Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

**Now streaming as a documentary series on Netflix, Pollan explores how cooking transforms food and shapes our world. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney is producing the four-part series based on Pollan's book, and each episode will focus on a different natural element: fire, water, air, and earth.**

In Cooked, Michael Pollan explores the uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements—fire, water, air, and earth—to transform the natural world into delicious things to eat and drink. Teaching himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns to grill over fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer.

Each section of Cooked follows Pollan's efforts to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements. A North Carolina barbecue master coaches him in the primal magic of fire; a Chez Panisse-trained cook teaches him how to braise; a celebrated baker teaches him how air transforms grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread; and finally, several mad-genius fermentos (a tribe that includes brewers, cheesemakers, and all manner of lers) reveal how fungi and bacteria can perform the most astonishing alchemies of all. The reader learns alongside Pollan, but the lessons go beyond the practical to become an investigation of how cooking implicates us in a web of social and ecological relationships. Cooking connects us, above all else.

The effects of not cooking are just as far-reaching. Relying on corporations to process our food means we consume large amounts of fat, sugar, and salt; disrupting a vital connection to the natural world; and weakening our relationships with family and friends. In fact, Cooked argues, taking back control of the kitchen may be the most important step anyone can take to help make the American food system healthier and more sustainable. Reclaiming cooking as an act of pleasure and autonomy, learning to realize the magic of these daily transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life.