7 ms·

I feel like people in the west need to become more familiar with Persian cooking. Every year I learn that one more ingredient that we commonly use in Persian co

I feel like people in the west need to become more familiar with Persian cooking. Every year I learn that one more ingredient that we commonly use in Persian cooking is good for your health. So based on this definitive evidence I'm gonna conclude everything we eat is good for you. To get you ahead here are some other things to try: 1. Sabzi Khordan: Elevate your breakfast with Sabzi Khordan, a mixed of herbs that are commonly eaten as breakfast with cheese and walnuts. 2. Drink properly brewed tea: If your idea of tea is what you get from Starbucks, you don't know what tea is. Try Persian brewed black tea. 3. Persian barberry rice: Try Persian style rice cooked with rice, salt, butter, barberries, and saffron. 4. Add turmeric to pretty much every stew. 5. Try Fesenjan, Ghormeh Sabzi, and Khoresh Gheymeh.

selimthegrim 5y ago
It can be hard to find the right cheese for sabzi khordan. Also some people find drinking tea out of the saucer weird.
- codelord 5y ago
  Saucer is optional. I drink directly from the cup. Make sure the cup is made of clear glass though to see the color of the tea.
  - angrais 5y ago
    Why does where you drink from it matter, let alone its transparency?
    - cyberpunk 5y ago
      Dunno about Persian style tea; but the pu’erh I often drink tastes significantly better from a sake cup vs a “normal” double walled bodum tea glass. I can’t really explain why, cup shape does affect hiw much you drink per sip, maybe the nose is involved.. Or it’s all bollocks and completely in my head. Either way, sake cup is the way to go for puerh ;)
      - okprod 5y ago
        Real puerh is very good for you. Anecdotal obviously but descendants on my father's side eat healthy and drink a lot of puerh daily, regularly live to 100+.
      - coopsmoss 5y ago
        Can't speak to the glass. But I find tea tastes awful out of a metal thermos.
      - angrais 5y ago
        Of course ... Makes sense now, thanks! Someone mentioned below that drinking from a metal cup compared with glass tastes different, which again makes sense to me. Where do you buy your pu'erh? I'll have to buy some, plus a sake cup it seems!
        cyberpunk 5y ago
        From Mei Leaf usually (see if you can get ahold of their tub highness it’s my favourite young Sheng), not cheap though.
    - gknoy 5y ago
      I believe they meant that the color of the tea matters, as an indicator of how thoroughly/well it's been brewed, rather than the fact that you can see it or not.
    - codelord 5y ago
      Actually color can affect the perceived taste. Red/vibrant colors make the drink taste more sweet.
      - angrais 5y ago
        Upon reflection, I have experienced this so it all makes sense now. Thanks.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Do you drink wine, or anything where you even occasionally care how 'open' the glass is? A saucer's way more open than a cup. I'm sure there are vicious debates over flutes vs. saucers on champagne-appreciation.net forums or whatever! Not at all the same, but texture too. Meringues are I think the best example of that.
- newhotelowner 5y ago
  > Also some people find drinking tea out of the saucer weird. I love drinking out of the saucer. It taste different than drinking from a cup. It taste different drinking from a stainless steel cup vs glass cup too. My favorite saucer is Corelle butterfly gold.
  - jpster 5y ago
    I was very interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was younger, as a result of reading her Little House on the Prairie books. An anecdote about her father, Charles “Pa” Ingalls drinking from the saucer always stayed with me. Thanks for teaching me that saucer drinking is still alive and well. https://henscratches.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/wilder-wednesday-drinking-from-a-saucer/ https://henscratches.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/wilder-wednesd...
brahadeesh 5y ago
It's not unique to Persian cooking, but there is wisdom in most cultural foods. I have been cooking a lot during the pandemic and every month I discover a new fermented food that has "recently" been found to be a superfood - kombucha, kefir, kimchi, soy sauce, mole sauce, sourdough etc. That is not to talk about other ingredients like turmeric, chiles, lentils and other stuff that add nutritional value. EDIT: I wanted to add something I just remembered from the Netflix docuseries "Cooked" - "If you were to eat grains and nothing but grains, you will die sooner rather than later from lack of one nutrient or another. But if you were to eat real fermented bread made from the same grains, you will live much longer". Something about fermentation is truly nourishing.
- chromaton 5y ago
  In the 70's it was yogurt.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    Yogurt is still going strong, isn't it?
    - Talanes 5y ago
      So strong that it's a little odd to think about it as having once been trendy. For the three decades I've spent on this planet it's just always been there.
    - yumraj 5y ago
      Yeah, but now it has been made into a dessert with lots and lots of sugar that it’s unclear if it’s good or bad for faith in the sugared forms.
- dataviz1000 5y ago
  I remember listening to an NPR story 2 or 3 decades ago which I can't find about how White people in the United States (probably referring to health food eating yuppies in NYC and Northern California) adopted a staple diet very close to an African American diet in the 40's and 50's while the modern African American diet more often included what White people were eating in the 40's and 50's. If anyone has any links to stories about how diets have change by demographics over time in the United States, please share.
joegahona 5y ago
> Persian brewed black tea Can you buy this in stores? Brand preference?
- fny 5y ago
  Sadaf is a staple. I'm a fan of the cardamom varieties.
- codelord 5y ago
  Similar taste can be achieved with non-Persian tea. I think brewing method maybe more important. For the brand I buy loose leaf english breakfast and use a transparent teapot to see when the tea is ready. Usually takes ~5 minutes for the perfect taste. Tea: https://teapigs.com/products/english-breakfast?_sid=3aed062b5 https://teapigs.com/products/english-breakfast?_sid=3aed062b... (choose the loose leaf version) Teapot: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KIW0T9C https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KIW0T9C
  - joegahona 5y ago
    $8 for shipping is a bit steep for a $9 bag of tea. Any other loose-leaf recommendations? Thanks for both this and the pot recommendation!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dragosmocrii 5y ago
Do you call the barberry rice pilaf or plov? It's popular in Eastern Europe and it's so much tastier than the rice cooked in the western world.
- codelord 5y ago
  Yes. We call it "Zereshk Polo". I didn't know it's also popular in eastern Europe. Interesting!
maininformer 5y ago
6. chips o mast ;) But I disagree with the tea. I thought about this and I think the way the persian drink tea might be a sign of economic hardship: we put a handful of dried tea leaves in a pot and brew it ad infinitum on the samavar. This causes the tea to over brew and let out a very bitter taste, but also allows for a longer lasting supply. Then to counter the bitterness we add rock candy or sugar to it. I prefer to brew the black tea in hot water but not too much; I still like saffron rock candy in it some times; but at this point my ancestral guilt is ablaze cause its a luxury to throw away tea for a cup when u can squeeze a pot out of it.
pazimzadeh 5y ago
Totally agree. Berberine, found in Barberries, seems to have very interesting properties: Cancer fighting: MDM2 inhibition-mediated autophagy contributes to the pro-apoptotic effect of berberine in p53-null leukemic cells https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31881227 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31881227 Synergistic antitumor effect of melatonin with several chemotherapeutic drugs on human Ewing sarcoma cancer cells: potentiation of the extrinsic apoptotic pathway https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20025643 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20025643 Melatonin inhibits AP-2β/hTERT, NF-κB/COX-2 and Akt/ERK and activates caspase/Cyto C signaling to enhance the antitumor activity of berberine in lung cancer cells https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823085/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823085/ Anticancer effect of berberine based on experimental animal models of various cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-019-5791-1 https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-... Berberine enhances chemosensitivity to irinotecan in colon cancer via inhibition of NF‑κB https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24173769/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24173769/ Berberine and Curcumin Target Survivin and STAT3 in Gastric Cancer Cells and Synergize Actions of Standard Chemotherapeutic 5-Fluorouracil https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01635581.2015.1085581?scroll=top&needAccess=true https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01635581.2015.1... Pre-treatment with berberine enhances effect of 5-fluorouracil and cisplatin in HEP2 laryngeal cancer cell line https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29460537 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29460537 Decreasing blood glucose levels (beneficial for cancer patients as well)`: Efficacy of Berberine in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2410097/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2410097/ Liu S., Fang Y., Shen H., Xu W., Li H.: Berberine sensitizes ovarian cancer cells to cisplatin through miR-21/PDCD4 axis. Acta. Biochim. Biophys. Sin., 2013; 45: 756-762 Pandey M.K., Sung B., Kunnumakkara A.B., Sethi G., Chaturvedi M.M., Aggarwal B.B.: Berberine modifies cysteine 179 of IκBα kinase, suppresses nuclear factor-κB-regulated antiapoptotic gene products, and potentiates apoptosis. Cancer Res., 2008; 68: 5370-5379 But apparently dosage is key, and there is such a thing as too small a dose! Hormetic Effect of Berberine Attenuates the Anticancer Activity of Chemotherapeutic Agents https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589364/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589364/ Sodium Caprate promotes absorptions of Berberine in the intestine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20237966/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20237966/ Also barberries tastes good.
AriaMinaei 5y ago
> So based on this definitive evidence I'm gonna conclude everything we eat is good for you More conclusive evidence that everything we eat is good for you [1], I recently discovered skyr, a traditional Icelandic dairy product [2] with an unusually high protein/calories ratio. It looks and tastes very much like the homemade yogurt of my grandma, "māst kise-i." And the preparation procedure of skyr and māst kise-i are almost the same. Anyway, skyr is good for you. It replaces the protein shake, plus it has the other nutrients of a good dairy product, goes with all kinds of foods, and costs no more than yogurt. [1] :P [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyr
- mabub24 5y ago
  Another interesting product is Kefir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir It's a bit like liquid yogurt.
tootie 5y ago
Saffron is used pretty heavily in Indian and Spanish cuisine too. Indian food is pretty good example of a cuisine with all sorts of ingredients with beneficial health properties (including good tea) but is also loaded with fat, starch and sugar. European cuisine is not too dissimilar. There's health benefits of ingredients like cinnamon, garlic and coffee but not when you mix them with high-calorie garbage.
- oblib 5y ago
  It would seem that the rate of depression should be lower in cultures where it's used more. I'm curious about rather existing statistics indicate that.
knicholes 5y ago
Wouldn't we be able to look at societies that ate certain foods to see if they lived longer/more healthy lives? I think that'd be a smoking gun for which foods have the most beneficial ingredients.
- Engineering-MD 5y ago
  Too many degrees of freedom to be useful in practice, although people have tried this in the past. Mediterranean diet notably had been suggested from these style studies.
sharadov 5y ago
Fesenjan, Ghormeh sabzi, Muhamarra, the dill rice - I could eat Persian food every day!
canadianfella 5y ago
Tea gatekeeping is pretty lame.
austinvsmiami 5y ago
Fesenjan is the meal of the gods. It looks disgusting but its one of the best dishes Ive had in a while. Its just magical how persians came up with it! Also Sohan and Lavashak are freaking amazing!

selimthegrim 5y ago

It can be hard to find the right cheese for sabzi khordan. Also some people find drinking tea out of the saucer weird.

codelord 5y ago
Saucer is optional. I drink directly from the cup. Make sure the cup is made of clear glass though to see the color of the tea.
- angrais 5y ago
  Why does where you drink from it matter, let alone its transparency?
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    Dunno about Persian style tea; but the pu’erh I often drink tastes significantly better from a sake cup vs a “normal” double walled bodum tea glass. I can’t really explain why, cup shape does affect hiw much you drink per sip, maybe the nose is involved.. Or it’s all bollocks and completely in my head. Either way, sake cup is the way to go for puerh ;)
    - okprod 5y ago
      Real puerh is very good for you. Anecdotal obviously but descendants on my father's side eat healthy and drink a lot of puerh daily, regularly live to 100+.
    - coopsmoss 5y ago
      Can't speak to the glass. But I find tea tastes awful out of a metal thermos.
    - angrais 5y ago
      Of course ... Makes sense now, thanks! Someone mentioned below that drinking from a metal cup compared with glass tastes different, which again makes sense to me. Where do you buy your pu'erh? I'll have to buy some, plus a sake cup it seems!
      - cyberpunk 5y ago
        From Mei Leaf usually (see if you can get ahold of their tub highness it’s my favourite young Sheng), not cheap though.
  - gknoy 5y ago
    I believe they meant that the color of the tea matters, as an indicator of how thoroughly/well it's been brewed, rather than the fact that you can see it or not.
  - codelord 5y ago
    Actually color can affect the perceived taste. Red/vibrant colors make the drink taste more sweet.
    - angrais 5y ago
      Upon reflection, I have experienced this so it all makes sense now. Thanks.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Do you drink wine, or anything where you even occasionally care how 'open' the glass is? A saucer's way more open than a cup. I'm sure there are vicious debates over flutes vs. saucers on champagne-appreciation.net forums or whatever! Not at all the same, but texture too. Meringues are I think the best example of that.
newhotelowner 5y ago
> Also some people find drinking tea out of the saucer weird. I love drinking out of the saucer. It taste different than drinking from a cup. It taste different drinking from a stainless steel cup vs glass cup too. My favorite saucer is Corelle butterfly gold.
- jpster 5y ago
  I was very interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was younger, as a result of reading her Little House on the Prairie books. An anecdote about her father, Charles “Pa” Ingalls drinking from the saucer always stayed with me. Thanks for teaching me that saucer drinking is still alive and well. https://henscratches.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/wilder-wednesday-drinking-from-a-saucer/ https://henscratches.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/wilder-wednesd...

brahadeesh 5y ago

It's not unique to Persian cooking, but there is wisdom in most cultural foods. I have been cooking a lot during the pandemic and every month I discover a new fermented food that has "recently" been found to be a superfood - kombucha, kefir, kimchi, soy sauce, mole sauce, sourdough etc. That is not to talk about other ingredients like turmeric, chiles, lentils and other stuff that add nutritional value. EDIT: I wanted to add something I just remembered from the Netflix docuseries "Cooked" - "If you were to eat grains and nothing but grains, you will die sooner rather than later from lack of one nutrient or another. But if you were to eat real fermented bread made from the same grains, you will live much longer". Something about fermentation is truly nourishing.

chromaton 5y ago
In the 70's it was yogurt.
- tartoran 5y ago
  Yogurt is still going strong, isn't it?
  - Talanes 5y ago
    So strong that it's a little odd to think about it as having once been trendy. For the three decades I've spent on this planet it's just always been there.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    Yeah, but now it has been made into a dessert with lots and lots of sugar that it’s unclear if it’s good or bad for faith in the sugared forms.
dataviz1000 5y ago
I remember listening to an NPR story 2 or 3 decades ago which I can't find about how White people in the United States (probably referring to health food eating yuppies in NYC and Northern California) adopted a staple diet very close to an African American diet in the 40's and 50's while the modern African American diet more often included what White people were eating in the 40's and 50's. If anyone has any links to stories about how diets have change by demographics over time in the United States, please share.

joegahona 5y ago

> Persian brewed black tea Can you buy this in stores? Brand preference?

fny 5y ago
Sadaf is a staple. I'm a fan of the cardamom varieties.
codelord 5y ago
Similar taste can be achieved with non-Persian tea. I think brewing method maybe more important. For the brand I buy loose leaf english breakfast and use a transparent teapot to see when the tea is ready. Usually takes ~5 minutes for the perfect taste. Tea: https://teapigs.com/products/english-breakfast?_sid=3aed062b5 https://teapigs.com/products/english-breakfast?_sid=3aed062b... (choose the loose leaf version) Teapot: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KIW0T9C https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KIW0T9C
- joegahona 5y ago
  $8 for shipping is a bit steep for a $9 bag of tea. Any other loose-leaf recommendations? Thanks for both this and the pot recommendation!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dragosmocrii 5y ago

Do you call the barberry rice pilaf or plov? It's popular in Eastern Europe and it's so much tastier than the rice cooked in the western world.

codelord 5y ago
Yes. We call it "Zereshk Polo". I didn't know it's also popular in eastern Europe. Interesting!

maininformer 5y ago

6. chips o mast ;) But I disagree with the tea. I thought about this and I think the way the persian drink tea might be a sign of economic hardship: we put a handful of dried tea leaves in a pot and brew it ad infinitum on the samavar. This causes the tea to over brew and let out a very bitter taste, but also allows for a longer lasting supply. Then to counter the bitterness we add rock candy or sugar to it. I prefer to brew the black tea in hot water but not too much; I still like saffron rock candy in it some times; but at this point my ancestral guilt is ablaze cause its a luxury to throw away tea for a cup when u can squeeze a pot out of it.

pazimzadeh 5y ago

Totally agree. Berberine, found in Barberries, seems to have very interesting properties: Cancer fighting: MDM2 inhibition-mediated autophagy contributes to the pro-apoptotic effect of berberine in p53-null leukemic cells https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31881227 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31881227 Synergistic antitumor effect of melatonin with several chemotherapeutic drugs on human Ewing sarcoma cancer cells: potentiation of the extrinsic apoptotic pathway https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20025643 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20025643 Melatonin inhibits AP-2β/hTERT, NF-κB/COX-2 and Akt/ERK and activates caspase/Cyto C signaling to enhance the antitumor activity of berberine in lung cancer cells https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823085/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823085/ Anticancer effect of berberine based on experimental animal models of various cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-019-5791-1 https://bmccancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12885-... Berberine enhances chemosensitivity to irinotecan in colon cancer via inhibition of NF‑κB https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24173769/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24173769/ Berberine and Curcumin Target Survivin and STAT3 in Gastric Cancer Cells and Synergize Actions of Standard Chemotherapeutic 5-Fluorouracil https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01635581.2015.1085581?scroll=top&needAccess=true https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01635581.2015.1... Pre-treatment with berberine enhances effect of 5-fluorouracil and cisplatin in HEP2 laryngeal cancer cell line https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29460537 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29460537 Decreasing blood glucose levels (beneficial for cancer patients as well)`: Efficacy of Berberine in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2410097/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2410097/ Liu S., Fang Y., Shen H., Xu W., Li H.: Berberine sensitizes ovarian cancer cells to cisplatin through miR-21/PDCD4 axis. Acta. Biochim. Biophys. Sin., 2013; 45: 756-762 Pandey M.K., Sung B., Kunnumakkara A.B., Sethi G., Chaturvedi M.M., Aggarwal B.B.: Berberine modifies cysteine 179 of IκBα kinase, suppresses nuclear factor-κB-regulated antiapoptotic gene products, and potentiates apoptosis. Cancer Res., 2008; 68: 5370-5379 But apparently dosage is key, and there is such a thing as too small a dose! Hormetic Effect of Berberine Attenuates the Anticancer Activity of Chemotherapeutic Agents https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589364/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4589364/ Sodium Caprate promotes absorptions of Berberine in the intestine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20237966/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20237966/ Also barberries tastes good.

AriaMinaei 5y ago

> So based on this definitive evidence I'm gonna conclude everything we eat is good for you More conclusive evidence that everything we eat is good for you [1], I recently discovered skyr, a traditional Icelandic dairy product [2] with an unusually high protein/calories ratio. It looks and tastes very much like the homemade yogurt of my grandma, "māst kise-i." And the preparation procedure of skyr and māst kise-i are almost the same. Anyway, skyr is good for you. It replaces the protein shake, plus it has the other nutrients of a good dairy product, goes with all kinds of foods, and costs no more than yogurt. [1] :P [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyr

mabub24 5y ago
Another interesting product is Kefir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir It's a bit like liquid yogurt.

tootie 5y ago

Saffron is used pretty heavily in Indian and Spanish cuisine too. Indian food is pretty good example of a cuisine with all sorts of ingredients with beneficial health properties (including good tea) but is also loaded with fat, starch and sugar. European cuisine is not too dissimilar. There's health benefits of ingredients like cinnamon, garlic and coffee but not when you mix them with high-calorie garbage.

oblib 5y ago
It would seem that the rate of depression should be lower in cultures where it's used more. I'm curious about rather existing statistics indicate that.

knicholes 5y ago

Wouldn't we be able to look at societies that ate certain foods to see if they lived longer/more healthy lives? I think that'd be a smoking gun for which foods have the most beneficial ingredients.

Engineering-MD 5y ago
Too many degrees of freedom to be useful in practice, although people have tried this in the past. Mediterranean diet notably had been suggested from these style studies.

sharadov 5y ago

Fesenjan, Ghormeh sabzi, Muhamarra, the dill rice - I could eat Persian food every day!

canadianfella 5y ago

Tea gatekeeping is pretty lame.

austinvsmiami 5y ago

Fesenjan is the meal of the gods. It looks disgusting but its one of the best dishes Ive had in a while. Its just magical how persians came up with it! Also Sohan and Lavashak are freaking amazing!