‘Because it’s quicker in the microwave, isn’t it?’ Using ethnographic episodes to go beyond words in food research

Ethnographic methods offer valuable insights into everyday practices, but their time-intensive nature can make them impractical for many qualitative research projects. This article explores how ethnographic episodes – observational encounters combining elements of go-along interviews and participant observation – can augment traditional interview methods while remaining practical and feasible. We draw upon a longitudinal study of food provisioning among low-income mothers in Sheffield, UK, in which we conducted ethnographic episodes with ten participants. The episodes variously involved shopping, preparing food, and eating together in participants’ everyday environments. We demonstrate that these episodes are valuable in revealing the entanglements of food provisioning, highlighting the impact of skills and constraints on food practices, moving understandings beyond ‘what is said’, and offering insights into the relational dynamics of food provisioning. The method attends to embodied knowledges, practices, and situated relational processes – and the temporal dimensions of these – that may elude articulation in the interview setting. The ethnographic episodes also generated conversations on themes outside the project topic guide. While not always strictly related to the research questions, these offered ethically sensitive opportunities to the researcher to demonstrate genuine interest in participants’ lives. Ethnographic episodes inevitably present certain methodological challenges. Attention is needed to considerations of authenticity and reactivity, alongside more practical matters of timing, equipment, and transcription. Researchers must also be prepared to navigate the sometimes ambiguous insider and outsider positionalities arising from being an outsider in an insider’s space. We assert that when carefully planned, implemented, and conceptualised as performative interventions, ethnographic episodes offer an eminently practicable way to generate rich analytical insights. These potentials extend far beyond this article’s focus on food practices to broad topics in everyday life.