Food Provenance 7.0 – Robert Arrington – YouTube – Deer Meat for Dinner

The word provenance comes originally from the Latin word provenire (come forth), which then became provenir in French (come from), and latterly morphed into provenance in the late 18^th Century. The short version of the provenance of provenance if you like.

In today’s food arena, provenance is used, with varying levels of accuracy, to describe a food’s origin. Such details of food provenance can include: where it was planted/born, what it was fed/fertilised with, how it was raised/grown, and how it was harvested/slaughtered. By knowing these fundamentals, it also helps us work out how far it has been transported to reach our gob. Provenance is thus a very big deal.

However, food provenance can drastically differ in quality, just like the food it’s accurately or less than accurately describing. An example of highly accurate provenance is when you go to your favourite food market and buy 12 eggs from the local farmer, Mr Higgins. As he’s neatly putting them into a crisp brown paper bag he tells you all about how his hens had amusingly and unusually all decided this morning to lay their eggs in the middle of his lawn, and that the yolks are so tasty due to the new corn they are being fed from surplus crop from his farm. After paying him a similar amount you’d pay your local supermarket you walk away knowing the who, what, when, why, where, and how. You know who the egg producer is, where and when they were produced, what the hen ate, where the corn feed came from, how the eggs were harvested, as well as the free-range conditions the hen lives in. Coupled with all this, you already knew Mr Higgins, he’s a lovely chap, this is one of the other reasons you buy your eggs from him.

At the other end of the provenance scale is when, at the supermarket, you inspect the small print on the back of a packet of ham to discover it’s seen more European countries than an easyJet pilot. Born in the Netherlands, fattened in Poland, slaughtered in Northern Ireland, processed in France, retailing in England. And the fact that these jet-setting slices of cured ham contain a disturbingly low % of actual pork, and an equally disturbing high % of E-numbers is a whole other story. It’s probably fair to say that these cured ham slices are comprised of bits of the pig that you’d most likely not choose if they were laid before you on a Smörgåsbord. Other than making you not want to eat the ham, all the label has really told you is the most rudimentary details of what, when, and where.

In Jupiter, Florida there resides a couple who put the 7.0 into provenance. When they cook and eat an animal there are certainly no labels needed pre-ingestion. All animals are respectfully and sustainably harvested in delightful digital journeys that, ever so well, show the who, what, when, why, where, and how of everything that ends up on their plates. These brilliant digital pioneers of what provenance needs to become go by the name of Robert and Sarah Arrington, and their awesome channel, Deer Meat for Dinner.

Readers of this blog will already know that we always look to deep-dive into what makes some food-related YouTube content creators just so darn good, their ‘secret sauce’ if you like. Deciding what ‘secret sauce’ element to focus on with Deer Meat for Dinner was exceptionally challenging due to the sheer depth and array of super interesting elements that the channel covers. Robert and Sarah have created a multi-layered channel with awesome consistency of quality that features hunting, fishing, food & cooking, family, sustainability, respect, religion, road trips, friends, technology and related gear of all sorts. You name it, this channel has it in spades.

To make our choice of focus even more difficult, it seems like this dynamic duo can quite literally turn their hands to anything. Sarah effortlessly moves from singlehandedly re-fitting a mobile home to filming zebras from an open sided helicopter. Robert goes from looking like he can literally fillet a fish/shoot a deer blindfolded, to catching thousands of fish with a single cast net throw. After much deliberation, we plumped for provenance due to this channel being a leading digital light in this new age of sustainability in which insightful and quality content about how we all can respectfully and sustainably harvest our food is becoming so important.

Robert and Sarah might be fishing for giant ling cod, stalking a huge buck, or harvesting invasive iguanas – regardless of the species, there is always a very respectful and detailed narrative around the animal. We are then frequently taken along on the journey of looking at the equipment being used in the hunt, tactics explained in full, and then seeing the harvest of the animal itself. By the time the animal has been brought back to Deer Meat for Dinner’s HQ we now know a whole bunch of stuff. We’ve learnt things about the animal that we didn’t know, we understand how and why it can be harvested sustainably, we know exactly when and where it was killed, and by whom. The animal is always eaten, being expertly butchered and cooked up by Robert for his family and guests. Prayers are always said, and the meal is enjoyed. And, boy can Robert cook. This channel is a must for discerning foodies, it’s becoming increasingly cooking focussed by the episode. Along with his culinary skills, he’s also demonstrated possibly the most authentic way of featuring a third-party product on any channel that I’ve come across. Any aspiring YouTuber who wants to remain authentic whilst talking about third-party products needs to watch Mr. Robert Arrington at work. Robert has literally written the book on how YouTubers can feature things that they use already in their day to day life and are thus genuinely passionate about. Simple, 100% authentic – genius.

The respectful and sustainable harvesting of animals on this channel is field-to-table for sure but, it’s more than that, it’s full-circle provenance that fills in all the gaps that our supermarket labels leave out. Unlike our supermarket labels that only give us the most sparing of details, this channel adds context, colour and enjoyment to the who, what, when, why, where, and how…but it adds a 7.0 element: whenever. These brilliant and super important insights into the respectful and sustainable way of harvesting our food can now be watched by millions of people around the world online whenever they want.

Rudyard Kipling obviously didn’t have YouTube when he wrote his poem ‘I Keep Six Honest Serving Men’, had he done, he may have added in When’s more energetic older brother, Whenever. He may also have been watching Deer Meat for Dinner when he had that brainwave.

Robert and Sarah Arrington’s Deer Meat for Dinner YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@deermeatfordinner

Brilliant video of fishing for giant ling cod, and then cooking it up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CRBmgC8QYo

…Enjoy!