(bright music) - It's all about what stories we can tell through ice cream.

We know that our customers are coming in for more than just a scoop.

They want to learn about the food community, and they can do that through just bites of ice cream.

- Salt & Straw is known for adding unexpected ingredients to their ice creams.

Blue cheese, bone marrow, and every April is Salt & Straw's upcycled food series, where co-founder and head ice cream innovator Tyler Malek, creates flavors of the month using rescued ingredients that would've otherwise ended up in a landfill.

I'm Rachel Belle, host of "Your Last Meal" podcast, cookbook author, and longtime Seattle journalist.

Today on "The Nosh," the sweet taste of eliminating waste.

(bright music) (upbeat music) Salt & Straw has scoop shops in six states, but it's headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

Welcome.

- Super excited.

- I know.

Good to see you.

Awkward call.

- Oh, I Know.

I'm so excited.

We're gonna go Urban Gleaners.

- [Rachel] Portland nonprofit Urban Gleaners collects 1.2 million pounds of perfectly good dumpster-bound food each year, and Salt & Straw buys some of it for their upcycled food series.

In just the last two Aprils, they've redirected 48,000 pounds of discarded food into their ice creams.

Tyler and I visited the Urban Gleaners warehouse to learn where this food comes from and to create our own zero-waste flavor on the fly.

(upbeat music) - We collect food from grocery stores, farms, corporate cafeterias, hotels, event centers, and then we sort it all, make sure that it's up to standard, there's nothing too far past date.

- Yeah.

- Just checking for quality.

We do 25,000 pounds of food every single week in this one area right here.

- That's what comes in?

- Yes.

- You don't even fit in this space, I don't even- I don't understand.

- I know, it's not that big.

- Like it does not compute.

- I know.

Yeah.

Right now what we're doing is we're sorting a bunch of food that came in.

We deliver to 42 different free food markets.

- It all looks completely fine to me.

- Oh yeah.

- Why is this food here?

- There's so many different reasons.

There's 50 different date labels on packages that have nothing to do with quality, freshness, or safety.

There's a huge need in Portland, around 12% of Oregonians are food insecure, so having access to 25,000 pounds of food a week from us for free and no barriers to get it is super amazing.

(upbeat music) So back here we have our kitchen and our repack area.

(upbeat music) - So the thing that I've always heard for years and years, this excuse of why there's so much composting happening with supermarkets is the liability.

We can't donate the food.

What if somebody gets sick from it?

- Yeah.

That's just not true.

There's a lot of laws that protect corporations or businesses or anyone.

It's the Bill Emerson Law and the Good Samaritan Law.

As long as you're doing something in good faith, you're not maliciously sending something bad out to get someone sick, you're protected.

(upbeat music) - I was taught if you would eat it, then you would save it.

- Right.

Okay.

- Which is an easy rule.

- So what are you looking for, Tyler?

Oh yeah.

Okay, yeah.

So for our flavor, what are you thinking?

- I've been thinking about this a lot, actually.

I really wanna do something with bananas.

- What about sweet potatoes?

- Ooh, sweet potato would be good.

- That would be really good.

- We really love to look for, in our kitchen, things that might be even in excess at Urban Gleaner.

- Right.

- So I love the idea of trying to avoid taking from people that might use it.

I am kind of feeling like banana cream pie a little bit.

- Yes.

I love that.

- Yeah.

- Banana cream pie.

Okay, so maybe, there's some brioche over there.

- [Tyler] We'll use those eggs.

- How many bananas?

- Not many, but I need the, the brownest, darkest.

- Oh, the brownest.

- Those are the best for flavor.

Is there a custard?

Ooh, the custard will be perfect.

- Vanilla creme brulee.

- Yum.

We can whip that in.

It'll add so much texture and flavor to our pudding.

- [Rachel] Do we need anything else?

- Look at these ingredients.

No, this is perfect.

- Okay.

- We got a whole batch of ice cream here, ready.

- Thank you guys for helping so much.

- Thanks, Nico.

We can't work here anymore.

We have to go make ice cream.

- Yeah, you gotta get outta here.

- Okay.

Bye bye.

(upbeat music) Back to the test kitchen where Tyler has dreamed up 2000 flavors and we're about to improvise number 2001.

Ooh, the test kitchen.

- Test kitchen.

- This is my dream.

- I love the idea of toasting this brioche in butter.

- Me too.

That's what I was thinking too.

- And the butter will brown a little bit.

As it gets coated in fat, that fat will actually protect the bread so it almost stays a little bit crispy, even though it's in ice cream.

I was thinking we'd actually make the pudding with this and almost fold it with the whipped cream at the very last minute, so they'll almost marble between the pudding.

- Ooh.

Okay.

- And the whipped cream.

(upbeat music) First, let's start with banana pudding.

Ooh, look at that.

- Ooh.

- It's usually pretty amazing.

- Can I taste a little bite before?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- It goes in, That's really good.

- Yeah.

- Oh my god.

Is this mushed enough?

- It looks perfect.

I'm gonna put it in this, and I'll start heating it up.

- So what are some of the flavors that you've done during upcycled month?

- Oh, we have so much fun.

We use an upcycled barley milk from the brewing process to make a chocolate barley ice cream.

We've worked with one company that actually gets whey from all the Greek yogurt companies.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- So we cook that whey down into a curd, so we make almost a lemon curd-type ribbon in a frozen yogurt.

We can have so much fun.

There's so many different ingredients to play with.

I think it's starting to inspire a lot of people in the industry.

When we first did this about six years ago, there was no one doing it, and slowly over the course of the few years, we've got now a whole association called the Upcycled Food Association that focuses on getting more ingredients to the market.

A lot of restaurants that are starting to do this.

- Yeah.

- So it feels like we're kind of starting this- - Little bit of momentum.

Yeah.

- Revolution in the industry, which I really love.

(upbeat music) This is ready.

- Oh, wow.

- I want to blend it together.

Just a really smooth texture.

So I'll cut this up.

- Okay.

- If you wanna start melting some of the butter in there.

- How much should I put in?

- Maybe a lot, but not too much.

- Perfect.

(both laughing) A lot, but not too much.

Maybe one more.

Boop.

(upbeat music) When you first started this upcycled series, you got a little bit of bad press.

- An article was written and they said "Salt & Straw is turning your garbage into ice cream."

- Mm.

I mean, not the greatest like choice of words.

- I know.

I can appreciate the provocation.

You need to get people's attention.

This is not garbage, it's our job to save it and that's why I love this idea of using kind of these higher-end pastry fine dining techniques to use food that would've gone to waste.

(upbeat music) - I wish you could try our flavor.

Layers of creamy vanilla ice cream, caramelized banana pudding with warm spices, ribbons of fluffy whipped cream, and crispy, buttery chunks of toasted brioche.

More than half of the ingredients came from Urban Gleaners.

Salt & Straw is scooping five new upcycled flavors through the month of April, including chocolate malted potato chip cupcake and salted grapefruit coconut gelee.

- There it is.

We can put it in the freezer and we can scoop it tomorrow.

Or we can just eat it right now.

- Yeah.

I mean, I'm not gonna be here tomorrow.

I need to eat this.

- Let's go for it.

- Okay.

So we wanna get a little of everything.

- Oh my god.

Look at that.

- Hmm.

- This is really good.

- That is really good.

I want to get a big chonker.

- I love it, I'm done.

That's great.

- That's really good.

- It's a winner.

- Put it on the menu.

- Okay.

- And I have the perfect name for it.

Orange you glad we upcycled this banana cream pie?

- It's bananas.

Isn't it cool to see, these ingredients were just sitting there.

They would've gotten thrown away and we saved 'em and made something so epic.

- We're little heroes.

- Yeah.

- Thank you for inviting me to your kitchen.

This was so much fun.

- Thank you.

Thanks for coming.

- And I'm gonna take you.

Bye bye.

- [Announcer] "The Nosh" was made possible in part with the generous support of Alaska Airlines.