Redditors Are Ride-Or-Die For These Food Rules
When it comes to cooking, some kitchen rules have become a standard as a way to prevent spreading germs. According to State Food Safety, you should always put up long hair to prevent it from falling into your dish, food shouldn't be left out overnight, you should wash all of your fruits and vegetables before preparing them, and when in doubt, wash your hands.
Other rules don't necessarily stem back to food safety standards. She Knows recommends that cooks avoid crowding their cooking pans in order to create a golden brown exterior on food, sharpen knives so that they slip less and create better cuts, cut and prepare all of their ingredients before assembling the dish, and add in garlic toward the end of the cooking process to prevent this aromatic from burning.
Reddit also has some strong opinions when it comes to food rules that particularly center on authenticity. One user created a thread titled, "What food authenticity hill are you willing to die on?" and started the discussion by claiming, "Basically "Dish X is not Dish X unless it has ____." They explained the rationale behind this thought, saying, "I hold loose definitions for most things. But one I can't relinquish is that a burger refers to the ground meat patty, not the bun. A piece of fried chicken on a bun is a chicken sandwich, not a chicken burger."
This comment opened the floodgates, and fellow Redditors couldn't wait to jump in with their own takes.
Redditors' hard-and-fast food rules
The Reddit thread sparked a discussion of what rules home cooks religiously follow. One Redditor said, "Where I live, there's this Italian chain that says they make 'the world's first meat cannoli.' It's a stromboli. It is literally called a stromboli everywhere else. A cannoli has a hard shell, not soft dough, and it's filled with sweet ricotta cheese." Another jumped in and claimed, "It's not pad Thai without tamarind paste and fish sauce. Don't get me wrong, it can still be tasty — but it's not pad Thai."
Many had some hard-and-fast opinions regarding what constitutes hummus. Takes included thoughts like, "as a middle eastern person working at a 'health food store' ... I cry a little inside every time I see chocolate hummus, everything bagel hummus, etc. lmaooo," and, "Born and raised in Israel (I know I know, hummus is not Israeli, I'm not claiming it as such), my wife has recently started buying chocolate hummus at whole foods and it kills me inside."
Others jumped in with rules like, "Macaroons (the Jewish coconut kind) should never have flour. Just coconut and eggs," and "Poutine isn't a poutine if it isn't made with the cheese curds Quebec style." Another Redditor concurred with the poutine comment, saying, "Saying poutine without cheese curds on it is still poutine is like saying a grilled cheese sandwich is still a grilled cheese if you swap the cheese for ham."
If you ever need to start a conversation on Reddit, always count on talking about the authenticity of food to start the discourse. With any luck, you might just learn a thing or two about hummus or cannolis.