We've written a lot about the differing tastes people from each state tend to have (including each state's most talked about food, what food each state looks for on Pinterest, every state's most important food innovation and the fastest growning food chain in each state). One thing we haven't talked about much is what food each individual state dislikes the most, but thanks to Hater, now we know. 

While some of the results are to be expected -of course Texas is particular about its steaks and Washington hates K-Cups, some of the answers are a bit surprising if not weird. Personally, I didn't know gas station wine was popular enough to warrant hating but it must be in at least New Jersey and what's the deal with the last bite of a hot dog, huh Missouri? And on a more personal note I just don't see how anyone could hate tapas North Dakota -maybe they're just particularly bad in that state.

Via Thrillist

You probably already know that McDonald's changed the fast food landscape for good and you could probably guess that Starbucks did a similar thing for coffee shops, but did you know how important White Castle or Dominos are American culinary history? Over on Thrillist, you can learn a lot about the history of American restaurants and the chains that formed our modern dining options in this great article. It's a long read, but if you like food and history, you'll probably find it fascinating -even if you're not a fan of some of the places listed. 

So see the whole article here.

The craze of making anything and everything taste (or smell) like a pumpkin pie is back, right on schedule, for fall 2017. Some of these products contain pumpkin, while others just have the "spice." While I can understand why you might flavor sweet things, like cookies, this way, I can't even imagine salsa with pumpkin pie spices in it.   

Yes, there really is a dog treat (actually a "vegetarian dog chew") flavored with cinnamon and ginger. I wonder if dogs really like it. There's a cat food featured, too, but it's only chicken and pumpkin soup, with no spices. That makes sense. See 36 odd products that come in the ubiquitous fall flavors at The Chive. Note there are more and more alcoholic drinks in the list every year.

The name of the actual post is Who Knew? The History of Baking Powder Is Incredibly Dramatic, but I couldn't help but use the title of the Metafilter link. The development of baking powder was a game-changer for household bakers, who previously dealt with unpredictable yeast and experimental alternate leavening that might or might not work. That's the subject of the book Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking by food historian Linda Civitello. Jezebel talked with Civitello about the importance of baking powder.

So women were looking for something better. Some of the early things they tried interfered, they said you can’t use anything acid with this. You can’t use orange juice or lemon peel, it will negate it, everything interferes with everything. This tastes like ammonia, that one strips the paint off of floorboards. Give me something better. Women had gone as far as they could go and then scientists had to take over and cream of tartar and baking soda show up in the 1840s. That’s another mineral. It’s inert, it doesn’t care about temperature the way that yeast does. But cream of tartar and baking soda, again, had problems. If you didn’t put the cake in the oven right away—Catherine Beecher says you have to get it in immediately and you might have to try a couple of times. You can’t mix the batter and then go oh, where’s my pan? That’s another drawback.

Then you get Eben Horsford at Harvard, who’s got five daughters who are probably in the kitchen a fair amount. His treatise in 1861 on bread making—bang bang, 30 or 40 minutes, foolproof, there you go. That’s it! Absolute revolution.

The book then goes into the rights and marketing of baking powder, which is where the "wars" part comes in. Read the interview with Civitello here.  -via Metafilter

Most crazy food items characters create in cartoons weren't meant to be recreated in real life, but YouTubers like Binging With Babish make sure any fictional food items that can be created are created for our culinary amusement.

On an episode of Regular Show a bearded burger cook described his ultimate cheeseburger creation aptly named the "Ultimeatum"- "a cheeseburger stuffed inside a cheeseburger with deep fried cheeseburgers for buns. And then we add our special ketchup that we get from the Himalayas."

Being the meticulous guy that he is Andrew Rea had to create the Himalayan ketchup from scratch, so if you ever wondered how Himalayan ketchup was made then wonder no more!

(YouTube Link)

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

People are sharing the clues that tell you a restaurant is not the place you want to eat with the hashtag #SignsOfABadRestaurant. While some of them are serious, most are jokes. But the pictures had to come from somewhere, right? Sometimes you can tell from the sign, like the one above posted by Derek Jansen. Sometimes you can tell from the menu that this is not a five-star restaurant.

#SignsOfABadRestaurant When you see this on the menu.... pic.twitter.com/Uz3lGYO59Z

— Shells In Ireland (@ShellsInIreland) August 28, 2017

Or maybe you should take your cue from the people who work there.

The staff refuses their free meal each shift #SignsOfABadRestaurant

— Luke, Cool (@LukeWheeler01) August 28, 2017

You can see plenty more of the indicators of a bad restaurant at Twitter. See a selection of the best at Buzzfeed.

F. Nephi Grigg grew up producing potatoes and corn on his family's farm in Idaho. In the 1940s, he understood the future of frozen food and opened a flash-freezing plant in Oregon with his brother. They named the company Ore-Ida, after the two states. The Grigg brothers made a fortune processing potatoes into frozen french fries. But cutting potatoes into fries presented a problem, in that the potato pieces that were too small to use were hard to separate from the fries.

When an equipment manufacturing company inexplicably showed up at their plant to demonstrate a prune sorter, Nephi and his plant superintendent Slim Burton chatted with them about a redesign. Could the barrel be redesigned so that it would eliminate the unwanted pieces of potatoes from the very wanted french fries? It could.

This being the northwest, and with the Grigg brothers’ company surrounded by farmland, Nephi decided that the scraps would go to feed the cattle and other livestock owned by the Grigg family. This was fine for a while, until Nephi realized that these cattle were getting enormous amounts of potato product. He was an entrepreneur, goddammit, and not one to waste anything, especially “product that has been purchased from the grower, stored for months, gone thru the peeling process, gone thru the specking lines and trimmed of all the defects, only to be eliminated into the cattle feed,” as Nephi wrote in a letter to an Ore-Ida representative in 1989.

You can see where this is going. It was those little scraps left over from making french fries that ended up in Tater Tots. Read the rest of the story of how Tater Tots were developed at Eater. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user Lower Columbia College (LCC))

Some people act as if they have genitalia on the brain, claiming clean images are obscene if they look the least bit like private parts, which makes me wonder how they manage to eat a banana without feeling ashamed.

Which is why I'm always skeptical about claims an innocent image is secretly filthy, but you've gotta admit there is something vaguely NSFW about the meat on that turkey sandwich, and once you see it you cannot unsee the booty.

This turkey sandwich better chill tf out pic.twitter.com/zQE25BG6xT

— AV (@deathcamps) August 22, 2017

After AV shared his smutty turkey sandwich on Twitter people LOLed and shared the pic until it went viral, but some didn't see the beauty in the sliced turkey booty- so they made it more PG.

pic.twitter.com/Gq04H9FAmD

— Ramon Cornejo (@510z32) August 22, 2017

But not everyone saw smut when they gazed at the turkey slices- this guy saw gators and proved not everyone is willing to admit they have a dirty mind!

My ass thought it was two gators pic.twitter.com/O5Qo8mZ8Fj

— Sam (@jiyongsb) August 24, 2017

-Via Distractify

Jesse Szewczyk graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, and now writes for Buzzfeed. He shares some basic tips for making your home-cooked dishes taste more like what you'd get in a top restaurant. If you've been cooking for a long time, you might know some of these things already, but it's always good to have a refresher course. For beginning cooks, it's an eye-opening list.  

5. Completely dry your meats before cooking them.

Whether it's roasted chicken or seared scallops, drying them ensures you'll get a crisp, golden skin that won't stick to the pan. Pat them dry with paper towels or let them air-dry in the cooler for a few hours before cooking them.

6. For maximum flavor, toast your nuts and spices.

Toasting nuts and spices brings out their flavors and takes your cooking to a whole new level. For spices, give them a quick toasting in a dry pan over low heat or bloom them in hot oil. For nuts, toast them in a 350° F oven for 10-15 minutes before cooking with them.

See all 16 tips at Buzzfeed.

People love to hear stories about police officers, paramedics or firefighters saving the lives of animals trapped in deadly situations because they show us how much emergency responders actually care about life.

But this story of firefighters rescuing animals is a little different, and may make some animal lovers a bit angry- because the rescued animals were later eaten.

Firefighters in southern England were called to a farm near Pewsey to handle a barn fire and ended up rescuing 18 piglets, so to thank the firefighters for their hard work farmer Rachel Rivers served them sausages-made from the piglets:

The 18 piglets and two sows survived the fire in Wiltshire in February, which saw 60 tonnes of hay catch fire.
In a potentially controversial move, farmer Rachel Rivers thanked the Pewsey fire team by giving them sausages.
She said: "I'm sure vegetarians will hate this." The firefighters however said the bangers were "fantastic".
The pictures of their impromptu barbecue have since been removed from the Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service's Facebook page.

The animals were given a six-month stay of execution when they were rescued from the farm at Milton Lilbourne.
But, having been reared for meat, they have since been slaughtered and the sausages were delivered to the fire station team, which barbecued them.

(YouTube Link)

-Via Boing Boing

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Oenophiles like to boast about their exquisite taste, claiming their obsession with wine began when their perfect palate allowed them to taste the very soil the grapes were grown in before they became wine.

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But the rest of us who simply enjoy drinking wine and the warm, fuzzy feeling we're left with after a bottle or two recognize wine for what it is- a tool for survival in this crazy world we live in.

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But as great as wine is there's definitely a time and a place for and drinking at work is definitely a no-no unless you're a sommelier, aka the job every wise wino should set as their career goal.

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See 54 Memes That Will Make Winos Spit Wine All Over Their Screens Laughing here

Cough drops sometimes try to taste like candy, but have you ever heard of a candy trying to taste like a cough drop? Well, Kit Kat apparently thought it was a great idea because that's the newest flavor they're releasing to Japan. The good news is that because it has 2.1% throat lozenge powder mixed in with the white chocolate, it could hopefully actually help if you have a sore throat -and that powder is just enough to make the treat "fresh and invigorating."

Via Eater

I'm either trying to savor that fine barrel-aged flavor straight up or I'm trying to catch a buzz when I drink whisky, and either way water seems like a waste of time to me.

But scientists Björn Karlsson and Ran Friedman have proven people were right about adding water to whisky- because the water helps enhance the flavor compounds on the surface of the whisky and release complex aromas:

"The taste of whisky is primarily linked to so-called amphipathic molecules, which are made up of hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts,” explained Karlsson. “One such molecule is guaiacol, a substance that develops when the grain is dried over peat smoke when making malt whisky, providing the smoky flavour to the whisky.”

The scientists found that guaiacol was more likely to be present at the “liquid-air interface” of a whisky with concentrations of ethanol up to 45%. “This suggests that, in a glass of whisky, guaiacol will therefore be found near the surface of the liquid, where it contributes to both the smell and taste of the spirit,” said Freidman.

“Interestingly, a continued dilution down to 27% resulted in an increase of guaiacol at the liquid-air interface. An increased percentage, over 59%, had the opposite effect, that is to say, the ethanol interacted more strongly with the guaiacol, driving the molecule into the solution away from the surface.”

The study therefore concluded that the taste and aroma of guaiacol – as well as other similar compounds in whisky – are “enhanced when the spirit is diluted prior to bottling, and this taste may be more pronounced on further dilution in the glass”.

-Via The Spirits Business

Have you ever wanted to taste a monster from the deep but worried it would be a little hard to catch and too salty and tough to enjoy? Then you'll want to head to Auckland, New Zealand, where you can get your hands on this colossal squid cone loaded with 3D printed cripsy cones and rich chocolate goodness from Giapo ice cream shop. The crazy creations are so popular that people often wait hours to get their hands on these tentacle treats. 

Via Thrillist

Back before there were fancy vodka brands on the market making people pay hundreds of dollars a bottle just to impress others there was Smirnoff- the vodka that leaves you breathless.

Smirnoff has been the world's best-selling vodka for decades, and part of that success is due to their hip and edgy ad campaigns that make their brand feel very modern, like these ads from the 1960s starring some seriously famous faces.

The jazzy and stylish Smirnoff ads of the 60s starred people like Groucho Marx, Eartha Kitt, Woody Allen, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Johnny Carson, just to name a few.

They even got the famous poet and playwright Langston Hughes to pose for a Smirnoff ad in 1959, so their brand not only looked hip but progressive as well.

See more Hip Smirnoff Vodka Ads from the 60s at Dangerous Minds