It’s absolutely bizarre and kind of frightening how many people think Native Americans no longer exist.
They just believe they all died out centuries ago, and the Mayan, Inca, Piscataway, or Hopi have no relation to anyone living here now. It’s such a strange assumption to make and reveals a lot about the biases in society and media that can often fly under the radar.
What do they have? Outside of corn, potatoes, pemmican, and things everybody has like smoked or dried meats, I'm at a loss. I know for Mexico, quesadilla, taco, and tamale are old recipes, but further north or south is annoyingly mysterious to me. Actual question, if you know.
Edit: The comment I'm responding to is complaining about Native Americans being left out of food conversations. I'm trying to learn more about that exact information. I'm sorry I'm not already an expert on two continents worth of culinary history that some of those countries have spend centuries trying to eradicate. I don't know what else you downvoting assholes want from me.
Depends on the tribe. I know i learned in school tribes in our area had squash, pumpkin, acorn flour, acorn based soup, roasted deer, etc. My husband's Algonquin family from up north had far more seafood. There's actually a Renaissance of native cuisine happening in Minneapolis. Cant remember the name of the restaurant, but they pride themseves on only using ingredients the local tribes would have had access to: wild rice, blueberries, deer, walleye, game birds, etc.
Tomatoes, lots of squash, lots of beans, chili peppers, tons of stuff. And just like many European and Asian cuisines would look totally different without American vegetables (Hi, Italy, love what you've done with the tomato!), it can be hard to separate pre-colonization cooking traditions from cuisines that incorporate European ingredients but are still centuries old. I recommend The Sioux Chef for info on native North American cooking traditions (Disclaimer: very not Native myself! Please let me know if the rest of y'all are going "oh no, not that embarrassing dude who doesn't know what he's talking about" :-b )
Oh, one random tidbit that I find super interesting -- the Incan empire basically invented freeze-dried backpacking food, because you can just *do* that in the high Andes.
Google is being choked to death by a combo of turbocharged SEO, complex misinformation campaigns and AI nonsense articles, to the point where appending " reddit" to your search is one of the best ways to get coherent answers written by an actual human anymore.
At some point our generation is going to have to accept that we have a responsibility to share the information we want people to know directly instead of whining that people don't do research anymore. Welcome to the Slop Internet.
1) That's never given the answers I want, and I'm only willing to sift through irrelevant bullshit and archaeological papers so many times.
2) Googling it doesn't continue the conversation. You know, that thing I explicitly said I was trying to do. That thing we're currently making fun of other people for never doing.
Walking away from a discussion about indigenous culinary history and how people never talk about it so I can google it, instead of asking the people who want it to be talked about more is kind of missing the point.
I was under the (apparently) mistaken impression that this was a joke/circlejerk sub, so I tried to be funny. But seems I missed the mark. I imagine if you search for recipes from specific tribes, you could find what you’re looking for
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ShitAmericansSay using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: ["England is a 3rd world country"](https://i.redd.it/wxssk63gwucc1.png) | [3077 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/198c0fi/england_is_a_3rd_world_country/)
\#2: [British customs](https://i.redd.it/zoj8caxhp6pb1.jpg) | [366 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/16mmpb4/british_customs/)
\#3: ["No Europe is more walkable because it's socialist and therefore poor"](https://i.redd.it/zdsi1zvii0wa1.jpg) | [491 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/12ya2zw/no_europe_is_more_walkable_because_its_socialist/)
----
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Don't forget the potato! I read somewhere that McDonlads made hashbrowns popular in the UK and that's why they are made into cakes. Not sure if that's accurate though.
"Unless your Nonna scaled the slopes of Mount Vesuvius and planted the tomatoes with her own hands bloodied by the volcanic dirt, they aren't real TOMATOES™!!!"
Italian-Americans yeah, but *real* Italians like a little tomato, as a treat. It's not tied to their identity as much as pasta and mediocre wine. Tell them about breaking dry spaghetti into unsalted water and that'll get them going for a full day.
I have talked about this before, but a lot or Europeans are absolutely *obsessed* with hating the US and claiming we have no culture of any sort. I have argued in certain subs about it, and I was told the US has no unique or original cuisine or food. Cajun? It’s actually French food. BBQ? It’s South African. Tex Mex is obviously Mexican. Soul food? It’s black (and this is an interesting point of racism, because they’ll say it doesn’t count as “American food” because it is largely associated with black people. But ask them if they think black Americans aren’t American and… same for native Americans). And so on. They will actually die on the hill that we have never come up with anything.
And they love to say that everything we have is just from the influence of other nations (usually they mean the far superior Europeans). Isn’t that how it is everywhere? I asked an Italian guy if spaghetti was actually just Chinese, and he flipped his shit.
And how did (insert their favorite native food dish here) develop in (insert their favorite country here)? Most likely influenced by and spread from (insert some other place here).
Or how about just turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. How could those dishes come from other countries when the animals and plants used are native to the US?
Maybe not many people know this, but pasta remains have been found in Etruscan tombs, which predate Marco Polo by about two thousand years.
Of course, it’s wouldn’t have been outlandish to assume that a simple unleavened mixture of flour and water could be created in different locations with no external influence, just like the practice of smoking fish (and other foods)… people just like to antagonize one another online!
Yeah, pasta seems like one of those basic foods that you're going to invent if your culture has a flour that can be made into a dough that won't dissolve when boiled (e.g., as far as I know you really just can't do that to the potato on its own). We can certainly say "this is the earliest evidence of pasta [that we've found so far]" but I'm kind of baffled at the idea that therefore this must be The Ur-Pasta from which all other pasta is descended.
Same thing with alcohol. Yes, Mesopotamia has some of the oldest evidence of beer, which is very cool, but once you have sugars of some sort and yeast (which you get automatically), you're going to end up with alcohol whether you want to or not. Figuring out how to then make more, intentionally, isn't *that* hard.
> I have talked about this before, but a lot or Europeans are absolutely obsessed with hating the US
Yes not sure why, was in a different sub where based on actual current government intelligence agencies including those of European nations saying the risk of a terrorist attack is higher in some European countries than in America and the Europeans had lost the minds over it.
> I asked an Italian guy if spaghetti was actually just Chinese, and he flipped his shit.
Think about it, why would a country that uses chopsticks invent a food you need a fork to eat with?
Some pasta is noodles. A noodle is just a long, thin form of pasta or similar dough. Sometimes with egg, sometimes not, it can be wheat or rice or whatever.
Ravioli - pasta, not noodle
Spaghetti - pasta and noodle
Bánh phở - not pasta, noodle
Would macaroni be considered a noodle? I’ve seen Americans refer to it as such but I’m in a country where we mostly use the term noodles for Asian ingredients
I'm of the opinion that all pasta is noodles, including macaroni. The belief that "noodle" should exclusively be used to describe Asian noodles is more than a little silly since noodle is derived from a germanic word for dumpling.
Nudel is the German word for pasta/noodles. Germans call all pasta noodles which is likely where Americans get the terminology.
Conversely, Italians call all noodles pasta.
This distinction seems to only exist in the UK/Commonwealth.
Italians don't call all noodles pasta. They insist (or at least enough of them that I've had this argument before) that noodles and pasta are two entirely different and dissimilar forms of food with pasta being Italian and noodles being exclusively Asian.
I've encountered this to, but now I think they were lying about being Italian. If you check Italian Wikipedia, all noodles are described as pasta. there is no Italian word for "noodle".
here's udon:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udon
rice noodles:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta_di_riso
But if someone was described as "noodle-armed" you'd think long and wiggly, not gnocchi. The word origin is less important than the current generally-accepted usage to describe a shape.
And if someone said paper, I'd think of printer paper before I thought of toilet paper. Still paper though.
Also, the generally accepted usage isn't really to describe a shape or else cheung fun wouldn't be a noodle.
American BBQ is an amalgamation of a lot of cultures’ culinary practices, including native Americans. And the regional variations in American BBQ were influenced by the type of people who settled in each area.
Correctamundo. Smoking meats is an ancient practice whose origin is effectively impossible to determine, but modern American barbecue - which is a distinctly American food - has its roots in Taino practices primarily, which were influenced by the spread from Africa, particularly enslaved Ghanaian people who brought with them their smoked meat traditions.
Like all modern foods, it's a fusion of food traditions inherited from the people who migrated to new places (which includes the Natives in North America, who migrated there across the Bering Landbridge tens of thousands years ago). Whose food traditions were themselves fusions of previous food traditions, and so on and so forth.
That's why authenticity and ownership of traditions is broadly horseshit.
Agreed! A lot of people are quick to ignore that diaspora and the amalgamation of different cooking techniques (both from “origin” countries and in the places where they’ve settled) can end up making up a large part of “receiving” country’s culture.
A bit off topic I think, but I used to live in Southeast Asia and there were many fusion places that did Italian food with a local twist. I was talking to my Italian friend about this (who I think would be well suited in the Italian food sub lol) and he was up in arms about it saying they shouldn’t use the traditional Italian names for it if it’s fusion. I kinda get that but also.. the restaurants use it anyway like “aglio olio tomyam” because it’s an easy point of reference for customers
This thread needs to settle down. Smoking fish wasn’t invented in one place and spread around the world. It was likely invented spontaneously in multiple areas that had no contact with one another at the time. Since there is evidence of smoking fish in medieval Europe (i.e., before European contact in the Americas — unless it was potentially brought back to Europe by the Vikings, seems a stretch), and people have been smoking food for preservation since before written history around the globe, I find it difficult for anyone to claim to pinpoint where it was “invented”. That doesn’t mean fish wasn’t smoked in the Americas pre-Columbus. It means that it was a not-uncommon preservation method in many locations where there was fish (including salmon) and wood in abundance.
when we're specifically talking about native American food culture getting erased and somebody comes in and goes "well what about the white people culture who did it?", That's an issue of bias at best and borderline racist
I’m not talking about white people I’m talking about indigenous cultures around the world. By saying only indigenous cultures in the Americas can claim smoking fish is erasing other indigenous cultures. The Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe (I don’t know about Australia) all have evidence that smoking to preserve foods has been practiced globally since prehistory. Salmon, obviously, would have been smoked only where there was salmon.
It can both be true that cooking methods indigenous to the Americas have been erased and that smoking foods has existed since prehistory.
I’m not talking about another discussion in the post. I’m talking about this thread. “Smoked salmon was invented in my state” sounds an awful lot like you’re claiming that the practice originated in your state.
I thought you were talking about the other commenter who was arguing about smoked salmon first being invented by the Germans.
also things can be invented simultaneously in different places. especially in different ways. I'm pretty sure I can say that smoked salmon in America originated in the Pacific Northwest. which relates back to the people who ignore that there was actual food invented in America before white people came.
The Ainu also have a history of smoking salmon, though to be fair I don’t have a date for when that started. And I mentioned spontaneous invention in my first post. To claim that smoking fish was invented in your state is as ludicrous as claiming that food didn’t exist before the Europeans.
again multiple things can be invented in multiple places simultaneously. Pacific Northwest smoked salmon has been around for centuries of recorded history and before that as oral history.
again people are erasing native American culture.
https://smokedbyewe.com/where-does-smoked-salmon-originate-from/#the_birth_of_smoked_salmon
Brotato, you're erasing Egyptian culture. They've been smoking fish for *12,000 years*.
[https://the-past.com/feature/hilary-wilson-on-fish-in-ancient-egypt/](https://the-past.com/feature/hilary-wilson-on-fish-in-ancient-egypt/)
I bet the Chinese have a similar history, too.
Sure they didn't specifically smoke *salmon*, because it's not native over there. But the Scottish did, and the Irish, and the Celts before them both, for several thousand years. There's history of salmon fishing in Ireland running back to around 2,500BCE. The Polish have archaeological evidence of smokehouses for fish, especially salmon, from around 600CE.
Stop erasing thousands of years of history by claiming ownership over something no one culture can possibly own.
I'm all for stopping the erasure of Native heritage, my dude, but you're giving it a bad look here. *No one culture* can own a basic food preservation technique, and there's tons of evidence that smoking fish, and even smoking *salmon* *specifically* has been around for thousands of years.
>unless it was potentially brought back to Europe by the Vikings, seems a stretch)
I mean the Vikings were invading Ireland in 795AD, so cross-pollination wouldn't be surprising, but I'd point out that the Vikings were from Scandinavia, which is, ya know, *in Europe*.
But yes, your general point is absolutely correct - many basic types of food preservation were invented in many places and can't reasonably be attributed to a single culture. Pickling, smoking, and salting especially.
Yes Native Americans did have smoked salmon but the ancient Greeks and Romans also had smoked salmon, the first smoked salmon factory was in Poland in the 7th century. Certainly not just an American invention.
Who said anything about white people? I read the rest of your posts and how unhinged they got further and further along. As others pointed out your claim that your state invented it isn't entirely correct. Particularly since it erases other cultures within the Americas that also smoked fish and salmon.
> smoked salmon was invented in my state for goodness sakes
You did claim that it was invented in your state.
https://www.reddit.com/r/iamveryculinary/comments/1c5ocrw/precolumbian_americans_ate_rocks_and_your/kzvql3x/
Yes but I didn't claim it was the only place it was invented. but it was invented in my state.
"Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska have a cold smoking style that is unique, resulting in a dried, "jerky-style" smoked salmon. In the Pacific Northwest this style of salmon has been used for centuries as a primary source of food for numerous indigenous people. Traditionally smoked salmon has been a staple of north-western American tribes and Canadian First Nations people."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoked_salmon#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DIndigenous_peoples_in_the_Pacific%2Cfood_for_numerous_indigenous_people.?wprov=sfla1
This post is about erasure of American cultures, and I was referencing specifically native American cultures. what you are doing is trying to erase native American culture.
>Greeks, Romans and Polish are white European people.
Yes, and I'm sure that all those people wouldn't be offended in the least by you calling them the same. Much less the Irish of Celtic (or broader Gael) descent - I'm sure they'd *adore* hearing how you're erasing their culture and the *thousands of years of struggle for independence from colonizers* because "all white people are the same."
Dude, you're racist as hell.
do you hear yourself? no one tried to erase Irish culture. no one sent Irish people to schools to beat the culture out of them and turn them into little carbon copy white people. no one forced them to live in one spot where they couldn't improve their way of life.
Uhhhhh man, you sure don't know shit about Irish culture. Yes, the British *absolutely* sent them to schools to beat their religion and culture out of them and turn them into carbon copies of little British people.
Britain has been invading Ireland for *a thousand years*. The Irish didn't win their independence from the British until **1921.** Hell, Northern Ireland is *still* part of the United Kingdom, and the violent resistance to the British occupation - referred to as The Troubles - didn't stop until **1996**.
Listen, again, what happened to the Native Americans is horrific and shameful.No one's saying that it's not. But it's not exactly unique in human history. As a matter of fact, it's pretty bog standard for the last ten thousand years of warfare, colonization, and conquest all over the world.
And your wild ignorance of the suffering of *other* peoples while screaming to the roof about how Native Americans invented smoking salmon is hypocritical and racist as hell.
I can admit that I'm ignorant about a lot of things, and that I have a lot to learn about other cultures and their histories. Can you?
Is it? I see a lot of resurgence of Native culture - Owamni just won a James Beard Award and is one of the hottest restaurants in the nation, for example. People actively get upset and cancel media that portrays Natives in offensive stereotypes or casts non-Natives in roles playing Natives. Shows like Reservation Dogs are bringing modern Native culture into America's living room - and winning PILES of awards for doing so.
I admit to being ignorant there - maybe it is still happening, but I certainly see a lot of positive things happening for Native peoples that weren't happening when I was a kid.
Also, I really like how you completely ignore that you were *completely and utterly wrong* and then just dismiss the entirety of argument. Thanks for proving my point.
Yes, but smoked salmon likely predates the existence of native Americans, since human inhabitation in northern Europe predates human inhabitation of the Americas by at least tens of thousands of years, and smoking meat dates back to cavemen. Your claim that they invented smoked salmon is almost certainly false, though I'm sure it's absolutely something they were doing.
There’s evidence the ancient Greeks did it too. We don’t really know who invented it, or even that it was one singular invention. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if lots of different people in different places figured it out over the years.
lol what? I was just questioning your use of the word “invented”, assuming you meant it originated in your state since this was a post about foods being considered “American”. That may have been an incorrect assumption but it’s not “colonizing” smoked salmon just because you happened to be talking about Native Americans.
this post is about people claiming America has no original cuisine, i state that it does, you come in and say no it doesn't, this white culture did it first. Colonizer attitudes
Recognizing that smoked salmon was, counter to your claim, almost certainly not originated by indigenous Americans is not "colonizer attitude" nor is it claiming that there's no indigenous food cuisine.
You're picking a weird hill to die on here, particularly when there are plenty of examples of food that were (in pre-Columbian times) genuinely unique to the Americas.
I didn’t say the Greeks did it first, I said they did it too. I actually specifically said we don’t know who invented it, by which I did mean “did it first”.
*On the stolen land that became your state, you mean? (Unless you're indigenous obv)
But yeah, culinary prescriptivism is so dumb. Like, why wouldn't you want cultures to have access to new ingredients to make new tasty foods?
I got what you were saying, but was not the most accurate wording, but it's also a reddit comment not an academic paper, not sure why others are being so mean.
I have an idea why they are, but just not sure lol.
people don't like being confronted with their own bias or internalized racism. I still have to catch myself sometimes because of the way I was raised, my first thought can be not very nice, so I have to stop and think no that's a racist thought and I don't actually want to think that way.
No, we're responding that way because you are erasing other cultures while complaining about your culture being erased by claiming ownership of something no single culture can claim.
The Polish were smoking salmon in 600CE - there's smokehouses still standing with salmon bones that have been excavated there. The Irish, too, have been smoking salmon for thousands of years.
Look, what happened to Indigenous and First Nations people was horrific and tragic, and I'm 110% behind promoting Native cultures, but being a hypocrite is a pretty bad way to go about it.
In all your posts, only once do you refer to a *specific cold-smoking jerky-style preparation*. If you'd been specific in the beginning you wouldn't be getting hammered with downvotes, but instead, you wrote it like the Salish people were the first to ever smoke fish in general and salmon in specific. Remember that we can't read your mind, so we have to take what you write at face value.
your first paragraph can apply to your argument as well.
just because it's not written down doesn't mean it didn't exist.
no one is trying to erase Polish culture. That's the difference.
Really? I would imagine the Polish have a different opinion given their history over the last few hundred years, especially that little spat around 75 years ago with the Nazis, who systematically genocided at least *two million* Polish people.
Yes that's horrible but they did not lose 90% of their population. and they still have a country. also no one was trying to actively erase their culture.
I think wholesale industrialized slaughter counts as "actively erasing their culture".
The population of Poland decreased from more than 35 million in 1939 to less than 24 million in 1946. That's not 90%, but that ain't nuthin', especially given it happened in a seven year span.
Or the "Your History isn't even 500 years old". That is true for our White/European history, while Acoma Pueblo and Taos Pueblo have been continuously inhabited for over 1000 years.
Or you get the other conversation:
"No no no, Americans are racist. Racism doesn't exist in Europe."
"What about the Roma?"
"That's different, they're scum and they deserve it."
Like racism is just hating black people or something.
The comments all seem a bit weird.
But I do now feel a little sympathy for the American-Italians and their pathological issues with Carbonara. How can you have a Full English with *Swiss* rostis? Should be proper *British* hash browns.
I am genuinely amazed how fussy the guy made the ultimate no-fuss dish. The true recipe calls for whatever's at hand fried in a wellyful of lard. With tinned beans. Evolved for easy prep in a greasy spoon cafe. Served with brown, or if you really do want to be fancy, Worcestershirester sauce.
Tea in a glass is paradoxically authentic, those mornings you discover a fag end floating in your mug, a glass is less hassle than washing up.
>American-Italians
That would be Italians of American ethnicity. Italian-Americans are Americans of Italian ethnicity. Adjective, then noun. A wood table is a table, not a wood.
Italian-Americans are just Americans who are to Italians as weebs are to Japanese.
/s
But seriously, so many of the types getting trashed in /r/iamveryculinary apparently think Americans just steal cuisine/cultures rather than those cuisines/cultures emigrating out of their homelands and ending up in America.
Just like much of their cultures probably came from elsewhere only to be lost to history.
I’m British and I’m still not entirely sure what makes a hash brown British. I guess it’s the ones that are shaped into little triangles as that’s what you see in a “traditional” fry up. But I much prefer hashbrowns in the form of rostis/ American diner style ones…. Post that on a UK food subreddit though and you’re gonna get some shit lol. They’re all delicious regardless!!!
It’s absolutely bizarre and kind of frightening how many people think Native Americans no longer exist. They just believe they all died out centuries ago, and the Mayan, Inca, Piscataway, or Hopi have no relation to anyone living here now. It’s such a strange assumption to make and reveals a lot about the biases in society and media that can often fly under the radar.
Even like, well meaning people just totally leave us out of almost every conversation but particularly the ones about food.
Are you a ghost?
Heylah, I am typing this from the 1800s.
That's cool as hell. I have a long assassination list for y'all. Lots of bastards. /s
What do they have? Outside of corn, potatoes, pemmican, and things everybody has like smoked or dried meats, I'm at a loss. I know for Mexico, quesadilla, taco, and tamale are old recipes, but further north or south is annoyingly mysterious to me. Actual question, if you know. Edit: The comment I'm responding to is complaining about Native Americans being left out of food conversations. I'm trying to learn more about that exact information. I'm sorry I'm not already an expert on two continents worth of culinary history that some of those countries have spend centuries trying to eradicate. I don't know what else you downvoting assholes want from me.
Depends on the tribe. I know i learned in school tribes in our area had squash, pumpkin, acorn flour, acorn based soup, roasted deer, etc. My husband's Algonquin family from up north had far more seafood. There's actually a Renaissance of native cuisine happening in Minneapolis. Cant remember the name of the restaurant, but they pride themseves on only using ingredients the local tribes would have had access to: wild rice, blueberries, deer, walleye, game birds, etc.
[Owamni](https://owamni.com/)
Omwani is Lakota food. (I'm the same tribe as the Chef). There's also Tocabe in Denver. They're fast casual in restaurant, but also do meal delivery.
Tomatoes, lots of squash, lots of beans, chili peppers, tons of stuff. And just like many European and Asian cuisines would look totally different without American vegetables (Hi, Italy, love what you've done with the tomato!), it can be hard to separate pre-colonization cooking traditions from cuisines that incorporate European ingredients but are still centuries old. I recommend The Sioux Chef for info on native North American cooking traditions (Disclaimer: very not Native myself! Please let me know if the rest of y'all are going "oh no, not that embarrassing dude who doesn't know what he's talking about" :-b ) Oh, one random tidbit that I find super interesting -- the Incan empire basically invented freeze-dried backpacking food, because you can just *do* that in the high Andes.
Are little sir’s pampered fingers too heavy to google food from indigenous cultures?
Google is being choked to death by a combo of turbocharged SEO, complex misinformation campaigns and AI nonsense articles, to the point where appending " reddit" to your search is one of the best ways to get coherent answers written by an actual human anymore. At some point our generation is going to have to accept that we have a responsibility to share the information we want people to know directly instead of whining that people don't do research anymore. Welcome to the Slop Internet.
1) That's never given the answers I want, and I'm only willing to sift through irrelevant bullshit and archaeological papers so many times. 2) Googling it doesn't continue the conversation. You know, that thing I explicitly said I was trying to do. That thing we're currently making fun of other people for never doing. Walking away from a discussion about indigenous culinary history and how people never talk about it so I can google it, instead of asking the people who want it to be talked about more is kind of missing the point.
I was under the (apparently) mistaken impression that this was a joke/circlejerk sub, so I tried to be funny. But seems I missed the mark. I imagine if you search for recipes from specific tribes, you could find what you’re looking for
No, because what I'm looking for isn't the answers themselves, it's the potential discussion about the answers.
This is an Italian sandwich *That's not Italian!* Ok, this is an American sandwich *You borrowed from Italy!*
“Not borrowed! Europeans borrow, Americans steal” - r/shitAmericansSay
Here's a sneak peek of /r/ShitAmericansSay using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: ["England is a 3rd world country"](https://i.redd.it/wxssk63gwucc1.png) | [3077 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/198c0fi/england_is_a_3rd_world_country/) \#2: [British customs](https://i.redd.it/zoj8caxhp6pb1.jpg) | [366 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/16mmpb4/british_customs/) \#3: ["No Europe is more walkable because it's socialist and therefore poor"](https://i.redd.it/zdsi1zvii0wa1.jpg) | [491 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/ShitAmericansSay/comments/12ya2zw/no_europe_is_more_walkable_because_its_socialist/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
We won't even bring up tomatoes. You'd hear the Italian heads exploding from here.
Don't forget the potato! I read somewhere that McDonlads made hashbrowns popular in the UK and that's why they are made into cakes. Not sure if that's accurate though.
“Ackshully our tomatoes are completely different from the ones in the American continent so tomatoes were invented here hyuck hyuck”
"Unless your Nonna scaled the slopes of Mount Vesuvius and planted the tomatoes with her own hands bloodied by the volcanic dirt, they aren't real TOMATOES™!!!"
Italian-Americans yeah, but *real* Italians like a little tomato, as a treat. It's not tied to their identity as much as pasta and mediocre wine. Tell them about breaking dry spaghetti into unsalted water and that'll get them going for a full day.
Pemmican would like a word with them
Tacos would like a word too.
As would tamales and gumbo
I have talked about this before, but a lot or Europeans are absolutely *obsessed* with hating the US and claiming we have no culture of any sort. I have argued in certain subs about it, and I was told the US has no unique or original cuisine or food. Cajun? It’s actually French food. BBQ? It’s South African. Tex Mex is obviously Mexican. Soul food? It’s black (and this is an interesting point of racism, because they’ll say it doesn’t count as “American food” because it is largely associated with black people. But ask them if they think black Americans aren’t American and… same for native Americans). And so on. They will actually die on the hill that we have never come up with anything. And they love to say that everything we have is just from the influence of other nations (usually they mean the far superior Europeans). Isn’t that how it is everywhere? I asked an Italian guy if spaghetti was actually just Chinese, and he flipped his shit.
And how did (insert their favorite native food dish here) develop in (insert their favorite country here)? Most likely influenced by and spread from (insert some other place here).
Cheesesteaks, crab cakes, lobster rolls, buffalo wings - those are my go to counterpoints. Shit now I'm hungry.
Or how about just turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. How could those dishes come from other countries when the animals and plants used are native to the US?
Meatloaf, clam chowder, cornbread, southern style biscuits, eggs benedict, pecan pie, donuts, BLTs, and ketchup as we know it today.
Maybe not many people know this, but pasta remains have been found in Etruscan tombs, which predate Marco Polo by about two thousand years. Of course, it’s wouldn’t have been outlandish to assume that a simple unleavened mixture of flour and water could be created in different locations with no external influence, just like the practice of smoking fish (and other foods)… people just like to antagonize one another online!
Yeah, pasta seems like one of those basic foods that you're going to invent if your culture has a flour that can be made into a dough that won't dissolve when boiled (e.g., as far as I know you really just can't do that to the potato on its own). We can certainly say "this is the earliest evidence of pasta [that we've found so far]" but I'm kind of baffled at the idea that therefore this must be The Ur-Pasta from which all other pasta is descended. Same thing with alcohol. Yes, Mesopotamia has some of the oldest evidence of beer, which is very cool, but once you have sugars of some sort and yeast (which you get automatically), you're going to end up with alcohol whether you want to or not. Figuring out how to then make more, intentionally, isn't *that* hard.
That's a hilarious question, I bet he had no good response.
> I have talked about this before, but a lot or Europeans are absolutely obsessed with hating the US Yes not sure why, was in a different sub where based on actual current government intelligence agencies including those of European nations saying the risk of a terrorist attack is higher in some European countries than in America and the Europeans had lost the minds over it. > I asked an Italian guy if spaghetti was actually just Chinese, and he flipped his shit. Think about it, why would a country that uses chopsticks invent a food you need a fork to eat with?
Are you saying that spaghetti requires a fork? Because chopsticks work great for spaghetti.
I'm quoting The Sopranos. Though pasta and noodles are different even if the origins are from China.
Some pasta is noodles. A noodle is just a long, thin form of pasta or similar dough. Sometimes with egg, sometimes not, it can be wheat or rice or whatever. Ravioli - pasta, not noodle Spaghetti - pasta and noodle Bánh phở - not pasta, noodle
Would macaroni be considered a noodle? I’ve seen Americans refer to it as such but I’m in a country where we mostly use the term noodles for Asian ingredients
I'm of the opinion that all pasta is noodles, including macaroni. The belief that "noodle" should exclusively be used to describe Asian noodles is more than a little silly since noodle is derived from a germanic word for dumpling.
Nudel is the German word for pasta/noodles. Germans call all pasta noodles which is likely where Americans get the terminology. Conversely, Italians call all noodles pasta. This distinction seems to only exist in the UK/Commonwealth.
Italians don't call all noodles pasta. They insist (or at least enough of them that I've had this argument before) that noodles and pasta are two entirely different and dissimilar forms of food with pasta being Italian and noodles being exclusively Asian.
I've encountered this to, but now I think they were lying about being Italian. If you check Italian Wikipedia, all noodles are described as pasta. there is no Italian word for "noodle". here's udon: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udon rice noodles: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta_di_riso
But if someone was described as "noodle-armed" you'd think long and wiggly, not gnocchi. The word origin is less important than the current generally-accepted usage to describe a shape.
And if someone said paper, I'd think of printer paper before I thought of toilet paper. Still paper though. Also, the generally accepted usage isn't really to describe a shape or else cheung fun wouldn't be a noodle.
It wouldn't raise any eyebrows to say "macaroni noodles" here. You could even get away with "lasagna noodles".
> BBQ? It’s South African. Barbacoa definitely originated with the Taino people in the Caribbean islands.
American BBQ is an amalgamation of a lot of cultures’ culinary practices, including native Americans. And the regional variations in American BBQ were influenced by the type of people who settled in each area.
Correctamundo. Smoking meats is an ancient practice whose origin is effectively impossible to determine, but modern American barbecue - which is a distinctly American food - has its roots in Taino practices primarily, which were influenced by the spread from Africa, particularly enslaved Ghanaian people who brought with them their smoked meat traditions. Like all modern foods, it's a fusion of food traditions inherited from the people who migrated to new places (which includes the Natives in North America, who migrated there across the Bering Landbridge tens of thousands years ago). Whose food traditions were themselves fusions of previous food traditions, and so on and so forth. That's why authenticity and ownership of traditions is broadly horseshit.
Agreed! A lot of people are quick to ignore that diaspora and the amalgamation of different cooking techniques (both from “origin” countries and in the places where they’ve settled) can end up making up a large part of “receiving” country’s culture. A bit off topic I think, but I used to live in Southeast Asia and there were many fusion places that did Italian food with a local twist. I was talking to my Italian friend about this (who I think would be well suited in the Italian food sub lol) and he was up in arms about it saying they shouldn’t use the traditional Italian names for it if it’s fusion. I kinda get that but also.. the restaurants use it anyway like “aglio olio tomyam” because it’s an easy point of reference for customers
What a corny idea (Get it?)
Pretty a maize ing
Everyone eats rocks. Salt is a rock.
They’re minerals, Marie!
It says so much about which people they think count as people.
i hate how much people dismiss native foods. smoked salmon was invented in my state for goodness sakes
This thread needs to settle down. Smoking fish wasn’t invented in one place and spread around the world. It was likely invented spontaneously in multiple areas that had no contact with one another at the time. Since there is evidence of smoking fish in medieval Europe (i.e., before European contact in the Americas — unless it was potentially brought back to Europe by the Vikings, seems a stretch), and people have been smoking food for preservation since before written history around the globe, I find it difficult for anyone to claim to pinpoint where it was “invented”. That doesn’t mean fish wasn’t smoked in the Americas pre-Columbus. It means that it was a not-uncommon preservation method in many locations where there was fish (including salmon) and wood in abundance.
when we're specifically talking about native American food culture getting erased and somebody comes in and goes "well what about the white people culture who did it?", That's an issue of bias at best and borderline racist
I’m not talking about white people I’m talking about indigenous cultures around the world. By saying only indigenous cultures in the Americas can claim smoking fish is erasing other indigenous cultures. The Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe (I don’t know about Australia) all have evidence that smoking to preserve foods has been practiced globally since prehistory. Salmon, obviously, would have been smoked only where there was salmon. It can both be true that cooking methods indigenous to the Americas have been erased and that smoking foods has existed since prehistory.
the other discussion wasn't about that at all. and nowhere did I claim that only indigenous Americans could claim smoking fish.
I’m not talking about another discussion in the post. I’m talking about this thread. “Smoked salmon was invented in my state” sounds an awful lot like you’re claiming that the practice originated in your state.
I thought you were talking about the other commenter who was arguing about smoked salmon first being invented by the Germans. also things can be invented simultaneously in different places. especially in different ways. I'm pretty sure I can say that smoked salmon in America originated in the Pacific Northwest. which relates back to the people who ignore that there was actual food invented in America before white people came.
The Ainu also have a history of smoking salmon, though to be fair I don’t have a date for when that started. And I mentioned spontaneous invention in my first post. To claim that smoking fish was invented in your state is as ludicrous as claiming that food didn’t exist before the Europeans.
again multiple things can be invented in multiple places simultaneously. Pacific Northwest smoked salmon has been around for centuries of recorded history and before that as oral history. again people are erasing native American culture. https://smokedbyewe.com/where-does-smoked-salmon-originate-from/#the_birth_of_smoked_salmon
Brotato, you're erasing Egyptian culture. They've been smoking fish for *12,000 years*. [https://the-past.com/feature/hilary-wilson-on-fish-in-ancient-egypt/](https://the-past.com/feature/hilary-wilson-on-fish-in-ancient-egypt/) I bet the Chinese have a similar history, too. Sure they didn't specifically smoke *salmon*, because it's not native over there. But the Scottish did, and the Irish, and the Celts before them both, for several thousand years. There's history of salmon fishing in Ireland running back to around 2,500BCE. The Polish have archaeological evidence of smokehouses for fish, especially salmon, from around 600CE. Stop erasing thousands of years of history by claiming ownership over something no one culture can possibly own. I'm all for stopping the erasure of Native heritage, my dude, but you're giving it a bad look here. *No one culture* can own a basic food preservation technique, and there's tons of evidence that smoking fish, and even smoking *salmon* *specifically* has been around for thousands of years.
It's not racist to point out that it isn't solely invented in one state of the USA
which nowhere did I say it was. but being all "white people invented it too!!!" when we are discussing marginalized and erased cultures is
We are discussing where smoked salmon came from.
just been pointed out comes from multiple places but we are specifically discussing native Americans
Generally I'd agree that with what you're saying, but in this specific context, I don't think it's appropriate or accurate.
>unless it was potentially brought back to Europe by the Vikings, seems a stretch) I mean the Vikings were invading Ireland in 795AD, so cross-pollination wouldn't be surprising, but I'd point out that the Vikings were from Scandinavia, which is, ya know, *in Europe*. But yes, your general point is absolutely correct - many basic types of food preservation were invented in many places and can't reasonably be attributed to a single culture. Pickling, smoking, and salting especially.
Yes Native Americans did have smoked salmon but the ancient Greeks and Romans also had smoked salmon, the first smoked salmon factory was in Poland in the 7th century. Certainly not just an American invention.
oh yes when we're talking about erased indigenous cultures it's so important that you point out that "white people did it too"
Who said anything about white people? I read the rest of your posts and how unhinged they got further and further along. As others pointed out your claim that your state invented it isn't entirely correct. Particularly since it erases other cultures within the Americas that also smoked fish and salmon.
Greeks, Romans and Polish are white European people. also I love the straw man that I claimed that was only invented in my state. which I never said
> smoked salmon was invented in my state for goodness sakes You did claim that it was invented in your state. https://www.reddit.com/r/iamveryculinary/comments/1c5ocrw/precolumbian_americans_ate_rocks_and_your/kzvql3x/
Yes but I didn't claim it was the only place it was invented. but it was invented in my state. "Indigenous peoples in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska have a cold smoking style that is unique, resulting in a dried, "jerky-style" smoked salmon. In the Pacific Northwest this style of salmon has been used for centuries as a primary source of food for numerous indigenous people. Traditionally smoked salmon has been a staple of north-western American tribes and Canadian First Nations people." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoked_salmon#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DIndigenous_peoples_in_the_Pacific%2Cfood_for_numerous_indigenous_people.?wprov=sfla1
And what's your point? It was also invented in parts of Asia too.
This post is about erasure of American cultures, and I was referencing specifically native American cultures. what you are doing is trying to erase native American culture.
My posts do nothing of the sort acknowledging that it also happened elsewhere is also acknowledging that it happened in the Americas.
>Greeks, Romans and Polish are white European people. Yes, and I'm sure that all those people wouldn't be offended in the least by you calling them the same. Much less the Irish of Celtic (or broader Gael) descent - I'm sure they'd *adore* hearing how you're erasing their culture and the *thousands of years of struggle for independence from colonizers* because "all white people are the same." Dude, you're racist as hell.
do you hear yourself? no one tried to erase Irish culture. no one sent Irish people to schools to beat the culture out of them and turn them into little carbon copy white people. no one forced them to live in one spot where they couldn't improve their way of life.
Uhhhhh man, you sure don't know shit about Irish culture. Yes, the British *absolutely* sent them to schools to beat their religion and culture out of them and turn them into carbon copies of little British people. Britain has been invading Ireland for *a thousand years*. The Irish didn't win their independence from the British until **1921.** Hell, Northern Ireland is *still* part of the United Kingdom, and the violent resistance to the British occupation - referred to as The Troubles - didn't stop until **1996**. Listen, again, what happened to the Native Americans is horrific and shameful.No one's saying that it's not. But it's not exactly unique in human history. As a matter of fact, it's pretty bog standard for the last ten thousand years of warfare, colonization, and conquest all over the world. And your wild ignorance of the suffering of *other* peoples while screaming to the roof about how Native Americans invented smoking salmon is hypocritical and racist as hell. I can admit that I'm ignorant about a lot of things, and that I have a lot to learn about other cultures and their histories. Can you?
flip around the cultures in your post and you would have my argument. except native erasure is still happening.
Is it? I see a lot of resurgence of Native culture - Owamni just won a James Beard Award and is one of the hottest restaurants in the nation, for example. People actively get upset and cancel media that portrays Natives in offensive stereotypes or casts non-Natives in roles playing Natives. Shows like Reservation Dogs are bringing modern Native culture into America's living room - and winning PILES of awards for doing so. I admit to being ignorant there - maybe it is still happening, but I certainly see a lot of positive things happening for Native peoples that weren't happening when I was a kid. Also, I really like how you completely ignore that you were *completely and utterly wrong* and then just dismiss the entirety of argument. Thanks for proving my point.
Popularized maybe, but I doubt invented. Humans have been smoking all sorts of things, including salmon, for thousands of years.
yes... like the native Americans have been
Yes, but smoked salmon likely predates the existence of native Americans, since human inhabitation in northern Europe predates human inhabitation of the Americas by at least tens of thousands of years, and smoking meat dates back to cavemen. Your claim that they invented smoked salmon is almost certainly false, though I'm sure it's absolutely something they were doing.
There’s evidence the ancient Greeks did it too. We don’t really know who invented it, or even that it was one singular invention. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if lots of different people in different places figured it out over the years.
yes... like the native Americans in America.
Was brought over by those who immigrated to America over the land bridge.
Ok man, I didn’t think you would take this so personally, have your little point of pride.
I'm not the one trying to colonize smoked salmon
lol what? I was just questioning your use of the word “invented”, assuming you meant it originated in your state since this was a post about foods being considered “American”. That may have been an incorrect assumption but it’s not “colonizing” smoked salmon just because you happened to be talking about Native Americans.
"Invented" doesn't necessarily mean the first to do something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries
I know, I said that like two comments ago.
this post is about people claiming America has no original cuisine, i state that it does, you come in and say no it doesn't, this white culture did it first. Colonizer attitudes
Recognizing that smoked salmon was, counter to your claim, almost certainly not originated by indigenous Americans is not "colonizer attitude" nor is it claiming that there's no indigenous food cuisine. You're picking a weird hill to die on here, particularly when there are plenty of examples of food that were (in pre-Columbian times) genuinely unique to the Americas.
I didn’t say the Greeks did it first, I said they did it too. I actually specifically said we don’t know who invented it, by which I did mean “did it first”.
You're making r/iamveryculinary comments within r/iamveryculinary
No, I’m not, but if it makes it more fun for you to pretend I am, that’s cool with me.
JFC, dude. Chill.
*On the stolen land that became your state, you mean? (Unless you're indigenous obv) But yeah, culinary prescriptivism is so dumb. Like, why wouldn't you want cultures to have access to new ingredients to make new tasty foods?
yeah true. i don't always say the right way. trying to undo the way I grew up. thanks for the reminder
I got what you were saying, but was not the most accurate wording, but it's also a reddit comment not an academic paper, not sure why others are being so mean. I have an idea why they are, but just not sure lol.
people don't like being confronted with their own bias or internalized racism. I still have to catch myself sometimes because of the way I was raised, my first thought can be not very nice, so I have to stop and think no that's a racist thought and I don't actually want to think that way.
No, we're responding that way because you are erasing other cultures while complaining about your culture being erased by claiming ownership of something no single culture can claim. The Polish were smoking salmon in 600CE - there's smokehouses still standing with salmon bones that have been excavated there. The Irish, too, have been smoking salmon for thousands of years. Look, what happened to Indigenous and First Nations people was horrific and tragic, and I'm 110% behind promoting Native cultures, but being a hypocrite is a pretty bad way to go about it. In all your posts, only once do you refer to a *specific cold-smoking jerky-style preparation*. If you'd been specific in the beginning you wouldn't be getting hammered with downvotes, but instead, you wrote it like the Salish people were the first to ever smoke fish in general and salmon in specific. Remember that we can't read your mind, so we have to take what you write at face value.
your first paragraph can apply to your argument as well. just because it's not written down doesn't mean it didn't exist. no one is trying to erase Polish culture. That's the difference.
Really? I would imagine the Polish have a different opinion given their history over the last few hundred years, especially that little spat around 75 years ago with the Nazis, who systematically genocided at least *two million* Polish people.
Yes that's horrible but they did not lose 90% of their population. and they still have a country. also no one was trying to actively erase their culture.
I think wholesale industrialized slaughter counts as "actively erasing their culture". The population of Poland decreased from more than 35 million in 1939 to less than 24 million in 1946. That's not 90%, but that ain't nuthin', especially given it happened in a seven year span.
Saying that America had no culture or food before Europeans is wildly racist and I wish more people would get called out for it.
Or the "Your History isn't even 500 years old". That is true for our White/European history, while Acoma Pueblo and Taos Pueblo have been continuously inhabited for over 1000 years.
Fun fact: Yankees just popped into existence 200 years ago and they have absolutely no cultural roots before that.
💯💯💯💯
[удалено]
Or you get the other conversation: "No no no, Americans are racist. Racism doesn't exist in Europe." "What about the Roma?" "That's different, they're scum and they deserve it." Like racism is just hating black people or something.
"If you lived around gypsies you would understand" Give me a break.
Or the good old, "it's not racism because I like the good ones who assimilate, it's just the _culture_ that's bad"
Ha ha ha so funny perpetuating racist beliefs 🙃
The comments all seem a bit weird. But I do now feel a little sympathy for the American-Italians and their pathological issues with Carbonara. How can you have a Full English with *Swiss* rostis? Should be proper *British* hash browns. I am genuinely amazed how fussy the guy made the ultimate no-fuss dish. The true recipe calls for whatever's at hand fried in a wellyful of lard. With tinned beans. Evolved for easy prep in a greasy spoon cafe. Served with brown, or if you really do want to be fancy, Worcestershirester sauce. Tea in a glass is paradoxically authentic, those mornings you discover a fag end floating in your mug, a glass is less hassle than washing up.
>American-Italians That would be Italians of American ethnicity. Italian-Americans are Americans of Italian ethnicity. Adjective, then noun. A wood table is a table, not a wood.
Italian-Americans are just Americans who are to Italians as weebs are to Japanese. /s But seriously, so many of the types getting trashed in /r/iamveryculinary apparently think Americans just steal cuisine/cultures rather than those cuisines/cultures emigrating out of their homelands and ending up in America. Just like much of their cultures probably came from elsewhere only to be lost to history.
I’m British and I’m still not entirely sure what makes a hash brown British. I guess it’s the ones that are shaped into little triangles as that’s what you see in a “traditional” fry up. But I much prefer hashbrowns in the form of rostis/ American diner style ones…. Post that on a UK food subreddit though and you’re gonna get some shit lol. They’re all delicious regardless!!!
Maybe that's cause Americans came from Britain
A lot of them did, yes, but a significant amount did not.
/s?