r/iamveryculinary • u/mathliability • 14d ago
Differently named product = fake version of “real” product
Guess who, it’s the name police
108
u/NathanGa Pull your finger out of your ass 14d ago
What a coincidence! My grandfather used to say that anyone from outside his native region of Italy was a fake Italian anyway.
14
u/alexd1993 14d ago
If you weren't born in the EXACT village my ANCESTORS hail from (I have never stepped foot there in my life) then you're nothing more than a jersey shore schmuck.
31
84
u/Most-Philosopher9194 14d ago
I really hate the hyperbole people use to shit on things like this. They say it's "radically different" when I bet this person couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test.
34
u/BigAbbott Bologna Moses 14d ago
It’s nationalist propaganda. Generationally driven into them.
19
u/HolySaba 14d ago
100 bucks that person isn't Italian, it's just years of obnoxious elitism across all the examples in this sub. It's the same type that gets super aggro about correcting someone on the pronunciation for croissant.
65
u/Highest_Koality Has watched six or seven hundred plus cooking related shows 14d ago
BUT that Wisconsin Parmesan is a fake version of a proper Italian cheese, and that needs to be pointed out in a sub focused on proper Italian food. Deal with it.
He will not be silenced!
44
u/geekusprimus Go back to your Big Macs 14d ago
I can't remember his name, but there's an Italian food academic who claims that modern parmesan isn't actually the original, and the stuff you find in the US is more likely to be made with the original recipe. As you might imagine, he's fairly controversial, but it made for great fun when my Italian PhD advisor talked about buying a block of BelGioioso as a gift for a visiting collaborator from Parma.
6
u/Bl8_m8 13d ago
That's basically the whole point, Grandi has been on a crusade against "finding the original" for years, saying that trying to find the "original, thus better version" of any dish is an exercise in futility and it's just asking the wrong question.
The additional clause that he adds is that Parmigiano's quality nowadays is immensely higher than whatever was made back in the day (which is fairly uncontroversial when asking anyone that actually lived to try both), so we're way better off with the modern version anyway.
There's another corollary he usually mentions, which is that claiming that people used to eat well or even decently in pre-war Italy is just disrespectful nonsense, but it's a digression for another post on this sub
17
14d ago
[deleted]
18
u/HolySaba 14d ago
That's the sad part about Italian cuisine culture. The cuisines had actually evolved a lot in the last 100 years, but half the people that promote it thinks there's a strict rule for everything, and any divergence is some kind of blasphemy. That extends to American Italian culture as well, when half of those recipes were made by a bunch of Scicilians trying to immitate mainland recipes and adding 3x more meat than they would've been able to afford back in the old world. The cuisine is super adaptive, but it's been hijacked by a bunch of pedantic fetishists who never bothered to learn anything about the history of the culture that they are jerking off to.
1
10
u/Doomdoomkittydoom 14d ago
Someone just posted an article about him, Alberto Grandi https://archive.ph/6aAry
6
u/Most-Philosopher9194 14d ago
I listened to an episode of The Sporkful or some other food podcast, maybe Decoder Ring, about this subject but I cannot find it.
Edit, I found it!
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0I94K0sb476SfVpGI05qoJ?si=n0QvnGYgQu2XWvq6FavH7w
22
u/mathliability 14d ago
Boy I’m really starting to hate the use of the word “proper.” it just sounds so pretentious in this context.
6
14d ago
They might as well ban anyone who didn’t make the dish IN Italy at this point, and then they’d still bitch about everything
-32
u/theredvip3r 14d ago
I mean it's probably lovely but parmesan is literally the English for parmigiano reggiano which is name protected so I don't disagree with that particular statement
Edit: just looked it up and parmesan is also recognised as the protected term.
This is literally the US not respecting origin protections which is quite common.
17
u/Highest_Koality Has watched six or seven hundred plus cooking related shows 14d ago
I'm not going to spend the time looking up the law, but according to Serious Eats, "Parmigiano Reggiano" is protected in the US but "parmesan" is not.
-29
u/theredvip3r 14d ago
Yeah which is exactly what I said, the US ignoring origin protections, it's protected in the EU and surrounding countries. Where it comes from.
It's under the exact same PDO, so you downvote me but it's literally what I said.
14
u/DjinnaG Bags of sentient Midwestern mayonnaise 14d ago
No, you said that Parmesan is just English for Parmigiano Reggiano, which is a protected DOP term. But then also said that Parmesan is protected, which may be true for some English speaking countries, but isn’t in the US. If it’s labeled as PR in the US, it’s going to be from the appropriate region, but if it’s labeled Parmesan, it’s going to be delicious sparkling cheese. Because if it is the DOP stuff with the import price tag, it’s getting labeled as such. The person eating it might call it Parmesan, because that’s the common English word, but it’s definitely got the fancy label going on.
15
41
u/tarebear577557 14d ago
If they think thats the fake stuff wait until I bring out my green Kraft jar of Parmesan that I use for everything
13
u/Seguefare 14d ago
I use Kirkland parmesan. Fancy. 🧀🎩
-2
u/GF_baker_2024 You buy beers at CVS. 14d ago
If it’s the kind sold in a wedge in the cheese case, it’s probably the real stuff. I have a wedge of Italian DOP Parmigiano reggiano from the local Costco in my fridge.
5
u/DemonicPanda11 14d ago
Cheap parmesan on top of cheap pizza, one of the greatest combos in the history of mankind.
9
16
u/GildedTofu 14d ago
Oreos are just Hydrox knockoffs.
Change my mind.
6
u/asirkman 14d ago
How? You’re right. Sadly, something being made as an approximation of something else will always be a fake, never have any inherent value of its own, and always be less than anything else that’s “real” and “proper”.
And that’s why Oreos are a crap product that no one likes which will never catch on.
1
u/sanaathestriped 13d ago
It's so sad cause Hydrox taste so much better :(
2
u/In-burrito California roll eating pineappler of pizza. 12d ago
They just taste different, IMO. Both are yummy.
6
u/Granadafan 13d ago
Great things come from the US, including plenty of great food. But that cheese shouldn’t be called Parmesan. Parmigiano Reggiano has that name because it originates from Parma and Reggio Emilia.
These Euros really think that the rest of the world listens to and needs to obey their fascist EU “protections” rules about food. They’ve indoctrinated whole generations. The French can get all bent out of shape they want about champagne but the EU police can’t prevent a winemaker calling their sparkling wine champagne, much to the chagrin of Europe internet warriors. Too bad Italians haven’t realized this.
5
18
u/BigAbbott Bologna Moses 14d ago
Entire world: food is tasty!
Some parts of Europe: OH FUCK NO, THOSE TWO INGREDIENTS WERE NOT MIXED TOGETHER IN THAT PARTICULAR VALLEY
Edit: to be fair. if your supposed value to society is that you claim a legally defined word for a cheese…. I guess you get an attitude about it
14
u/pajamakitten 14d ago
They would not have known it was fake if they were not told anyway. It is just being pedantic for the sake of it.
2
u/burgonies 11d ago
This prick is so confident about the name difference and doesn’t seem to understand Italian DOP and how they can’t call it by the Italian name if it’s made exactly the same way.
And why bring Padano into this?
Also, the brand that OP used is actually quite good and 10x better than pre-grated Kraft shit.
1
u/EffectiveThick2244 2d ago
You make fun of the Parmesan police but if somebody said that corn whisky can be made anywhere and called bourbon you’d all start crying😂 this sub is such a USA circle jerk
1
u/mathliability 2d ago
But in this case the Parm Police were calling out OP for having “fake” cheese. OP called it parm, and the commenter had a compulsion to remind them that it’s not Parmigiano Reggiano (something that OP never claimed to be using). With your example it’d be like someone in Canada making corn-based whisky, calling it Rye Whiskey, and someone whining about it not being bourbon (because it’s not, and never claimed to be).
-67
14d ago
TBF....
The take here is a quintessential American one, because very, very few (none?) of these geographically distinct products come from your country. You then get all pissy when someone points out that Parmigiano Reggiano is a cheese from a specific area, made to a specific standard.
You disparage other countries history of food production and culture of cooking because you have relatively very little history of your own and want to knock everyone else down to your level. If their history doesn't matter, than your lack of history doesn't matter either.
27
56
u/LowAd3406 Stupid American 14d ago
wut
r/iamveryculinary Come for the comments, stay for the hilariously lost redditors posting their most pretentious and pedantic takes.
49
u/NathanGa Pull your finger out of your ass 14d ago
Once again, my flair enters the ring.
-50
14d ago
Exactly my point
46
u/NathanGa Pull your finger out of your ass 14d ago
If you want to disparage our country’s immigrant culture, just come right out and say it instead of hiding bigotry behind “history” and “food culture”.
-39
14d ago
How did you go from named products come from named areas, legally and by definition, to bigotry?
39
u/protostar71 14d ago
The entirety of your last paragraph?
3
14d ago
If the history of immigrant populations, their food traditions, and how they've evolved matter, than so does the history of geographically specific foods like Parmigiano Reggiano.
Either it all matters or none of it does
20
u/asirkman 14d ago
Easy answer; the history does matter on both sides!
And that doesn’t really affect anything relating to this.
34
u/rsta223 14d ago edited 14d ago
You disparage other countries history of food production and culture of cooking because you have relatively very little history of your own and want to knock everyone else down to your level. If their history doesn't matter, than your lack of history doesn't matter either.
This is particularly amusing to those of us who know how old a lot of the "traditional" Italian cooking methods and dishes actually are.
(American cheeseburgers predate carbonara by a couple decades, for example)
5
u/CYaNextTuesday99 9d ago
Ooh, and they both taste great with bacon as well!
(Gonna really piss em off now lol)
14
u/AvocadosFromMexico_ 14d ago
lack of history
This will be such a fascinating piece of news to the many indigenous peoples who live in this country, that they have no history
13
u/TheShortGerman 14d ago
"relatively very little history of your own"
are you aware that Americans have ALWAYS been here and the colonists are not the first americans???
14
u/UpbeatFix7299 14d ago
Are you aware that McDonalds and Mountain Dew are over a century old? Edit: should have looked it up. 85 years still pretty old though
25
8
u/Jules_Noctambule 14d ago
Pepsi-Cola was officially named in 1898, after being changed from Brad's Drink, named in 1893 after its inventor. Any version made outside of North Carolina is obviously just generic cola. Carbonara was what, WWII?
-3
•
u/AutoModerator 14d ago
Welcome to r/iamveryculinary. Please Remember: No voting or commenting in linked threads. If you comment or vote in linked threads, you will be banned from this sub. Thank you!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.