Cured Meats

Profile: Cortney Burns – Chef/Owner, Motze

Cortney Burns and her husband and co-chef Nick Balla led the team at Bar Tartine in San Francisco’s Mission District for almost six years before departing at the end of 2016 to start their new restaurant, Motze. The unique style that they developed at Bar Tartine and continue at Motze combines ingredients and techniques from around the world with a focus on processing all their ingredients themselves, including the widespread and creative use of microbial foods. We caught up with Cortney in September 2016 to talk about her approach to cooking and microbe wrangling. [click to view the full story]

Can good viruses keep bad bacteria out of fermented foods?

Food scientists have developed a diverse toolkit to help food producers keep pathogens out of fermented foods, including pasteurization, raw ingredient and end-product testing, and the addition of natural preservatives. Over the past decade, a new technology using viruses that attack pathogenic bacteria (bacteriophages), has emerged on the market as a potential addition to this food safety toolkit. Here we explain the science of using good viruses to kill bad bacteria in fermented foods.

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A new mold species discovered on salami

Our world is full of organisms that scientists have yet to discover and officially describe as a species. You may have heard in the news about a new species of amphibian discovered in a remote rainforest or new species of fish discovered at the bottom of the sea. But you don’t have to travel to far flung places to find new species. Sometimes they are right under our noses…. growing on salami.

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Microbe Guide: Yarrowia lipolytica

From biofuels to fish food to gold nanoparticles, Yarrowia lipolytica is all the rage these days as a powerful workhorse for biotechnology. But this yeast also has important roles in the flavor development and appearance of some traditional fermented foods. Here’s all you need to know about this versatile and beautiful yeast. [click to view the full story]