The Larder

The growing popularity of rapeseed oil

Cold-pressed rapeseed oil is one of the more fashionable new products to appear on the local food scene in recent years. Donald Reid found out more about Scotland’s other national oil.

A guide to Scotland's potato varieties

Including Highland Burgundy and Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy

Scottish heritage potatoes are no longer an underground movement, explains Cate Devine.

Technology's role in Scottish berry production

The soft fruit industry in Scotland has long benefited from the appliance of science. Nicki Holmyard looks at the technology keeping Scottish berries in juicy good health.

Hand-pressed Cuddybridge Apple Juice

From a small room in the Scottish Borders, Graham Stoddart is using the hand press he designed and made to create Cuddybridge Apple Juice, as John Cook discovers.

Smoking Scottish seafood with peat

The unmistakable whiff of peat smoke is something we associate with crofting townships or whisky distilleries. For a few Scottish fish smokers, it’s the sweet smell of success, as David Pollock discovers.

A brief history of Ayrshire's Dunlop cheese

Scotland’s equivalent of Cheddar is enjoying a revival thanks to a number of artisan makers. Jackie Hunter looks at the story of Ayrshire’s Dunlop.

The importance of pastry in Scotland's pies

Stuart's of Buckhaven, Simple Simon, Acanthus and more

Nicki Holmyard looks at the different types of pastry used by the makers of Scotland’s famous savoury pies.

Scottish gin fast-becoming the nation's new spirit

Producers Spencerfield, Blackwoods and VC2 all on the rise

It's seen as quintessentially English, but gin is now being produced by a number of Scottish distillers, as Jay Thundercliffe reports

Guide to different breeds of Scottish beef

With many farmers choosing larger and faster-growing continental breeds such as Charolais and Limousin in the post-war era, Scotland’s native breeds were on the decline. Rob Fletcher looks at four Scottish breeds whose meat is back in fashion.

Alison Sykora on Scottish island produce

The Larder: Chef's Choice

With focus on air-miles and carbon footprints, restaurateurs are looking to source their food as locally as possible. Alison Sykora, Chef Manager at Mount Stuart, tells us about the produce available on the Isle of Bute.

Val Buchanan on food from local allotments

The Larder: Chef's Choice

Nothing compares to fruit and vegetables freshly dug from a plot around the corner. Val Buchanan, of Buchanan’s Bistro, tells us why produce grown on local allotments is becoming an increasingly prevalent feature on her menu.

Stornoway butcher seeks protection for Marag Dubh

Black pudding from Stornoway – or marag dubh as it is named in Gaelic – is a common sight on Scottish menus these days. David Pollock caught up with moves to secure its status and identity.

Fred Berkmiller on Gartmorn Farm chicken

The Larder: Chef's Choice

It’s not everyday a Frenchman will admit that non-Gallic produce rivals their own. Fred Berkmiller, of Edinburgh’s L’Escargot chain, on why Scottish Gartmorn chicken cuts it as an alternative to the famous authenticated Poularde de Bresse.

Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin on Scotland's best berries

The Larder: Chef's Choice

The Scottish idiosyncratic climate is good for something – it provides ideal growing conditions for our produce. Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin explains why he uses only Scotland’s best berries in his restaurants.

Perfectly cooked venison

Nicola Fletcher, author of Ultimate Venison Cookery, provides tips on buying and cooking venison.

David and Katie Young on sourcing from their local estate

The Larder: Chef's Choice

For David and Katie Young, owners of The Cross at Kingussie, keeping it local really does mean local. Wild red and roe deer roam their neighbouring estate, where Highland beef is also farmed using traditional methods.

From field to fork - The meat producers of Fife, Scotland

For those who love their meat, but like to know where it comes from

For at least a decade now, Fife farmers have been finding a way to market that has avoided the high-volume supermarket route and reduced the food miles between field and fork. Typical of this movement are small-scale, family farmers such as Jim and…

Why Scottish oats and bread are a cut above

The essential ingredient in porridge, crowdie, skirlie and haggis

Oats thrive in a cold, damp climate and so it comes as no surprise that they have long been a staple food in Fife, and Scotland in general. Indeed oats, inseparably entwined with Scotland’s culinary heritage, were, and still are, held in high esteem.

Eat your way along the Fife Coastal Path

A guide to one of Scotland's great food areas by local chef Christopher Trotter

The 105-mile Fife Coastal Path starts at the Burgh of Culross and winds its way along beach, rough paths, villages and towns to the Tay Bridge in the north. The walk is best completed in sections, and it’s always worth leaving time for some food…

Fife’s fishing industry is ready to take the next step towards sustainability

Ronald Kerr talks to Pittenweem fishermen’s spokesman Billy Hughes

The fortunes of Fife’s fishing industry may fluctuate like the spring tides, but the sea continues to exert a compelling hold on men such as Billy Hughes. Having entered the industry as an apprentice fish auctioneer in the 1960s, the secretary of…

How Anster cheese become one of the Fife’s headline food acts

One of Scotland's artisan cheeses

‘Right from the start, cheese seemed an obvious option. There was nobody else in Fife making cheese from their own milk on the farm; there seemed to be public demand for, and interest in, locally produced food; and last, but not least, we love…

The long and colourful history of ice-cream in Fife

Ice-cream makers in Scotland

Given that it’s not the warmest country in the world, Scotland has a surprising number of excellent ice-cream producers. This trend was established as early as the 1880s, when Italians began traveling to Scotland for work to escape poverty at home.

Chefs' choices: Key chefs pay tribute to the food of Fife

Praise for Anster cheese, Falkland beef and locally-grown fruit and veg

Geoffrey Smeddle on Anster Cheese Fife is hugely fortunate to have its own landmark cheese production farm, the St Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company, home of Anster cheese. Ever since first tasting this traditional, unpasteurised cheese, we have always…

Orchards of Fife provide a bounty of fruit

Pear, plum and apple among fruit grown in Fife, Scotland

There is a very rare pear tree in Newburgh, on the banks of the Tay estuary. Called the Lindores pear, it’s rooted in the twelfth-century world of Tironensian monks who founded Lindores Abbey just beside the town. The monks were responsible for the…

The farm shops of Fife

Fife boasts more farm shops than anywhere else in Scotland

‘People like to see where their food is produced,’ says Duncan Stewart, manager of Falkland’s Pillars of Hercules farm. ‘Here you can see things growing in the fields and put a face to the person who’s producing the food, which means a lot more than…