While on some days it feels like we’ve been publishing stories for a decade (or at least working on a story’s edits for a decade), 2018 was in fact TASTE’s first full year living and breathing and tweeting on the Internet. In selecting our year’s best work we are highlighting some important topics crisscrossing food and culture (and lasagna). And by no means is this list the final say; we (100% the truth) only publish work that we really, truly feel passionate about. But lists are what they are, and here are 25 stories that stuck in our brains.
In 2018 we looked closely at the cauliflower rice boom and figured out whatever happened to a 1990s food relic, the sun-dried tomato. We assessed the life-affirming blackness of Southern cakes and detailed how canned foods highlight America’s troubled occupation of the Philippines. And we traveled the world to report on industrialized masa harina in Mexico, the struggle for daily tea in Kashmir, the most militarized region in the world, and met Japan’s father of cooking manga. These are a few favorites, and we’re so excited to bring you more from TASTE in 2019. —Matt Rodbard, Editor in Chief
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Do You Eat Dog?
The practice of eating dog meat is at the center of many racist stereotypes about Asians. Is it possible to reexamine both the stereotype and the practice?
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The Tortilla Cartel
The rise of industrial instant corn flour, masa harina, represents not only a gastronomic loss (the stuff tastes lousy), but a death blow to Mexico’s corn heritage.
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What Ever Happened to Sun-Dried Tomatoes?
To some, they are flavor firecrackers and a beloved relic of the past. To others (cough Ruth Reichl) they are “an example of all the worst qualities of tomatoes.”
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Ethiopia and Eritrea’s Long History With Lasagna
Despite its ties to Italian colonialism, lasagna still occupies an important place on dinner tables in the Horn of Africa, and for immigrants settled in the United States.
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The Pickled Cucumbers That Survived the 1980s AIDS Epidemic
A writer returns to a well-worn family recipe card: Richard Hsiao’s Pickled Cukes.
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Night Shift at the New Fulton Fish Market
Scouring the 700,000-square-foot Bronx market for a symphony of seafood. We’re with The Guy.
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What to Expect to Eat When You’re Expecting
In the United States, postpartum medical care is minimal. Increasingly, women are looking to family recipes with healing properties, from moringa to barley porridge.
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100 Cups of Tea in Kashmir
In one of the most militarized regions in the world, tea is both a daily celebration and an everyday struggle.
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Appalachia’s Little Free Pantries That Could
They may be only Band-Aids for the region’s food insecurity, but “blessings boxes” are popping up in more and more parts of Appalachia, dutifully refilled by local pastors, police officers, and anyone with a box of pasta to spare.
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Inside the Cult of Clay Cookware
Make all your food taste better with this one prehistoric trick? Not exactly, but clay-pot cooking has got some rabid fans.
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Caul Me by Your Name
A “malicious and nefarious” grain alternative has got millions of home cooks excited—and corporate flacks and lobbyists a little steamed. But does the rice industry really have anything to worry about?
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The Gay Man Who Brought Tapas to America
The late Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, an immigrant from Peru, may be America’s most anonymous celebrity chef.
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Comfort Me With an Assembly Line of Dumplings
There’s no cure for heartbreak. But Soviet mechanical efficiency and endless pelmeni do help. Some.
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Colonialism in a Can
There’s a shame-free exuberance and practicality in the Filipino transformation of canned food—even as it harkens back to America’s checkered occupation of the Philippines.
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The Year of Lasagna
We live in an era of performative project-cooking. It’s time to bring back the reassuring, unglamorous functionality of a big tray of baked pasta.
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All Hail the Asian Supermarket: An American Institution
A generation of kids of immigrants who moved out to the suburbs have a deep love for these places.
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The Bearded Chef of Akko
For nearly 20 years, Uri Jeremias has been cooking fish and spreading the gospel of Israeli cooking. It’s about time the world listened.
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The Life-Affirming Blackness of Southern Cakes and Pies
Dolester Miles winning the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef is the culmination of a long road traveled for African-American pastry chefs.
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Not All Heroes Wear Capes, and Not All Omelets Have Eggs
Easy to make and even easier to customize, pudla are India’s answer to the omelet. That is, an omelet without eggs.
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Wednesdays at Nguyen Phat
A Rust Belt town’s battle for survival comes down to a single change driver: refugees.
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Permission to Cook Normal Food
A home cook’s ambitions, driven by a sometimes insane and frequently unrealistic food media, yield to blissful mediocrity.
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Japan's Father of Cooking Manga
For 33 years, Cooking Papa creator Tochi Ueyama has taught the comic’s readers that spending time in the kitchen is fun—while quietly subverting Japanese gender dynamics.
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The End of Afghan Cuisine in Pakistan?
Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, is home to a deeply rooted Afghan restaurant scene—one that is now threatened by ongoing tension between bordering countries.
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The Art of Norway's Sit-Down Breakfast
Breakfast is often rushed, over-ritualized on the weekend, or skipped altogether. In Norway, it’s not.
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Cook the Whole Damn Heart
Beef heart is an extremely flavorful cut that is maybe not for the squeamish. But cooking a delicious dinner sometimes takes guts.