Do you hate it when people insist that something should only be made with cheap ingredients...

Do you hate it when people insist that something should only be made with cheap ingredients? Like if you use something nicer or fancy it up that you're somehow ruining the integrity of the dish?

Case in point, the tomato sandwich. I've got a ton of tomatoes from my garden and I was looking for interesting variations, and so many articles are written by people insisting that you cannot use anything other than garbage mayo and cheap, terrible, spongy sliced, white bread to make a proper tomato sandwich, and adding anything else is sacrilege. The fact is that the sandwich becomes a million times better if you use a nicer bread or a spread, or if you simply add basil or pepper or a smoked cheese.

people often miss the point when they 'upgrade' dishes. just because it's an ingredient commonly perceived as 'better' or more luxurious does not mean it improves the dish. i hate people who put camembert or some shit in a burger.

>The fact is that the sandwich becomes a million times better if you use a nicer bread or a spread, or if you simply add basil or pepper or a smoked cheese.

i don't agree. i do like adding lemon juice and pepper to the mayo though. and often slices of hard boiled egg.

They just want to recreate the flavor of their childhood meals prepared by their alcoholic mom when they lived in a trailer park.

I've never seen an example of this

>insisting that you cannot use anything other than garbage mayo and cheap, terrible, spongy sliced, white bread to make a proper tomato sandwich

Nah, nobody worth mentioning thinks that. You should stop worrying about it. But a tomato sandwich is pretty fucking depressing, so might as well do it cheap.

What are you talking about? I can't think of a single website or blog that would advocate using shitty ingredients, ever.

No, I think certain dishes really are best with cheap ingredients. And generally speaking I am a serious ingredient snob. For example:
Chili dogs. They need to be made with cheap canned chili like Wolf or Hormel. Normally I'd argue that stuff is disgusting, but it is literally perfect for a chili dog. (and this is coming from someone who regularly enters, and wins, chili cookoffs.) Good chili does not help a chili dog. It needs to be the cheap stuff.

Kraft Singles are a culinary abomination, but they are the ideal cheese for a cheeseburger. Singles have the perfect texture. Yes, you can get cheeses that have better flavor but they either don't melt well, or they are strong enough to overpower the other flavors in the burger.

That being said, I think the list of foods that are best with cheap ingredients is very small. Most of the time upping your ingredient quality is a very easy way to improve a dish.

> a tomato sandwich is pretty fucking depressing

why

i think it's more depressing that people think a sandwich is only worthwhile if it has meat or cheese or some shit

Some trashy things are delicious. No one is going to agree on an exact list, but a common things on that list would include: In-N-Out burgers, chili dogs, Chick-Fil-A sandwiches, grilled cheese on white bread with American cheese, pepperoni pizza, fried catfish Po'Boys, fried chicken and for some Kraft Mac & Cheese. Americans love it when something cheap and trashy is delicious, and to many trying to do upscale versions of such foods is missing the point of them entirely. I get that.

But given the choice between trashy deliciousness and not trashy deliciousness I'll choose not trashy most of the time. For two reasons: First I can afford to, and second eating a lot of trashy shit made me a fatass, and now that I'm trim again I don't want to go back.

Do you have an example of one of these articles?

I mean that's kind of a harsh way of saying things, but this is probably what's most accurate.

Tomato on toast, sure. Tomato sandwich? That's depressing.

why does the addition of an extra slice of bread make it depressing?

I think he means just how it sounds. It's not ACTUALLY depressing, but it just seems like someone a lonely poor person would slap together that has no hope. At least eating it toast makes it seem like you put some sort of effort in.

where i'm from a good tomato is something to be celebrated.

Fair enough. But slapping it between two slices of bread covered in your choice of condiments doesn't sound like you're celebrating the tomato.

what does?

Hey, I don't give a shit if you eat it on crackers lol. My grandma use to literally just cut a chunk of tomato and dab it in mayo.

This, though my mother would disagree. She loves the tomato on white bread with mayo thing. Then again she grew up poor eating Depression Era dishes her mother cooked. Some of the things she likes are actually horrible.

This thread is chock full of horrible people with horrible opinions. I think it gave me cancer. I wish I'd never read through it.

That said, OP, a tomato sandwich is a thing of beauty that should never be made with shit tier bread or shit tier mayo. That's desecration. Good bread, good mayonnaise, summer ripe tomatoes from the garden, and a little s&p sprinkled on is heaven. If you want to add herbs or cheese, that's entirely your prerogative. Tomato sandwiches aren't "Depression" food or "poor food, they're a summertime treat. People who think that simple sandwiches that showcase particular flavors are somehow bad are the fucking worst people.

>Kraft Singles are a culinary abomination, but they are the ideal cheese for a cheeseburger
Ideal would be cheese slices you make yourself by processing high quality cheese with an emulsifier. Kraft singles aren't even the best store bought processed cheese slices.

I'll take my tomato sandwich with olive oil and salt.

Every heard of a toast sandwich???

Pic highly related, it's a Heston Blumenthal interpretation of a piece of toast between two pieces of bread.

Fucking this. I'm getting sick of the Kraft shills in here. It's not even good process cheese.

>a toast sandwich
It's real, wow. Of course it's from the UK, where things are so absurd I think it's a bad troll. This is like when I heard of a TV license, I thought it was just a meme like an "ice sandwich" or "penis inspection day".

>Classic southeast asian working-man's breakfast
>white rice
>some fried anchovies and peanuts
>spicy sambal
>a fried egg
>cucumber slices
>You know what this is missing? A broiled lobster!

Wait. TV licenses are a real thing? Wtf

Some people are cheapass pennypinchers. I met a customer today that literally bought a fifth of shitty Jose Cuervo for $16 over a liter of Sauza Blue Silver (100% de Agave) for $17.

How do you think they pay for the pretty quality stuff the BBC does? That shit is a little too good to be done for free, and a little to interesting to be paid for by advertising.

Yes. And they have vans that drive around and try to catch people that don't pay them so they can raid their homes. It's so bizarre you'd think people are making it up as a silly joke.

>Kraft Singles are a culinary abomination, but they are the ideal cheese for a cheeseburger. Singles have the perfect texture. Yes, you can get cheeses that have better flavor but they either don't melt well, or they are strong enough to overpower the other flavors in the burger.
Disagree heartily. Slice your own cheese, cheddar or whatever, relatively thinly and put them on your burgers. Way better than that Kraft plastic shit.

It's not the Vans that are amusing! It's the progressively more aggressive and colorful (literally, I've been getting bright red envelopes these days) letters threatening litigation for lack of tv license....

>Disagree heartily. Slice your own cheese, cheddar or whatever, relatively thinly and put them on your burgers. Way better than that Kraft plastic shit.
Bad advice. No one listen to this guy.
See for what really to do.

what kind did you plant this year?

I get red envelopes from my dentist, when he sends me a birthday card

I feel you on the chili, but dude... Kraft singles are gross. This is probably just a "no accounting for taste" thing because it's precisely their texture that turns me off most. I'd prefer a cheese that refuses to melt over one that melts like rubber.

I don't even put mayo on mine. Wheat bread, sandwich cut, with a good slather of butter on one side of each slice. Four thick tomato steaks. Black pepper. Salt. Done.

I don't think there's anything wrong with "Depression" food, that is, capital "D" "Depression" food. Lots of great culinary inventions came from poorer people who needed to get creative to make tasty food out of what they could afford. Lobster, for one. My mom got tomato sandwiches from her mom, who really did follow those Depression-era traditions about canning and growing food and stuff like that.

I grew up thinking I hated cheeseburgers because of shitty Kraft cheese since that is what was always at family BBQs

I've never been able to get homemade mayo to emulsify properly, though. And I enjoy white bread as a base for certain sandwiches, especially with cured meats and spreads.

I feel the only real sacrilege for a tomato sandwich is using a greenhouse tomato on it. Those are obviously the devil.

>What are you talking about? I can't think of a single website or blog that would advocate using shitty ingredients, ever.
>can't think of a single website
I think you can

>TV licenses are a real thing?
Wtf
I don't understand this reaction to TV licenses.
It's just a tax associated with a service.
In the US, some federal tax dollars go to funding PBS - oh no the world is ending!
A TV license is like paying to drive on a toll road (upkeep of the road), or paying a sales tax on tobacco products (funding anti-use ad campaigns).
The difference is that the British gov't gives a shit about what is on tv, whereas the US gov't hasn't since the '80s (death of the fairness doctrine).

I´m a poorfag student, I use the cheapest ingredients possible.

>I don't understand this reaction to TV licenses.

It's a unique thing that nobody else has, so of course people are going to make fun of it.

Also, there's the concept that a "license" is usually associated with something that's dangerous and requires demonstration of skill or special education to get, like a Driver's license, concealed weapons license, commercial truck operator's license, diving license, and so on. That implies that a "TV" license requires some kind of test or class certification, and that's fucking hilarious.

I would agree with that, sure. I once bothered to follow the Modernist Cuisine recipe for their ultimate burger cheese and it was indeed fucking amazing. But I figure the average cook isn't going to be fucking around with sodium citrate and lab thermometers.

>It's a unique thing that nobody else has
Germany has GEZ or "Rundfunkbeitrag".
You have to pay 17,50€ per month even if you don´t have a TV.

We have it in Denmark too. Used to be on radio and TV but now it's on "media" so they can screw you even if all you own is a smartphone.
I don't pay it and while they do send me a letter a couple times a year to "remind" me they haven't done more than that yet.
I never watch any TV or listen to any radio and I will absolutely not pay the $355 a year it costs.
I already pay 50% income tax and a flat 25% VAT.

I think, but am not sure, that Sweden and possibly Norway have it too.

In germany they have sent people in prison for not paying.
Also
>50% income tax and a flat 25% VAT.
We have over 50% income tax (in total) and 19% VAT, so not much of a difference.

>Lots of great culinary inventions came from poorer people who needed to get creative to make tasty food out of what they could afford.
Agreed, but that wasn't the case during the Depression. Depression Era cooking was top down from Elanor Roosevelt in league with Home Economists and Cornell developing recipes based on the misguided understanding of nutrition they had at the time. And how were these Home Economists? Upper middle class WASP women who valued a scientific and pragmatic approach to food rather than one based on taste. The kinds of dishes they popularized were shit. Shit like carrots and spaghetti in white sauce, liver loaf and prune pudding for dessert. It was not food that came from poor people being clever. It was from test kitchens where people with other priorities than taste were working out the cheapest possible ways to get some nutrition into people who had little or almost no money for food. For the most part it was really grim stuff.

Pic related is a good read on the topic.

That was a lot of it, sure. But that wasn't the whole story.

They encouraged people to grown their own vegetables, for example. And plenty of people came up with foods on their own, ether relying on old family knowledge or thinking things up on their own. Not every cook mindlessly followed whatever the Gubbmint was spouting.

Depends on the dish. Cheaper ingredients usually have a more conventional flavor that is catered to people with undeveloped palates. Sometimes introducing "fancier" ingredients will disrupt that harmony.

:Unsubscribe:

mozzarella di bufala is only true mozarella. Not like this fake tasteless cow milk garbage imitation.

If you make my bangers and mash with fancy sausages I'll be pissed

>It's a unique thing that nobody else has
we've gone full burger