Unbayleafable.
came here to make a silly comment. i can see im not needed here.
Keep an eye out for another spice-related pun opportunity, your thyme will come.
Your presence is welcome, thanks for cumin.
Do you mean thanks for cumin?
🍃
LOL
That is fucking magnificent. If you’re not a dad your talent is being wasted on us mere mortals.
You won the internet today
I can’t bay leaf that happened to her.
This thread is just going to be peppered with puns now.
Ain’t nobody got thyme for that.
Incorrect. I love pun threads, they are mint…
Cummin mate, that’s enough with the puns
I appreciate you addressing it gingerly. Even the punniest Portlanders would give these puns the old oregaNO. 😬
Only seasoned veterans will get this thread.
Others might be salty about missing the joke.
Don’t have to be salty about it.
I knew things were going to get spicy in here.
deleted by creator
I was hoping the Pun People would have stayed on Reddit. I haven’t missed scrolling through miles of puns before getting to real posts…
Sir this is a shitpost
No need to be paprikabout it.
She is a dangerous type of white person.
We call them Karen
I worked with a dude who loved “ramen” but had never had it from a restaurant. He didn’t seem like he knew how to cook particularly well, and I’m not sure if he’d ever even left the suburbs he was born in.
One day he was talking about how excited he was to go to a real ramen shop over the weekend. So next time I see him I asked how it went. He sighed and said he got a veggie ramen because he found out the meat ones were “made with bone” and he was grossed out by it. I could only say “of course, that’s how you make good soup.” Then I had to explain how you make stock or split pea with ham soup, etc. I think I ruined soup for him.
Vegetarian soups are still delicious though. Soup is just awesome all around
I can’t downvote you for an honestly expressed opinion, but soup is a disappointing meal.
I respect your wrong opinion
Tbh, that would be a functional dish without the broth.
Oooh, is that a soup though? Soup is something that’s eaten with a soup spoon. I challenge you to eat noodles with a soup spoon. That looks damned fine, by the way.
[I never said my opinions were rational, only correct, like an absolute truth of the universe.]
Try a thai curry, seafood if you like it, or pork or veggie. So flavorful.
Other suggestions: pho, French onion soup, bouillabaise.
certified banger
I’m not saying soups aren’t nice. But if you offer me, eg, a French Onion Soup (one of the greatest soups there is) and you offer me… a rack of ribs, or a steak, or blackened chicken with dirty rice, soup is coming second every day of the week.
In fairness, I’m not sure anyone knows if bay leaves even do anything.
my person, it absolutely does i love them very much, they are one of my favourite spices
… what?
Make a dish twice, once without the bay leaf. There is an obvious difference. It’s fine to not like the taste of any particular spice but saying there is none is sort of crazy?
He’s joking, it’s people that don’t cook often don’t know what the difference is
Bay leaf does provide a subtle earthy flavour, but it is also an anti fungal. I guess your left overs will stay edible a bit longer.
It also looks exactly the same as a clove leaf. A shop sold me a bag of mis-labelled clove leafs and my Bolognese that evening tasted most strange
Ah, yeah, the kind of cooking our household does is usually pretty strong favour wise (lots of South Asian cooking), it’s probably why neither my wife or I have ever noticed it.
Maybe if when make Italian food we should use it :)
I wasn’t sure myself, so i made a “tea” out of bay leaves to check, and i can confirm that they do in fact have a pretty distinct flavor.
This is smart, I don’t know when to put it in so I should get familiar with the taste
In the tea? I just stuck a leaf in a cup with water and microwaved it for a minute or two.
In food? I usually put it in as soon as I start the simmer on a liquid part of the dish. It takes a long while for the flavor to really become significant.
Just smell it (not just bay leaves but whatever). If it has a smell, that aroma can be infused into cooking, though you’ll want to make sure it’s edible before just throwing it into dishes.
And you might need to sauté them for a bit (also called tempering) to infuse that aroma into oil, since it’s not all water soluable.
Might as well just boil up a handful of grass from the local park, about the same.
That just means your meal was freshly picked from the burrito tree. Geesh, some people…
While I support the message of never eating at Chipotle again, she’s doing it for the wrong reasons.
I don’t eat at Chipotle because they were bought by private equity and subsequently enshittified to further enrich someone who already had more wealth than could be spent in a lifetime.
She doesn’t eat at Chipotle because she found a bayleaf in her burrito bowl…
Chipotle is really resting on its laurels.
Guess this person is unfamiliar with seasoning and the fact that bay leaves are used for flavor.
Wait, they go to a bay and pick up leaves to put in food? Urgh, yuck!
Why can’t they just use the aromatic herb from a laurel tree?You want one from a bay or harbor, where the pollution hast concentrated, and the bay leaf has been able to draw in all the tasty flavors of PCBs, chemical waste, sewage, fertilizers, pesticides, industrial run-off, etc. It’s all those subtle flavors that make the Bay Leaf the King of Seasonings.
I cook all the time, every day, and have never once said, “This needs a bay leaf.” I don’t even know when it’s appropriate to use it. My mom puts a bay leaf in everything - spaghetti sauce, chili, pot roast, etc. - but I’m not convinced she knows what she’s doing, she just does it.
Seriously, what’s a bay leaf for? What does it do to the flavor?
It has a soft flavor. I don’t put it into anything spicy, and probably won’t be noticeable with the way Americans seem to do seasoning. But if I’m making a soup with some meat and potatoes and various vegetables, I’ll put it in, it’ll be noticeable.
If you just boil beef with and without it, you’ll feel the difference the most, I think.
I’ve read it enhances every other flavour, kind of like salt but without making things salty
Hmm, that’s interesting. I got a pot of chili scheduled for later today, I’ll try a bay leaf.
I’ve been perfecting my chili recipe for years. It includes red wine, cocoa powder, and lime juice. Perhaps a bay leaf will become part of it.
Bay leaf is subtle but nicely “rounds out” the dish. It’s not a distinct spice flavour like pepper or thyme. I use it in a lot of the food I cook but not everything. Putting it in chili is exactly where it should be put.
Interesting, I’m looking forward to giving it a try.
Have you tried a little bit of espresso grounds? It adds a certain flavor to meats that’s just… incredible… Might not go with what you have here though.
Or like tap out the tiniest amount of cinnamon on your hand and add whatever falls off of it? It shouldn’t even be enough to say there’s cinnamon in it. It’s like nature’s msg, it just makes it taste better, gives it a good homogeneous flavor that pops somehow. Straight up witchcraft
Cinnamon is my favorite spice, but I don’t put it in my chili, even though I know people who do. I think I’d be able to taste it too much.
And I’m not a coffee drinker, at all, so I don’t think a coffee ingredient is going to work for me. I get it, though.
The cocoa powder was the big revelation for me, it really adds a nice hint of molé. Next was lime juice, which does something to balance the flavors. I’m finding it handy for lots of stuff.
I’ve been experimenting with soy sauce, too.
The thing with the cinnamon is you’re not adding anywhere close to enough to taste it. Not even really enough to say that it’s in there. It’s like the bay leaves in this thread, adding the most miniscule amount to a recipe does something to the flavor. It’s not enough cinnamon for it to logically be the cinnamon but it just tastes better somehow.
I’m not a coffee person at all either. So that’s totally understandable.
Soy sauce is a surprisingly adaptable ingredient!
I just toss a sprinkle of msg in, does wonders
MSG only enhances umami and has a distinctly salty flavor. Try substituting a bay leaf for a fuller, richer flavor. You may want to remove the leaf before serving.
MSG isn’t just enhancing umami, it tastes umami by itself, because the umami taste is triggered by receptors on the tongue that react to some amino acids, one of them being the glutamate in Mono-Sodium-Glutamate. The salty part comes from the sodium, which has its own receptors as well.
This stuff is literally made for our taste buds.
bay leaves are bitter af
They are just for flavor not for eating. Can’t recommend eating cloves or allspice berries either.
You’re not supposed to eat it
That’s why you take them out afterwards
And also so they don’t tear up your insides.
Or warn people if you forget. “If you find a leaf, don’t eat it. It’s for flavour, but not pleasant to eat on its own.” Texture isn’t great either iirc (but I could be wrong, as I was a kid the last time I tried eating one).
21 first century woman that doesn’t know how to cook? Checks out
i think it’s more significant that she’s a white american who desn’t know what goes into food than that she’s a she
Oh dam, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Many recipes call for bay leaves. But I think you may be right 🤔.
Cherry on top would have been if her name was Laurel
Leaf on top
That’s where food comes from - trees, bushes, grasses, dirt.
Also - if Minecraft has taught me anything - punching animals until some chops appear in my inventory.
The saddest part to me is how little more and more people know about cooking. Each generation seems to know less and less about the basics and rely more and more on fast food and restaurants to survive.
In Brazil’s version of the Shark Tank TV show, they sometimes call for guest “sharks” to show up besides the regular hosts. Once, the founder of China in Box, Brazil’s largest Chinese fast food chain (and one of the first in general) was there.
So the participant shows up and his pitch was a device he invented for peeling garlic faster at home. It’s basically a blender motor, but with attachments to vibrate the garlic against the container rather than cut through it, so the skin peels off and the garlic is ready for usage. After the pitch, of course, they ask the hosts if they want to invest into their company.
So the Chinese food guy says “oh no, no way I’m investing into that, it’s a kitchen appliance - in ten years, nobody will have a kitchen in their homes, they’ll use delivery apps for every meal, they won’t ever need any cooking apparatus”
And honestly his comments still fill me with rage every single time.
I wouldn’t invest in that because all you need to do is smash a clove with a knife and the skin falls right off, but I see what you mean.
If you need to peel a bunch of cloves, put them in a small mason jar and shake the shit out of it.
Yeah but your hands do end up smelling like garlic for a couple days
When seasoning meat, remember that you are also meat and therefore susceptible to be seasoned.
That’s a feature.
Wash them but use salt instead of soap. The smell will go away. It works for onions and probably a bunch of other stuff too.
Are you sure you’re trying to help and are not a cannibal?
If i was a cannibal why would I give you advice on how to un-marinate yourself?
Rubbing against stainless steel gets rid of the smell also works
That’s a bonus!
I mean, that dude makes money each time you dont cook. Of course he’s going to pitch “kitchenless” homes as a real thing.
Its abject bullshit, but also a clear cut case of “follow the money” to understand stupid reasoning.
did he say that 10 years ago?
What are you talking about? Every generation in the US knows more about food than the ones before.
Boomers were raised on canned/frozen nonsense and basically had no variety. Their vegetables were underseasoned and overcooked. Their pickiness about cuts of meat left many delicious parts of the animals underappreciated scraps. They knew each fruit as basically one cultivar, like how all apples were the utterly mediocre red delicious. Even their bread was boring.
Their restaurant scene was pathetic, with Italian American food representing the pinnacle of exotic cuisine. Any immigrant opening a restaurant for American diners would have to carefully water down their traditions to fit American tastes and the American supply chain.
No thank you, I’d never travel back in time to eat or cook the way people did 50 years ago. Food is better now, and it’s largely because today’s cooks and diners know way more about food than people did back then.
No matter what they might think, history did not actually start with the Boomers
No, but by referencing their childhoods I’m covering their parents and grandparents, too, while avoiding the complications of the discussing food culture during the total war posture of World War II. Of every generation still alive today, each generation generally knows more about food than their parents.
Shit the acceleration of public cooking knowledge, ingredient availability, cuisine variety, food media, etc since the 90s has been incredible.
Yeah maybe the average person doesn’t know how to work with lemongrasss or whatever but you can look it up in a minute and people are doing that.
The upvoted comment you replied to is so demonstrably false. Sometimes Lemmy is just like Reddit where you come across a topic you’re actually familiar with and see all the bullshit comments for what they are.
My grandma boils vegetables like nobody’s business.
Yeah I mean nowadays I feel like something like hello fresh or whatever meal delivery service (that still requires you to cook) is a big convenient treat. Delivery is so goddamn expensive, I ain’t made of money!
I can’t speak for everyone, but since the COVID inflation I’ve swore off most fastfood and exclusively cook for myself now. I’ve learned baking bread, making stocks, processing meat, canning, and so much more. It’s so much healthier, tastier, and more affordable. I think folks are coming back to cooking for themselves. It may not be the majority, but there are many of us that have mostly swore off eating out.
Just as intended.
Man, just wait until someone tells her where the rest of food comes from
I know folks, my boss and his family, who - if it doesn’t come from a box, powder, and/or plastic bag, will not be eating it. It’s really sad and I eat whole food in front of him all the time in hopes…
I had a relative once say that she’s vegetarian, won’t eat animals. I point out the chicken she’s eating and has always eaten, and she says “It’s from the grocery store, not an animal”. We had to have a long chat. People too divorced from real food and its sources, have some weird assumptions.
The staunch vegetarian stance of not eating anything you yourself killed
My friends mom has been trying the opposite- shes trying to avoid buying any plastic packaged food. Not so much out of concern for microplastics, but as a way to reduce her environmental impact.
Its also helped her eat much healthier- most candy is out, all her veggies are fresh instead of frozen, fresh meats instead of prepackaged ones, etc.
Now don’t go hate on frozen veggies, they did nothing wrong
A weirdly large amount of people seem to think frozen foods or persevered foods in general are all evil and will kill you. Like ALL of it.
Like fucking salted meats and refrigeration are a god send. People are fucking stupid.
My first girlfriend’s brat sister got grossed out when I told her that eggs were literally shitted out by hens. Beautiful twist. She went on to get a food safety degree.
The cook really should be picking the bay leaves out. No one wants to eat a bay leaf.
They probably do, but finding them all every single time is almost impossible. I know I’ve had a few pop up in my own food over the years.
we just tell the kids whoever finds the bay leaf “wins” and gets first dessert.
i can’t remember the last time i served dessert.
It’s always been framed as “good luck” in every family I knew growing up.
While that is true, not recognizing a bayleaf is a sign of embarrassing stupidity.
ignorance, but yeah. Who hasn’t encountered a bay leaf by adulthood?
Yeah this is pretty much where I’m at, her reaction seems pretty stupid but I would be a little annoyed if I had to pick a bay leaf out of my mouth.
Like a cat with a hairball.
TBH I have no idea why bay leaves aren’t ground like other herbs — despite having spent my childhood watching my mom regularly put bay leaves in her cooking.
That might also be why I detect barely any taste in bay leaves.
Nah, you don’t want that. I don’t think the leaf would grind very well and it’s just supposed to be a hint of spice in the final dish.
I live in a country where ground bay leaf is a very common spice to use. It’s just another powdered spice in a jar or a bag like cinnamon or curry.
Huh. Maybe I’ll try it
