start of a broader discussion around alternative meats. If you’re going, be sure to drop us a line and tell us how it went.

Tyson Leads $2.2 Million Investment for Israeli Startup Future Meat

Tyson just announced a new name on the list of alterna-meat manufacturers it backs: Future Meat.

Tyson co-led the Israeli based startup’s $2.2 million seed round, in which the Neto Group, S2G Ventures, BitsXBites, and Agrinnovation also participated.

Future Meat manufactures animal fat and muscle cells for meat without ever having to actually raise and slaughter animals, and without genetic modification. Right now, this is a fairly expensive process: current production costs are $10,000 per kilogram, according to the company’s Chief Scientist, Yaakov Nahmias.”We redesigned the manufacturing process until we brought it down to $800 per kilogram today, with a clear roadmap to $5-10 per kg by 2020,” he said in a press release. 

If Future Meat can make that cost efficiency a reality, it could very well be an enormous advantage for the company in terms of how it stacks up to competitors. And as one expert noted earlier this year, price and taste are two crucial factors for any company looking to make an impact in alterna meats.

The company is also looking to get away from using fetal bovine serum, which is widely known as the key to lab-grown meat right now. No doubt some of the new funds—which Future Meat says are for engineering activities and biological research—will go into developing an alternative element. Future Meat is currently looking for engineers, chefs, and scientists.

The company is one of a growing number of startups and initiatives making alternative forms of meat a reality. Memphis Meats, another Tyson investment, also makes lab-grown meat and raised an undisclosed sum at the beginning of 2018. And last summer, JUST (formerly Hampton Creek), said it would bring lab-grown meat to market by the end of this year. There’s also Integriculture, who not only makes clean meat but is also trying to develop “agricultural-scale cell culture” for uses beyond food.

Meanwhile, it seems there’s a “clean meat revolution” happening in Israel. The country is home to not just Future meat, but also SuperMeat, who recently raised $3 million Meanwhile, Soglowek, a big-time meat producer in Israel, just announced its plans to donate 20 percent of profits to SuperMeat, in addition to launching its own plant-based meat label.

None of this is very coincidental, since Israel is both a leader in tissue engineering and home to the largest number of vegans per capita in the world. And with companies like Tyson and Soglowek backing both lab-grown and plant-based meat concepts, it’s looking like the future of meat is less of an either-or scenario and more about finding the most sustainable, cost-effective, and tasty alternative.

 

 

The Joy of Cooking in The Legend of Zelda

“Dad, I think you’re addicted, and you shouldn’t play tonight.”

That’s my seven year old acting like a parent, out of concern that I’ve been playing video games too much lately. He’s not entirely wrong.

We picked up The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch a couple of months back, and I can’t stop playing. It’s a problem. And while there is plenty of action firing bomb arrows at moblins and struggling to solve imaginative puzzles, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game is actually . . . cooking?

Before we get into the culinary quests, though, let’s just say that Breath of the Wild is by far one of the best video games I’ve ever played. It’s a massive world that encourages deep exploration and rewards smart thinking. But the most impressive thing about Zelda is how all the attention to detail intertwines to create an immersive, unified experience. That includes the attention to food. What could have been a one-off, throwaway bit is actually central to how you play (and survive) the game.

There is some main plot to defeat some monster, yadda, yadda, yadda. That’s fine. Most games have that. It’s the discovery that’s much more fun. Zelda is a forager’s dream. Meadows, river banks, beaches and mountaintops all hold items you can pick: mushrooms, apples, honey (but watch out for the bees!), and so much more.

Plus, for the carnivores out there, you can fish and hunt, or visit a local bodega to buy ingredients like rice and milk. And everything you pick up goes into your inventory and can be used throughout the game.

Which is when the real fun begins.

There are stone fire pits scattered across the map. When you come across one you can reach into your inventory and pull out five ingredients. Throw them all in a pot and after a jaunty little song, it reveals your food creation.

At minimum you can throw just mushrooms into the mix and create a simple mushroom skewer, or throw boar meat on for a seared steak. But it’s way more fun to see what you can come up with by mixing and matching. I find myself channeling my inner chef as I spend several minutes examining and handpicking the best ingredients, trying to balance my salty and sweet flavors.

This is for a meal, mind you, in a video game.

IGN has the full list of all the recipes you can make, and they can quickly get all Michelin star-like. For instance: Combine mushroom, a bird egg, goat butter and rock salt to create a mushroom omelette. Throw salmon, rock salt, rice and goat butter together for a Salmon risotto. Then polish the whole thing off with a slice of pumpkin pie made from pumpkin, goat butter, cane sugar and wheat. (That’s a lot of goat butter.)

Even the in-game descriptions of each meal in the game are sumptuous in their own right, and could appear in an issue of Bon Appetit.

What’s interesting, and completely weird for me to type out loud here, is that making meals in Zelda actually makes me want to cook more in real life. I realize that’s insane. If I threw a whole apple, wild honey and a steak into a pot over an open flame the result would be inedible. Not to mention the fact that moblin is totally not in season right now. But in a weird sort of way, my Zelda adventures are making me feel like maybe I could be more adventurous when I cook in real life, too.

I can’t recommend Breath of the Wild highly enough for both gamers and non-gamers alike. It’s fun, and all the foraging, experimenting and cooking is really quite . . . addicting.

Feast Your Eyes on These Weird & Wonderful Instagram Feeds

Ah, Instagram. You keep us entertained in airports, waiting for the bus, and standing in line at the post office. You keep us up to date on our acquaintance’s lives and celebrity’s lives. Sometimes you even inspire us.

If you want to add some delicious, weird, and informative food-focused Instagrams into your feed, we’ve got seven to scroll through.

@smallhold.co: Mushroom lovers, this one’s for you. Smallhold is a subscription-based fungi minifarm, and NYC’s only mushroom farm.

 

@dinarakasko: Pastry chef Dinara Kasko makes crazy beautiful edible geometric sculptures using 3D-printed molds, which she sells on her website.

 

@impossiblefoods: A must-follow for anyone that loves adorable anthropomorphized burgers, bright colors, and Impossible’s plant-based “bleeding” burgers.

 

@kitchensuspension: This Italian account features kitchen ingredients and tools in… suspension. It’s wild and disorienting and a fun “how’d they do that,” though the photos sometimes feature creepy dyed hands.

 

@modcuisine: Wacky, mind-bending, and guaranteed to make you hungry, Modernist Cuisine’s Instagram has some seriously high-class photography.

 

@uglyfruitandveg: Celebrating oddly-shaped produce in all its glory. This Instagram’s goal is to reduce food waste by showing off misshapen produce that would normally be tossed, but it can also be just plain funny.

 

@paulfuentes_design: This Instagram of Mexican artist Paul Fuentes is whimsical and inventive. It makes you look at food not just as an object to be eaten, but one to be played with.

What’s your favorite food-related Instagram account? Did we miss any? Tell us in the comments or on social media at @thespoontech!