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Man, as an Indian, this is hard to read. You're spreading a lot of misinformation about Indian food. > Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food is popula

Man, as an Indian, this is hard to read. You're spreading a lot of misinformation about Indian food. > Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food is popular in India. First, while there are a lot of tasty Indian vegetarian dishes, vegan food is decidedly not a cultural thing. We use butter and ghee pretty commonly in food: definitely not vegan. India is the world's largest milk producer; also not vegan. That dal you refer to will often have a "tadka" of ghee and spices on top. The "dal makhani" - another popular restaurant dish - literally means "buttered dal". And the reason pre-cooked meat pieces are added to curries in restaurants is that we need to get the food to you in 5-7 minutes. We can't cook it leisurely for 25-30 minutes in the gravy like we would do at home. It's called "mise en place" in the restaurant business. > Lots of Indian restaurants usually have vegan or vegetarian versions of most of their curries where they toss in some tofu or paneer instead of meat. If it's India, you're talking about, you're unlikely to find tofu being used in a restaurant. Paneer is made from milk, so...not vegan. Maybe restaurants abroad do it differently. > And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with warm climates like India was historically to mask the flavor of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past their prime. Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food is popular in India. OK, this annoying canard is the worst. [1] Spices and meat used to be both historically expensive. A bit of research will tell you that. You know, that whole "spice trade" thing. Malaysian, Singaporean, Sri Lankan, food also use spices and they're not vegetarian cultures at all. (For that matter, only some 30% of Indians are vegetarians, despite the stereotype, but that's a discussion for another day.) TL;DR India has lots of good vegetarian food, but hardly any of us are vegans. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice#Preservative_claim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice#Preservative_claim

aziaziazi 2y ago
Hi, thanks for this cultural sharing. I don't understand something about Indian culture -probably because of prejudices- and would be glad to know more. Hindus in India venerate (or respect?) cows such a way they let them live in free roaming. Also they eat a lot of ghee and milk derivatives. Where does those milk comes from ? A. Is it ok to eat a cow if someone else raise the cow? B. Is it ok to eat milk raised by someone else C. Is it ok to 'milk' a stray cows while they looks skinny? D. How do they regards the calves needed once in a while for milk production? E. Does Hindus only eat chicken (and so) but no milk while muslims eat everything? F. Where goes the dead free roaming cows cadavers? Is there enough vultures? Note I'm not trying to find logical incoherencies or logical fallacies, I'm very aware there's many think that can been seen as inconsistant or very consistent depending on your knowledge on a subject - which is never 100% reachable.
ttepasse 2y ago
> And the reason pre-cooked meat pieces are added to curries in restaurants is that we need to get the food to you in 5-7 minutes. We can't cook it leisurely for 25-30 minutes in the gravy like we would do at home. It's called "mise en place" in the restaurant business. Some years ago I fell into a Youtube rabbit hole of British Indian Restaurants. (Actually most seemed Bangladeshi) In Britian Indian cuisine has a far more "takeout" status. Hence BI restaurants started to deconstruct popular dishes into components which can be prepared in advance and combined into different dishes. It may not be original but I found the process of adaptation rather fascinating. (Here in Germany it seems rather worse. Also takeout status, but I suspect a lot of takeout orders are simply microwaved stuff.)
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I'm actually well aware of this and didn't mean to offend people. And 30% is actually quite a large percentage. I actually make ghee myself sometimes from butter (easy and a lot cheaper than buying it from the super market). A lot of (british) indian restaurants use cooking oil instead and I'm well aware that that's not the same as what people in India would consider Indian food and that something like a Tikka Massala is not actually a thing you'd find in a proper restaurant in India; which is a country I've never been to and would love to go to to experience the food. But anyway, a lot of these restaurants use cooking oil because it's cheaper and because it makes everything they cook with that vegan by default. Which at least in places with a lot of vegans is a nice feature. Here in Berlin, finding decent Indian food is a bit of a challenge in any case. Germans are hopeless with spicy food. And I know only a few Indian places that add more than homeopathic amounts of chili. Most of the Indian restaurants in the more touristy spots are owned by one family and those aren't great. I've gotten some tips from Indian colleagues over the years for better options. Anyway a lot of dals indeed don't use a lot of spices or flavoring. And that's just sidestepping all the different regions and food styles. Which are a thing as well of course. As for Malaysian/Indonesian style cuisine; I'm Dutch and got exposed to a lot of the Dutch Indonesian food which, similar to British Indian food is not really that authentic. Lots of meat in there indeed. And quite spicy.

aziaziazi 2y ago

Hi, thanks for this cultural sharing. I don't understand something about Indian culture -probably because of prejudices- and would be glad to know more. Hindus in India venerate (or respect?) cows such a way they let them live in free roaming. Also they eat a lot of ghee and milk derivatives. Where does those milk comes from ? A. Is it ok to eat a cow if someone else raise the cow? B. Is it ok to eat milk raised by someone else C. Is it ok to 'milk' a stray cows while they looks skinny? D. How do they regards the calves needed once in a while for milk production? E. Does Hindus only eat chicken (and so) but no milk while muslims eat everything? F. Where goes the dead free roaming cows cadavers? Is there enough vultures? Note I'm not trying to find logical incoherencies or logical fallacies, I'm very aware there's many think that can been seen as inconsistant or very consistent depending on your knowledge on a subject - which is never 100% reachable.

ttepasse 2y ago

> And the reason pre-cooked meat pieces are added to curries in restaurants is that we need to get the food to you in 5-7 minutes. We can't cook it leisurely for 25-30 minutes in the gravy like we would do at home. It's called "mise en place" in the restaurant business. Some years ago I fell into a Youtube rabbit hole of British Indian Restaurants. (Actually most seemed Bangladeshi) In Britian Indian cuisine has a far more "takeout" status. Hence BI restaurants started to deconstruct popular dishes into components which can be prepared in advance and combined into different dishes. It may not be original but I found the process of adaptation rather fascinating. (Here in Germany it seems rather worse. Also takeout status, but I suspect a lot of takeout orders are simply microwaved stuff.)

jillesvangurp 2y ago

I'm actually well aware of this and didn't mean to offend people. And 30% is actually quite a large percentage. I actually make ghee myself sometimes from butter (easy and a lot cheaper than buying it from the super market). A lot of (british) indian restaurants use cooking oil instead and I'm well aware that that's not the same as what people in India would consider Indian food and that something like a Tikka Massala is not actually a thing you'd find in a proper restaurant in India; which is a country I've never been to and would love to go to to experience the food. But anyway, a lot of these restaurants use cooking oil because it's cheaper and because it makes everything they cook with that vegan by default. Which at least in places with a lot of vegans is a nice feature. Here in Berlin, finding decent Indian food is a bit of a challenge in any case. Germans are hopeless with spicy food. And I know only a few Indian places that add more than homeopathic amounts of chili. Most of the Indian restaurants in the more touristy spots are owned by one family and those aren't great. I've gotten some tips from Indian colleagues over the years for better options. Anyway a lot of dals indeed don't use a lot of spices or flavoring. And that's just sidestepping all the different regions and food styles. Which are a thing as well of course. As for Malaysian/Indonesian style cuisine; I'm Dutch and got exposed to a lot of the Dutch Indonesian food which, similar to British Indian food is not really that authentic. Lots of meat in there indeed. And quite spicy.