Hay, That Agricultural Staple, Moves From the Barn Into Top Kitchens
Hay-roasted chicken at Jack & Charlie’s No. 118 in New York.
Photographer: Melissa Hom for Bloomberg Businessweek
Some food trends are so ancient their start dates are lost to time, with cycles of in- or out-of-fashion measured not in months, but centuries.
Hay falls firmly in that category. The idea that a portion of a cow’s lunch could be a sublime addition to food for humans goes back at least to the early Middle Ages, when Vikings smoked fish and meat with it. Fast-forward to 1977, and star chefs were embracing the agricultural staple: The seminal cookbook Paul Bocuse’s French Cooking included a recipe for ham-in-hay. Around 2010 chef René Redzepi began featuring a parfait at Noma in Copenhagen in which toasted hay was added to cream and made into a sweet custard.