/ck/ - Food & Cooking

[Anonymous No.5120726]

I'm a white guy living in a mostly-white area, yet surrounded by lots of different non-chain ethnic restaurants like Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian places. I've always liked trying new things, and I've always loved spicy food, but I'm aware that they tend to have a distinction between what they'd use for themselves and white-person-spicy. How do I go about requesting more "authentic" non-Americanized dishes or saying I want it to be their level of spicy without spilling spaghetti?

Pic unrelated.

[Anonymous No.5120754]

If you're in a mostly white area, like a suburb or something, probably nothing. You'll get what they serve because that is literally all they make. Some places won't even make dishes actually spicy, no matter how much you insist. Well, I guess if you're sitting in rather than having takeout, you can insist that they just dump chilis all over the dish and they'll pretty much have to, but you definitely won't get authentic ethnic food.

You have to go where the Asians are. If you have anything like a Chinatown or large Asian market, that's where you need to go.

[Anonymous No.5120778]

Japanese food isn't spicy. Korean and Chinese aren't THAT spicy although they can be spicier than what a lot of white people are used to. Indian food can be killer spicy but at your average dumpy neighborhood curry place it's just a question of tossing more red dust on the finished product, just like with Chinese and Korean.

The trick is to go to an actual good regional Indian place where Indians go to eat. These are usually found either in very large cities, or any place with a lot of IT workers. Those kinds of foods are usually prepared with the chilis according to recipe (often ground up in a paste and fried before the meats or veggies) and you won't get a choice. They may be served with various little chutneys or achars to add more heat and flavor, according to taste.

tl;dr get out of the burbs

[Anonymous No.5120810]

Is Louisiana an anomaly when it comes to the majority of the white population liking spicy food?

[Anonymous No.5120859]

>>5120810
No, but the cultural blight that is the burbs and the flyover zones are awful. I mean, I like me a tuna noodle casserole as much as the next man, but they really need to get some spice into their lives.

[Anonymous No.5120898]

>>5120810

It's got nothing to do with "white", it has to do with geography.

The closer you get to the equator the hotter/spicier the dishes become. That's because hot peppers don't grow in cold climates, and they're also useful for masking the taste of food from the days before refrigeration. So, countries and regions near the equator have spicer food: Mexico, central America, Carribean, north Africa, India, Thailand, India, etc. Those farther away from the equator have blander food. You can even see it within a given country: compare the cuisine from Southern China to the northern areas. Southern USA vs. northern states. South Europe like Spain or Italy vs. England, Finland, Norway, etc.

[Anonymous No.5120926]

>>5120898

The majority of Central American and Caribbean food isn't very spicy. Chili's popularity is more about trade routes and colonization than the need to preserve food.

[Anonymous No.5120940]

>>5120926
I was thinking the same thing. I've friends from Honduras and Nicaragua. Several of them, actually. They can't do spicy at all. Neither can any Puerto Ricans or Guadeloupeans I've ever met. Tabasco is about as hot as it gets for Ricans.

[Anonymous No.5120976]

>>5120898
Spanish/Italian food really isn't spicy at all. Less bland than Northern European food, for sure. But there are only a few dishes from those countries that could be considered spicy (off the top of my head I can only think of Italian ones, but maybe there are some Spanish ones too?), and even then it doesn't compare to Indian/Mexican spicy. Most Spanish/Italian people I know are actually pretty averse to spicy foods.
>I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense I'm hammered

[Anonymous No.5121018]

>>5120926

I am sure there are some outliers but the general trend is very strong. All the countries famous for spicy food are right there near the equator. And while not all of the Caribbean has spicy food, there certainly is a lot of it. Scotch Bonnet peppers are from the Caribbean and are used in Grenada, Trinidad, Haiti, Jamaica, etc. I've had doubles in Trinidad that would knock the teeth out of your skull. Jerk chicken needs no introduction either.

[Anonymous No.5121040]

>>5121018

The reason they are popular in places like Trinidad and Jamaica is because of the large population of Indian servants that liked spicy food. By population they are insignificant compared to Cuba, the DR, and Puerto Rico, where spicy food isn't popular, not to mention all the mainland countries bordering the Caribbean such as Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, etc. And with these mainland countries, again, the exceptions (such as Guyana) can thank South Asians.

[Anonymous No.5121058]

>>5120976

Spicy doesn't mean just "hot peppers". There's spices and there is heat. They are different. And Spanish food certainly isn't all that "hot" spicy, but it's very flavorful-spicy.

and yeah, I know what you mean about Spanish cuisine being less spicy than say Indian, but have you compared it to Northern Europe?

[Anonymous No.5121897]

>>5120859
"cultural blight" "flyover zones"

fuck you nigger.

[Anonymous No.5121938]

>>5120898
This is true. I'm in Arizona; we will stop at nothing to exploit any excuse to put jalapenos in dishes they have no business being in. Meanwhile, my relatives in NYC sweat when eating mild jarred salsa.

[Anonymous No.5121979]

>>5120859
But Mr. Anon, spices are for foreigners and ethnics, and we don't like them around here! We just want us some good old plain white person food, Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes. You start adding spices to your food, and then you start listening to that devil's music, that "rock & roll" or whatever you kids call it, and before long you're stealing hubcaps, and the next step past that is committing acts of sodomy with other men! So the only way to keep someone from being a socially disgraceful homosexual is to keep food good and plain and bland.

[Anonymous No.5122039]

>>5120726
OP, if you want "authentic", go to where the intended customers go. ie: If you want Korean food, go to wherever all the Koreans flock. A Korean restaurant in the middle of a white neighborhood is usually not a good sign because the customers would mostly be white and that restaurant would have to tweak their food to cater to their palates, not to their fellow countrymen.

I know this by experience. I go to this Chinese place where all the staff and most customers are Chinese. I almost feel out of place whenever I eat there but my god their food makes getting stared at worth it.

[Anonymous No.5122059]

>>5120859

>hur dur white people suck am i cool guys

why do you even post here

[Anonymous No.5124195]

>>5122059
I dunno.