Completely Inconsequential Hot-Takes 2: People Take Too Long to Post New Threads

[Bohandas]

As for "burn your mouth" - yeah, that's not a problem with coffee, that's a problem with very hot water. The flavour is irrelevant. The same thing would happen if you were dumb enough to drink overheated soda, but nobody claims that's an argument against soda. Why should it be one against coffee?

Yes, but nobody drinks overheated soda, and within the last century or so they've finally gotten their act together regarding tea. It's only coffee that's served this way.

[Batcathat]

Yes, but nobody drinks overheated soda, and within the last century or so they've finally gotten their act together regarding tea. It's only coffee that's served this way.

By that logic, shouldn't pizza (as well as any number of other dishes) be blamed for burning one's mouth (if consumed too quickly after making it) too?

[Draconi Redfir]

I really really really really think that a warhammer 40k "Sisters of battle" army based on the Mother and Daughters from the video game "Othercide" would be a cool concept to play with and design.

But alas i don't have the money to actually try it for myself, and Othercide is some obscure game or something because i can never find anyone to talk about the idea with 😭

[veti]

There's nothing "quasi-religious" about caffeine being merely an adenosine-receptor antagonist, and not a caloric source.

Point of order - coffee does contain calories. Actual coffee beans contain quite a lot of energy. Most of that doesn't make it as far as the drink, but (1) we were talking about coffee in general, not just the drink, and (2) the drink is commonly served with milk and/or sugar, which add a lot of calories.

EDIT: Also, I'm not sure how "your phone's autocorrect function will create nonsense phrases like 'cabinet does it actually' when you type things that are technically true but also mostly irrelevant" is a particularly strong cautionary warning, nor an accurate one.

How about "if you had a cup of coffee, maybe you'd be alert enough to spot mistakes of that magnitude before publishing them"?

Yes, but nobody drinks overheated soda, and within the last century or so they've finally gotten their act together regarding tea. It's only coffee that's served this way.

Depends where you get your coffee from, I guess. When I buy it, it's hot, sure, but not scalding, and it's drinkable within a few minutes.

But the point remains, there's nothing intrinsic to coffee that makes people serve it too hot, or drink it that way. That's 100% pure human error.

[Khedrac]

Depends where you get your coffee from, I guess. When I buy it, it's hot, sure, but not scalding, and it's drinkable within a few minutes.

But the point remains, there's nothing intrinsic to coffee that makes people serve it too hot, or drink it that way. That's 100% pure human error.

I suspect my parents would have agreed. Both spent a fair chunk of the 1950s in West Africa where they caught the taste for iced coffee.

Dad would drink it black, unsweetened from the fridge - he would make a pot of coffee in the morning (ground coffee, a mixture of dark roast and French roast to get the right amount of chicory), let it cool down, then place it in the fridge.
Mum would have it hot with milk for breakfast, but then switched to cold black for the rest of the day.

(Is it any wonder that I don't life the flavour of coffee?)

[Batcathat]

I suspect my parents would have agreed. Both spent a fair chunk of the 1950s in West Africa where they caught the taste for iced coffee.

Dad would drink it black, unsweetened from the fridge - he would make a pot of coffee in the morning (ground coffee, a mixture of dark roast and French roast to get the right amount of chicory), let it cool down, then place it in the fridge.
Mum would have it hot with milk for breakfast, but then switched to cold black for the rest of the day.

(Is it any wonder that I don't life the flavour of coffee?)

While I understand wanting to drink cool drinks in Africa (I find it too hot here in Sweden like half the year, I suspect Africa would kill me), intentionally drinking cool coffee sounds crazy to me. In my experience, cooling the coffee removes pretty much any taste not sour and bitter.

[Rynjin]

What I think a lot of people don't quite get is that very high quality coffee is drastically different from your average coffee. I have nothing against your Folgers of the world, they're a great coffee to drink with milk or cream and sugar, but they are indeed much, much too bitter to drink black.

But a high quality coffee (and South Africa is one of the top producers of coffee, so they'd be able to locally source the good **** over there, fresher than anything) is generally less bitter. Freshly ground coffee is ALSO less bitter. So freshly ground, high quality coffee has very little of what you'd usually associate with coffee's bitterness.

[Peelee]

Hot take: sour cream ruins Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes.

[Ionathus]

Hot take: sour cream ruins Mexican

Um, that's not a hot take, that's the overwhelming consensu--

and Tex-Mex dishes.

Oh damn that one is spicy, good job!

Alright, you can have your strong opinion, but you gotta show your work. I'd argue the whole point of Tex-Mex is to take a Mexican dish and Americanize it -- which usually means to add as much beef or dairy as you can. Sour cream fits that mission perfectly, giving you a tangy creaminess that blends with whatever anemic Taco Seasoning you're using and turning the whole thing into comfort food.

I'm curious what you consider Tex Mex if sour cream isn't allowed. It's basically the biggest staple of the cuisine to me, alongside ground beef and shredded cheese (from the grocery stooore, and Ortega sauce from the grocery stoooore, and tortilla shells from the grocery stoooore...)

[Peelee]

Alright, you can have your strong opinion, but you gotta show your work.

Can do! Sour cream tastes like nothing, which has somehow gone bad.

[Rynjin]

I can take or leave sour cream...which is kinda the issue. It is a condiment that adds almost no flavor, but a lot of calories. I have no clue why people go so nuts over it.

[Rockphed]

I can take or leave sour cream...which is kinda the issue. It is a condiment that adds almost no flavor, but a lot of calories. I have no clue why people go so nuts over it.

Sour cream changes the texture of food, not the taste. It gives sauces body, which helps to hold together the inside of a taco.

[Bohandas]

On that note, I like tex mex food but I won;t eat tacos, precisely because they're so fiddly to keep together

[Peelee]

Sour cream changes the texture of food, not the taste. It gives sauces body, which helps to hold together the inside of a taco.

A.) I disagree. And even if it did, it still ruins the flavor.
2.) it is used incredibly often in other instances where there is nk texture changes needed, even if it did (it doesnt).

Example: went to brunch with wife today. Had a barbacoa chilaquiles bowl. Sour cream was 100% unnecessary unless you like they taste. Sadly i forgot to ask them to nix it. Fortunately they only drizzled it on top instead of globbing it like many places are fond of doing, so it was relatively minimal and i still got ro enjoy it.

Even if they didn't give me the extra cotija that i did ask for.

[Draconi Redfir]

hot take: "Spicy" is not a flavor, it's unnecessary mouth-pain that distracts you from the actual flavor of the food you're making.


Spicy butter chicken and not-spicy butter chicken taste exactly the same, but only one of them is tolerable to eat.

[Rynjin]

Sour cream changes the texture of food, not the taste. It gives sauces body, which helps to hold together the inside of a taco.

Sour cream is typically just haphazardly dolloped on top of Tex-Mex as a condiment. You can't tell me this is "holding the sauce together":

hot take: "Spicy" is not a flavor, it's unnecessary mouth-pain that distracts you from the actual flavor of the food you're making.


Spicy butter chicken and not-spicy butter chicken taste exactly the same, but only one of them is tolerable to eat.

That's not a hot take, that's just not knowing what you're talking about. Spicy foods have a different taste, because they are often different vegetables. A jalapeno tastes different from an onion which is different from a radish, etc.

[halfeye]

hot take: "Spicy" is not a flavor, it's unnecessary mouth-pain that distracts you from the actual flavor of the food you're making.


Spicy butter chicken and not-spicy butter chicken taste exactly the same, but only one of them is tolerable to eat.

This is odd, there are hundreds of spices, not all of them are hot. Cinnamon is a spice, Cumin is a spice, there's not much heat to either of those, and there are dozens more like them.

[Ortho]

By that logic, shouldn't pizza (as well as any number of other dishes) be blamed for burning one's mouth (if consumed too quickly after making it) too?

Speaking of which, here's my hot take: chilled pizza tastes better than hot pizza.

[Batcathat]

I'm gonna do what is perhaps the hotter take and say I quite enjoy sour cream in my tacos. I'm not really sure why, to be honest, I agree it doesn't taste that much but I do think it makes the whole better.

On the topic of spicy food, I love it but if it reaches the level of "mouth pain" (and I suspect when that happens is very individual) it's probably too much. It's the same as with coffee – if it hurts, you're probably doing it wrong.

Speaking of which, here's my hot take: chilled pizza tastes better than hot pizza.

I think you're far from alone on that one, but I've never understood it. The taste of cold pizza is alright (though not as good as warm pizza), but I find the texture rather unpleasant.

[NichG]

Sour cream + lemon icecream is amazing, and it definitely has a taste that's different than just 'lemon icecream'. The combination basically ends up tasting sort of like cheesecake.

[Khedrac]

hot take: "Spicy" is not a flavor, it's unnecessary mouth-pain that distracts you from the actual flavor of the food you're making.

That's not exactly a "new" take though.
Spices originally served two purposes:
1. To disguise the taste of meat going bad.
2. As a preservative to slow meat going bad.

I think one of the reasons that most cultures which originate spicy food have a warm climate where it is harder to keep food from going bad in the first place.

[Rynjin]

Sour cream + lemon icecream is amazing, and it definitely has a taste that's different than just 'lemon icecream'. The combination basically ends up tasting sort of like cheesecake.

At that point it'd just be better with...cream cheese though.

[NichG]

At that point it'd just be better with...cream cheese though.

I could try that but I do think the sourness from the sour cream matters in the flavor. Just like how buttermilk and milk are not remotely the same thing. Edit: I guess technically the main difference is that in cream cheese you lose the whey, but in sour cream it's still emulsified in? Pure whey definitely has a distinct flavor... Edit 2: Also sour cream has huge brand and regional variations so I'm not sure without being very specific we'd have the same experiences. I remember that sour cream I was able to find in Japan basically was cream cheese, whereas the sour cream I get here is fragile enough that if you blend it you basically get something thinner than half and half. And Mexican-style sour cream was a totally different thing too...

(Also, even with the sour cream you start to hit issues with the ice cream wanting to be on the firm side. With cream cheese, I fear you'd have a brick that wouldn't even melt at room temperature, like if you do a peanut butter ice cream with too much peanut butter. So probably I won't actually try making cream cheese ice cream.)

[InvisibleBison]

Spices originally served two purposes:
1. To disguise the taste of meat going bad.
2. As a preservative to slow meat going bad.

This is not actually correct.

[Peelee]

This is not actually correct.

You linked to modern usage, which is different from historical. Cornell University might disagree with your findings.

[Batcathat]

You linked to modern usage, which is different from historical. Cornell University might disagree with your findings.

The Wikipage references historical usage too, and most of its references appear more recent than the one you linked, which might explain the difference (or maybe even the experts disagree, it wouldn't exactly be the first time).

[Peelee]

The Wikipage references historical usage too, and most of its references appear more recent than the one you linked, which might explain the difference (or maybe even the experts disagree, it wouldn't exactly be the first time).

Thr historical references in the wiki (which are scant) still refer to current usage - eg pepper being the most common/popular spice, and. This may be true generally and in modern days but thr Cornell anti-microbial claims specifically noticed that the most anti-microbial spices are also the ones that were heavily used in the cultures that favored spicy foods, such as Southeast Asia, and the spices also align heavily with the more historically common spices in those regions.

[Draconi Redfir]

This is odd, there are hundreds of spices, not all of them are hot. Cinnamon is a spice, Cumin is a spice, there's not much heat to either of those, and there are dozens more like them.

... okay? but i am quite clearly not talking about those.

"Spicy"

Look, look right there. i said "Spicy", not "Spices". These are in fact two entirely different things.

You are defending the honour of books, when the conversation is about rivers.

[InvisibleBison]

You linked to modern usage, which is different from historical. Cornell University might disagree with your findings.

The critical line from the Wikipedia page was "It is often claimed that spices were used either as food preservatives or to mask the taste of spoiled meat, especially in the European Middle Ages.^[16][20] This is false.^{[21][22][23][16]}". Note that of the four sources cited in support of "This is false", three are specifically about the Middle Ages and the fourth is a more general history of spices. None are specifically about modern usage.

[Peelee]

The critical line from the Wikipedia page was "It is often claimed that spices were used either as food preservatives or to mask the taste of spoiled meat, especially in the European Middle Ages.^[16][20] This is false.^{[21][22][23][16]}". Note that of the four sources cited in support of "This is false", three are specifically about the Middle Ages and the fourth is a more general history of spices. None are specifically about modern usage.

Bolded for emphasis:

but the Cornell anti-microbial claims specifically noticed that the most anti-microbial spices are also the ones that were heavily used in the cultures that favored spicy foods, such as Southeast Asia, and the spices also align heavily with the more historically common spices in those regions.

I will readily agree that Europe is not Southeast Asia.


Also, the Cornell article noted, garlic is among "the best all-around bacteria killers (they kill everything)", which is also unbelievably prevalent in cuisine worldwide. And one of the authors was am evolutionary biologist who proposed the idea that the reason we find these spices flavorful might be because of their health effects on food preparation.