I don’t think people really realize how much food has changed in the past few centuries. I was talking with this Pakistani dude and he was telling me about this traditional dish. Like half the ingredients were from the Columbian exchange.
The amount and variety of spices we have is just crazy in a historical context. For most humans for most of human history, meals consisted of grains in a pot, whatever veggies you could scrounge up (which looked very little like they do today), and a little meat if you were lucky.
My favorite will always be wartime foods. Shit on a shingle and spam on rice are fucking amazing.
Seriously. I love Korean army stew.
Peasant food, because peasants knew how to feed a family with cheap hearty ingredients, which keep you full. Whenever you imagine a cozy “I’m ready for a nap after eating” meal, it is almost always peasant food that you’re imagining.
Isn’t chicken Parmesan technically a New York dish?
TIL the chicken parmie is from NY. Although we Aussies have it served with hot chips, salad, and lager, instead of with pasta.
Do you throw some shrimp on the parmie?
I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help myself.
Mmm, acorn bread and beaver cheese.
You guys milk beavers?
I lick’em.
Oh you can milk just about anything…
Mammary glands, testies, beans, nuts, seeds, even the mighty coconut.
I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?
No, but their eggs make delicious omelettes
Partner (UK) and I (US) talk about this a lot. I felt this way, but she pointed out to me that the US is astonishingly good at taking dishes from other countries and putting a spin on them, such as changes in texture or combinations. Once I started to pay attention I agreed.
We fry it, add fat, carbs, and/or add sugar.
Done.
It’s also about fusing different cuisines together, to make something new. America is the big melting pot, and that means you end up getting flavor palettes that otherwise wouldn’t have been brought together.
Traditional Mexican food isn’t anywhere near as spicy or as cheesy as Tex-mex, for instance. That’s because Texans took the traditional Mexican cuisine, combined it with American peppers and English+North American aged orange cheeses, and created Tex-mex. Tex-mex also tends to rely on flour instead of corn, because Mexico had red/yellow/white maize (and later, modern yellow corn) while American settlers had wheat.
And then California Mexican food is an entirely different third type of food.
Hell, my favorite local pizza joint sells a chicken tikka masala pizza that is fucking wonderful. We have a really big North Indian population in my area, so lots of the local restaurants have veggie options (India is largely vegetarian) and/or Indian spice blends incorporated into some of their menu items.
Hamburgers, meatloaf, gumbo, and all sorts of southern food is American.
*Edit. Some of you think hamburgers weren’t an American creation. Y’all are incorrect. The humburg meat was never put between bread. The sandwich hamburger is a US creation.
Hamburger were invited in Athens Texas. Just go ask that city they advertise that it was a man from that town at the World Fair in the 1930’s.
I have to think of a lot of fish dishes too. Since we only have them here. I don’t think Walleye is from anywhere else. Maybe I’m wrong.
Walleye isn’t a preparation, it’s an animal.
Preparing pineapple or mango isn’t native either and included in these comparisons.
I didn’t say anything about nativeness. Also seems like you forgot to finish your sentence, I’m really not sure what you are trying to say here.
Literary all of those dishes have origins outside of the US lol
So does all human society, this is a stupid argument.
I find it fascinating that almost half of the world has their own dumpling (ie. a small ball of a cheap source of protein and fat held together by a wrapping of flour dough; cooked by boiling in water).
I bet if you they would all dispute the origin of that food item.
My point is that US people tend to claim ownership to a lot of things that were not invented there. I’m all for sharing culture and food and transforming them to something new, but don’t claim they are your invention.
Like as american as apple pie is an expression for a dish from Germany and the Netherlands.
We invented the chocolate chip cookie, man. That pretty much means we won. Lol
My point is that nationalism is poisoning society and destroying the ecosystem, and this discussion isn’t helping.
That I completely agree with and concede the point.
You’re literally wrong. A hamburger as a sandwich is a US creation. So is gumbo. Literally do a 2 minute search about it before “thinking” you know what you’re talking about. Lol
Dude, Hamburgers are literally named after the non-US city they originally came from…
But I have to admit that the refinement to its delicious present day form is an American achievement!The original hamburger was more like a meatloaf. It was a hamburg steak, meant to be eaten with a fork and knife just like a modern meatloaf. The modern hamburger is 100% an American invention, because America was the place that first turned it into a sandwich.
That’s a Hamburg steak. Not a hamburger, since there’s no bun
Na, buddy. You’re wrong. The Hamburg thing is just about a mashed up piece of meat. Not the hamburger. Putting the meat in the bun to make a sandwich is 100% US like 125 years ago.
That’s quite disputed.
One of the more likely theories states that the bun idea together with the ground meat steak originated in Hamburg, where it was a variant of the common “Rundstück warm”, which has been around since 200 years ago or so.It’s less disputed than most food origins. I looked up your rundstuck warm food. Dunno why you’re trying to make that argument, because because that sure looks nothing like a hamburger, nor does it get eaten like one. That it didn’t use ground beef aside, it being covered in gravy is a dead giveaway.
What about pumkin pie?
Native American: I am a joke to you?
Last panel gets it wrong, though.
Rest of the world totally thinks that there is such a thing as original American food:
High-caloric, hyper-processed junk containing no significant nutritional value but much too much fat, fructose sirup and carcinogenic substances.
That, and watery beer.I had bread that tasted like a cake, and the Pop-Tarts made my teeth jump out of my mouth due to the amount of sugar they were able to concentrate in it. Can’t recommend.
Both 100% American.
The people were very nice though, so that was something.
Isn’t that just all the news communities, even global news?
Perhaps establishing some additional designated Communities will somewhat reduce the US-centric pressure from the more general communities.
So, not a bad thing, I would say.
Fusion, mostly. Latino coworker from Texas told me Burritos are neither Mexican nor American, but a beautiful Texas border food fusion. Anecdotal, but the guys son is a professional chef.
All food is some kind of fusion. Humans have been cooking for hundreds of thousands of years, and very few communities have been truly isolated in human history. People going on about “true” this, and “authentic” that, just don’t know shit about cooking or culture.
Migration and transplanting of cultures has massively increased in the last 100 years though… Shit changed a lot slower in the past.
I think people vastly underestimate how much people moved around in the past. Not just from mass migrations, but also individuals just ending up in places. An army was basically a moving city making it’s way around for years if not decades. New trade routes opening often meant people moving across the world to either end just to handle logistics. A fad started by one individual eventually turns into a staple, a tradition, a culture.
If you went back to the time of Leonardo DaVinci you wouldn’t find tomatoes anywhere in Italy. Tomatoes are indigenous to Central America yet today it seems almost impossible to imagine Italian food without tomatoes! The introduction of tomatoes to Italian cooking might’ve been more gradual but the transformation was far greater than anything we see now.
Cali has amazing not quite Mexican food too.
Yeah, I mean when you have a European power colonize a native area, then the locals take over for a while before the noisy neighbor to the north re-colonizes it, then rebuilds on the labor of people that were already there (Surprise! You’re Americans now!), there’s going to be some back-and-forth culinary Frankensteining going on. For example; the California burrito.
What’s in the California burrito that the natives wouldn’t have made? Potatoes are from Peru.
Same with the argument of “we need to deport them to preserve our culture”. America has always been mix up of cultures and has a vastly different culture from state to state and city to city. New york wouldn’t have been the world renowned city it is if it didn’t have its diversity.
Mexico has breakfast tacos at home, they’re called Tacos de Canasta
I hope this is just american whining about cultural appropriation again. Food evolved based on which culture cook it and that country’s flavour, and chance is, some of your favorite food that you think is originated from one place is actually a fusion of another food. As a chinese that isn’t originated from china(and not from the west), the chinese food i loved the most is actually just fusion made using local ingredients for local tastebud, not because some people decided to ruin someone else culture.
I recommend watching this video from Jennifer Lee: https://youtu.be/U6MhV5Rn63M
It talks about the history of Chinese food in America it’s great. Echoes some of the flavours you’ve experienced with some fun context.
Looks great!
If you end up pinning any related communities in the sidebar, there is also !ehbuddyhoser@sh.itjust.works
Removed by mod
This might be a bit of a “I recognise that bulge” moment, but: that’s actually the Greek Chad nose, not Jewish Chad nose.
oh
WTF you talking about? If anything, aquiline noses are associated with Romans, not Jews.
oh
What the fuck is wrong with you?
