Yeah this one is very confusing. Tofu is delicious in Chinese food. Mapo tofu is one of the greatest treasures we have available to us. You can’t “replace” the tofu in that dish with a meat, it wouldn’t work at all.
“meat substitution” type dishes are stupid anyway. There are thousands of years of delicious non-meat meals, built around the ingredients as they are. Dishes don’t need meat at all to be delicious, just construct your dishes around the ingredients you have and they’ll be wonderful. Trying to shoehorn in “replacements” just creates weird stuff.
Agree’d, but we ain’t starting at 0 and chicken nuggets were around to define the flavour before plant based alternatives were ever made, so yeah, they’re a substitute. Good stuff though, would’ve been better if we never had to take the detour of the animal abuse
It’s very much a cultural thing. A lot of cuisine in the americas is built around chattle culture. With the best land used for commodity cultivation, the ever moving, ever expanding peripheric frontier of american colonies was used for chattle ranching. ‘Cowboy Culture’ was invented by the spanish and the portuguese, after all. So all compositions follow a similar pattern. What type of meat, what type of cut, how to season it, and then what type of side dishes to accompany it.
Even here in Brazil where Rice+Black Beans is considered the staple food people will still add a serving of red or white meat to their plate as if they weren’t already eating more protein than they probably need. Nevermind cutting meat entirely, having meat as a secondary or a tertiary aspect of a dish is culturally strange and something that would indicate poverty in most people’s eyes.
Yeah this one is very confusing. Tofu is delicious in Chinese food. Mapo tofu is one of the greatest treasures we have available to us. You can’t “replace” the tofu in that dish with a meat, it wouldn’t work at all.
The whole idea that something like tofu just exists without being a meat substitute is unimaginable to a lot of people
“meat substitution” type dishes are stupid anyway. There are thousands of years of delicious non-meat meals, built around the ingredients as they are. Dishes don’t need meat at all to be delicious, just construct your dishes around the ingredients you have and they’ll be wonderful. Trying to shoehorn in “replacements” just creates weird stuff.
Disagreeing heavily here. Chicken Nuggets are good as fuck and they basically nailed those in vegan form, which begs the question, why not?
I think chicken nuggets is a great example where it works because “real” “chicken” nuggets are basically meat substitute products anyway.
Agree’d, but we ain’t starting at 0 and chicken nuggets were around to define the flavour before plant based alternatives were ever made, so yeah, they’re a substitute. Good stuff though, would’ve been better if we never had to take the detour of the animal abuse
It’s very much a cultural thing. A lot of cuisine in the americas is built around chattle culture. With the best land used for commodity cultivation, the ever moving, ever expanding peripheric frontier of american colonies was used for chattle ranching. ‘Cowboy Culture’ was invented by the spanish and the portuguese, after all. So all compositions follow a similar pattern. What type of meat, what type of cut, how to season it, and then what type of side dishes to accompany it.
Even here in Brazil where Rice+Black Beans is considered the staple food people will still add a serving of red or white meat to their plate as if they weren’t already eating more protein than they probably need. Nevermind cutting meat entirely, having meat as a secondary or a tertiary aspect of a dish is culturally strange and something that would indicate poverty in most people’s eyes.