We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in food writing.

Irving Nachumsohn invented the crock pot so that his family didn’t have to use the stove to prepare dinner on hot summer evenings. You’re welcome.

Instand Pot: great. Dover eggbeater? Not so much.

Excellent Japanese whiskies were easy to come by, until suddenly they weren’t. What happened? And why can’t one whisky aficionado let go?

The origins of hard shell tacos are hazy, but certain things are clear.

Uniquely shaped Cheetos go for big bucks online, but is anyone really buying?

Rapidly modernizing has caused the McDonald’s company some growing pains, but embracing Big Tech might just save them from their old analog self.

Beef is a major culprit of the climate crisis, but if you want to consider beef’s future, then look to its past. The industry’s tactics have not changed as much as you might think.

Clams, family, and fried fish.

When you live with animals, you collect killing stories.

Can Impossible Foods’ meat facsimiles save us from our carnivorous appetites?

The unsung heroes of the food world battle against time and chaos, cooking haute cuisine over lit cans of Sterno in the gloomy back hallways of New York’s civic landmarks.

American food supplies are increasingly channeled through a handful of big companies: Amazon, Walmart, FreshDirect, Blue Apron. What do we lose when local supermarkets go under? A lot — and Kevin Kelley wants to stop that.

Your favorite Mexican shrimp dish isn’t about the shrimp at all: “People think the star of the dish is the shrimp, but really it’s the chile.”

Pro tip: your fat friend (read: me) doesn’t want to sit in the booth.

Don’t disrespect the fish. Or do! It’s your dinner.

“I was thinking a lot about childhood as this special status, an almost endangered status … that is eroded the more that we start thinking of ourselves as these units of value and worrying about what we’re worth.”

Black women take power where they can find it, and sometimes that’s in a pot of hot, skin-searing grits.

When caviar-crazed Eastern Europeans flocked to Warsaw, Missouri to poach eggs from a vulnerable species of fish, federal agents went undercover and spent two years to build case against them.

Now tat certified taste experts specialize in a range of foods, from hot sauce to honey, is taste becoming too codified?

One Tucsonan writes a love letter to the 24-hour Mexican food joint that shaped his youth.

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in food writing.

Talking about male bulimia.

I love bagels, but not as as much as Lloyd Squires loves bagels.

Bread: it was so terrible, right? Thank goodness the tech industry finally iterated on it so we can make a decent piece of toast after 6,000 years.

If the personal is political, then food is political — and food writing should be, too.

How America stacks the deck against black farmers.

Portland’s most successful restauranteur doesn’t care about your fancy, fresh-picked, locally sourced garden ingredients. He cooks for $$$.

Investigating the benefits of menu hacking and customer re-personalization.

A California cult had more success producing award-winning wine than sustaining their religion, so why are thousands of bottles gathering dust in a storeroom?