I don't understand people's obsession with bacon. Bacon is good, it's tasty. It can be perfect in the morning with eggs or on a club sandwich. But it is not the most delicious food of all time, or even the most delicious pork product.
There's two main levels of it.
The memetic version is to shove bacon into everything regardless of balance or reason. This is the realm of using a bacon weave to replace bread, bacon in candy bars, bacon milk shakes, and bacon related products that are not food. It's a mix of enthusiasm for bacon as a food, a rejection of strict dietary guidelines, and no small amount of patriotism in the US, real or ironic. While we're obviously not the only place that does real bacon, pig farming was a huge part of American life in some areas for a long time before chicken got really cheap.
The more culinary focused version is a recognition that bacon has salty, sweet, and a strong dose of savory/umami taste to it that goes well with a lot of different foods it's not traditionally associated with. Pork fat goes well with a lot of seafood in general as demonstrated by many Cajun dishes mixing pork sausages and seafood, and bacon fat can play a similar role. Like a lot of cured meats, a small amount can be used in a sauce to accent vegetables which shouldn't surprise anyone that's enjoyed a Salad Lyonnaise or Cobb Salad. And it can easily substitute for some of the butter in baked goods to add flavor. I've done it in chocolate chip cookies and had wonderful biscuits that did the same.
Combine those two plus social media evolving and taking off at a time when cooking at home was becoming more popular so people experimented more and you have a food fad that lasts longer than most.
I bet there was a marketing push by pig farmers. I've found that there almost always is when it comes to food fads like this, an industry-based push to popularize one of their products that maybe didn't reach the public conscience directly, like with milk or pomegranates or chilean sea bass, or whatnot.
In terms of economic impact, nothing beats bacon. While most food trends tend to trickle down from the gourmet market into the mouths of mass consumers, that wasn’t the case with bacon. Bacon mania was sparked not in the kitchens of fancy restaurants in New York or Chicago, but in the pork industry’s humble marketing offices in Iowa, where people like Joe Leathers engineered a turnaround for an underappreciated cut of pig....
The first chain to do this was Hardee’s, which at the time had a much larger share of the market than it does today. Larry Cizek, the retired head of food service marketing at the Pork Board, remembers sitting poolside in Orlando at an industry conference in the early ’90s, having a drink with Bob Autry, then president of Hardee’s. Cizek was complaining about trying to get restaurants interested in bacon, because everyone wanted lean products. “Well,” Cizek recalls Autry saying, “everyone says that you have to have the lean stuff on your menu, but by God, I only sell three, four lean sandwiches a day!” Cizek began telling Autry about the Sisyphean task of trying to move pork bellies, and Autry said, “I’m gonna come up with a sandwich with grease dropping down their chin and we’ll see what they say!” ...
The Pork Board lobbied restaurant chains to develop bacon-based menu items, and subsidized recipe development and market research. Some of these were wild shots. Leathers recalls a prototype for Burger King (BKW) that was a fried pork patty (almost like a giant pork nugget) topped with bacon, which died in the final stages of corporate recipe testing. “We followed the old rule ‘Keep It Simple,’” Leathers says, noting that while they occasionally played around with ideas like “bacon balls” or “deep-fried bacon strips,” the Pork Board directed its efforts toward having restaurants “put it on a burger.” Though the money spent by the National Pork Board on this effort was relatively small—a few hundred thousand dollars, spread over a decade, by one estimate—the investment paid off better than anyone could have imagined. “McDonald’s had more positive influence for the turnaround of bacon when they started adding it to sandwiches” such as the Bacon Double Cheeseburger and Quarter Pounder BLT, says Leathers. “Man, if you put two, three strips of bacon on their sandwiches, that’s a ton of bacon.”
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
no small amount of patriotism in the US, real or ironic.
What, patriotism? No no no. The obsession with bacon comes from the Internet, specifically the place where people worship the mustache guy from Parks and Recreation and post r/atheism rage-face comics. They're the ones buying bacon mints, bacon air fresheners, bacon soap, bacon soda, etc. ad infinitum.
Ironically I'm more of a Canadian bacon guy. Less fat, and harder to mess up.
I bet there was a marketing push by pig farmers. I've found that there almost always is when it comes to food fads like this, an industry-based push to popularize one of their products that maybe didn't reach the public conscience directly, like with milk or pomegranates or chilean sea bass, or whatnot.
In terms of economic impact, nothing beats bacon. While most food trends tend to trickle down from the gourmet market into the mouths of mass consumers, that wasn’t the case with bacon. Bacon mania was sparked not in the kitchens of fancy restaurants in New York or Chicago, but in the pork industry’s humble marketing offices in Iowa, where people like Joe Leathers engineered a turnaround for an underappreciated cut of pig....
The first chain to do this was Hardee’s, which at the time had a much larger share of the market than it does today. Larry Cizek, the retired head of food service marketing at the Pork Board, remembers sitting poolside in Orlando at an industry conference in the early ’90s, having a drink with Bob Autry, then president of Hardee’s. Cizek was complaining about trying to get restaurants interested in bacon, because everyone wanted lean products. “Well,” Cizek recalls Autry saying, “everyone says that you have to have the lean stuff on your menu, but by God, I only sell three, four lean sandwiches a day!” Cizek began telling Autry about the Sisyphean task of trying to move pork bellies, and Autry said, “I’m gonna come up with a sandwich with grease dropping down their chin and we’ll see what they say!” ...
The Pork Board lobbied restaurant chains to develop bacon-based menu items, and subsidized recipe development and market research. Some of these were wild shots. Leathers recalls a prototype for Burger King (BKW) that was a fried pork patty (almost like a giant pork nugget) topped with bacon, which died in the final stages of corporate recipe testing. “We followed the old rule ‘Keep It Simple,’” Leathers says, noting that while they occasionally played around with ideas like “bacon balls” or “deep-fried bacon strips,” the Pork Board directed its efforts toward having restaurants “put it on a burger.” Though the money spent by the National Pork Board on this effort was relatively small—a few hundred thousand dollars, spread over a decade, by one estimate—the investment paid off better than anyone could have imagined. “McDonald’s had more positive influence for the turnaround of bacon when they started adding it to sandwiches” such as the Bacon Double Cheeseburger and Quarter Pounder BLT, says Leathers. “Man, if you put two, three strips of bacon on their sandwiches, that’s a ton of bacon.”
While interesting, that seems to more about a revival of bacon onto the plate after a long period of diets trying to shift towards low fat directions and not the fad as we know it. It predates the bacon fandom by at least a decade. No one was making bacon scented shaving soap in the 90s and early 00s.
And other recent food fads definitely haven't had the same kind of marketing push. I don't recall advertising pushes for quinoa, cupcakes, or Sriacha (though I'm now suspicious of a kale lobby existing in the shadows).
I bet there was a marketing push by pig farmers. I've found that there almost always is when it comes to food fads like this, an industry-based push to popularize one of their products that maybe didn't reach the public conscience directly, like with milk or pomegranates or chilean sea bass, or whatnot.
In terms of economic impact, nothing beats bacon. While most food trends tend to trickle down from the gourmet market into the mouths of mass consumers, that wasn’t the case with bacon. Bacon mania was sparked not in the kitchens of fancy restaurants in New York or Chicago, but in the pork industry’s humble marketing offices in Iowa, where people like Joe Leathers engineered a turnaround for an underappreciated cut of pig....
The first chain to do this was Hardee’s, which at the time had a much larger share of the market than it does today. Larry Cizek, the retired head of food service marketing at the Pork Board, remembers sitting poolside in Orlando at an industry conference in the early ’90s, having a drink with Bob Autry, then president of Hardee’s. Cizek was complaining about trying to get restaurants interested in bacon, because everyone wanted lean products. “Well,” Cizek recalls Autry saying, “everyone says that you have to have the lean stuff on your menu, but by God, I only sell three, four lean sandwiches a day!” Cizek began telling Autry about the Sisyphean task of trying to move pork bellies, and Autry said, “I’m gonna come up with a sandwich with grease dropping down their chin and we’ll see what they say!” ...
The Pork Board lobbied restaurant chains to develop bacon-based menu items, and subsidized recipe development and market research. Some of these were wild shots. Leathers recalls a prototype for Burger King (BKW) that was a fried pork patty (almost like a giant pork nugget) topped with bacon, which died in the final stages of corporate recipe testing. “We followed the old rule ‘Keep It Simple,’” Leathers says, noting that while they occasionally played around with ideas like “bacon balls” or “deep-fried bacon strips,” the Pork Board directed its efforts toward having restaurants “put it on a burger.” Though the money spent by the National Pork Board on this effort was relatively small—a few hundred thousand dollars, spread over a decade, by one estimate—the investment paid off better than anyone could have imagined. “McDonald’s had more positive influence for the turnaround of bacon when they started adding it to sandwiches” such as the Bacon Double Cheeseburger and Quarter Pounder BLT, says Leathers. “Man, if you put two, three strips of bacon on their sandwiches, that’s a ton of bacon.”
While interesting, that seems to more about a revival of bacon onto the plate after a long period of diets trying to shift towards low fat directions and not the fad as we know it. It predates the bacon fandom by at least a decade. No one was making bacon scented shaving soap in the 90s and early 00s.
And other recent food fads definitely haven't had the same kind of marketing push. I don't recall advertising pushes for quinoa, cupcakes, or Sriacha (though I'm now suspicious of a kale lobby existing in the shadows).
Well. 2013 was the International Year of Quinoa. A day declared by the UN according to a resolution pushed by the Bolivia and Peruvian delegations, all which just happen to be where most of the world's quinoa is grown, coinciding with Evo Morales' appointment as the Special Ambassador to Food and Agriculture Organization
It makes for a great story, but it just doesn't happen that an obscure grain that's been common for decades in the Third World suddenly ends up being a North American fad. It ain't Facebook or Twitter or whatever that's accomplishing that; it's not somebody going down to Bolivia, tweeting about how great quinoa is, and then it exploding all across American consciousness. Fads involving previously unheralded foods are almost always driven by some industry actor with an interest - which is actually somewhat self-evident, because otherwise, there wouldn't be enough supply / logistics to feed the fad in the first place.
As for bacon... well... some pushes are enough to drive a food into the mainstream culture for a long time. Lobster went from a peasant food to a luxury item. Chicken wings used to be waste and are now practically the drivers of chicken prices because they've been marketed into a niche (boneless chicken wings, anybody?).
Cupcakes... cupcakes I have no explanation for though. Hipsters?
I bet there was a marketing push by pig farmers. I've found that there almost always is when it comes to food fads like this, an industry-based push to popularize one of their products that maybe didn't reach the public conscience directly, like with milk or pomegranates or chilean sea bass, or whatnot.
In terms of economic impact, nothing beats bacon. While most food trends tend to trickle down from the gourmet market into the mouths of mass consumers, that wasn’t the case with bacon. Bacon mania was sparked not in the kitchens of fancy restaurants in New York or Chicago, but in the pork industry’s humble marketing offices in Iowa, where people like Joe Leathers engineered a turnaround for an underappreciated cut of pig....
The first chain to do this was Hardee’s, which at the time had a much larger share of the market than it does today. Larry Cizek, the retired head of food service marketing at the Pork Board, remembers sitting poolside in Orlando at an industry conference in the early ’90s, having a drink with Bob Autry, then president of Hardee’s. Cizek was complaining about trying to get restaurants interested in bacon, because everyone wanted lean products. “Well,” Cizek recalls Autry saying, “everyone says that you have to have the lean stuff on your menu, but by God, I only sell three, four lean sandwiches a day!” Cizek began telling Autry about the Sisyphean task of trying to move pork bellies, and Autry said, “I’m gonna come up with a sandwich with grease dropping down their chin and we’ll see what they say!” ...
The Pork Board lobbied restaurant chains to develop bacon-based menu items, and subsidized recipe development and market research. Some of these were wild shots. Leathers recalls a prototype for Burger King (BKW) that was a fried pork patty (almost like a giant pork nugget) topped with bacon, which died in the final stages of corporate recipe testing. “We followed the old rule ‘Keep It Simple,’” Leathers says, noting that while they occasionally played around with ideas like “bacon balls” or “deep-fried bacon strips,” the Pork Board directed its efforts toward having restaurants “put it on a burger.” Though the money spent by the National Pork Board on this effort was relatively small—a few hundred thousand dollars, spread over a decade, by one estimate—the investment paid off better than anyone could have imagined. “McDonald’s had more positive influence for the turnaround of bacon when they started adding it to sandwiches” such as the Bacon Double Cheeseburger and Quarter Pounder BLT, says Leathers. “Man, if you put two, three strips of bacon on their sandwiches, that’s a ton of bacon.”
While interesting, that seems to more about a revival of bacon onto the plate after a long period of diets trying to shift towards low fat directions and not the fad as we know it. It predates the bacon fandom by at least a decade. No one was making bacon scented shaving soap in the 90s and early 00s.
And other recent food fads definitely haven't had the same kind of marketing push. I don't recall advertising pushes for quinoa, cupcakes, or Sriacha (though I'm now suspicious of a kale lobby existing in the shadows).
Well. 2013 was the International Year of Quinoa. A day declared by the UN according to a resolution pushed by the Bolivia and Peruvian delegations, all which just happen to be where most of the world's quinoa is grown, coinciding with Evo Morales' appointment as the Special Ambassador to Food and Agriculture Organization
It makes for a great story, but it just doesn't happen that an obscure grain that's been common for decades in the Third World suddenly ends up being a North American fad. It ain't Facebook or Twitter or whatever that's accomplishing that; it's not somebody going down to Bolivia, tweeting about how great quinoa is, and then it exploding all across American consciousness. Fads involving previously unheralded foods are almost always driven by some industry actor with an interest - which is actually somewhat self-evident, because otherwise, there wouldn't be enough supply / logistics to feed the fad in the first place.
As for bacon... well... some pushes are enough to drive a food into the mainstream culture for a long time. Lobster went from a peasant food to a luxury item. Chicken wings used to be waste and are now practically the drivers of chicken prices because they've been marketed into a niche (boneless chicken wings, anybody?).
Cupcakes... cupcakes I have no explanation for though. Hipsters?
2013 was well after quinoa became popular, at least in this area. I recall the declaration was more a response to the popularity to remind people that it was an Andes area food since there were fears its heritage would be ignored or forgotten if other countries started growing it.
There are a number of other food fads that come to mind as well like non-instant ramen, cronuts, and kimchi seeing a sharp uptick but those may be more restaurant centric and much more localized to places with certain ethnic populations or food scenes. Especially those damn cronuts.
Food industry groups still have a significant effect at pushing things, but they're definitely not the only sources anymore and don't have huge control over what becomes memetic. They'll try to take advantage of course, like when Pillbury tried to convince people they could use their dough to make cronuts at home. With limited success from what I can tell.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Ooh, in the 1800s some American trying to mimic soft French cheese made cream cheese instead, and from there, the modern cheesecake, god's gift to dessert.
Yesterday I had a bacon milkshake. It was neither as good not as bad as it might sound.
As in using actual bacon/bacon fat? Or imitating the flavor with paprika, maple, smoked salt, etc?
As far as I could tell, it was actual bacon strip tossed into the blender with vanilla ice cream. It was pretty well ground up, almost gritty though not unpleasant.
It was salty and savory and didn't clash with the vanilla ice cream particularly. That said, it was very silly and I just tried it because I wanted to check it off the list. I don't think it'll catch on as a thing people drink regularly.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Yeah, you should read a French cook book sometime and notice the number of dishes that are straight up named after other countries/places in other countries.
Like Mayonnaise.
User name Alazull on Steam, PSN, Nintenders, Epic, etc.
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AlazullYour body is not a temple, it's an amusement park.Enjoy the ride.Registered Userregular
Cupcakes... cupcakes I have no explanation for though. Hipsters?
Really easy to make, watch Cupcake Wars and you'll see all kinds of people who have no idea what they're doing in a kitchen making cupcakes. Also tasty and can be visually appealing what with fillings and toppings.
I really don't understand people who get mad about food trends. This isn't a brand new thing and has been happening probably as long as food.
User name Alazull on Steam, PSN, Nintenders, Epic, etc.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Corn is a Western Hemisphere crop. Cornbread was taught to American settlers by Native Americans and other cornmeal based foods came to be in time.
Barbecue is straight American as well for the same reason if I recall.
It's definitely in a similar boat. Like I said previously, pigs are a huge part of food history in North America. Buccaneers were pirates that attacked Spanish ships and towns in the Caribbean named for buccans, wooden frames used to roast and smoke hogs and cattle by settlers in the area who were often those same pirates. The buccan itself (the word and the device) came from Caribbean natives though they tended to barbecue manatee.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Ooh, in the 1800s some American trying to mimic soft French cheese made cream cheese instead, and from there, the modern cheesecake, god's gift to dessert.
Additionally, again, like
Saying "this place took the food from somewhere else and changed it" is 1) saying nothing about quality and 2) means that the Best Flavor is some obscure grass that lives in the Serengeti.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Ooh, in the 1800s some American trying to mimic soft French cheese made cream cheese instead, and from there, the modern cheesecake, god's gift to dessert.
Additionally, again, like
Saying "this place took the food from somewhere else and changed it" is 1) saying nothing about quality and 2) means that the Best Flavor is some obscure grass that lives in the Serengeti.
For that matter, look at an Indian or Thai cookbook and count how many recipes use chile peppers. Chile peppers are not native to Asia, they originate in the Americas. Indian and Thai cooking was a bit different before chiles were brought in a few centuries ago.
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Sorry; the intent was not to downplay the quality of American food, regardless of the country of origin.
Up here we're constantly bombarded by aggressive claims of '[X] thing is CANADIAN, dammit!' because people feel that there's a lack of Canadian identity in things, and cuisine is certainly one of them. So I've been exploring the topic of what things really are home grown here or in North America as a whole (it turns out... not much. There were plenty of traditional First Nations dishes, of course, but none of those have really survived into modern Canadian cuisine).
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Sorry; the intent was not to downplay the quality of American food, regardless of the country of origin.
Up here we're constantly bombarded by aggressive claims of '[X] thing is CANADIAN, dammit!' because people feel that there's a lack of Canadian identity in things, and cuisine is certainly one of them. So I've been exploring the topic of what things really are home grown here or in North America as a whole (it turns out... not much. There were plenty of traditional First Nations dishes, of course, but none of those have really survived into modern Canadian cuisine).
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Ooh, in the 1800s some American trying to mimic soft French cheese made cream cheese instead, and from there, the modern cheesecake, god's gift to dessert.
Additionally, again, like
Saying "this place took the food from somewhere else and changed it" is 1) saying nothing about quality and 2) means that the Best Flavor is some obscure grass that lives in the Serengeti.
For that matter, look at an Indian or Thai cookbook and count how many recipes use chile peppers. Chile peppers are not native to Asia, they originate in the Americas. Indian and Thai cooking was a bit different before chiles were brought in a few centuries ago.
The one which has always seemed crazy to me is: think of how much tomatoes are used in various European cuisines. Tomatoes are native to central/south America.
Also, a lot of cuisines which are normally thought of as a specific ethinicity can be considered American, since they were invented post-immigration by immigrants from those countries.
Here's what it comes down to. Spaghetti, long strands of durum wheat pasta, extruded, dried, then boiled, and ragu alla Bolognese, a chunky, heavy meat stew, are physically incompatible. In Italy, spaghetti is tossed with oil, cheese and herbs, while heavy sauces are married to big, tube shapes, or fresh ribbons like tagliatelle. So how did a dish that's unheard of in Italy become the poster dish for Italian cuisine in the U.S.? Well the answer can be found on a small island, but I don't mean Capri.
I mean Ellis. From 1892 to 1954, some 12 million immigrants began their American experience here. Some were rich, others poor beyond imagining. Many had their identities changed, while some lost them altogether.
Now culturally, Ellis was an engine of homogenization. You might walk in Tuscan, Sicilian, or Venetian, but you walked out Italian, and the "American" came later on. Bound by little more than a common language, many of these strangers in a strange land settled in tight-knit communities inside larger urban landscapes. No longer forced to dine on black bread and beans, the cooks of such "Little Italys" began to innovate giving birth to many of the dishes that Americans consider to be Italian today. What's more, many of these new dishes quickly moved onto the plates of mainstream America, compliments of an active, motivated, and highly organized Italian-American manufacturing community.
A good example, the powerful National Macaroni Manufacturer's Association, which was like an extruded pasta cartel in the old days. Now during the 1920's, they published and distributed W.A.S.P. friendly recipes, including a wildly popular one for something called Italian spaghetti and meatballs, which was basically meat sauce. What was interesting is that it was cooked and served as a casserole. Fascinating! The association also offered up, shall we say, fanciful food mythologies in their magazine, "Macaroni Journal." In fact, an Association writer may have actually may have actually invented the whole Marco Polo-bringing-pasta-to-Venice-from-China legend. Nice piece of viral marketing, that.
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Sorry; the intent was not to downplay the quality of American food, regardless of the country of origin.
Up here we're constantly bombarded by aggressive claims of '[X] thing is CANADIAN, dammit!' because people feel that there's a lack of Canadian identity in things, and cuisine is certainly one of them. So I've been exploring the topic of what things really are home grown here or in North America as a whole (it turns out... not much. There were plenty of traditional First Nations dishes, of course, but none of those have really survived into modern Canadian cuisine).
Poutine is the big one that comes to mind but not much beyond that. Also, Quebec still produces like 3/4 of the world's Maple Syrup.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
Ooh, in the 1800s some American trying to mimic soft French cheese made cream cheese instead, and from there, the modern cheesecake, god's gift to dessert.
Additionally, again, like
Saying "this place took the food from somewhere else and changed it" is 1) saying nothing about quality and 2) means that the Best Flavor is some obscure grass that lives in the Serengeti.
For that matter, look at an Indian or Thai cookbook and count how many recipes use chile peppers. Chile peppers are not native to Asia, they originate in the Americas. Indian and Thai cooking was a bit different before chiles were brought in a few centuries ago.
The one which has always seemed crazy to me is: think of how much tomatoes are used in various European cuisines. Tomatoes are native to central/south America.
Also, a lot of cuisines which are normally thought of as a specific ethinicity can be considered American, since they were invented post-immigration by immigrants from those countries.
Here's what it comes down to. Spaghetti, long strands of durum wheat pasta, extruded, dried, then boiled, and ragu alla Bolognese, a chunky, heavy meat stew, are physically incompatible. In Italy, spaghetti is tossed with oil, cheese and herbs, while heavy sauces are married to big, tube shapes, or fresh ribbons like tagliatelle. So how did a dish that's unheard of in Italy become the poster dish for Italian cuisine in the U.S.? Well the answer can be found on a small island, but I don't mean Capri.
I mean Ellis. From 1892 to 1954, some 12 million immigrants began their American experience here. Some were rich, others poor beyond imagining. Many had their identities changed, while some lost them altogether.
Now culturally, Ellis was an engine of homogenization. You might walk in Tuscan, Sicilian, or Venetian, but you walked out Italian, and the "American" came later on. Bound by little more than a common language, many of these strangers in a strange land settled in tight-knit communities inside larger urban landscapes. No longer forced to dine on black bread and beans, the cooks of such "Little Italys" began to innovate giving birth to many of the dishes that Americans consider to be Italian today. What's more, many of these new dishes quickly moved onto the plates of mainstream America, compliments of an active, motivated, and highly organized Italian-American manufacturing community.
A good example, the powerful National Macaroni Manufacturer's Association, which was like an extruded pasta cartel in the old days. Now during the 1920's, they published and distributed W.A.S.P. friendly recipes, including a wildly popular one for something called Italian spaghetti and meatballs, which was basically meat sauce. What was interesting is that it was cooked and served as a casserole. Fascinating! The association also offered up, shall we say, fanciful food mythologies in their magazine, "Macaroni Journal." In fact, an Association writer may have actually may have actually invented the whole Marco Polo-bringing-pasta-to-Venice-from-China legend. Nice piece of viral marketing, that.
There's a huge difference between how meatballs were prepared in Italy and the US. Different ingredients and they weren't served with pasta normally.
On a side note, I'm a huge fan of classical Italian cuisine dating from before tomatoes became a part of Italian cuisine. The brown and white sauces involved are really, really good but it's tough to find an Italian place that does them out where I am.
Going back to distinctly American food again, quick research reminds me that non-English muffins are American in origin. And anything involving turkey has its origin in the the Americas given that they're not native elsewhere.
AlazullYour body is not a temple, it's an amusement park.Enjoy the ride.Registered Userregular
While poutine may be Canadian, the idea of putting cheese and gravy on fries is old. On the East Coast for a long time diners served Disco Fries, which was a snazzy new name for a dish that people asked for on occasion because it was cheap and filling. Obviously poutine is a perfection of the art, but it probably has its origins somewhere else.
Which lets be honest is the story of food. Many dishes we consider traditional or emblematic of a country may have only been eaten there for the last hundred or so years, or are really traditional of a specific area but the entire country has developed a taste for them. Also, especially true from the 1800's on, it could have been invented by a chef working at a restaurant and/or hotel and some wealthy tourists brought back the recipe so they could teach their home cook and eventually they started their own place and had it on the menu and so on and so forth.
I mean, again, look at the history of Worchestershire sauce. It's a sauce that a couple of English brothers came up with to mimic something they had in India they really liked, which in itself was based on garrum which was a sauce used by Ancient Romans. This is the essence of food.
If you get too worked up about authenticity you're missing the point. Food is a result of history, both conquest and trade. Just realize that people everywhere at every point have always tried to eat the tastiest food possible.
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...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Corn is a Western Hemisphere crop. Cornbread was taught to American settlers by Native Americans and other cornmeal based foods came to be in time.
Barbecue is straight American as well for the same reason if I recall.
It's definitely in a similar boat. Like I said previously, pigs are a huge part of food history in North America. Buccaneers were pirates that attacked Spanish ships and towns in the Caribbean named for buccans, wooden frames used to roast and smoke hogs and cattle by settlers in the area who were often those same pirates. The buccan itself (the word and the device) came from Caribbean natives though they tended to barbecue manatee.
I remember reading a story in an Usagi Yojimbo book where they talked about how soy sauce is made. One important thing they mentioned was that the building had mold growing in it and over time it caused the flavor differences that made them unique to the maker. If you were building a larger place to ferment soy sauce and you wanted it to keep the unique flavor, you had to use timbers from the old building in the new one (That had the mold on it).
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Corn is a Western Hemisphere crop. Cornbread was taught to American settlers by Native Americans and other cornmeal based foods came to be in time.
Barbecue is straight American as well for the same reason if I recall.
It's definitely in a similar boat. Like I said previously, pigs are a huge part of food history in North America. Buccaneers were pirates that attacked Spanish ships and towns in the Caribbean named for buccans, wooden frames used to roast and smoke hogs and cattle by settlers in the area who were often those same pirates. The buccan itself (the word and the device) came from Caribbean natives though they tended to barbecue manatee.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Corn is a Western Hemisphere crop. Cornbread was taught to American settlers by Native Americans and other cornmeal based foods came to be in time.
Barbecue is straight American as well for the same reason if I recall.
It's definitely in a similar boat. Like I said previously, pigs are a huge part of food history in North America. Buccaneers were pirates that attacked Spanish ships and towns in the Caribbean named for buccans, wooden frames used to roast and smoke hogs and cattle by settlers in the area who were often those same pirates. The buccan itself (the word and the device) came from Caribbean natives though they tended to barbecue manatee.
Is manatee endangered?
I would try a BBQ manatee.
It is the cow of the sea.
And much like the cow of the land, the buffalo, it is also endangered.
...OP seems to basically admit that America just steals cuisine from everywhere else, occasionally blending it with other stolen cuisine to create 'American' dishes.
I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Corn is a Western Hemisphere crop. Cornbread was taught to American settlers by Native Americans and other cornmeal based foods came to be in time.
Barbecue is straight American as well for the same reason if I recall.
It's definitely in a similar boat. Like I said previously, pigs are a huge part of food history in North America. Buccaneers were pirates that attacked Spanish ships and towns in the Caribbean named for buccans, wooden frames used to roast and smoke hogs and cattle by settlers in the area who were often those same pirates. The buccan itself (the word and the device) came from Caribbean natives though they tended to barbecue manatee.
Is manatee endangered?
I would try a BBQ manatee.
It is the cow of the sea.
And much like the cow of the land, the buffalo, it is also endangered.
American bison are actually not endangered anymore. They're considered Near Threatened which is a step down from Least Concern but two steps up from Endangered. Otherwise we wouldn't be farming them for food.
"Let some heat-hater specify what's hot and what's not".
This is like getting somebody who hates games to review them. To somebody who hates anything spicy, everything that's even slightly spicy is too spicy. There's an argument to be made that if any amount of spicy is too spicy, then you should get somebody who thinks that way to try it and see if they have issues. But using them to quantify a food's spiciness continuum is a spectacularly bad idea. Let the pros handle that!
Also, the person who wrote that is named D.R. Martin, which I feel is a transparent attempt to make it look like they have a PhD in spiciness. For shame.
Also, the person who wrote that is named D.R. Martin, which I feel is a transparent attempt to make it look like they have a PhD in spiciness. For shame.
While poutine may be Canadian, the idea of putting cheese and gravy on fries is old. On the East Coast for a long time diners served Disco Fries, which was a snazzy new name for a dish that people asked for on occasion because it was cheap and filling. Obviously poutine is a perfection of the art, but it probably has its origins somewhere else.
Which lets be honest is the story of food. Many dishes we consider traditional or emblematic of a country may have only been eaten there for the last hundred or so years, or are really traditional of a specific area but the entire country has developed a taste for them. Also, especially true from the 1800's on, it could have been invented by a chef working at a restaurant and/or hotel and some wealthy tourists brought back the recipe so they could teach their home cook and eventually they started their own place and had it on the menu and so on and so forth.
I mean, again, look at the history of Worchestershire sauce. It's a sauce that a couple of English brothers came up with to mimic something they had in India they really liked, which in itself was based on garrum which was a sauce used by Ancient Romans. This is the essence of food.
If you get too worked up about authenticity you're missing the point. Food is a result of history, both conquest and trade. Just realize that people everywhere at every point have always tried to eat the tastiest food possible.
World history would have been so much more interesting to study in school if they had tied it into everybody trying to get food that tasted good.
While poutine may be Canadian, the idea of putting cheese and gravy on fries is old. On the East Coast for a long time diners served Disco Fries, which was a snazzy new name for a dish that people asked for on occasion because it was cheap and filling. Obviously poutine is a perfection of the art, but it probably has its origins somewhere else.
Which lets be honest is the story of food. Many dishes we consider traditional or emblematic of a country may have only been eaten there for the last hundred or so years, or are really traditional of a specific area but the entire country has developed a taste for them. Also, especially true from the 1800's on, it could have been invented by a chef working at a restaurant and/or hotel and some wealthy tourists brought back the recipe so they could teach their home cook and eventually they started their own place and had it on the menu and so on and so forth.
I mean, again, look at the history of Worchestershire sauce. It's a sauce that a couple of English brothers came up with to mimic something they had in India they really liked, which in itself was based on garrum which was a sauce used by Ancient Romans. This is the essence of food.
If you get too worked up about authenticity you're missing the point. Food is a result of history, both conquest and trade. Just realize that people everywhere at every point have always tried to eat the tastiest food possible.
World history would have been so much more interesting to study in school if they had tied it into everybody trying to get food that tasted good.
For the last two years or so I've exclusively used extra large Tellicherry peppercorns at home. I was at at a spice shop sniffing the different peppercorn samples and when I got to this particular offering, one of my first thoughts was "So this is why the British wanted India."
Maybe their brain hears "pepper" and immediately gives them an expectation of spice.
Yeah, that's all I can come up with as I watch them pick through their food to remove any peppers because they are determined never to experience anything spicy.
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Desserts with some savory flavor even if it's just a pinch of sea salt have been popular for a bit. Bacon easily capitalizes on that.
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I bet there was a marketing push by pig farmers. I've found that there almost always is when it comes to food fads like this, an industry-based push to popularize one of their products that maybe didn't reach the public conscience directly, like with milk or pomegranates or chilean sea bass, or whatnot.
Some fast Googling finds me this http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-10-06/bacon-why-americas-favorite-food-mania-happened:
Ironically I'm more of a Canadian bacon guy. Less fat, and harder to mess up.
While interesting, that seems to more about a revival of bacon onto the plate after a long period of diets trying to shift towards low fat directions and not the fad as we know it. It predates the bacon fandom by at least a decade. No one was making bacon scented shaving soap in the 90s and early 00s.
And other recent food fads definitely haven't had the same kind of marketing push. I don't recall advertising pushes for quinoa, cupcakes, or Sriacha (though I'm now suspicious of a kale lobby existing in the shadows).
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Well. 2013 was the International Year of Quinoa. A day declared by the UN according to a resolution pushed by the Bolivia and Peruvian delegations, all which just happen to be where most of the world's quinoa is grown, coinciding with Evo Morales' appointment as the Special Ambassador to Food and Agriculture Organization
It makes for a great story, but it just doesn't happen that an obscure grain that's been common for decades in the Third World suddenly ends up being a North American fad. It ain't Facebook or Twitter or whatever that's accomplishing that; it's not somebody going down to Bolivia, tweeting about how great quinoa is, and then it exploding all across American consciousness. Fads involving previously unheralded foods are almost always driven by some industry actor with an interest - which is actually somewhat self-evident, because otherwise, there wouldn't be enough supply / logistics to feed the fad in the first place.
As for bacon... well... some pushes are enough to drive a food into the mainstream culture for a long time. Lobster went from a peasant food to a luxury item. Chicken wings used to be waste and are now practically the drivers of chicken prices because they've been marketed into a niche (boneless chicken wings, anybody?).
Cupcakes... cupcakes I have no explanation for though. Hipsters?
2013 was well after quinoa became popular, at least in this area. I recall the declaration was more a response to the popularity to remind people that it was an Andes area food since there were fears its heritage would be ignored or forgotten if other countries started growing it.
There are a number of other food fads that come to mind as well like non-instant ramen, cronuts, and kimchi seeing a sharp uptick but those may be more restaurant centric and much more localized to places with certain ethnic populations or food scenes. Especially those damn cronuts.
Food industry groups still have a significant effect at pushing things, but they're definitely not the only sources anymore and don't have huge control over what becomes memetic. They'll try to take advantage of course, like when Pillbury tried to convince people they could use their dough to make cronuts at home. With limited success from what I can tell.
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I'm genuinely curious: what dishes do people consider home-grown American cuisine (...mostly because I've been exploring the topic of home-grown Canadian cuisine, and basically drawing a blank. Even most of our maple syrup is actually imported)?
Cornbread, hushpuppies, johnnycakes . . . anything Southern involve cornmeal really.
Corn is a Western Hemisphere crop. Cornbread was taught to American settlers by Native Americans and other cornmeal based foods came to be in time.
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Every culture "steals" from every culture. Nobody's food is developed in a vacuum. It's all influenced by other cultures. Learning from others and then changing and improving on what you've learned is a good thing.
That said, as far as dishes created in America
As far as I could tell, it was actual bacon strip tossed into the blender with vanilla ice cream. It was pretty well ground up, almost gritty though not unpleasant.
It was salty and savory and didn't clash with the vanilla ice cream particularly. That said, it was very silly and I just tried it because I wanted to check it off the list. I don't think it'll catch on as a thing people drink regularly.
Barbecue is straight American as well for the same reason if I recall.
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Yeah, you should read a French cook book sometime and notice the number of dishes that are straight up named after other countries/places in other countries.
Like Mayonnaise.
Really easy to make, watch Cupcake Wars and you'll see all kinds of people who have no idea what they're doing in a kitchen making cupcakes. Also tasty and can be visually appealing what with fillings and toppings.
I really don't understand people who get mad about food trends. This isn't a brand new thing and has been happening probably as long as food.
It's definitely in a similar boat. Like I said previously, pigs are a huge part of food history in North America. Buccaneers were pirates that attacked Spanish ships and towns in the Caribbean named for buccans, wooden frames used to roast and smoke hogs and cattle by settlers in the area who were often those same pirates. The buccan itself (the word and the device) came from Caribbean natives though they tended to barbecue manatee.
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Additionally, again, like
Saying "this place took the food from somewhere else and changed it" is 1) saying nothing about quality and 2) means that the Best Flavor is some obscure grass that lives in the Serengeti.
For that matter, look at an Indian or Thai cookbook and count how many recipes use chile peppers. Chile peppers are not native to Asia, they originate in the Americas. Indian and Thai cooking was a bit different before chiles were brought in a few centuries ago.
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Sorry; the intent was not to downplay the quality of American food, regardless of the country of origin.
Up here we're constantly bombarded by aggressive claims of '[X] thing is CANADIAN, dammit!' because people feel that there's a lack of Canadian identity in things, and cuisine is certainly one of them. So I've been exploring the topic of what things really are home grown here or in North America as a whole (it turns out... not much. There were plenty of traditional First Nations dishes, of course, but none of those have really survived into modern Canadian cuisine).
ummm poutine?
The one which has always seemed crazy to me is: think of how much tomatoes are used in various European cuisines. Tomatoes are native to central/south America.
Also, a lot of cuisines which are normally thought of as a specific ethinicity can be considered American, since they were invented post-immigration by immigrants from those countries.
Consider Spaghetti and Meat Sauce.
Poutine is the big one that comes to mind but not much beyond that. Also, Quebec still produces like 3/4 of the world's Maple Syrup.
There's a huge difference between how meatballs were prepared in Italy and the US. Different ingredients and they weren't served with pasta normally.
On a side note, I'm a huge fan of classical Italian cuisine dating from before tomatoes became a part of Italian cuisine. The brown and white sauces involved are really, really good but it's tough to find an Italian place that does them out where I am.
Going back to distinctly American food again, quick research reminds me that non-English muffins are American in origin. And anything involving turkey has its origin in the the Americas given that they're not native elsewhere.
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Which lets be honest is the story of food. Many dishes we consider traditional or emblematic of a country may have only been eaten there for the last hundred or so years, or are really traditional of a specific area but the entire country has developed a taste for them. Also, especially true from the 1800's on, it could have been invented by a chef working at a restaurant and/or hotel and some wealthy tourists brought back the recipe so they could teach their home cook and eventually they started their own place and had it on the menu and so on and so forth.
I mean, again, look at the history of Worchestershire sauce. It's a sauce that a couple of English brothers came up with to mimic something they had in India they really liked, which in itself was based on garrum which was a sauce used by Ancient Romans. This is the essence of food.
If you get too worked up about authenticity you're missing the point. Food is a result of history, both conquest and trade. Just realize that people everywhere at every point have always tried to eat the tastiest food possible.
Is manatee endangered?
I would try a BBQ manatee.
It was interesting.
It is the cow of the sea.
And much like the cow of the land, the buffalo, it is also endangered.
Ah, Minnesota - the slums of Flavortown.
American bison are actually not endangered anymore. They're considered Near Threatened which is a step down from Least Concern but two steps up from Endangered. Otherwise we wouldn't be farming them for food.
Or maybe we would. They are tasty.
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"Let some heat-hater specify what's hot and what's not".
This is like getting somebody who hates games to review them. To somebody who hates anything spicy, everything that's even slightly spicy is too spicy. There's an argument to be made that if any amount of spicy is too spicy, then you should get somebody who thinks that way to try it and see if they have issues. But using them to quantify a food's spiciness continuum is a spectacularly bad idea. Let the pros handle that!
That would be a pretty cool PhD to have though.
"I've got a doctorate in being HOT"
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World history would have been so much more interesting to study in school if they had tied it into everybody trying to get food that tasted good.
For the last two years or so I've exclusively used extra large Tellicherry peppercorns at home. I was at at a spice shop sniffing the different peppercorn samples and when I got to this particular offering, one of my first thoughts was "So this is why the British wanted India."
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I still don't understand like, at all
My guess is that they conflate spicy and bitter. Both can cause a somewhat similar sensation in the mouth even if the actual flavors are different.
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...that's the point at which you need to be put in a room with padded walls.
Yeah, that's all I can come up with as I watch them pick through their food to remove any peppers because they are determined never to experience anything spicy.
Cooked Green Bell Peppers are not remotely bitter.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
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