Example, putting ketchup on a perfectly cooked ribeye steak at a nice restaurant.
Flour tortillas are a sin
Surprised I haven’t seen pineapple on pizza yet…
If I listen to my french education, then basically everything except the traditional French way of doing things. Thankfully as a well travelled man I’ve learned that others do figure out some nice cooking here and there.
Putting ice in your glass of wine. I will judge you very harshly.
Meanwhile Germany with Wein-Schorle :p
Hot honey on pizza, liquid candy bbq sauce, meat candy generally. Definitely most ketchups. I’m largely against added sugars in most foods that aren’t desserts or otherwise typically include a savory/sweet component (citrus or teriyaki glazed poultry for ex, also Japanese curry is often made with a dollop of honey and I get it but not mine). People’s ‘chili’ recipes with too much honey or brown sugar, it’s chili, it’s kinda supposed to be deeply savory/spicy? Not everything is or has to be a sweet treat, but it feels like nothing is sacred or safe from the candyfication effect that seems increasingly popular. I’d never say anything to anyone making or ordering their sugary product of choice but I do think about it a lot.
Waste.
The only wrong move is to waste it. Do what you want but use everything possible.
The only place ketchup belongs is in the trash
I hope you don’t like japanese food.
Many of the western style dishes as well as some local ones, use ketchup.
Example: Okonomiyaki saucedeleted by creator
What?
Ketchup/catsup was a fish sauce developed in China. Westerners made the recipe with all sorts of things, like mushrooms.
We didn’t start using tomatoes until like the 1800’s when we figured out that a tomato isn’t poisonous.
Go look at the wikipedia page for ketchup: the first picture is mushroom ketchup.
Why do you think your ketchup bottle specifies “tomato ketchup”?
I think you are thinking of salt, which we used for rotting meat, as salt is derived etymologically from Sol, the name of the sun and the bringer of all life.
Yes, there is salt in tomato ketchup. And then we add more on frenched fries.
But salt would cure meat, because it would destroy harmful bacteria. Ironic, because if you salt the earth, then nothing grows, even though it is named to be the essence of life.
However, you need salt to live: just not the level you get from Burger King fries with ketchup.
Here’s a weird one that I only learned recently, at 41 years old, and changed both my ability to consume seafood and my feelings toward food preparation in general…
Ever since I was in 4th grade, after getting very sick eating my first lobster in Nantucket, MA, I couldn’t eat seafood. For a long time we thought it was a shellfish allergy, but over time I learned that a) I could eat shrimp tempura just fine, but not regular shrimp; b) lots of seafood made me sick, like sea bass, but anything fresh water was fine.
For decades, nobody I asked could figure out what the deal was; I eventually assumed that it was just something about things that grow up in the sea, and things like tempura could mask the problem flavor whatever
This year, I went to Japan with my family, and of course I’m not an asshole who would stop them from having the best sushi in the world. We booked a reservation at a sushi restaurant, assuming I could order something I liked, but discovered too late that it was “omakase”, meaning a set course of the sushi chef’s choice.
So, like always, hopeful that I might find something new I could eat, I decided I would give things the sniff test and if it smelled bad to me I’d pawn it off on my family. First dish lands, it smells great, so I eat it. it was delicious.
I asked the su-chef what it was, excited to find a new type of seafood I liked.
…It was sea bass. Something that definitely makes me sick. Next? Sea urchin. Then shrimp. And a whole bunch of other stuff I could never normally eat.
I was in shock. I asked if they knew why it could be but they didn’t know. I talked about it with a bunch of people throughout the trip but nobody had any ideas, until the owner of the hot springs inn in Hakone said “oh, I know, my friend has the same problem when we travel to America for business”.
He introduced me to the concept of Ikejime, a humane method for killing fish (and the shellfish and mollusk counterparts).
When big fisheries outside Japan kill their fish, they typically suffocate them in liquids with insufficient oxygen, then drain their blood later on. The stress of dying slowly releases hormones into their bloodstream, which soaks into their tissue after they’re dead. THAT is what makes me sick, and the Japanese consider it “dirty”. So Japanese fisheries use the process called Ikejime to swiftly kill the fish and quickly drain their blood.
This is also why seafood in Japan tastes so good to everyone compared to elsewhere.
There are even some small fisheries on the US West Coast that practice ikejime. I’ve found several sushi restaurants near me with Japanese head chefs who source their fish/shellfish/mollusks from Japan or specifically fisheries in the US that practice ikejime.
Suddenly I have access to a whole new world of seafood that I never could have enjoyed before.
As a result, I’ve started thinking now about how the killing process of ALL animals can alter their biochemistry and change their taste and edibility.
So I generally now consider any killing of animals for food that isn’t humane and “clean” to be objectively “wrong” even if I can still eat non-seafood like that.
Absolutely mind blowing food experience.
That is amazing. Thanks for sharing.
So you know, this applies to all meat, not just seafood. This is what kosher meat is. A happy animal makes for a happy meal. Drain the blood and kill it fast.
I couldn’t eat sushi at all until I moved to a bigger city, which has a much larger asian population.
And I am extremely picky about chicken, and frankly cannot eat red meat.
You can taste the suffering.
Just FYI, kosher is just a way of slaughtering coming from the Bible, it’s not particularly humane to the animal.
Um, Kobi beef.
FYI, the procedure in the Bible was basic instructions on how to make sure animals were killed, still delicious, and avoided as much pain as possible.
Whatever the reason, it is one of the more humane methods. It is specifically designed to cause a rapid drop in blood pressure that leads to rapid unconsciousness and death.
Whatever the motivation, other than using chemical sedation, it is one of the most humane ways to kill an animal.
I agree a quick death was the design intent, but as applied in modern kosher factories the letter of the law has been stretched to break the spirit. Things like hanging cows upside down so the guy with the killing knife could find their jugulars more quickly is not humane to the animals. And the non-kosher modern standard for cows of a bolt to the head is even faster than bleeding out a jugular. Still humane concerns over miss rates, but at least for cows I don’t think kosher is any better.
(Side note that other required parts of kosher meat like salting to draw out blood and removing the ligament Jacob tore when wrestling with the angel have, as post-death activities, no relationship to humaneness of slaughter.)
Bro, this has nothing to do with modern Kosher laws: this has to do with basic biology.
Fucking hell, Christians think some dude was bouyant as fuck. That’s not really the topic.
I grew up reform Jewish and knew about keeping kosher but never did myself, and never appreciated the actual taste difference in deli meats was due to the stress hormones.
tmyk
TIL something important. Im sensitive to all kinds of stuff, but now I’m going to pay closer attention to seafood.
Eating raw cookie dough
Pouring out bacon grease or beef tallow
“Authentic” Mexican street tacos with flour tortillas
Beef curry
Sweet tea using any sweetener but cane sugar
What’s wrong with beef curry?
No idea if you’re being sarcastic, but a lot of Indian people (in India, where curry was basically invented) revere cows
And millions of Indian non Hindus and people in neighbouring countries don’t.
Curry is a global cuisine.
It may originate in India, but it has been incorporated into local cuisines all over the world. Most countries in Asia have their own versions of curry at this point. I’d argue that the UK does too, even if they call it “Indian”. Even the concept of curry as a category of food is largely a British invention, and many of the things we’ve been calling curry for more than a hundred years have little relation to Indian food.
Also, India is a large and diverse country. Many Indians don’t eat beef, but there are absolutely whole populations of Indians who eat beef curry regularly.
GP is allowed to think of it as a faux pas. Others can have a different culture as you kindly pointed out.
Perhaps a kinder wording would have been: not everyone considers beef curry as a food crime, since <rest of your comment>
Your comment is quite nicely worded otherwise :)
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Back when I was in the Army, a friend of mine tricked his vegan GF into eating meat.
That is super fucked up. We don’t need to agree on things. I thing vegans are cringe, personally. But I would fight tooth and nail to make a vegan get what they want.
Like come on.
You articulated some of what I was about to write up.
Do what you like to your own food but never, ever, ever intentionally mess with or disregard someone else’s food restrictions. Doesn’t matter if you disagree with them or think they’re “making it up.” At best it’s a violation of their agency, and at worst you could kill or seriously injure someone. Stuff like that is scary.
One of my friends tells a story when she was 8, and she was deathly allergic to nuts. She was at a friend’s birthday party, and was given a cookie. She went to her mom to ask if it was okay, and her mom asked the mother of the birthday girl, “Does this have nuts in it? My daughter is deathly allergic to nuts.” The woman said, “No.” So she was allowed to eat the cookie. A few minutes later, her face started to swell, her throat started to close, and she started having a deadly reaction. The mother freaked out, and said to the other mom, “I thought you said there was no nuts in these?” “I mean, there are just one or two walnuts, but they are ground up so fine, she couldn’t have tasted them.” My friend had to go to the ER.
That “mother”, and I use to term lightly here, is beyond stupid dangerous (the one that said there were no nuts in the cookie).
After saving my child, it would have been all I could do to not beat them to a bloody pulp.
Hope the mother who provided the cookie was the one to pay for the medical bill. Otherwise, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I feel like a lot of people back then didn’t understand what allergies were, thinking it was just an extreme form of not liking the taste.
This really is baseline respect.
What do you find to be cringe about vegans?
I knew a woman who almost killed her son in law because she believed his shellfish allergy was “made up”.
I remember a story on Reddit of a grandmother that killed her granddaughter because she wouldn’t listen about an allergy.
I’d almost extend this to any kinds of trickery about what people are putting into their mouths. The consequences can be lethal at worst.
A bit unrelated but at a previous work place the guys there put viagra into another guy’s food as a joke where as I would’ve considered that borderline assault.
That’s not borderline, if he had low blood pressure issues or already medicated for high blood pressure, it could have killed him.
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paprika, salt, and pepper
So dried pepper, salt, and pepper? That’s wild!
Wildly different kinds of pepper lol. Fun fact, chili peppers are actually named peppers because when they were named they were thought to be related to black pepper, but are actually not really related at all.
Heating day old pizza is to be done on low in a covered skillet - all other methods are objectively inferior.
Edit: Also putting a box of pizza in the fridge, without laying a piece of wax paper, cling wrap, or tin foil over the top of the pizza slices is wrong because it will desiccate without it.
Judging people for preparing their food how they like it.
Waste.
Putting any seasoning on a meal you are served without tasting it first.
If it is not to your liking, then add the ketchup, steak sauce, salt, whatever, but at least try it first. 1) Out of respect for those who prepared it. 2) You might find that you enjoy it as it is.
Now if you prepared it, by all means, do whatever you want to it.
Reminds me when I spent several hours cooking a cubano sandwich and my brother just added tonkatsu sauce to it before ever tasting it. I begged him to taste it first, I’ve nvr even seen him add tonkatsu sauce randomly like that, but nope
I can’t find a link to verify this story, but I remember reading a story that an officer was given the opportunity to eat with Napoleon, and he seasoned his food before he took a bite, and it ruined his military career.
Napoleon decided that that person was not worthy of being entrusted with an army because he wouldn’t even try what was presented in front of him before changing it.
Ok, to start I completely agree… but for devil’s advocate sake where is the dividing line?
Let’s say cheese pizza with red pepper flakes; you like your cheese pizza with a little bit of spice on it but otherwise don’t want any other toppings on there.
If you and a few friends are ordering cheese pizza together from a local place that you haven’t tried yet, would it still be wrong to add the pepper flakes before trying the plain cheese pizza first?
There is a bit of generalization here because I know there are millions of variations of cheese pizza and some wildly different takes around the world but for the most part the vast majority of cheese pizza, especially from a standard, local to you, take out/delivery spot, has a small standard deviation from the norm.
Or put another way, does someone have to try a french fry plain first before they dip it in ketchup if they know they like their french fries with ketchup?
Is this rule more specifically geared towards fine dining, less fast food/mass produced type of foods/eating establishments?
Sorry if my autism is showing here but I do like hearing other people’s take on the narrow grey area between black and white social situations/faux-pas’.
Good questions. In my opinion, I think if it is fast food or delivery, do whatever you wish. Similarly, if it is a food you’ve had at a place before and remember it needed more of XYZ spice/sauce, it is fair to add it prior to eating.
For new experiences, especially with company, at a nice restaurant, or at someone’s home, definitely taste first.
But in the end, as a fellow poster stated, life is too short, enjoy whatever makes you happy.
I would add to it that this was also not fast food, like in Napoleon’s time, each meal had to be cooked personally, so you may not know what the chef was doing, you don’t know necessarily what to expect. So I think Napoleon’s reasoning in that case was that you should try what the chef prepared for you to see if you like it as is before you start altering it.
After all, like food science was very much in its infancy at that time, so you can eat the exact same meal prepared by the exact same recipe by two different chefs and have two wildly different food experiences.
I had to train my wife out of immediately dumping random hot sauce on every meal.
Wasting it, if it can at all be avoided.
My grandmother was purported to have frequently said that this was the only true crime.
Of course, she lived through Jim Crow, WWII, and The Korean War, so she overlooked a few other massive crimes, but she was a young adult living in the dust bowl when the Great Depression hit, so I think it’s reasonable for that to have been pretty formative for her.
My parents grew up in the ruins of post WWII Germany, so that has certainly impacted their raising of me.
But even setting that aside, deliberately wasting food is a disrespect to all the life that needed to end for you to have it. Be it flora, fauna, or fungi.
