Ask Lemmy

Tradition and authenticity is bullshit.

Food from good ingredients prepared well matters more than if the cheese was stared at for two hours by the sheepwife of the mayor of Scrumthrorpeshireffield.

For example: Wine tasters were clear that French wine just tasted better than Californian wine. They were extremely convinced. Then they tried a blind test and hoo boy did everyone get pissed when they couldn't tell the French wine was better without knowing it was French first. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)

Its more important to enjoy what you are eating than it is to follow someone else's food "rules". Put ketchup on hotdogs, pineapple on pizza, smear wasabi on sushi, coffee with pasta.

Steaks are diminishing returns for the price.
Most people can tell a $30 steak is better than a $6 one, but I think most people aren't going to get much of a difference between a $30 and a >$100 steak.

Brands names and generic coming from the same production lines are priced difference because of differing quality control standards. This may or may not still be the case, but it was when brand names were working on building the brand.

So a can of brand name green beans is more likely to have full beans with better texture and consistency. The lower quality beans, more fragmented and smaller pieces, and more variety in color are going to be in the generic labeled cans. Yes, same beans and same production line but the brand names get the better stuff in the same way as the people who pick through the fresh produce when it arrives at the store and the generic gets to use whatever is left over.

Generics are perfect in soups and casseroles and if you don't care enough about presentation. Brands are for when you want rigid consistency.

Car dependency is bad for food culture. It encourages massive chains and drive throughs and makes it harder for mom and pops to thrive

Food culture sucks. Gourmets, foodies, Michelin star chasers etc, all suck.

All my favorite places were low-key mom and pop indie operations where the focus was on the food. Not the decor, the presentation, or the pretentiousness.

I also will never understand the total obsession people have with super expensive dinners. I hate them and they are a huge waste of money and the food is usually mediocre. Like expensive wine, it has nothing to do with the product's quality or taste, and everything to do with just bragging about how rich you are by blowing boat loads of cash on an hour or two of pure vanity.

Food culture only exists because people aren't hungry.

No chef or restaurant can beat the satisfaction of eating whatever you have when you're truly hungry.

If we are talking about cuisine, then mine is that intensely spicy food (e.g. Indian, Korean, Laos, etc.) is heavily overrated.

I prefer a taste bouquet of a carefully crafted meal. Hotness should be a nice touch, not a dominant agony. Food should not require a built tolerance to it's ingredients in order to be enjoyed.

We're finally starting to get there, but American food culture really needs to embrace communal eating more. Think tapas, hot pots, even simply ordering a few dishes to share with the whole table.

It's more of a social and interactive activity, you get to try more things--it's just a better experience. And you don't get ostracized if you have some specific reason that you need your own separate food (medical, personal, whatever).

• afternoon cappuccino is great (Italians disagree)
• sweet-and-savory is tasty af (pineapple pizza, cream cheese with chocolate/nougat, steak with ketchup)
• sweet alcoholic drinks are great, actually (but they should still have taste - use high quality ingredients and keep the ratios sensible!)
• 2 months-old dry vermouth (fridge-stored) tastes better than freshly unsealed dry vermouth

Spicy food challenges are doing everything to ruin spicy food for everyone. They focus entirely on heat, not flavor.

If you want a spicy hot challenge and only care about the heat, there's pepper spray.

But super spicy hot foods should be intentionally made to also taste great. The challenge he should be the allure of the spicy food conflicting with the pain it puts you in. If you're gonna struggle with the heat, you should be equally tempted by the taste.

Da Bomb, for example, is a fucking abomination and shouldn't ever have stayed in business, nor be promoted by Hot Ones.

More Complicated food does not mean better food.

I dont want my steak with a thick bitter chocolate sauce that pairs with the Beet sauce squirted artfully around the plate, I dont want to try my steak with 18 different steak sauces.

I dont need my chicken curry to be paired with puree asparagus sauce, a Smokey egg yolk poured over peas and you replaced the butter for my bread with a mushroom pate.

Since when did good food stop just being...good food.

Cook it well, let the food speak for itself.

Average American inland "seafood" is garbage. You have access to the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Florida Keys, Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, and hundreds of thousands of lakes and rivers, yet the top fish dish 100+ miles from a shore is usually catfish fresh out of a polluted sewage overflow ditch or farmed shrimp/crawfish fed on subsidized cornmeal.

I saw a great sign at a seafood market once that read "If it smells like fish, it's not fresh fish". I can personally guarantee you that you cannot find good quality, fresh seafood in the USA unless you live within travel distance of a shore where you can find a local market or restaurant that sells their catch of the day.

Catfish is not good quality fish. It's a trash bottom feeder that does an excellent job of cleaning waterways. Stop eating it and claiming the flavor is unmatched, I can taste the Monsanto runoff.

Look, sniff, and only then taste if you didn't detect anything. Do it with totally fresh stuff too so you learn what That's supposed to be like.

That's why your mom had "the nose". Learn to use your senses.

I like. Steak. Well. Done. Because. That is how. I. Like. It.

it's not because I can't tell truly unsafe undercooked meat from rare

it's not because I don't like steak at all

it's not because i fantasize about eating leather

IT'S HOW I PERSONALLY ENJOY THE TEXTURE AND FLAVOR OF A STEAK

now that's out of the way I'll be ordering the veggie burger because i have overwhelming ecological guilt lol

You can just say you don't eat cilantro. You don't have to lie about it being an allergy.

Smash burgers fucking suck..

The only thing wearing gloves does is keep your hands clean.

Presentation rules all, but cheap does not equal bad or inferior.

I don't care about the rules. I don't even know what the hell I'm doing most of the time. I do read recipes, but I don't follow them. They are more like ideas for me, as in "oh they are using that spice with these veggies, might try that some time."

Most of the time I just throw stuff in the pan/pot and let them be over the heat for a bit. So far, nobody has complained about the food. Though that might be because I eat alone.

There's nothing special about red meat.

spicy food sucks