Gravy

In “Spilling the Tea in the Mississippi Pine Belt” Gravy reporter Georgia Sparling explores the tea farms popping up in Mississippi’s Pine Belt, where the tannic soil is perfect for growing tea. While many think of strong, syrupy sweet, ice-cold tea as quintessentially Southern, the only thing truly Southern about this ubiquitous beverage is how we drink it. Almost every tea leaf we consume in the...

In “Tasting Haiti in New Orleans,” Gravy reporter Eva Tesfaye gives listeners a taste of Haitian cuisine—and history—in New Orleans. For Haitians living in the Big Easy, many things remind them of home, from Second Line parades to the architecture to the food. Red beans and rice, boudin, jambalaya… all these iconic Louisiana dishes have connections to Haiti. That’s because Haitian migrants profoun...

Martin Padgett wrote the feature essay “Object Permanence” for the fall 2025 issue of Gravy Quarterly, our sister publication. In the piece, he catalogs the objects we live with actively, those we tolerate like inanimate roommates, and those we give away, sometimes to make room for the new. We liked it so much that we asked them to read it for Gravy podcast listeners. To read other engaging essays...

In “American Barbecue’s European Adventure,” Gravy reporter Eve Troeh takes us to meet restaurateurs in Prague, Czech Republic (Big Smokers) and Berlin, Germany (Big Stuff Smoked BBQ) who have gone to great lengths to import the techniques and equipment needed to bring American barbecue to their communities. Along with developing their own recipes, working closely with suppliers to select the righ...

In Highland County, Virginia, there are more trees than people. Specifically, the County is rich in sugar maples, the trees whose sap produces maple syrup. Better known as a “northern” sweetener, maple syrup is something that Highland County residents have been producing for decades—likely as early as the County was first settled in the mid-1700s. They learned the practice from local Indigenous tr...

In “Sniffing Out American Truffles,” Gravy reporter Irina Zhorov explores truffle production in the U.S.—and how the South is emerging as a hub.  Truffle production in the U.S. is a young industry. Commercial cultivation started in the 1980s. Truffles are a complicated business. When you’re farming truffles, what you’re really growing is trees. The truffles are fungi that grow on tree roots. The t...

In “Virginia Has the Blue Catfish Blues,”Gravy reporter Anya Groner takes listeners to the Chesapeake Bay, where, over the past decade, invasive blue catfish have derailed the ecosystem in the East Coast’s largest fish nursery. Native to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio River basins, blue catfish were first stocked in the bay’s tributary rivers in the 1970s to provide a new trophy fish for recr...

In “A Taste of the Other Georgia in Pensacola,” Gravy reporter Martin Padgett ventures to Pensacola to sample a bit of Georgia—a Georgia much further away than the five-hour car ride to Atlanta. Florida’s Gulf Coast brings to mind pictures of crystal-sand beaches and the Navy’s Blue Angels, but until recently, it hasn’t been known as a haven for global food. That’s begun to change, and as Pensacol...

Atlanta can seem like it’s a very long way from the oystering communities in Florida’s Panhandle. There are, in fact, hundreds of miles between them. But there are ways even distant places are intimately connected, perhaps more intimately than you’d guess. And when one of those places is in trouble, those connections get revealed. This is the story of what’s happening to the oysters in Apalachicol...

Order a catfish po-boy or a few pounds of crawfish in Acadiana any Friday between Mardi Gras and Easter, and you may be surprised to learn that your delight is another person’s sacrifice. The Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat on Fridays in Lent is alive and well in Southwest Louisiana, a region where more than a third identify as Catholic. Thanks to the long list of Catholic churches and...

In “Trade, Taste, and the Evolving Tale of Texas Whiskey,” Gravy reporter Evan Stern visits the Lone Star State to get a taste of a growing movement: Texas whiskey. Given the importance of saloons in cowboy culture and western mythology, one might think Texas whiskey has a long and storied history. But though Texans have always had a fondness for the demon drink, as a legal industry, Texas whiskey...

In “Fruitcake in Space,” Gravy reporter Bronwen Wyatt explores a bizarre footnote in the annals of human space travel. In 1968, a scientist at a military research facility developed a very unusual recipe: a nutritionally-fortified fruitcake designed as an emergency ration for astronauts. It might be easy to dismiss this fruitcake, but we’re here to argue that it’s part of a larger story—one that t...

In “How a Humble Crab Dish Became the Soul of Tampa,” Gravy reporter Nicole Hutcheson travels across Tampa to trace the story of a lesser-known local dish—crab chilau. Every city has a dish that says something true about the people who built it. In Tampa, that dish is crab chilau. Made with blue crabs and simmered in tomatoes, garlic, spices, and served over pasta, crab chilau is shaped by Sicilia...

In “Southern caviar is wild, nutty, and...sustainable?” Gravy reporter Irina Zhorov takes us to the Tombigbee River, where valuable paddlefish swim, and makes a case for caviar as an ingredient with a Southern pedigree. Every mature female fish makes roe—that’s the term for their clusters of unfertilized eggs. But caviar, for purists, comes from an ancient fish called sturgeon. There are more than...

In “Boars Gone Wild: Texans Hunt, Trap, and Cook a Piggy Pest,” Gravy reporter Georgia Sparling takes a deep dive into the conundrum around Texas’ pig problem. They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and that is certainly true of the wild hog population. Millions of feral pigs roam the rural (and not so rural) areas of the Lone Star State — destroying farmland, pushing out native animals, obstructi...

In “Texas Pecans, A Thirsty Nut to Crack,” Gravy reporter Avery Thompson explores how a changing climate is impacting pecans in Texas, and introduces listeners to the innovative Texans using both age-old techniques and twenty-first-century adaptations to ensure Texas pecans make it to the grocery shelves—and into a Thanksgiving pie near you. For about as long as there have been humans in what we n...

In the sixth and final episode of her six-part Tending series, host Shirlette Ammons seeks insight on the future of Black farming and asks if there is a world in which farmers are not dependent on the USDA. About Tending Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, Tending is a six-part narrative series that explores the ongoing struggles of Black farmers through the...

In this fifth installment of Gravy's Tending series, producer Shirlette Ammons examines the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, comparing it to the Pigford settlement and assessing whether this new federal program represents a genuine step toward justice for Black farmers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The fourth installment of the six-part Tending series explores the power of the USDA's county committees, recounting a Black family’s tragic story of land loss and harassment and examining why these local committees are often called "the last plantation." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the third episode of her six-part Tending series, host Shirlette Ammons visits Nicodemus, Kansas, a historic Black settlement, to learn how one family’s decades-long battle against the USDA’s discrimination began and how their case became a foundation for the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this second episode of Tending, Shirlette Ammons travels to Georgia, where she meets two Black farmers whose stories illustrate the emotional and physical toll of fighting the USDA's discrimination. About Tending Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, Tending is a six-part narrative series that explores the ongoing struggles of Black farmers through the lens...

In the first episode of “Tending,” host Shirlette Ammons begins a journey to reclaim her family's legacy by exploring the largest civil rights lawsuit in U.S. history, Pigford v. Glickman, in which Black farmers fought against discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to save their family land. About “Tending” Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, “...

Listen to Gravy's preview of “Tending,” a 6-part weekly narrative series debuting October 15, 2025. Hosted by award-winning musician and documentary producer Shirlette Ammons, “Tending” explores the ongoing struggles of Black farmers through the lens of Pigford v. Glickman—the largest civil rights class-action lawsuit in U.S. history.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

In “The Long Recovery: Farmers and Hurricane Helene,” Gravy reporter Irina Zhorov looks at how North Carolina farmers are building back after Hurricane Helene and finds that many still have a long way to go. The storm hit in late September, 2024. It killed at least 250 people and left nearly $80 billion worth of damage, the majority of that in mountainous western North Carolina. Farmers, who work...

In “An Orthodox Jewish Congregation Keeps on (Food) Truckin' in Birmingham,” Gravy reporter Margaret Weinberg Norman documents the story of JJ’s Sandwich Shop, a glatt kosher deli on wheels operated by the oldest Orthodox Jewish congregation in Birmingham, Alabama. In the Magic City, food trucks are familiar, but both kosher restaurants and authentic delis are rare. Knesseth Israel, founded in 188...