Salt & Straw is famous for adding unorthodox ingredients to its ice creams – blue cheese, bone marrow, cured black olives. And every April they release their Upcycled Foods Series, where they weave 8,000 pounds of perfectly good rescued food, which ordinarily would have ended up in a landfill, into flavors like Chocolate Malted Potato Chip Cupcake and Coffee and Stone Fruit Marmalade.
Where does this food come from? Host Rachel Belle headed down to Portland, Oregon, to spend the day with Tyler Malek, co-founder and head of innovation at Salt & Straw. Together they visit Urban Gleaners, a nonprofit that collects 25,000 pounds of unwanted food from restaurants, farms, corporate cafeterias and grocery stores each week and distributes it to community members in need. Tyler and Rachel collect a box of ingredients and head back to the Salt & Straw test kitchen to create an upcycled ice-cream flavor on the fly.
For Tyler, this Zero Waste-focused initiative hits several of Salt & Straw’s core values – creating awareness, being a good steward of the environment, supporting local nonprofits and small businesses and, of course, serving delicious ice cream.
You can try the Upcycled Foods Series flavors through April. Check out the flavors here!
Support for The Nosh with Rachel Belle is provided by Alaska Airlines.
