• Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    It’s not a joke though Minnesota really does have the blandest trough slop in north america it’s awful.

    They have this thing they call “hot dish” which is they dump green beans and cream of mushroom soup in a casserole dish and put tater tots on it. This is the height of Minnesotan cultural cuisine. I am not joking. It is not seasoned.

      • Hexboare [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        It shouldn’t be completely bland if you saute some onion and garlic, that’s the taste base of meals for like a thousand years

        Would be better with literally any spice

    • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      They have this thing they call “hot dish” which is they dump green beans and cream of mushroom soup in a casserole dish and put tater tots on it.

      I’ve made this! Well, a vegan equivalent with mushroom gravy I made myself. And I used frozen mixed veggies, not just green beans. Oh, and I seasoned it. And put some (vegan) cheese on it. But it was really good! Sure, it’s not something I’d serve to anyone or even admit I enjoy (except anonymously on the internet, I guess), but like, it’s almost a shepherd’s pie situation, except with tots instead of mashed potatoes. Surprisingly good for a lazy meal, and lots of leftovers!

        • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Gravy is one of the laziest foods ever! I’ve made gravies while blackout drunk. I’ve made gravies while too high to function. It takes a little time (like 10 minutes, maximum) and some pretty constant stirring, but for the amount of tasty it adds to a dish, it’s well worth it. It often feels like the gravy makes itself while I just stand there waiting for it to come together.

        • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Oh, it’s a pretty straightforward, very lazy gravy! I make a roux with flour and oil, then add in broth while whisking vigorously to get rid of any clumps. Then I add a can or two of canned mushrooms and I season it with salt, pepper, soy sauce, maybe some msg, and herbs. Lots of herbs. Rosemary, sage, thyme, parsley, usually dried because that’s what we have sitting around, but I bet fresh would be even better. We also have some, like, mushroom stir fry sauce (I don’t exactly know what it is) that we found in an asian market, so I usually add some of that to get it more mushroomy.

          And yeah, I’ve done fried onions on a green bean casserole. In my mind that’s different than a tater tot hot dish. I do love green bean casserole though!

    • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Forgive me for being prejudiced eurotrash but isn’t a lot of “traditional” white American foods just branded processed foods hastily mixed together? Are fresh ingredients that hard to get your hands on? Has the knowledge of how to cook them been lost?

      • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        A lot of “traditional” white American food rises from traditions of using government issued foodstuffs. Government cheese, spam, various concoctions devised from military rations. But quite a lot also comes from what immigrant communities were able to afford, which was generally the worse stuff. There’s also a not-insignificant number of white households that possessed no generational cooking knowledge because it was done by slaves, and thus had no culinary culture they could continue without the requisite skills.

        • copandballtorture [ey/em]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          A lot of the Americanization process encouraged immigrants to give to their customs and replace them with American substitutes. Shitty food is a result of generations of urban working class proles fed on cheap “American approved” slop and losing their customs and knowledge

      • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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        3 months ago

        Are fresh ingredients that hard to get your hands on?

        I mean we have food deserts here for one thing. I imagine theres more to the answer to your question, but thats one thing I can mention.

      • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        It’s sort of a 50/50 split between standard poverty meals adapted by time and region, and recipes invented by marketing campaigns to sell processed slop.

    • FactuallyUnscrupulou [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Upstate NY beats out Minnesota in the bland food category, all they have is buffalo sauce w/ bleu cheese. Most of the restaurants I go to don’t even salt the food, at least Campbell’s cream of mushroom is packed full of sodium. Sponge candy is bland, they used to produce brown beans that everyone acknowledged needed to have ingredients added to give them flavor, and even the hotdogs have a weird texture because they’re ground so fine and not smoked. Don’t even get me started on salt potatoes or garbage plates.

    • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Made “hot dish” with refried beans, fried onions and queso and topping it with crushed tortilla chips instead of cream of mushroom soup and green beans makes a pretty good half-assed taco casserole kinda thing tbh, tater tots are a nice base to add assorted slop to in a baking pan and just chuck it in the oven for awhile.

      chefs-kiss

      Cream of mushroom soup is nasty though, so are any kind of pasta/potato salads where the main ingredient is mayo, and “Waldorf salad” is an affront to apples

    • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Nah, that’s “green bean casserole.” That’s the ONLY hotdish we DON’T call hotdish. Ive always seen it with fried onions, not tots, but everyone makes a hotdish a little differently.

      There’s a thousand kind of hotdishes and there are good and bad ones, I guarantee you.

    • I’ll die on the hill that the only issue with green bean casserole is that it isn’t vegan. Its’ meant to be communal, if made properly the contrast between the softness and the crunch create an inviting texture, it is quite possibly the only way to sneak both soy sauce and black pepper into a dish that middle America won’t question, it was designed to be cheap and therefore accessible, no authentic version has tater tots, no authentic version is unseasoned, for the less unadventurous it benefits greatly from adding even more spice (paprika, garlic powder, and sprinkle some herbs on top of the onion. if making a vegan version use a but less cashews than you would normally use for a vegan cream of mushroom. I don’t know why, it just works better.). Also, if you like the taste of hot peppers but not the heat, its a great vehicle for cutting the heat so much you can still dump some capsicum bomb on there.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        I am channeling Lenin and screaming “utopianism! Utopianism!”

        There might be some theory of edible green bean casserole or edible hot dish. It might work on paper. You might look at the recipe and think “mmm, yes, i can see the appeal.”

        But on earth? Where people live and die? No such thing exists, nor could it.

        • Breath_Of_The_Snake [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          But it can’t be a utopian dish if I’ve actually made variations of it. It’s Eutopian.

          Fr though I would die from shame if Lenin wakes up and insults my cooking. Breath of the snake has served a silly dish, I won’t be trying it.