Head over to Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty’s web entry on Bour­bon, and you will learn that, back in 1964, the U.S. Con­gress rec­og­nized Bour­bon Whiskey as a “dis­tinc­tive prod­uct of the Unit­ed States,” and the Fed­er­al Stan­dards of Iden­ti­ty for Dis­tilled Spir­its (27 C.F.R. 5.22) estab­lished a bunch of laws defin­ing what Bour­bon is, and isn’t. The Stan­dards read as fol­lows:

• Only whiskey pro­duced in the Unit­ed States can be called bour­bon.
• Bour­bon must be made of a grain mix­ture that is at least 51% corn (maize).
• Bour­bon must be dis­tilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alco­hol by vol­ume).
• Nei­ther col­or­ing nor fla­vor­ing may be added.
• Bour­bon must be aged in new, charred oak bar­rels.
• Bour­bon must be entered into the bar­rel at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alco­hol by vol­ume).
• Bour­bon, like oth­er whiskeys, must be bot­tled at not less than 80 proof (40% alco­hol by vol­ume.)
• Bour­bon that meets the above require­ments and has been aged for a min­i­mum of two years may (but is not required to) be called Straight Bour­bon.
• Straight Bour­bon aged for a peri­od less than four years must be labeled with the dura­tion of its aging.
• If an age is stat­ed on the label, it must be the age of the youngest whiskey in the bot­tle.

If a spir­it does­n’t com­ply with these rules, it ain’t Bour­bon.

In the video above, Gear Patrol takes a clos­er look at how Bour­bon is made. The pro­duc­ers toured 12 dis­til­leries in five days, and asked each to explain the Bour­bon-mak­ing process. Along the way, you will fig­ure out why so much Bour­bon comes from Ken­tucky. It comes down to geol­o­gy, not chance.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Physics of Guin­ness Beer Demys­ti­fied

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe for the DIY Con­nois­seur

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

Last year, we fea­tured “How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life,” an ani­mat­ed short based on the work of In Defense of Food, The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma, and Food Rules author Michael Pol­lan. If you want more — and the culi­nar­i­ly inclined fans of Pol­lan, a self-described “lib­er­al food­ie intel­lec­tu­al,” often can’t get enough — have a look at his extend­ed pre­sen­ta­tion on the same sub­ject above. (If you pre­fer an audio pod­cast, you can get an MP3 with audi­ence Q&A and all here.) The talk came as part of an event held at the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce (RSA), which con­fronts the daunt­ing ques­tion of how peo­ple can “improve their family’s health and well-being, build com­mu­ni­ties, help fix our bro­ken food sys­tem, and break our grow­ing depen­dence on cor­po­ra­tions.” Pol­lan’s rec­om­men­da­tion, it may or may not sur­prise you to hear, comes down to one sim­ple act: cook­ing.

Of course, any­one who decides to jump into cook­ing in the 21st cen­tu­ry real­izes how sim­ple it isn’t, or at least how com­pli­cat­ed we’ve made it. Pol­lan, as luck would have it, real­izes this, so today we’ve round­ed up some of his resources that can help you learn to cook bet­ter, or indeed cook at all. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the man him­self has nev­er writ­ten a cook­book. “While I enjoy cook­ing, I’ll leave the art of per­fect­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing recipes to the pros,” he writes. “That said, I believe that if you can read, you can cook, and I have a few cook­books that I use reg­u­lar­ly and rec­om­mend to those of you want­i­ng good, healthy and basic recipes” — from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Every­thing and How to Cook Every­thing Veg­e­tar­i­an to Chez Panisse chef Alice Waters’ The Art of Sim­ple Food, and even (“when I have an ingre­di­ent I want to use but don’t know what to do with it”) epicurious.com.

You can find more Pol­lan-endorsed food read­ing, includ­ing San­dor Katz’s The Art of Fer­men­ta­tion and Michael Moss’ Salt Sug­ar Fat, on his lists at Omnivo­ra­cious and Barnes and Noble. He also offers a roundup of online cook­ing resources:

• “A few dozen video tuto­ri­als on mak­ing meals from Great Depres­sion with an amaz­ing woman in her 90s named Clara,” includ­ing how to make dan­de­lion sal­ad and toma­to sauce from scratch.
• “America’s Test Kitchen, pub­lish­ers of the Cook’s Illus­trat­ed mag­a­zine, hosts a great Youtube chan­nel” cov­er­ing skills like cook­ing and brin­ing dry beans, chop­ping gar­lic, and mak­ing car­ni­tas.
• San­dor Katz, he of The Art of Fer­men­ta­tion, has videos on just that, start­ing with basic fer­men­ta­tion and mov­ing on to spe­cif­ic dish­es like sauer­kraut and kim­chi.
• The famous Jamie Oliv­er “has some nice, basic video instruc­tions” on how to dice an onion and how to cook rice.
• The even more famous Jacques Pépin has made even more videos such as how to make an omelette, how to make crepes, and how to pre­pare aspara­gus and oth­er veg­eta­bles.
• Chad Robert­son, of Tar­tine, tells you how to “make and fold bread.”
• “Chow.com has some good videos on a host of top­ics,” like ster­il­iz­ing jars for can­ning and mak­ing Ital­ian gnoc­chi.
• New York Times Mag­a­zine recipe tester Jill San­topi­etro has done her own “series of videos filmed in her tiny New York kitchen.”

Pol­lan’s sec­tion on cook­ing class­es and oth­er ways to learn to cook, aside from a vari­ety of sug­ges­tions of region­al insti­tu­tions, includes these use­ful options:

• A “free, beau­ti­ful book full of recipes that fit a food stamp bud­get” called Good and Cheap.
• Skill­Share, whose “inno­v­a­tive plat­form allows almost any­one, any­where to teach a project-based class either online to a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty or offline in their local com­mu­ni­ty. You can search for cook­ing, brew­ing or bread bak­ing class­es in your region.”
• Life­Hack­er and its “cook­ing advice, recipes and how to’s.”

And if you missed it, don’t for­get to take Pol­lan’s own course “Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion,” free from UC Berke­ley. I like to think he’d sec­ond my own advice on the mat­ter: just cook some­thing that sounds good, any­thing that sounds good, right now. Not that I dare inflict the result on friends and fam­i­ly until I’ve learned a lit­tle more — which is when all those links above come in handy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

Michael Pollan’s Book, Food Rules, Brought to Life with Ani­ma­tion

Michael Pol­lan on Sus­tain­able Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

For its fall Food issue, The New York Times mag­a­zine took six sec­ond graders from Brook­lyn to din­ner at Daniel, the fan­cy French restau­rant locat­ed on the Upper East Side of Man­hat­tan. There, the kids each enjoyed a $220, sev­en-course tast­ing menu, which includ­ed Maine Lob­ster Sal­ad, Squash Ravi­o­li with Pork Bel­ly, Smoked Papri­ka Cured Hamachi, Crispy Japan­ese Snap­per, and Wagyu Beef Rib-Eye. Jef­frey Blitz fit­ting­ly cap­tured the kids’ reac­tions. He’s the direc­tor of the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary Spell­bound, which fol­lowed eight teenagers on their quest to win the 1999 Nation­al Spelling Bee. These young kids have style, and cer­tain­ly not the most finicky taste I’ve ever seen.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Michelangelo’s Hand­writ­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List