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>I'm not sure we can trust US resident's opinions on taste as long as Hershey's chocolate still exists. As an American, I agree with you 100%. Our opinions on

by magduf 7y ago

>I'm not sure we can trust US resident's opinions on taste as long as Hershey's chocolate still exists. As an American, I agree with you 100%. Our opinions on taste are utterly worthless. It's not just Hershey's chocolate either (which is already bad enough), it's so many other foods that are commonplace here. Food quality in this country is abysmal. You can get great food here, but it's harder to find and you'll pay dearly for it, but the stuff that regular Americans eat is generally awful.

rayiner 7y ago
Hershey’s chocolate is fine, so is American cheese. (You’d be insane to make S’mores or a grilled cheese with anything else, and if you don’t like those things you’re unamerican and should just move to Europe.)
- joecool1029 7y ago
  I once heard a Belgian say: "There are two kinds of foods: Those that go with chocolate and those that go with cheese" Hershey's chocolate breaks that rule and contains butryic acid. Here's a link explaining why and how that affects the taste: https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/butyric-acid/1017662.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/butyric-acid/1017662... EDIT: To be fair I think the butryric acid thing can be overlooked as an acquired taste. Same way that IRN BRU tastes like bubblegum to Americans, even though UK'ers claim it isn't. I still think Hershey's regular milk chocolate works better with peanut butter than any other chocolate I've had. The bigger issues I have with Hershey are the cloying amounts of sugar they keep adding as they knock down the cocoa butter and cacao solids in each of their products to save money. I used to run boxes of UK KitKats down from Canada's duty free stores so that other Americans could see what they were missing out on.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Hershey's chocolate is pretty bad, and American cheese is barely cheese. But both have functional properties that make them desirable for some applications: it's difficult to make a truly good cheeseburger without American cheese because of its melting properties, for instance. That's also why people use it in grilled cheeses, although it's less essential there (swiss melts just fine on a sandwich, for instance), and you should at the very least probably add some shredded cheddar or something to your American in a grilled cheese. You can add American's functional properties to almost any cheese with sodium citrate powder (we make and slice up baking sheets worth of "Americanized" aged cheddars, gruyere, and even blue). I would not confuse these useful properties with goodness. Grapeseed oil is also extremely useful. But California olive oil is a better oil. American cheese is like the grapeseed of cheese.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    What makes Hershey’s chocolate bad? A Hershey’s bar with almonds is pretty much as good as it gets chocolate wise. Certainly better to my palate than the fancy high cacao chocolate that is trendy these days.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      You like what you like. You can go read any number of blind taste tests, or any of a million Reddit threads where it is tediously re-explained that the sour milk note in the stabilizers Hershey's grosses Europeans out, or the NYT's notes about how bitter their cocoa is, but really it's just commodity chocolate whose overwhelming characteristic is sweetness with almost no texture or anything of interest to recommend it. If you're looking for something to serve an almost functional role in a product, like a S'more or whatever, it's... fine? Do you bake with Hershey's? Like in a brownie, where you can dial the sweetness in instead of swinging it all the way to 11? I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Hershey's chocolate, and I myself like American cheese! I'm just saying they're objectively not as good as other products, and the people who point that out aren't wrong to do so. Honestly, I think most people who say Hershey's is good would prefer Cadbury's.
    - magduf 7y ago
      You should try some German or Swiss chocolate. Ritter Sport (German) is very good and not costly (and not high-cacao either).
  - magduf 7y ago
    >it's difficult to make a truly good cheeseburger without American cheese because of its melting properties, for instance Huh? On non-fast-food cheeseburgers, cheddar is typically the standard cheese, and swiss is also popular. One of the best burgers I ever ate had caramelized goat cheese (in Europe). I don't even know the last time I had American cheese (on a burger or anything else), and I'm pretty sure the cheeses I've had on burgers were not "Americanized" as you mention, they were just normal cheese.
    - 7y ago
- triceratops 7y ago
  If you've only had good grilled cheeses with American cheese in them, I feel bad for you - truly. A good grilled cheese is one of life's greatest pleasures. There are many different kinds of cheeses that can go into a good grilled cheese.

by magduf 7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

Hershey’s chocolate is fine, so is American cheese. (You’d be insane to make S’mores or a grilled cheese with anything else, and if you don’t like those things you’re unamerican and should just move to Europe.)

joecool1029 7y ago
I once heard a Belgian say: "There are two kinds of foods: Those that go with chocolate and those that go with cheese" Hershey's chocolate breaks that rule and contains butryic acid. Here's a link explaining why and how that affects the taste: https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/butyric-acid/1017662.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/butyric-acid/1017662... EDIT: To be fair I think the butryric acid thing can be overlooked as an acquired taste. Same way that IRN BRU tastes like bubblegum to Americans, even though UK'ers claim it isn't. I still think Hershey's regular milk chocolate works better with peanut butter than any other chocolate I've had. The bigger issues I have with Hershey are the cloying amounts of sugar they keep adding as they knock down the cocoa butter and cacao solids in each of their products to save money. I used to run boxes of UK KitKats down from Canada's duty free stores so that other Americans could see what they were missing out on.
tptacek 7y ago
Hershey's chocolate is pretty bad, and American cheese is barely cheese. But both have functional properties that make them desirable for some applications: it's difficult to make a truly good cheeseburger without American cheese because of its melting properties, for instance. That's also why people use it in grilled cheeses, although it's less essential there (swiss melts just fine on a sandwich, for instance), and you should at the very least probably add some shredded cheddar or something to your American in a grilled cheese. You can add American's functional properties to almost any cheese with sodium citrate powder (we make and slice up baking sheets worth of "Americanized" aged cheddars, gruyere, and even blue). I would not confuse these useful properties with goodness. Grapeseed oil is also extremely useful. But California olive oil is a better oil. American cheese is like the grapeseed of cheese.
- rayiner 7y ago
  What makes Hershey’s chocolate bad? A Hershey’s bar with almonds is pretty much as good as it gets chocolate wise. Certainly better to my palate than the fancy high cacao chocolate that is trendy these days.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    You like what you like. You can go read any number of blind taste tests, or any of a million Reddit threads where it is tediously re-explained that the sour milk note in the stabilizers Hershey's grosses Europeans out, or the NYT's notes about how bitter their cocoa is, but really it's just commodity chocolate whose overwhelming characteristic is sweetness with almost no texture or anything of interest to recommend it. If you're looking for something to serve an almost functional role in a product, like a S'more or whatever, it's... fine? Do you bake with Hershey's? Like in a brownie, where you can dial the sweetness in instead of swinging it all the way to 11? I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Hershey's chocolate, and I myself like American cheese! I'm just saying they're objectively not as good as other products, and the people who point that out aren't wrong to do so. Honestly, I think most people who say Hershey's is good would prefer Cadbury's.
  - magduf 7y ago
    You should try some German or Swiss chocolate. Ritter Sport (German) is very good and not costly (and not high-cacao either).
- magduf 7y ago
  >it's difficult to make a truly good cheeseburger without American cheese because of its melting properties, for instance Huh? On non-fast-food cheeseburgers, cheddar is typically the standard cheese, and swiss is also popular. One of the best burgers I ever ate had caramelized goat cheese (in Europe). I don't even know the last time I had American cheese (on a burger or anything else), and I'm pretty sure the cheeses I've had on burgers were not "Americanized" as you mention, they were just normal cheese.
  - 7y ago
triceratops 7y ago
If you've only had good grilled cheeses with American cheese in them, I feel bad for you - truly. A good grilled cheese is one of life's greatest pleasures. There are many different kinds of cheeses that can go into a good grilled cheese.