In addition to properly using salt, I will add that acid is often missing in home cooking. Even if it's just a drop, a bit of citrus or vinegar can totally open up a dish. Salt, fat, sugar, and acid. That's the core of good food.
Are you white? This post alone proof that you don't even know what proper seasoning is. Chinese use garlic, ginger and spring onion as a bare minimum on top of salt for most dishes. Most heavy flavoured meat dishes has soy sauce undertone with a dozen other herbs as seasoning that makes KFC recipe look like its out of a child's cookbook. The judge of a good chef was mostly how well one can put as much Umami which the ultimate flavour into the dish, thousands years before MSG was even invented. Whereas Umami is practically none existent in most Western food even today due to the way ingredients are prepared. Asian food is simply superior on all fronts, that's there's barely any Michelin star restaurants in China, as their standards are simply too low when judging against Chinese food.
MSG as well. I love MSG and I don’t know why it’s bad or considered unhealthy. It’s an amazing seasoning and umami flavoring and it’s freaking amazing! Same with the different tasting salts. Yummy
There's also the fact that European cultures tend to incorporate more fermented foods such as a huge variety of cheeses, sausages, etc. in their cuisines, which adds more variation in flavors overall. There's other creative ways to add flavors than the use of herbs and spices.
It's about preserving food really. Spices can help preserve food in warmer climates without a winter. And fermenting, smoking, and canning can help preserve foods in places with a winter where plants will stop growing for some time.
you can also use wine to cook meat. i knew someone who cooked some meat (forgot) using a pan, a bit of oil, onion, red pepper, garlic, salt and wine. best meat i've ever had.
I come from a tiny Nordic country in the middle of nowhere where fish and sheep are abundant. My grandfather was and my father is a fisherman as well as rearing sheep and growing potatoes. As a kid I would get fresh fish, potatoes and some melted butter for dinner at least 3 times a week. I could see how some would call it bland food, but man, that fish just melted on your tongue.
@@HeriEystberg Får, fisk och mitt ute i ingenstans, inte super svårt att gissa lol. Vackert land däremot, skulle älska att besöka det nån dag. Skål på dig!
@@_________-_______ det är inte så långt att resa från Sverige, så det skulle jag absolut rekommendera att du gör. Den 29 juli är vår nationaldag vilket innebär att alla färöingar samlas i Torshavn den 27-29 juli och det är en jättefest! Skál!
The Great Depression and convenience culture are huge influences too. Poverty can knock pricy ingredients out of a generation’s nostalgic comfort foods. We also work ourselves to death over here and our mega corporations are glad to toss frozen fish sticks at our exhausted bodies.
THIS. SO MUCH. I feel like other than a couple things such as how to cook eggs, a lot of why I can’t cook well is because of the food I was brought up with. A lot of Hamburger Helper, canned foods, frozen bagged whatever. Crock Pot recipes that didn’t call for spices, but for cans of French onion soup or whatever for flavor.
Actually, during hard times, people will seek food and spices in unconventional places, based on what's available, many things commonly used as food items were at some point, poor people's food, such as kasha. During WW2 people would use things like Rumex (which could literally be found on the side of the road). Urtica, Tilia flowers or dried forest mushrooms
@@Araneus21 Then there’s modern poverty, though, where the majority of people don’t know how to forage like that at all. Haven’t got at least a couple generations in cities.
Some other points: 1. There are plenty of non-European cultures that use minimal or subtle seasoning. Japanese is good example - A lot of modern Japanese cuisine emphasizes freshness and uses subtle ingredients like soy sauce, mirin, sake, miso, spring onions, bonito flakes, shiitake mushrooms, perilla leaf, various seaweeds, citruses, etc. There are exceptions but no more or less than there are exceptions in European cuisines - Japan like their version of curry just like British like their version of curry; Japanese have wasabi just like British people have hot mustard and horseradish, Japanese have togarashi shichimi just like many Western kitchens stock Cayenne powder, etc. Other non-European cuisines to think about are traditional Mongolian food and other cuisines of traditionally northern, nomadic, pastoral, or subsistence-farming cultures such as indigenous peoples of North America and Siberia. 2. "Seasoned" is not a black-and-white concept, it's a spectrum. My Persian coworker raves about her native cuisine which uses spices like saffron, sumac, cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, turmeric, black lime, etc. One day she recommended her favorite Persian restaurant to a client originally from southern India who then told her he'd tried that restaurant before and found it the taste too mild for his taste. 3. There's a huge difference between traditional European cuisine made by old grandmothers from farming villages using fresh, locally-sourced ingredients, and the "white Midwestern homemaker" cuisine that was born from the 1940's onward with the advent of widespread home refrigeration and cookbooks of "convenience" teaching people shortcuts with canned, jarred, and shelf-stable ingredients and factory-farmed meat from a sterile supermarket.
@@rarescevei8268 of course not, he's talking about white midwestern cuisine. some may have come from eastern europe, but when they lived in the midwest america, it clearly became a branch cuisine.
As an Indian who likes spicy food, I don't like it when people deride "white people's food." Yes, it's not for everyone's palate, but making fun of minimally seasoned food as "white people's food" is just as bad as people saying that curries smell bad. It may not be suited to your tastes and senses, but don't ridicule it.
@@rachelforshee6014 White people is not used primarily to describe Europeans. Its to describe the Euro-Americans if you will. The “whites” since the Afro-American community is considered to be “blacks.” It was a term that didn’t really exist until the late 1600’s if I remember correctly.
@@rachelforshee6014 It wasn’t to dispute that point. I can agree on that. What I wanted to clarify was that the use of “white people” doesn’t apply to those in the places you stated. Just Euro-Americans.
@@rachelforshee6014 'I also don't understand what is "white people".' Why did you just watch the first 2 minutes of the video? The guy explains exactly what he means by 'white people,' and he does a pretty good job.
Bro you smell bad cuz your house desensitized you. Let's not lie to ourselves. Don't make you a bad person just like I'm not gonna rob you but if someone did rob you they prolly gonna look like me. Serial kill you is a different story
I am German and I season food all the time, we have a lot of native spices/herbs parsley, thyme, laurel, chives, black pepper, juniper berries, nutmeg, and caraway. All of those are, and have been used for ever. Also we use things like honey or barries to flavor meats and so on.
I'm Russian and I really struggle to remember any time my mother, our family friends, my other relatives, or just people I know NOT seasoning their food, especially meats. Na ja es scheint, ihr und wir sind einfach nicht weiss oder was
Video seems to stupidly gloss over the fact that all those things are also their own type of seasoning despite not being exotic spices. I guess it's to follow the narrative of "white people don't season their food", but it comes off as rather dumb.
@@moosepatil5946 Germans are white and not Italian, and he actually does talk about those Americans of German heritage, and a lot of my extended family fits that description, they season the food the same way my family does.
I’m from Argentina and we tend to only salt and pepper beef because the meat, when properly cooked, is so flavourful that it doesn’t need anything else. But I love an Indian curry or a Mexican Birria. I think it’s a matter of balance: I wouldn’t want to eat “bland” food everyday but I wouldn’t want everything to be spicy.
Argentina has incredible meat that it doesn't need seasoning thats why . You Argentines are also heavily influenced by Italy which are known to not over power seasoning but taste the actual flavours of the dishes.
THIS! Most people I eat with put herb butter on beef or drown it in ketchup/barbecue sauce, and I'm like "Ehm, no, thank you, I actually want to taste the beef, it's fucking delicious on it's own!"
Same, salt is all you need maybe a little pepper if you want some kick but the meat is the dish. I cringe when I see people get super well done steaks and lather A1 sauce all over it.
as another argentinean, I can attest...meat should be seasoned with salt and only salt..its the only way to eat the meat.Occasionally a little chimichurri to dab on the meat is ok, but thats about it. It needs nothing else.
The problem is how americans view spices. If it's exotic then it's a spice. Herbs like mint are a spice, rosemary, garlic and onion. Ir doesn't need to be a spicy chilly to be spicy.
@@Dinofaustivoro Well they're referring to people from the USA, the USA is a country colloquially referred to by many as America. If you want to say South Americans or people from Mexico or Canada would refer to themselves as Americans you'd be hard pressed to find any. Also if you think America is a continent it isn't, it's North and South America which aren't called America together, they're called The Americas.
Mint is a Herb, not a spice. Spices are the nut, seed, bark etc of the plant. A Herb is the leafy bits like the stem and leaves. I can't think why you would say Mint is a spice like chilli without making sure you know what you are talking about first, but Be better, check your facts.
@@moosepatil5946"Spices can come from the following plant parts: roots, rhizomes, stems, leaves, bark, flowers, fruits, and seeds." This is taken from the website of US Department of Agriculture, specifically the page on what is a spice and what's an herb.
The "bland" cuisine of North America dates from the 1930s and 1940s, and was influenced by the Great Depression and World War 2 rationing. After the war, a very bland cuisine was associated with the expanding suburbs, where young, inexperienced brides had to cook with whatever the corporate supermarket chains wanted to sell them, and that wasn't an array of spices like what was available in the old neighbourhoods that these young people were abandoning. It was corporate-based mass-market advertising that promoted bland food. Before that era, cooking in North America employed LOTS of spices. I have examined popular cook books in Canada from the 19th century.... and they were full of spicy dishes. A cowboy cook book from Western Canada included fiery chilis and powerful curries --- anything but bland. Madame Benoit's popular cookbooks, full of her mother's and grandmother's old French Canadian recipes, had lots of spicy dishes. And anyone who thinks Polish, Hungarian, or Ukrainian traditional cooking didn't use spices doesn't know anything about those cultures.
They did once they came to North America and became....white people. English,Welsh,Scottish, Irish people were the dominant ethnic groups for the first 200 years of America. Large scale immigration from other groups such as Germans, Italians,French ,Russians, etc. came mostly after 1840. They were not included in the "white" category. They were ethnic compared to the white Anglo Saxon Protestants. White people are the people who founded the 13 original colonies and enslaved Africans and called them black. When enslaved Africans and lowerclass whites tried to revolt, the rebellion was quelled. British American upperclass and landowners created the white category and subsequent laws to keep enslaved Africans and poor whites separated.
@@Indigolily80your infos are not accurate. Jacques Cartier 1534, (French). New Amsterdam before the British immigration were Dutch, La Florida was first occupied by Spain, etc.
@@Indigolily80 Actually, a sizeable portion of the original colonies were German, which is why it was proposed to Congress that federal laws should be printed in both English and German. France helped us fend off Britain. Both German and French people were considered white, and their ideas and culture heavily influenced American ideas (such as DEMOCRACY) and American culture as a whole. White people also didn't enslave any Africans. Africans enslaved each other, then sold their slaves to Whites and Jews. Jews played a prominent role in the slave trade, which was centered in St. Ellis Island. The only "white" people considered nonwhite were Italians, Slavs, Greeks, Hungarians, and the Irish.
as a mediterranean who likes to cook, i go by "less is more", a pinch of salt, a touch of olive oil, some rosemary or pennyroyal and a clove of garlic is enough to bring the flavor and essence of well cooked ingredients. I love to feel the natural flavors of fish, or meat, but I am also fortunate to have access to good produce and ingredients. when the food is over seasoned i feel like something is being covered up.
I get your point but I want to point out it's something subjective and personal often no matter how poetic it is put as these parameters are set by the individual; someone who enjoys raw fish can easily say that those who cook it are only trying to hide the fact their fish isn't fresh and adding unnecessary ingredients like oil to enhance the taste when they are purer! I appreciate the simplicity but also think spices (not over using spices, one can say using too much garlic - like in the US - or too much salt..etc ) has their place too when used correctly, the truth some people don't know how to use spices.
@@jorgeblanco1929 Raw fish checked for worms straight off the hook, perhaps, after that, dry smoke, salt, lime it or cook it for sure! Any fruit especially apples, picked straight off a tree has sublime, subtle almost perfume like top notes in flavour, and apples are loudly crisp on biting, after a day, the flowery top notes have gone, a week, the crispness. Some heritage varieties after months will be softer but intensely sweet and more flavourful. Mass marketing cannot use any of this, it had become a privileged experience for those who have it, and a ugh! weird! concept for those who do not.
@@jorgeblanco1929 Depends on fish species, the type of cut (body part) etc. Maybe not overall better, but sometimes there's cravings for grilled fish. Other times it's for fresh, raw slices.
I think it also comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what costitutes a spice, garlic and onion as you said add flavor yet some people would only acknowledge their powdered forms. I'd argue herbs are Europe's spice rack, but they're disregarded by some. Marjoram, basil, thyme, rosemary all seem like spices to me, they're only there for flavor. Also as others have mentioned it was often a matter of preservation, southern countries used spices to make food last while northern ones used the cold or fermentation. They used what they had.
I'm sure you realize this but to be clear, at 4:32 you are kinda putting potatoes in Europe before the Columbian exchange. They obviously weren't eating potatoes before potatoes came to Europe.
There are even more things wrong, like the whole thing that medieval Europe hadn't spices, which is wrong. Exotic spices were relatively expensive but not unaffordable to the common people. Also, there were other things to flavour your food like homegrown herbs, roasted onions or Garum, which was quite popular in the medieval german area.
@@Dinofaustivoro I mean, ignoring that whatever we think of it it IS known as the "Columbian Exchange", it was an exchange for sure. Not a great one, but the various American groups got lots of diseases and genocide in the exchange!
@michellejames2447 it really depends how you define "garum". In the medival sense, no. But if you define garum as a unami favoured for cooking with a strong flavour, like soy souce would be, then yes. It's called "Maggie -Würze" which is basically a mix out of msg, salt and Lovage.
As Eastern European I just wanted to add that we add dill, garlic, laurel, parsley and peppers to food :0 As well as horseradish and mustard My great-grandpa would also snack on a whole chilly pepper every time he ate borscht
I'm from Paraguay and our cuisine does not have strong seasonings as well , I can go even a step further saying that picking and preserved food are foreign concepts even for out modern days, the reason might be because our natives did not have harsh winters so food were fresh and abundant, some tribes had their fermented drink made out of mandioca roots but it was fast to make and it was not made with the purpose of preserving or storing food, but more for ritualistic purposes. Foreigners often think that all of south american food are all similar to mexican cuisine but that is totally not the case, we even consider mexican food way too spicy or way too seasoned compared to the paraguayan cuisine and that is not a bad thing. our most liked delicacy is called asado, and it is just sprinkling a bit of salt on big cuts of meat cooked on a fire, as simple as that.
That's also the case for us in Bosnia and much of the Balkans. Our delicacies include slow roasted lamb in a dry-wood oven for several hours with only salt for seasoning. It comes out soo tender, the wood-smoke alone gives it flavour, and the layer of animal fat melts into the meat with the salt. We often dip bread into the melted fat afterwards because it's so delicious. Adding any more seasoning would just ruin the beauty of that process.
Meat with just salt, cooked over fire is absolutely wonderful tasting. Different woods produce different flavors too because of compounds that get into the smoke.
@@ebinecksdee9872 Italians and Spanish are white etc. So he's right. The white vs non-white framing is specifically just a US centric load of bollocks because they have a messed up view of race relations
As a retired line cook of 20 yrs, I find this theory interesting. My background is mostly Italian and Creole. That said, sometimes I like to go "purist", and focus on the flavor of the ingredients. Anyway, there is a reason why the ancient Romans used salt as currency.
See a lot of people make the mistake of calling everything that comes out of Louisiana Cajun, when in fact a lot of the more heavily spiced dishes the state is famous for are more Creole...poor Acadians out in the swamp or out in the marshlands and canefields normally couldn't access or afford such luxuries and authentic Cajun food traditionally is more basic, not unlike the provincial French cuisine it is based off of. Look at cajun boudin, normally just salt ,pepper, green onions, and sometimes cayenne..and compare that with a Creole Andouille sausage for instance. Or cajun Couchon De lait...just a pig and fire, compared with a Creole tasso ham
I watch a lot of historical cooking and I find it amazing how much more complex (savory, sweet, and aromatic) food was in the middle ages. On the whole I would say it's better, and it's a shame that we don't use nearly as many herbs and spices as we did then. Nouvelle cuisine certainly has a place - but it has to be as you said: it must use fresh, premium ingredients. It has to be *good* beef, like prime or select, and for chicken it should probably be thighs rather than the easily dried and lean breasts. In my amateur chef opinion, a lot of the accusations of blandness come from the fact that yes, people don't use salt, but they don't work with materials that have much flavor in their own right. At least from the reference frame of pre-modern and early-modern cooking.
It's also people's laziness and resulting thoughtlessness. You could tell millions of people "why don't you do this and that with food" and they'd either go "Wow, you are right." or just "Nah.". Premade meals with herbs in the ingredients list tend to be for subtle taste notion and to satisfy the recipe template, but it's not exactly healthy. What I do instead is simply eat closer to what used to be. I have a glass of freeze-dried Provence herb mix and I add a generous amount of them to whatever meal they fit, and often after heating so that I don't destroy anything valuable. (I do the same with water-activated garlic powder.)
We did a lot of things in the middle ages which we don't do now. The design of their books and the art and effort they put into them was absolutely incredible and beautiful. People who mock the medieval period and consider them backwards have no idea what they're talking. Take a look at a Cathedral in Europe for example.
what are u talking about bruv xddd. Cooking has never been more complex than today. That 90 percent of the population doest want or cant cook doesnt mean there arent chefs out there pushing the boundaries.
Depending on which historian you believe, peasants had over a month to half the year off of work. Logically, this means they'd have a lot of time to dick around and make good food. The industrial era clamped down on free-time, now you had to work absurd hours in jobs that could easily maim or kill you just to continue living. These traditions endured, now people who are uneducated on cooking (aka the vast majority of the population) are content to eat food someone else made. Further, these peasants had access to a wide range of unique plants, as well as their own gardens. Due to the nature of industrial cities, unique weeds and plants are scarce in densely populated areas, unless you choose to grow it yourself from seed(ling)s bought either locally or online.
The spoiled meat theory has a little more truth to it, and I wouldn’t call it racist. A lot of studies show strong anti microbial and anti fungal properties to common spices along the equator, even capsaicin (the spicy compound in peppers) is a registered insecticide. There is no doubt that spices help in keeping meat fresher for longer. That said it wouldn’t have made spoiled meat edible again, so you ain’t totally wrong :) Great vid tho, keep it up
My understanding is that salt and a few other spices would be used to preserve meat longer, because in a region like Israel they can’t exactly freeze meat, they can instead cover the meat in salt and spices that preserve the meat. Also I would not call it racist either because it’s based on geography not race, that bit made me roll my eyes
Indeed. Adam Ragusea covered this topic on his channel as well and he had a much better answer, and actually provided sources proving that spices were indeed historically used in warmer climates to mask spoilage. It was just a fact of life prior to refrigeration, and while it wasn't exclusive to warmer climates (Europeans did it too), it was obviously more common in those regions due to the climate + more abundant spices.
I think it's more like the concept is used by racists to support their racism, I've heard it (much to my horror). e.g. "I don't eat Indian food, they use all those spices so they can serve you rotten food." Meaning ALL restaurants ALL the time as if that could actually happen & the restaurants stay open. It's not logical, just racist, so when he mentioned racist, I thought of that & went "yep".
Salting and also smoking meat was known for a looooong time, in Europe too. How do you think people could survive a cold winter in the North? They had to make some supplies. Also pickling and fermenting food came around for the same reasons.
@@colbyzur4642meat spoils with moisture. so packaged grocery store meat is wrapped up in moisture. salt and seasoning dries it out, dehydrates it and cooks it. you can leave meat outside as long as other things don't come for it you can leave it out for many days to cook in the sun
I felt like Scandinavians at least didn't season food because they didn't have any. Literally nothing but mushrooms grow there. Salty fish and pickled fish with dill was the most "seasoned" foods I ate.
as a foodie, my fav part of travelling is trying the local cuisine. I'm from south east Asia, where spices are abundant, but travelling and living for sometime in europe and other parts of asia, I really like the minimal use of spices. I don't think it's bland, it's just different. and every country has a story told through it's kitchen. travelling from one place to another and noticing the change in people's palate, their eating habit, and the way they present their food is just so amazing to see. hopefully one day I can travel some more.
A lot of this seems like arbitrary decisions about spice vs not spice. Salt and Pepper? defined as not-spice, even though pepper, at least, is clearly a spice. Garlic, onions and other herbs? Not-spice. So the short answer is that white people don't spice their food for the same reason white people's dialect is considered "not an accent." We've defined white-people cuisine as the default, so anyone using different ingredients to flavour their cuisine is adding spice.
Spices are not just used to COVER UP ROTTEN MEAT. They are natural preservatives, like hops. Using spices like garlic, ginger, chili/pepper and salt creates a harder environment for bacteria to live in. Mexicans and Indians etc do not just SEASON their food - they marinade it, they coat it in preservative spices before cooking.
While not used to mask rotting food, spices can kill microbes so they kinda do help prevent food related disease in warmer climates where those are more common.
It's an USAnian meme far removed from objective reality. Nobody outside of their bubble think like that. Hell, rest of the planet doesn't really know what "white people food" even means, since European cuisine is diverse.
That's what I (being european) expected, but I still don't fully get it - how is needing less spices in one's food to be able to enjoy it a BAD THNG? I mean, embracing this cliché I could say I'm objectively easier to satisfy, so I'm in the better spot, I should make fun of people who always need more spice... This somehow feels like people who are heavily into BDSM sometimes belittlling the "vanilla" folks for allegedly being boring/unimaginative. Or people generally acting like enjoying things is a contest where those with the weirdest or most specific taste win. No dude, you're just harder to satisfy (or pretending for attention), I should pity you. And you being able to eat chilis with some number x on this scale doesn't mean you're a badass, it maybe means your taste buds are worse then everyone else's...
@@Knokkelman most of us aren't going around judging what anyone else eats. My parents have high blood pressure (so no salt,) my Dad (Irish descent) is gluten free, and my stepmom (from the Netherlands) has gerd so she doesn't even eat tomatoes or bell peppers usually. Some people have stomach ulcers and can't handle spices, or kidney failure and exclude nightshade veggies. I'm not judging anyone for how they eat or cook but some people act offended if you add spices to your own food which they've cooked. For me it's not about how much I can burn my mouth as much as the flavor profile. (Although I definitely do not mind a mouth-numbing experience) My favorite flavors of food are Thai, Caribbean, and Indian but I enjoy quite a variety of flavors, including raw, plain veggies. Personally it seems like I have more options when we go out to eat than my parents do. It is good to not necessarily need spices, but it can be bad (not that it should be ridiculed) to have some of the types of health conditions which dictate one's diet & cause excruciating pain (or worse kidney failure.) Those conditions are not exclusive to a certain racial profile.
You don't have to be rich or even middleclass to eat unprocessed food, I eat whole foods every day including fresh meat, fish, fruit and veg and I'm a poor cleaner who makes minimum wage. I rarely season my food because I find plain food is better for my digestion and health. Whole foods aren't expensive unless they're 'organic', and they taste good enough on their own with little-no seasoning, for me and many people I know.
When I lived in the US, I developed techniques of my own that kind of sublates from these two ways of thinking - I was able to keep the taste of the meat in front, with the spices acting as an accompaniment.
A lot of people also form a border around “European” food that doesn’t exist in real life. Like Pirogi or Chebureki is not that much different than a Chinese dumpling and both are flavorful. Aioli is pretty much the same as Toum. Tzatziki is present in dishes all the way to Nepal just with different names and variations in aromatics. Look at how many names we have for Kofta (or köfte or kofte) or shakshuka (or chakchuka or shakshouka)
Oh look, an asian failing hilariously to discredit our endless White culture and accomplishments. Must be rough needing to take credit for everything of ours. I'd be jealous if I were you too. Don't you EVER f-ing tell ME, a WHITE PERSON, what OUR culture is. You know jack sh*t.
I’m southern African American married to a euro-Australian and this is the fight we have whenever I cook. He says don’t use too much salt and I don’t think I am. I’m salting the food the way I was taught. When my husband makes Asian food, which is common in Oz, he puts tons of spices and sauces that are loaded with salt in the food. He doesn’t see that as salty because he’s use to the flavor. Ironically if we eat southern food or Mexican in a restaurant the amount of salt in the food isn’t a problem for him. 🤷🏾♀️
It's not okay to treat people differently based upon their race, you acknowledge but still think it's okay to make jokes at the expense of other people that are white. Not every single person who is white has enjoyed the same privileges you have, so why are you normalizing violence towards these people who have nothing to do with the past? Maybe your ancestors committed violence towards marginalized groups, but that doesn't mean everyone else's ancestors did. You're just coming with all sorts of rationalizations because you don't want to be on the other side of mob. You're better than this, but instead of rising above you bring people down. No one deserves to be treated one way or the other because of their skin.
FWIW as an Asian person I think you should at least have a spine about it. Yelling about white people not seasoning their food does not materially address colonialism and is not a meaningful blowoff valve for racial tension, it's just insensate lashing-out. You might not think it's worth sticking your neck out to argue with poc about it but the alternative is letting a generation grow up thinking certain cuisines are entirely meritless.
4:30 What do you mean they "kept" eating potatoes??? Potatoes didn't arrive in europe until the 16th century, and they only reached the regions you speak of (excluding ireland) by the start of the 17th century!!
I used to help out a bit at a soup kitchen. It was summer and somewhat rural so there was an abundance of fresh garden food. People kept passing up chunked tomatoes. But they were just tomatoes. I took a tray plastic but pretty and made rows of sliced tomatoes that I sprinkled some salt on along with some sugar. Not much of each. I found a bottle of white wine vinegar so added a slight sprinkle of that. Oh, no one will eat that now I was told. Gone and everyone asking for more. Another day we had cucumbers and tomatoes and someone showed me where some herbs were growing so on top of my sliced veggies I put a light sprinkling of Spike and topped with fresh chopped parsley one day and cilantro another adding some crushed coriander as well. Every time gone gone gone. Sometimes I had green onion and put thinly sliced green tops on the tomatoes keeping the trimmed green onions in a glass of ice water with salt shaker next to it. The cook only got paid for 2 hours of work so just didn't have the time but I did and enjoyed it. It's true... I'm white and don't season much relying mostly on salt but I've had dinner guests who ask what seasoning I use to make the food taste so good. Hmmm, salt. But simple foods can taste amazing with a little salt and the love we add when cooking.😁
Those are some great but simple ideas you did! I enjoy spicy food like Mexican or curry, but also really like basic one-ingredient dishes...but the ingredients need to be super fresh and good quality! Last night, I made a pork chop with quinoa and some steamed broccoli. A little salt and really good olive oil on the broccoli, and I poured the pork drippings on the quinoa...but other than that, one ingredient each. It was amazing and took 15 minutes!
Balkans are very wealthy? This is the most american thing j have ever seen grouping all of europe togheder and even saying that germany is eastern europe
Europeans are more likely to use spices as a preservative, such as pickling food for storage, or adding heat to winter recipes. If good ingredients are fresh they taste great without messing about with the flavours. I like spicy food occasionally, but it's also boring in its own way.
I went to Sweden, Denmark, and Germany recently and I had some of the most delicious and flavorful dishes there with minimal spices added. I found that it was more about letting the ingredients do the talking instead of covering it them up. I also found that I never felt bloated or weighed down after eating over there.
But those countries also use lots of salt, herbs, sauces, mayo etc to “cover up” the taste. No such thing as “covering up” tbh. If you ate “uncovered” meat it would be pretty disgusting
@@balkanwitch5747 I've actually eaten meat without anything on it, and I mean nothing, and it is really great if you cook it just right (to be fair this was over an open fire and that makes a big difference)
I'm seeing a trend of people who think that people just throw a bunch of spices on to 'cover up' the flavour of the food and I have to tell you if you did that in Jamaica you would be laughed at. That is not cooking. You just essentially described throwing a cup of salt on your chicken cause you heard salt enhances flavour.
As a Romanian, Balkans, the idea of "White people don't season their food" is kind of funny to me. In fries, for example, I usually just throw some salt and garlic, they taste absolutely phenomenal. The key is to just... experiment with different ingredients...? I literally tried omlette seasoned with curry powder one day, it's not bad actually. I'm basically semi-self taught in cooking (watched tutorials, then deviated a little), and while I don't work as a cook, I've never actually heard someone say my food is bland, quite the contrary in fact.
Daca vrei sa incerci un blend jmk pt cartofi prajit baga oregano, sare, usturoi (pudra sau zdrobit fresh), chilli de vreun fel si niste cajun seasoning. Dar omleta cu curry powder n-am mai auzit lol. Oule mi se par mai sensibile cand vine vorba de spice-uri ultra-aromatice. Poti sa le strici la gust destul de usor, pt mine cel putin. Acolo prefer sa merg doar cu sare si piper.
totally agree but my grandmother was hungarian-american so maybe i just picked up the inclination but also i agree, its an over simplification/generalization. Also married a Syrian so spice cabinet is packed
I disagree with the premise that spices were not used to hide the taste of rotten meat. Personally, as a young soldier in the Australian army we were shown that if you cook rotten meat long enough by boiling it, i the bacteria and toxins are neutralised and the meat is safe to eat - even though it doesn't taste great. It totally makes sense to me that whenever you can it's nice to disguise the 'off' flavour of meat that has gone 'off' in the tropics with spices - spicy curries cooked for a long time are great and so popular in the tropics, particularly in SE Asia where I have travelled extensively for many years. Encourage you to rethink that one.
huh, what i had heard about the cultures closer to the equator had been that they found that foods, meats especially, preserved with spices tended to stay safe longer and not rot as quickly, therefore the heavier use of spices evolved from food preservation techniques, not trying to cover up spoiled meat
I grew up in a Mexican household. We never had salt or pepper on the the table. My mother and grandmother used very little salt immensely small amounts. Garlic, onion and spices like oregano were what flavored the food. Now lard was used in abundance as well as flour and left over grease. My mother always told us meat, vegetables, etc... already contained a certain amount of salt and to have a salt shaker would compound the amount of salt added to the food. I hate going to Mexican restaurants the reason all I taste is salt in their food.
I find this to be an unfounded stereotype. A lot of people simply don't consider that before "white people" existed as we do in modern times, that we originated from many different caucasian cultures. There was a time when many types of white people discriminated from each other in the west. Italians, french, swedes, you name it, all had hangups about one another. Even biologically indistinct groups such as the Irish and Scottish had a hard time reconciling their "differences". Eventually we all settled our differences and adopted a mainstream culture, and ultimately that's what has painted us all broadly as "white". I'm of Portuguese ancestry and consider myself white, and you'd be at odds convincing me that we don't spice our food. I sincerely don't know where this stereotype comes from, but it seems to be manifested as a slight against caucasian people despite the fact it holds no water.
that's why he differentiates it in the video, and 'white' in this context is often referring to mostly anglo-saxon americans. it's true 'white' hasn't always been a term for many european ethnic groups until quite recent though. again, the generalization is usually american / british oriented, and it does have some relevance in places like Australia (for me at least - lots of people have joked abt this of themselves here).
Great comment. OP lost any credibility he may have had by indulging rather than immediately rejecting this laughably asinine stereotype. He uses AI to generate all the images in his videos, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that his scripts are also AI-generated, at least in part.
me, a German, angrily shaking my marjoran, lovage, sage, mugwort, dill, chives, parsley, fennel, caraway, juniper, mustard, garlic and wild garlic, sorrel and other plants that are vital in our cuisine because they grew here since forever
I’m a white American with northern/eastern European roots and my partner is a naturalized American from Guatemala. I normally cook with less spices and also prefer far less salt than he does. He mentioned once that spiced meat lasts longer than unspiced meat, and I think that’s a factor that can’t be overlooked. It’s not so much about covering up bad meat as it is about keeping the meat from going bad.
I sure wish this had been my experience. My parents and grandparents and everyone else in my family will season whatever their eating with whatever they could get their hands on. I remembered they even ordered some kind of special spice only found in Montana called alpine touch, which is actually pretty good but all the other stuff they used was too much
We actually do season our foods, always have, even in the most traditional of dishes. The idea itself is a racist stereotype that is quite far from the truth. But which seems to me to be based on a misunderstanding of the seeming relative unpopularity of foods high in spicy/hot foods and garlic in the Caucasian Anglosphere from maybe the Victorian or Edwardian to say the 1970s or 1980s. Except for of course mustard, horseradish and the British curry powder and increasingly manufactured sauce, which remained popular. Historically a high medieval lord would likely put a modern Indian restaurant to shame with the variety and amount of spices and even heat they used, many from the east or Africa, often barely used in western cooking today, such as galangal, long pepper and grains of paradise. But also even the poor had very many things to flavour their food with such as pot herbs. Many half forgotten like rue, marigolds, angelica, maiden's bedstraw, verbena, savory, meadsweet, I could go on all day. It would be fair to say that in traditional western cuisine herbs often played the part that spices do in the cuisines of the far east. And since the middle ages western cuisine never actually stopped _commonly_ using eastern, African and new world spices like saffron, black pepper, white people, cinnamon, alspice, paprika, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, cassia, caraway, coriander, cloves and ginger. Even amongst the poor. They were just increasingly used with greater purpose and sophistication albeit with a reduced selection. Rather than saturate every dish with a melange of spices and have every dish taste strongly of multiple spices, instead they were increasingly used sparingly as a compliment, such as a little cloves or cinnamon with apples, usually one or the rather than both. And if they tasted very strongly of spices, increasingly it would be one spice that was the main flavour. Such as a gingerbread or a caraway seeds cake. And also remember that the line between flavourings such as herb, spice and neither such as vanilla, cacao, elderflower, violet, rose water, salt and sugar is entirely arbitrary, blurry and particular to time and place, language and culture. Mustard is very probably a spice not a herb for instance. But what about horse radish? Mustard greens? Nasturtiums? Curry leaves? Bay leaves? What category would something like a poppyseed fall in? Also salt and pepper is most definitely "seasoning". In fact to "adjust seasoning" is to taste and to add salt and pepper if necessary, as you know full well.
Reminds me of my own culinary journey through life. When I first moved out on my own and had to feed myself I thought I was great at cooking because I over seasoned everything and that was at least better than everything my friends could cook. Over the years I've learnt which seasonings I like with what food and I have also pinpointed more or less how to get the flavor of the food "with a touch of" this or that seasoning.
did you just say you season your food with white people? and also spice melange? careful that's prescient, geriatric addictive and don't it make your brown eyes blue in blue, but whoever controls it....
@@alexcallender you literally use iternet terminology to show youre on a different culture team and youre feelings are hurt when someone disses white people
I don't appreciate making fun of a race just because of their past, if it's okay to make fun of one race but not the other, that's just discrimination or racism. Either everyone is free game to be the butt of a joke or nobody is.
Being vegetarian also adds to the need for spice I also feel as someone needs to turn a bowl of uninspired Lentils into something I want to eat. But yeah it's so much down the person cooking it. Got someone's whole spice cabinet recently and had a flatmate from New Delhi and we cooked up storms together.
Vegetarian food has all the components that make omni foods delicious. The trick is to add a salt, an acid, a savoury component (like tamari), a fat source, and maybe a little bit of sugar. That's all you need to create unami flavor and make any dish spectacular. I'm a vegan, and my family is regularly blown away and remarks that they didn't know "rabbit food" could taste so good. Vegetarian/vegan dishes are just as good as omni dishes, they just require different preparation methods that aren't taught in our societies.
As a white American, I generally just don't care enough to put spices on my food. My family has a ton of different spices to work with, but for the majority of foods, all we ever use is salt, pepper, and garlic. We have mustard seed, clove, several different blends of herbs, seasoned salts, and much more to choose from, and for some reason we just don't ever actually use them? I think the biggest thing that keeps me personally from spicing my food aside from simple laziness is just that I don't have a good grasp on how much is too much and I've definitely ruined meals by putting too much of something in it. I'd much rather eat something that's a bit bland than something overly spiced. On top of that, I don't have a great understanding of what flavors will complement each other and what will clash, and while I know I could solve both of those problems with more education on the matter, I just don't feel like it's worth my time to look into it. I mostly eat out of necessity, and I don't have a strong relationship with food. To me it's just something I have to do to stay alive and it doesn't have to be complex and super flavorful. As long as it's not revolting, it's good enough for me
This is probably the actual explanation right here. Sure, it's nice to hear a chef's perspective, but the reality is that most Americans aren't chefs and have better things to do than build a relationship with their food.
Just discovered you yesterday with the Arthur vid. Now binging your whole portfolio. It’s the perfect mix of three RU-vidrs I love: Jon Bois, BostWiki and Johnny Harris. Thank you for your content!
Spices helped prevent meat spoiling, like how we Americans give food a longer shelf life with salt. But yeah, a lot of it is simply most spices grow closer to the equator.
SHALOM! Isn't churches, KFC, chicken fila, and everywhere chicken place owned by a white guy? Season police getting hit by those 11 herbs and spices from dey yt pepol
White is a veeeery broad term. I am Greek and our food has heavily influenced and been influenced by the Persian and Ottoman empires. We might not use chilli traditionally, but we use a lot of other spices and herbs. That said, I am only 1min into the video, and may have jumped on this bandwagon a bit prematurely, lets see!
The craziest part about it is historically Europeans went to war over spices/the spice trade. That's why I really don't understand. Why modern-day they're not fully utilized 🤔 When your ancestors literally fought and died for something, you would think it would hold more significance.
He answered that in the video. He said that once spices began to be more widely used, the upper classes saw it as too accessible and so changed to a minimally spiced menu instead. The only white people that were actively sending out colonizers to other nations were these upper classes. The lower classes just followed along and did what they were ordered to do. They couldn't even afford bread, let alone spices. I know it might be a shock, but for the vast majority of the history of Colonizing nations in their full power, the average layman was generally dirt poor with no money to spare, especially on things like spices. Questions like yours come from the untrue image of Europeans as somehow richer and more capable of accessing delicacies like spices than other races and nations when they largely weren't. Especially not in Northern Europe. They were poor like everyone else around the world. That's why they just made do with that they had, and the upper classes likely stopped importing spices to a large extent for popular use because they no longer liked them and the average family could never afford them. It wouldn't make sense to even spend the money to import them in.
@@tisbutascratch2045 I understand that completely but I would still think just like other materials that were deemed precious. They would retain their value especially as access was broaden to more people.
I think it's more of a Midwest thing in states like Indiana. These are landlocked states that historically didn't have access to spices like coastal states did. So their palettes adjusted to unseasoned food and carried on from generation to generation.
The midwest was also heavily influenced by the healthy-living movements of the 1800-1900s. Prominent figures like John Harvey Kellogg made large efforts to incorporate a vegetarian based diet as it was nutritious, affordable, and available.
0:28 Yes there are: Dill, Mace, Basil, Rosemary, Sweetgrass, Garlic, Sorrel, Doc, treated nightshade and pepper-adjacents like elmgrounds are a few Spices dont have to be 'spicy' to be spices
As an American from the Midwest I declare all food from all nations (including my own) that ISN'T coated in a minimum of 3 inches of melted Wisconsin Mozzarella cheese unseasoned, and subsequently, uncivilized.
One thing you do not look at is historical recipes. Most come out very bland tasting simply because the people writing them at whatever time had the thought "EVERYONE knows to add in X/Y/Z, or s9me combination of things", so they didn't bother to write them down. From experience in the SCA I have discovered that a lot of recipes ate improved by adding things as simple as cloves, rosemary, or cinnamon, but these things don't appear in the recipes because they were just obviously common to the area/period.
Most of the best food in the world is European or Latin American food inspired by our European ancestors. Spanish, French, Italian, Brazilian, Argentinian, Portuguese cooking and cuisine are all at the top of the world tree - and except for a handful of areas or meals of Spain, Brazil and Portugal, no spice or chilli is used. But you can go on pretending dogshit covered in “ghost chili spice rub number 8” is superior to an Argentinian barbecue, Brazilian feijoada, Spanish tapas, Portuguese salt cod, Italian sausage and French anything😂
@@2k7Bertramhaha getting upset because you’re embarrassing yankee bullshit has been challenged by other white peoples from Latin America. All the best food is European - I forgot Greek earlier! East Asian is also very good, we have many Japanese in Brazil and your Chinese food is good in US. But Europeans still the best at food. You can keep the processed crap, sugar and terrible “spice rub” of African American cuisine😂
As an old white guy, I season the fuck outta my food. But I am from the Southern US. We put hot sauce on everything. Hell, we put hot sauce on hot sauce. My dad was German, and is the one that inspired me to want to learn to cook. I am not a chef, but I have worked with a few chefs. In fact, I am currently working at a chef owned restaurant. Ironically, he's from Pennsylvania, so mayonnaise is spicy for him. But Southern folks love spicy food.
Really quite ridiculous you have no problem defending a racist stereotype while calling another racist stereotype for what it is. The modern liberal everyone
Sorry but, the moment you are using garlic, olive oil (or other flavorfull oil), any aromatic herb or nuts, or even vinegar, you ARE using spices. Only considering powdered or dryed stuff "spice" doesn't make sense to me. If you added it only because it will bring flavor to the dish, it is a spice, IMO.
Halfway through the video and already pretty annoyed that you haven't mentioned that northern Europe DID season its' food with herbs and spices, but with different things: Pepper and salt DO count. So does mustard, rosemary, paprika, garlic, cinnamon, basil, thyme, fennel, cloves, nutmeg, different kinds of berries and seeds. Then yeah, one thing that Europe had that most of your tropical regions didn't was cheese. It's not like European food is bland. It's just a different flavor. Can't believe I'm defending Northern European food when I don't even like it. It's just annoying that this myth persists. Hell, Curry is one of Britains most popular foods.
I feel that is a silly adage and is used in a more demeaning way than most. I think it just really depends on the person's upbringing, which you pointed out, and their overall knowledge of culinary.
Good work as always! Love the artwork ✌Speaking as an American of northwestern European ancestry, I would also like to add that not only were many of the early European immigrants to America and Canada from cultures that didn't have a history of using much spices, but they also settled on lands which equally didn't provide much spice. Think of the foods native to the US and Canada - meats, rice, beans, corn, squash, potatoes, berries, nuts and seeds. Many families were subsistence farmers and only ate what they could grow themselves, literally up until just 1-2 generations ago. Once you get into the more tropical climates of Mexico and further South, you suddenly have access to many complex and flavorful foods like peppers, tomatoes, avocados, chocolates, tropical fruits, and other spices. Additionally, there are gene variants which impact our TRPV1 receptors for capsaicin (the source of heat spice in peppers) and it's been shown that some people physically can't tolerate spice as well. So it's okay if some people just straight up don't enjoy spicy food!
I went to culinary school as well, and my professor actually said that only salt and pepper are considered seasonings. Everything else is considered flavorings. These flavorings also included herbs as in leaves and stems which we pasty people had in abundance, whereas spices are usually derived from fruits, seeds, berries, roots, and rhizomes.
This channel is peak sophistry. "White people don't season their food, except all the times that they do and have throughout their long history, but those don't count because sometimes they season their food with the express purpose of highlighting and complimenting the main element of a dish, which isn't really seasoning even though by every definition it is, I went to a culinary school, like that matters in the slightest, and only serves to make my broken reasoning more embarrassing." Also, sushi exists, specifically nigiri, true traditional "sushi," completely lacks any seasoning save for a tiny amount of vinegar in the rice, is considered one of the greatest dishes on earth.
I understand your point at the end however, I haven't brutally conquered any one in 31 years of my life on this planet. That's like saying it's ok to be racist to the Germans because the Natsofunsies over 70 years ago, they're all dead by now..
Edit: also feel free to look at the prison populations and you'll find actually criminals who deserve spite for crimes they committed themselves on their own volition. I am not the cause of other people's suffering unless I am. The problem is the easily fooled will turn it into actual violence and believe that we deserve to be the next witch hunt. All witch hunts are bad.
as a polish citizen i think the shame of colonization is kinda cringe to impose to eastern european countries, like its not "our" ancestors who colonized and postcolonized So that's about "shut up and be humble" part, i liked video cuz it's kinda different stance that i usually encounter here in Poland, i always tought that we dont do seasoning cuz we already have "seasoning" like smoking meet, adding a ton of onion to everything and so called blant food like Lard (idk if its what i meant but it's the best i can do to explain) is just the same niche that whole proper seasoning is filling.
It's an American think. The soviet block was a Jewish group that occupied and oppressed the native Europeans for decades while offering nothing in return. But no one condemns that, while offering modern technology of the time to non-whites is ignored and considered the worst thing in history. It's almost like the truth is heavily manipulated for modern political clout.
You are right, but when attacked as white you should defend yourself as white. I'm Irish and they still do the same anti-white shit here too. Just because my country didn't colonise anyone doesn't mean I will throw other Europeans under the bus for the crime of being a native in their own country.
I think a big part is that Europe industrialised first and it became very trendy to eat pre-made or half-made food. As a result we already have several generations where the majority arent particularly good at cooking.
I come from a very foodie family and we eat a lot of quality flavorful food with minimal seasoning. It’s about how you cook it not what you cook it with
even in the case of white home cooks in America, saying there's no use of spices isn't exactly true. for example, there's a seasoning made of salt, plus paprika and several other herbs and spices, called Old Bay. it's popular amongst white Americans from the titular Chesapeake Bay region, especially in the state of Maryland.
Slaves were given the worst left over parts of meat e.g. pig feet, pig snout, pig intestines, oxtail, crawfish, ect. In order to make that tolerable it was seasoned well. It is what makes soul food, soul food.
Heritage doesnt affect good food. If we want to achieve better food we cant hold our selfs to cultural standards, because theyre just that: socially made traditions. In a world of internacional cuisine you want to mix up flavours so you get the best result, you can never achieve the best food if you try keeping food traditional (aka keeping the food like a peasant did it 400 years ago)
@@dostoievskyiii6251 that is very true. We live in a globalised world. culture is no longer an excuse to eat bland boiled brocoli. at least sautee em, geez
@dostoievskyiii6251 I don't disagree that is your preference for food. All I'm saying is I'm fortunate to have kept the foods from my heritage and where I can enjoy them once in a blue moon, or during holidays with family. Preservation of tradition is key, in that regard.
@@grenadierhaast in what regard? Culture is literally pressure from dead people. You should only keep good aspects of culture. Why would you just do a bland dish for cultural reason? Tradition should be preserved, but also evolved. History didnt end yet, history is made every day and culture is always evolving and its up to you to evolve your culture the way you most like, and not how others before you did. If we keep stuck to our culture, we keep stuck in time
"After brutally colonizing the world..." I was enjoying the video until you had to throw that line in. That's a gross simplification, not true for all European countries, and an assignment of collective guilt to modern people who had nothing to do with it.
I think if your diet is largely meat and dairy based, you are likely not to season your food alot but if its fish or plant based you will...I am African but my tribe is nomadic with livestock rearing so the earliest foods I was introduced to might be considered bland. It is basically salted meat, offal, milk both fresh and fermented and wild veggies that we would add cream to. I find these foods absolutely delicious and they are my comfort foods wherever I am. I do appreciate more spicy cuisine but when I feel nostalgic or homesick, I go back to my 'bland' food.
I really like some of your videos, but as an artist it makes me sad to see AI images being used. These are clearly drawing from a database of work done by people who did not consent to having their work used this way, and probably don't know!
