Air Protein – Startup Uses Space-Age Tech to Create Meat Out of Thin Air

Creating meat literally out of thin air sounds like technology you’d only expect to see in sci-fi movies, but according to Air Protein, it’s very real and viable.

Air Protein, the startup behind the air-based meat project, was co-founded by Dr. Lisa Dyson, an award-winning research physicist and strategy consultant, with the goal of producing meat alternatives. Such plant-based meat alternatives like Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat are all the rage these days and touted as the sustainable future of the meat industry, but Air Protein is taking sustainability to a whole new level with its air-sourced proteins. They are basically relying on a bunch of microbes capable of converting CO2 into amino-acids, with the final product being a protein-based flour that can be used to make a bunch of meatless products.

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Snake and Whole Scorpion Soup – A Dish That Makes You Sweat With Fear

China is famous for many weird traditional foods, but the snake and whole scorpion served in Guangdong province is definitely among the most bizarre and downright scary dishes in the Asian country.

Arachnids and insects have been a part of Chinese cuisine long before the West even considered their nutritious value, but even here scorpion soup is not really considered mainstream. In northern China, deep-fried scorpions skewered like grilled meat are very popular as street stall food, but in the south, the arachnids are preferred as the main ingredient of a soup that also contains chunks of snake and pork meats, as well as a mix of spices. Despite the toxic poison of the scorpion, the dish is actually considered a detox dish.

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Potato Milk, the New Health Drink That’s About to Take the World by Storm

When it comes to dairy alternatives, we already have a lot of “milks” to choose from, but the latest alternative could prove to be a game-changer due to how available and cheap its main ingredient is.

Potato milk doesn’t sound like the most delicious thing in the world, but then again, neither does oat milk or soy milk and look how popular they turned out to be. Not to mention that this new dairy alternative is apparently “deliciously creamy” and works great for homemade lattes and cappuccinos. Plus, the humble potato uses a lot less land and resources than other plants that are currently used for milk, which makes both the vegetable and the milk more affordable.

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Japanese Restaurant Serves Miso Ramen With a Soft-Serve Cone in It

A Japanese restaurant has been getting a lot of attention for its unique Miso ramen dish which comes with a soft serve cone melting in the center of the bowl.

If you were to make a list of ingredients that you think best complement Miso ramen, milk and chocolate soft serve probably wouldn’t be at the top. But that just proves you’re not a gourmet visionary, like the people at Franken, a restaurant in Osaka Japan. On January 4th, Franken started selling its unique sweet-and-sour red miso ramen dish with a soft serve cone melting in it. Apparently, they went through many types of desserts, and the soft serve was just unexpectedly compatible with the ramen dish.

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Olive Wagyu – The World’s Rarest Type of Steak

With only about 2,200 heads of cattle bred specifically for it, of which only a few are harvested every month, olive wagyu is regarded as the rarest type of steak in the world.

The history of olive wagyu is closely tied to that of Shodoshima Island, in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture. Also known as “Olive Island”, because of its microclimate, which is comparable to that of the Mediterranean, Shodoshima is the native home of Japan’s olive cultivation. It’s also a place where Wagyu cattle have been raised since the 8th century, mainly as animals of burden, cultivating rice paddies and hauling heavy loads thanks to their ample energy reserves. But until one local farmer came up with a way of incorporating Shodoshima’s main export into the cattle’s diet, Wagyu couldn’t stand the bitter taste of olives.

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These Halloween Brownies Look Like Crap

Aptly named Cat Poop Brownies, these Halloween treats created by Singaporean cafe Nasty Cookie really look like something you’d only expect to find in a cat’s litter box.

When it comes to disgusting-looking food, we’ve featured a few examples over the years, with notable mentions including milkfish intestines and alien dumplings, but most often than not, the unappetizing look was not by design. In the case of Cat Poop Brownies, however, the bakers at Nasty Cookie tried to make the chocolatey treats as “crappy” as possible. Shaped just like cat poop and placed on a layer of crumble that looks just like litter sand, this brownie dessert looks hard to stomach, to say the least.

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These Handmade 3D Cookie Frostings Will Blow Your Mind

Generally speaking, frosted cookies are among the simplest, most basic desserts you can find, but that description certainly doesn’t apply to the artistic masterpieces created by Japanese food artist Izumi.

Saying that Izumi’s frosted cookies look too good to eat is an understatement. It’s damn near impossible to believe that they are 100% edible, not to mention eating one of them must feel like ruining a timeless masterpiece. The Japanese food artist uses his talent to create incredible three-dimensional cookie decorations by hand and has developed the skill to recreate almost any anime character.  The 3D aspect is also awe-inspiring, with some characters looking ready to jump off of the cookie.

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Ram Kand Mool – The Mysterious Plant Snack That Has Intrigued Scientists For Decades

Ram Kand Mool, a drum-shaped tuber that has been sold as a hearty snack on Indian street corners for at least several decades remains a mystery to scientists, as no one can figure out what plant produces it.

Indian botanists developed an interest in ram kand mool in the 1980s, after trying and failing to find out the origins of the almost paper-thin snacks cut out of giant reddish tubers by street vendors. None of them were willing to reveal the plant that produced it, and those that did gave conflicting answers. Some claimed that it was a root, others that it was the stem of a plant, but most either refused to answer or claimed that they bought the tubers from third parties and genuinely didn’t know the source. Stranger still was the fact that not even science could provide a clear answer to the botanists’ questions.

Ram kand mool is often advertised as the only food source of Lord Ram when he was exiled to forests along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman, and vendors claim it can cool you down during the summer, quench both hunger and thirst, and provide all sorts of medicinal relief. It is served with all sorts of seasonings, from chili and salt, to lime and sugar. It’s cut and served as very thin slices out of tubers that can reportedly weigh up to 300 kilograms.

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Quintessential Grilled Cheese – The World’s Most Expensive Sandwich

Priced at an eye-watering $214, Quintessential Grilled Cheese has held the the record for the world’s most expensive commercially-available sandwich for over seven years.

You could say that New York-based restaurant Serendipity 3 is specialized in setting food-related Guinness records. It currently holds world records, most expensive desert, most expensive hamburger, most expensive hot dog, largest wedding cake and largest cup of hot chocolate. But the one we’re interested in today is the records for world’s most expensive sandwich, which happens to be a humble grilled cheese treat. Named Quintessential Grilled Cheese, the sandwich is deceptively simple, as it features some of the world’s most exclusive ingredients.

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Aptly-Named ‘Miracle Berry’ Makes Even the Sourest of Things Taste Sweet

Synsepalum dulcificum, aka the miracle fruit or miracle berry, is a unique plant known to produce fruits that, when eaten, make all sour foods and drinks subsequently ingested taste sweet.

For centuries, indigenous tribes of Ghana, in West Africa, used the fruits of the Synsepalum dulcificum plant to sweeten sour or tart fruits, foods, and drinks, but it wasn’t until 1968 that the miraculin protein that makes the fruits special was finally extracted and turned into tablets. That made it possible for virtually anyone in the world to experience the “taste tripping” that miracle berries are so famous for. Miraculin essentially alters your senses, causing things that should taste sour, like lemon or vinegar, to taste sweet, or even too sweet for up to 60 minutes after the protein is consumed.

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The World’s Most Expensive Burger Costs a Whopping $6,000

The Golden Boy, a decadent delicacy made with 100 percent Wagyu A5, Beluga caviar, king crab, white truffle, among other premium ingredients, has just broken the record for world’s most expensive burger, with a price of 5,000 euros ($6,000).

The Golden Boy burger was created by Robbert Jan de Veen, owner of Dutch restaurant De Daltons, who came up with the idea while sitting in his restaurant pretending to get some work done. As he browsed the internet to pass the time, he stumbled over the previous record for the world’s most expensive burger, held by an Oregon restaurant that made a $5,000 burger that weight a whopping 352 kilograms, back in 2011. He found it cool, but decided he could make an even more expensive burger, and one that could actually be finished by one person.

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Inventor Creates Machine That Turns Beer and Spirits into Soft-Serve Ice Cream

The Below Zero ice cream machine uses a unique technique to freeze alcohol, which allows you to turn beers, cocktails and even spirits into delicious soft-serve ice cream.

Getting drunk on ice cream used to be the stuff of dreams, but thanks to Will Rogers, inventor and owner of WDS Dessert Stations in Hinkley, Illinois, it has become a delicious reality. Rogers, who runs his own ice cream shop, was trying to create a highly-caffeinated espresso ice cream flavor when he realized he could use the same technique with alcoholic beverages. He started experimenting with various gums and stabilizers commonly used in the ice cream industry and eventually patented something called the NEA gel. It’s this magical concoction that allows the alcohol to freeze to a near solid inside the Below Zero ice cream machine.

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Mojie Ringo – Using Sunlight to Turn Apples Into Edible Works of Art

‘Mojie Ringo’ is a Japanese technique of harnessing the power of the sun to create beautifully decorated apples without the use of any sort of chemicals.

For centuries, apple growers in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture have been creating stunning heirloom apples by using the mojie ringo technique. The process is fairly simple, as basically implies depriving the apples of sunlight for a period of time and then applying stencils to ensure that some portion of the apple peel remains discolored. Most often than not, mojie ringo apples are decorated with messages and symbols of good fortune and prosperity, and are offered as gifts.

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Yin and Yang Fish – A Controversial Dish That’s Both Dead and Alive

Yin and Yang Fish is a controversial dish where the body of a fish is cooked, while the head is kept fresh so that it moves its mouth and eyes while it is being eaten.

From fish that smells like a public toilet, to a cheese as hard as rock and even a fish-head-stuffed pie, the world is full of weird foods, but few dishes can be described as truly disturbing. Well, the dish you’re about to discover is one such rarity. Reportedly invented in the early 2000s, by a restauranteur in Chiayi City, Taiwan, Yin and Yang fish, also known as “dead and alive fish”, is definitely not a dish for the faint of heart. It consist of a whole fish, usually carp, whose body has been cooked and covered in sauce, but whose head is maintained raw so that its mouth and eyes are still moving while it is being eaten.

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Cascatelli – The Ideally Shaped Pasta You Didn’t Even Know Existed

Inspired by the firm belief that spaghetti is far from the ideal shape for pasta, a man set out to create a perfectly shaped pasta. The result of his hard work is now known as cascatelli.

The story of how cascatelli came to be began in 2018, when Dan Pashman, the host of the James Beard and Webby Award-winning “Sporkful” podcast, made some harsh remarks about spaghetti, on the stage of the Caveat Theater, in front of a live audience. His comments got a lot of attention and inspired him to dedicate a lot of his time to researching pasta shapes in a quest to create the ideal pasta design, which needed to have an appealing texture, have the perfect bite, and, most importantly, hold the right amount of sauce. Believe it or not, he spent almost three years on this project.

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