Whether it’s a long train journey ahead, an afternoon pottering in the kitchen, or you’re finally planning to tackle the washing up, the following food podcasts are here to keep you company. A peer inside the fridge and mind of these various chefs, growers, home cooks and food writers will allow you think about food in new and thoughtful ways.
1.Lecker
Lecker describes itself in simple terms as ‘a documentary podcast about how we eat’. Each episode maintains this documentary feel, zooming in on a particular niche, whether that’s the Isle of Man’s World Bonnag championships, the science of lactofermentation, or life as a female chef with ADHD. Human stories remain at the centre of these carefully crafted ‘audio essays’.
2. Dinner Document
The backlog of cook and writer Rebecca May Johnson’s Dinner Document feels a bit like being given access to her journal, complete with biro scribbles and hastened shopping lists. A Substack and newsletter read aloud, Dinner Document is complied of a combination of precious scraps – mini-essays, recipes, playlists, and allotment updates. Her writing touches on a love of meals on trays and crisp sandwiches, and a hatred of washing up and bad porridge. It’s end of evening or early morning listening, soothing and unrushed.
3. The Food Programme (BBC)
Listen to BBC Radio Four’s The Food Programme live on Sundays at 12:30 and Mondays at 15:30, or trawl through a backlog of 806 episodes, to hear condensed, informative podcasts ‘investigating every aspect of the food we eat’. Recent highlights include ‘How Spain does beans’, ‘Wassail! Wassail! A celebration of cider, orchards and song’ and ‘The Rise of Ultra-Fast Grocery Delivery’. The annual roundup of the year’s best cookbooks is ripe with nostalgia.
4. Snack Sounds
Fuse FM’s Snack Sounds, sees UOM student Gloria Coles explore the intersection of food and music, as creative pursuits enjoyed both on an individual and communal level. Find the soundtrack to match your Withington kebab, opulent Italian dinner party, or bowl of steaming ramen here, or catch Gloria on air on Tuesday afternoons, 1-2pm.
5. Racist sandwich
Racist Sandwich foregrounds the political nature of food and its consumption. Stephanie Kuo and Juan Diego Ramirez discuss questions of race, class, gender and geopolitics within the food industry and media ‘with humor, grace, and little pretension’. Episodes worth seeking out include ‘Erasing black barbecue’, ‘I Know a Bodega When I see One’, and ‘The Memory of Za’atar and a Free Palestine’.
6. A Bit of a Mouthful
If you can make it past A Bit of a Mouthful’s insufferable jingle, there is a nice chat between MOB residents Michael, Will, and Sophie to follow. Promising ‘food hacks you’ll actually use’, the episodes move over a baffling range of topics. The episode titled ‘Sounds, Spoons, Crunching and Melting’ covers, kidneys, crisps, Wetherspoons breakfasts, gram flour, and whether poached eggs are actually rubbish – all in under 50 minutes.
7. At the Sauce
Voted ‘Best Organic Food Blogger’ in the 2019 BOOM awards, Alex Ryder’s podcast At the Sauce reaches out to sources across the food industry – master bakers, farmers, food photographers, and small producers. They talk pork pies, soft cheese, and burnout in the hospitality industry.
8. Hacking Hunger
Produced by World Food Program USA, Hacking Hunger provides in-depth coverage on ‘Hidden, human stories about food on the front lines of hunger’. This is essential listening for understanding the politics of hunger and the global imbalance of food distribution today.
