I love podcasts. I can put in my headphones, shut everything out and lie on the sofa, or chop up some veg whilst learning, laughing and sharing in someone else’s world.

And I love the medium so much that I was delighted, in late 2020, when Andrea from Instagram’s @farmandhearth agreed to co-host a podcast based around ancestral food techniques that I’d been wanting to bring to life for ages.

You can find us at The Ancestral Kitchen in iTunes or your podcast app, or you can listen here on my site.

In addition to my own podcast, here are some of the podcast resources I’ve found helpful.

I love GOLA for its intelligent, fun discussion of all ingredients Italian. Here, I have learnt about olive oil, the industrialisation of wine production, the fermented colatura di alici, Italian breads and much more. If you love Italian ingredients and food culture, this is a great listen.

Cooking with an Italian Accent is the podcast of Giulia Scarpaleggia of Juls’ Kitchen. It is poetic, interesting and fun. She highlights Italian food traditions and ingredients. As she talks, she mentions many recipes, all of which are lovingly detailed on her blog.

The Food Programme from BBC radio 4 is a podcast I pick and choose episodes from. They’ve had great recent episodes on the future of meat consumption, sour, what Brexit means for food and an interview with Jamie Oliver. Whilst I’m covering the BBC, I often listen to The Food Chain from the BBC world service. It has very well-researched episodes. I learnt a lot from their episode ‘Is Our Food Creating Pandemics’ recently. I also sometimes dip into The Kitchen Cafe from BBC Radio Scotland.

For female inspiration, One Woman Kitchen with Rozanne Gold is wonderful. The interviews with women chefs are uplifting and Rozanne’s enthusiasm is infectious. If traditional food culture is your thing, start with the interview with Darra Goldstein.

Continuing on with inspiration, Asma Khan is a woman who blew me away when I first heard her speak on the Come to Dinner podcast. If you are a woman who’s passionate about being female (!) and home-cooking you seriously must listen to this interview. I was jumping up and down and saying, “yes!” most of the way through.

Wise Traditions is the Weston A Price foundation’s podcast and a useful source of knowledge. It is a good starting pont for those who are newer to ancestral living.

Smidgen had a great couple of episodes about how to use spices, and the importance of the technique of blooming.

Stella Culinary School is quite masculine, but their series on bread a while back really helped me when I was learning how to make sourdough. There is the science along with real-life application from a guy who’s knee-deep in the food industry but a fun presenter.

Milk Street Radio is another chatty, fun podcast which jumps around geographically and has a Q&A section which often has some gems in.

Farmerama had a great series on bread in Nov/Dec 2019. It took me through the whole life-cycle and highlighted practitioners who are passionately returning to sustainable agricultural models. I particularly enjoyed the episode titled The Miller is Missing.

Farm Gate is another regenerative farming focused podcast, which often delves into psychological topics. I found the one on behavioural change very interesting.

Moving on to more health-focused podcasts, there are two which have not left my feed for many years:

Revolution Health Radio is a superb resource from Chris Kresser. I have historically used it to learn no-nonsense functional medicine-based views on so many health issues, such as sleep, biome, EMF, neural retraining, histamine….the list goes on. His recent interview with the guy who heads up White Oak Pastures was a great listen.

Ben Greenfield Fitness is astoundingly detailed and an amazing life’s work. I used to sometimes listen in when my hubby was plugged in, but thought it was too masculine. His episode in December 2019 on spirituality won me over though and having got used to his delivery, I have found his podcasts very useful. I really enjoyed his episode on olive oil from Feb 2020.

Am I missing a great resource? Do you listen to something along these lines which I haven’t mentioned? I’d love to know about it: comment below, or drop me an email to alison (at) ancestralkitchen (dot) com.