General Tso's Chicken was invented by a Chinese chef in Taiwan. It was stolen by another Chinese chef and made in NYC. He was getting famous for it when the original inventor found out about it, got upset, and came to the US to set the record straight - by giving out the recipe on TV. That's when it started spreading across the US. The guy is still alive (and serving it at his restaurants in Taiwan). What you get in Chinese restaurants in the US is very unlike what he originally made, though. You can see a really great and funny documentary about this called "The Search for General Tso".
Pupu platter actually comes from Hawai'i. Pūpū means appetizer or relish in native Hawaiian. One story I've been told is because the food used to be served on small shells, which are also called Pūpū, but I'm not sure if that's actually true. And because there are so many people of East Asian ancestry in Hawai'i, of course the the appetizers are going to be Chinese or Japanese or Korean in nature.
Hey Stopthat your correct ! Also you don't cook the chicken and already cooked items on the fire... we made the beef skewers rare and you put them on the fire to med - rare or well, depending on your tastes... this gave them a true Hawaii BBQ taste.
@@mad_max21 yes it's Hawaiian fusion cuisine, but not Native Traditional Hawaiian cuisine. Our traditional cuisine is a lot more like other Polynesian island cuisines. So instead of using ingredients only found off island and therefore imported, Native Hawaiian cuisine uses only the resources indigenous to the island or the ones brought by Canoe voyage by Polynesians. It stresses a lot of fresh and local foods, and minimal complexity while maximizing the natural flavors of food.
My wife is from Hong Kong, and she already told me everything that you said in this video. She agrees with you 100% and she is always going on and on about what is "real authentic" Chinese food. Because of her, I have also come to appreciate authentic Chinese cuisine. Nevertheless, I still love the American Egg Roll, with Shrimp and cabbage......dipped in duck sauce. The point is to enjoy your food and love what you eat and not be a Food Snob.
Earl Taylor it is bologna to think Chinese don't eat healthy. Almost all Chinese household know the benefits of eating certain things. i.e. hot tea, ginger, garlic, tofu, just to name a few. It is when western food go to China that ruin Chinese health, potato chips, fried chicken, French fries, pretty much all western fast food are junk food.
I heard this story about chop suey: In the 19th Chinese workers were brought to the US to assemble the Trans-Continental railroad, paid low wages, then sent back to China. While in the US either they couldn't afford good food or were trying to save money to send home. Basically they fried up scraps that other people were ready to discard but seasoned them well. The seasonings they used were so fragrant and inviting that Americans came around and asked to buy plates. When asked what they called this wonderful food, the Chinese said, "We call it chop suey," which means garbage. 150 years later and chop suey still on menus in the US.
Many came from southern China, where an authentic form of _chop suey_ originated. The chop suey we know today is actually an derivative of the southern Chinese original.
Sacto1654 That makes sense. I looked it up and found chop suey has several origin stories, but what you said is most likely right. When I think about it, China is such a vast country it is probably best to take claims that anything is inauthentic with a grain of salt. It's unlikely any one person knows all the dishes from every part of China. As soon as someone says something is not authentic because his or her famy never made it, somebody else knows somewhere in China where it is traditional. Fun conversations anyway!
Most of these chinese Trans-Continental works were sold as slave from China or got duped by someone in the US telling them that gold can be found in abundant.They are worked to the point of death and the only way out for them is to sneak out from their employers.
Some people actually like learning about other cultures, and respect other peoples traditions and cultures. Of course its interesting to know whats authentic or not!
Everything we eat is genetically modified. Compare a domestic turkey to a wild one. Find me a wild Jersey cow. They don't exist. We've altered them to suit our needs. How about corn? Comes from maize, and we've bred it into several different plants. We've been modifying food since we first started cultivating it. Just because it's in a lab instead of a greenhouse with selective pollination doesn't mean jack. We're all gonna die anyhow. I'd rather eat whatever I want and enjoy it, rather than worrying over whether that McShit burger is gonna take 5 or 7 minutes off of my life.
I honestly don't see what's wrong with western broccoli... My parents make broccoli all the time... They came here from China. In fact even my grandparents make dishes with western broccoli and they still live in Qigong
OK, I am Chinese, born in Hong Kong, fluent in spoken and written Chinese. came to the US at 12. Here is what I think: 1. Most Chinese are lactose intolerant I don't know about that. Condensed milk was highly popular in Hong Kong, just because markets with refrigeration were rare. 2. General Tso's Chicken According to the documentary The Search For General Tso, it was actually invented by a Chinese in Taiwan and was brought to the US. 3. Chop Suey I lived in Hong Kong for 12 years, watched hundreds of Chinese movies both before and after, and never heard Choy Suey used as a swear word. It does not have negative connotation either. 4. Mongolian Beef Mongolian Beef is not stirred fried with onion, but rather scallion. That's a big difference and why it is so good. I used to think this is a Chinese dish, not sure why it was called Mongolian Beef. 5. Egg Roll Now THAT is a pure Western invention. And typically made with roast pork, not ground beef. But I do like to eat them with Chinese mustard. Spring rolls in Hong Kong are typically eaten with Lea & Perrins, which is of course a Western invention. 6. Broccoli I actually like Broccoli much better than Chinese Broccoli. Broccoli with anything is actually very much a Chinese dish, but substituted with Western Broccoli for Chinese Broccoli. 7. Duck Sauce Of course Chinese eat duck sauce with ducks. In Hong Kong, when you buy a boiled duck, they always give you duck sauce on the side. Duck sauce is not called duck sauce in Hong Kong, it is called Tardy Berry Sauce. Anyone who doesn't know what duck sauce really is is probably not born in an Asian country. 8. Pu-pu Plater Supposed to be Hawaiian. But I don't know.
Condensed milk is processed dairy. Lactose intolerant usually just means a person can't drink milk, but can eat processed dairy. But even then cheese gives old people the runs, regardless of food allergies.
I am from HK and don't know about a lot of Chinese have lactose intolerant. Chinese people or for what I know about HK people don't eat much cheese or other dairy products when compare to western countries because it is EXPENSIVE in early days and we have a mindset that those will make you fat. Lol.
Hong Kong doesn't count though. For 99 years (and your life time) Hong Kong was a British Colony. All of the food and lifestyles of Hong Kong Chinese are actually a Hybrid of European and Chinese cultures. That includes the foods.
What do you mean most of us are lactose intolerant.... hongkong is a western influenced place duck sauce is actually most served in a dipping dish it is thick and never called duck sauce
+Zoe TheCat I am not so sure about that....my husband's classmates used to meow every time he would open his lunch at school when he was a kid. And no, he's never eaten cats or dogs.
+Zoe TheCat Yeah honestly, growing up in America I've never heard judgement about what people in other cultures eat, because we eat everything from all sorts of cultures. However for some reason, many Americans have a problem with vegans. Like seriously, you mention that you eat a vegan diet to someone and they get all defensive as if you're attacking their morals and the way they eat.
***** Well, if that is true, I recommend discarding your "friends" and finding some REAL friends ;-) Here's some more advice: "If you loan a good friend $20 and you never see him again....it was worth it!"
+A Tam Yeah... that is really fucked up. I mean. I have been around A LOT of racism and stereotyped assumptions but damn! How old were these classmates. What year was this? What country?
I'm German and we have loads of "germanized" Chinese restaurants as well and even though they're not authentic I still like the food. A couple of years ago I went to Greece on holiday and we ate some Chinese food with sweet and sour sauce. The sauce tasted like sweet and sour sauce but at the same time it tasted so incredibly Greek that it had us laughing for hours. Don't get me wrong it was delicious but it really had us wondering how German the German sweet and sour sauce tastes to someone from Greece - or even worse, from China!
It would be interesting to travel around the world and try all of the local variations on Chinese food and see how Chinese food differs from country to country.
glockenrein What you describe is similar in Canada. I live on the border and Canadian Chinese restaurants serve a differing variant from what you’ll get from an American Chinese restaurant. The egg rolls in Canada are smaller, there are very few restaurants that offer PuPu platters on the menu in Canada, Teriyaki beef is almost never on the menu in Canada. And the red sauces do have completely different flavours and consistency.
I am laughing my old ass off! I thought before I watched "I bet nothing I eat will be on there, my dads Asian friends always show me how you say, to eat properwy" dang! The were all on there! I love Chicken or beef chow mein (aka) chop seuy. How about a video with AUTHENTIC dishes so we can be food snobs?!? I have really enjoyed your videos, I have health problems right now and am on bed rest. I need to watch something besides zits being popped! Me love you long time! 🐣
The broccoli is incorrect... I've lived with Chinese people from China who ate it almost daily. They blanch it then stir fry it with roughly chopped garlic and soy.
+Nymeria Meliae That is how I ate it in Beijing, from a little Chinese Restaurant call the White Horse Inn in San Li Tun. A great little place we ate there so frequently that the staff new what we wanted and just checked with us on the menu. It was great.
+Nymeria Meliae Yes but the point is that that type of broccoli was not eaten 'til modern times. Late 70's, early 80's. Again, to appeal to the western diner. So of course through the years it has branched in to the everyday diet and menus. But there are no authentic Chinese recipes that have head broccoli. Which I love by the way. And the method you said your Chinese friends would cook it is very common. It can and is done with all kinds of green veggie. So it would make sense that they would eat a common ingredient in a traditional way.
bah-Dumb bum666 that is still 25-35 years of eating it. How long does a food have to be in circulation before it is considered 'Chinese'? I mean we could dismiss most food in the world as 'traditional' when we consider that potatoes, chili, and tomatoes were not around outside of the Americas before the 16th century.
+Nymeria Meliae : Agree on the broccoli. Every vegetable market here in Shanghai sell broccoli and it is common in other cities as well. The 'Chinese broccoli' that is mentioned in the video (gai lan, or jie lan, or 芥兰) is actually not that often seen in northern China. It is more common in south China and especially popular in HongKong and surrounding area. I like all of them!
In HK, we do have dishes like "western broccoli stir-fry chicken" or "western broccoli stir-fry beef" or "western broccoli stir-fry pork", really yummy
Correct. In fact, Filipino cuisine has both Spanish and Chinese influences because 1) the Philippine islands are close to southern China and 2) the Philippines were under Spanish control for several centuries.
fun fact chop suey was invented in LA and its basicly all the left over vegies at the end of the day thrown into a pot and recooked because "americans are morons so they wont know the difference" also i think it was invented in the 30s -40s
The Abortion This is true it is very easy to trick most American shopers so as one of the few who know of this flaw of my people I can take advantage of this for my own profit MWHA HA HA HA
The Pu Pu Platter is an American invention by the owner of a Polynesian-themed restaurant. "Pu Pu" is a real word; Hawaiian for appetizer, canapé, or hors d'oeuvre. Having lived & traveled in Asia, I learned to cook Asian dishes. I still make/order, eat & enjoy these dishes, but I don't have any false expectations about their history.
Please don't take this wrong Mike, I'm not trying to be mean, but it does need to be asked, why were your parents serving this sort of food? Westerners wouldn't eat these inauthentic foods if they aren't served inauthentic foods to begin with. And I am not talking about corporate drones like Panda Express, but so many of the Mom and Pop places that make up the vast majority of Chinese restaurants. If people are taught (fed) wrongly by someone they believe to be knowledgeable, who is really at fault for them for not learning any differently?
I'm Chinese and when I'm out with my family at a Chinese restaurant, I don't judge what people of other ethnicities order... That's kind of rude don't you think? When I walk into a Vietnamese, Italian or French restaurant, I wouldn't want other people judging me either. Besides, it's expected that Chinese takeaway/restaurants in America, Australia, Canada etc will be influenced by western foods. When I walk into a restaurant, I just want to have a good time and not be judged.
Chinese -American cuisine is what you are talking about. it's not fake. it's a result of. two cultures combining cooking methods to form a new dish. it happens in melting pots. while I understand you are e promoting authentic chinese dishes don't down play the other so much. if there was no combining dishes together we wouldn't have many of the dishes people eat around due world today.
Especially since he said he eats some of it and his parents cooked all of this stuff in their restaurant LOL. They don't eat it but have no problem making money off of it.
Ebony Arnold Yeah, Half the dishes used in even acient china are possible thanks to other countries trade! spices like garlic, and others didnt exist. It breaks my heart when some one insults an entire nations cuisine by sampling the simple stuff. Food can taste bad, but cuisine, or the actual recipes vary from person to person. He makes fun of his own heritage without joking.Its sad.
Hey Mike, this is a really late comment but I just saw this video for the first time. As an FYI, the reason the sterno-packed flame is in the middle of the pu-pu platter is that in the original Polynesian restaurant versions of the appetizer, popularized by Don's and Trader Vic's in the US, the "teriyaki beef-on-a-stick" was served raw. The customers would then cook the beef on the flame to desired doneness (this was explained by the waiter to the table). This has genuine origins in South Pacific raw skewered meat dishes; another similar version would be satay beef in SE Asia. My understanding is that, at some point, restaurants went away from the raw beef for various reasons and simply precooked the beef before serving. The pu-pu tray with flame was still used, but only for decoration and continuity. I am definitely showing my age for having known this. In fact, I can actually boast of hearing a waiter's description of how to cook that beef at my table decades ago.
Really? There is nothing wrong with getting inspiration from other countries and doing something different. That is the beauty of food! I'm American and if I had the chance to try any sort of authentic food from any other country I would. And honestly, these unauthentic Chinese foods are good!! I'm going to hope you aren't saying Americans dislike learning about other cultures and that we disrespect them because that would be ignorance at its finest.
Phil W I've never called them crab rangoons. I've always known them as wontons. I'm aware that a wonton is a soup dumpling, but they are also the "crab rangoons" when I did a Google search. I know I got confused when he said crab rangoon. Also I've tasted ones that actually had crab in them. I dunno. I like cream cheese! xD
I've eaten in American-style restaurants in Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Spain, and Italy, and none of them served particularly authentic American food. But I didn't judge the locals for putting their own spin on American-style food. So, why would Chinese people (as this guy says in the first minute of this video) judge Americans for eating americanized Chinese food?
I relate a lot to this video but there are some wrong facts. As a 100% Chinese, we do use western broccoli in our dishes, but mainly for decorational purposes. Also, duck sauce is originally known as plum sauce(酸梅醬). We usually put the sauce onto roast duck(燒鴨)or roast geese(燒鵝) here in Guangdong and Hong Kong.
They might not have changed the oil when mike was a child in his parents restaurant, but these days we have health codes and inspectors, they're not gonna get away with that for long one would hope. Particularly with a popular dish. I know the buffets around here have gotten a lot more diligent checking temperatures and stuff as the years have gone on.
8. Crab rangoon (full of cheese, many Asians are lactose intolerant) 7. General Tso's chicken (real general, Chin Dynasty, but not his chicken) 6. Chop suey 5. Mongolian beef (not really Mongolian) 4. Egg rolls (Chinese like spring rolls, not egg rolls) 3. Any dish with broccoli (Now you've hurt broccoli's feelings! - Broccoli not Chinese) 2. Duck sauce (No idea why it's called that, or what it's put on. Made with Turkish apricots.) 1. Poo poo platter. John V. Karavitis
+John Karavitis I eat chop suey a lot, yes it's crap, but it's cheap and convenient. Suitable for the lowest of working class like me. egg rolls, hmm... I'd rather eat the japanese tama. Mike has a really northerner taste, as a southerner I do love my noodles, but northerner foods are somewhat waaaaaay too thick and dense for me type.
Love this! When my family interests on Chinese buffet, I straight up ask the servers.. is this what you really cook at home? They say.. no! So I ask.. bring me what you eat at home then! Lol
THeres a netflix documentary on general tsao chicken dish. The documentary said it originated from Taiwan. However, the major factor is that in Taiwan the dish isnt sweet and isnt served with broccoli. From the same documentary, Chopped Suey was invented down south from Chinese immigrants in order to appeal to American folks. Basically, most c hinese immigrants in the restaurant business found out that Americans just liked fried chicken coated in a sweet type sauce and yueahhhhhh
Love your channel! It's really surprising how many "westerners" have no idea hat your typical Chinese restaurant is not authentic. Countless times i have gotten in arguments with people over this fact. Keep the great videos coming! Chris in NY
And yet, the spring rolls don't have much in them as the egg rolls...ergo...stingy. When you bite into them you're going "Where's the beef". The roll itself maybe better, but the filling ain't really filling.
+1958debs, They're actually meant to be light as they are appetizers. They're already fried, so making them with a little filling keeps it from spoiling your appetite. Maybe you've just had some bad ones?
DDJ. No, they just seem a little light. Mike seems to state that he mostly goes for meat...in a spring roll? Now an egg roll,. that's where the meat is.
I lived in Chengdu, Dujiangyan, and,WenJiang in Sichuan for a long time and I so miss the spicy food and hotpot. Here in the USA did you guys ever notice the stove is not as hot as in China ? Water boils much faster in China. I can't eat American Chinese food any more but my students taught me to cook real Chinese food, luckily.
A pupu platter would be Hawaiian not chinese. Never in my life seen it at a chinese restaurant. It is far more similar to Japanese food than chinese, consisting as it does of raw fish (poke), sushi, vegetables, poi etc.
I feel like most Chinese people who hate on western Chinese food are young Asian hipsters who think it's cool to knock on what's popular. I myself am Chinese who was born in Beijing and while I admit western Chinese food doesn't taste as good as the authentic stuff back home, it still tastes pretty damn good. Most older Asian people I know who try western Chinese food think it tastes pretty good as a fast food kind of thing.
sometimes when i'm hanging out with my non asian friends, they want to accommodate me by going to a chinese restaurant or ordering chinese.. it makes it extremely awkward because i don't like any of these food
It's OK if you don't like Western broccoli, but if authenticity in food means only prehistorically-correct ingredients, half of the world's cuisines are in serious trouble. Nearly everyone uses peppers abundantly, and those originated in South America. And where would the peoples of the Mediterranean region be without the tomato, or Northern Europe without the potato, both of which are also from South America?
I grew up in the 80s in the land of chop suey. My parents owned a Canadian Chinese restaurant in a small town and served this kind stuff. Now in my late 30s, I still crave it sometimes and I'm always on the lookout for authentic Canadian-Chinese food! Good egg rolls and meaty fried wontons aren't so easy to come by anymore.
I absolutely love you, I laughed so hard at this because I've eaten almost every dish on here at one time or another. The one I didn't like was the crab rangoon (rangoo? sp?) anyway, my daughter-in-law makes home-made spring rolls and her own sauce. She makes fried rice all the time, and believe me what she makes is awesome. I came to visit my son and daughter for the first time and she sent me on the plane with coconut rice, and spring rolls and fresh sauce for the spring rolls, and the entire plane wanted to know what I was eating and where did I order it from. I proudly told them, my daughter made it.
***** As are my daughter-in-law's spring rolls, light, with shredded carrots, basil, maybe some cilantro, lightly cooked strips of chicken, and rice noodles, the rice roll.
Fried rice is easy to make if you've seen it made at a japanese hibachi a few times. Not that they aren't much better at it than you'll be, but just to make something to eat it's not hard.
I feel like authentic or not authentic is the wrong term here. The food is still "authentic" American-Chinese food. It's just food invented in America. Same as Canadian-Chinese food is different from American-Chinese. And Indian-Chinese food different from the first two. (Have you ever had Chili Paneer with Hakka Chow Mein? That's a couple of my fav Indian-Chinese.) and etc. You just can't call it Chinese food from China. Maybe influenced by. It's a new style. And people like whatever they like. To each their own. So you're pointing out the difference between authentic American-Chinese vs Authentic Chinese-Chinese. You just have to state where it comes from. I would say it might be the same for other culture dishes.
Sounds like nonsense. Like saying, "Eskimo-Quebecian is raw fish on a baguette...". Look, if I want Chinese Food, it better be Chinese and if I feel like American food, the Clam chowder and turkey-gravy better be authentic...
During my 7 years in Beijing I did in fact come across western brocolli in a simple garlic salt sauce, which was almost every time I went to a chinese restaurant
I admit that i love general tso chicken and yes everyone makes it the same way(battered and deep fried chicken breast with dark sauce) but the best two places i ever had it at unfortunately both have closed permanently. Both places used cut up boneless skin on chicken thighs topped with fresh ginger green peppers carrots and green onion. May not be authentic but over white rice it was damn good
Same. I eat authentic chinese food all the time due to my family being from China, but I absolutely love egg rolls. Everything else, not so much. The Crab rangoons I honestly thought were fried wontons filled with meat until I tried one. It was weird. Why call it crab rangoon when it doesn't even contain crab? It doesn't even look like a crab!
If you like you like. That's not the point of this vid. It to inform those who don't know there is a difference between Chinese-Chinese cuisine and American-Chinese cuisine. Most Americans will never visit China or venture outside the tourist quarters so they will not realize the difference in taste and methods of cooking. I've often hear it said "Chinese food is Chinese food" by those who never sampled other than what they know. That naivety is what is being addressed.
Anything you like is good. As a non-parochial, non-insular Chinese, I assure you that Chinese food cooked by Chinese is different all over the world. Nowadays, if I cook something for my friends and they ask if it's Chinese food, I tell them, "Yes, it is. I cooked it, didn't I?"
Chinese takeaways are different in the UK. Here, we brits love ordering sweet and sour. The average UK Chinese takeaway is also a fish and chip shop. Most of the dishes that you mentioned don't appear on a UK Chinese menu. Although I did once make the mistake of ordering chicken in a lemon sauce. The effect of the sauce on the inside of my mouth is something I won't easily forget. How about investigating the authenticity of British Chinese food?
*Only* 8??? LOL I'd put stinky tofu (chou doufu) near the top of the list... you can smell that $4!t for a km when they open a "fresh" jar at a street-front restaurant in China... "pure" putrefaction...
Peking Duck, Pineapple Buns, Dim Sum, Fish, Shrimp, Crab, Techinally Sushi, Zongzi (Rice with meat and peanuts inside wrapped with bamboo leaves), and like 1,000,000 other things
Duck sauce is actually plum sauce. Roasted goose and duck is served with plum sauce in Hong Kong, I go to Sham Tseng for roasted goose and they always have it there.
What would be interesting would be to know why Western Broccoli came to be used so much in Chinese-American restaurants. I can see how a single dish like General Tso's Chicken could be invented here and become popular but what explains the broad use of a particular ingredient that is not authentic at all ... and not very popular on its own in the first place?
Also, to a lot of people, broccoli actually tastes pretty good. My wife is a Chinese immigrant, and she loves the stuff, and so does her brother's wife... It is best when just blanched, then tossed with garlic - kind of how the Italians will serve it most often. I did need to teach my wife that cutting up the big woody stems into little chunks just gives you little woody chunks - if you want *tender* broccoli, you need to buy smaller heads, which haven't begun to turn woody, and even then, you need to throw away the bigger stems... That lesson was a culture shock for her...
Whenever I go to my best friend's house (usually with other people), they order "Chinese" food ALWAYS AGAINST MY WILL. They love that crap, and I hate it soooo much. They do the classic one liter of soy sauce per grain of rice stuff, and I want to die. They sound like pigs too! I'm like: once you go to China, this will become disgusting. And then they laugh and spray their sweet and sour spit all over my face. That was my daily rant. Back to studying for AP Euro.
"Chop Suey," as I heard it, was leftovers. Some California gold miners came in after a Chinese multi course meal and asked for something to eat. The restaurant owner gathered up what hadn't been eaten and served it up. The gold miners pronounced it great and asked the Cantonese cook what it was. Along with the stretched-with-leftovers rice, that's how American Chop Suey came to be. (American Fortune Cookies came along much later.;)
Wow. I was prepared to severely disagree with this video because dishes invented by Chinese Americans back in the day are still "authentic" in their own way (adapting dishes to the locally available ingredients is necessary). But...honestly, I would never eat any of the abominations listed in the video, except for egg rolls. I may love spring rolls more, but the bumpy egg rolls have a crazy weird appeal all their own. But yeah, all the other stuff is horrible and awful. Still, our family's favorite Chinese American invented dish is "Mu Shu Pork". My father, a Taiwanese immigrant, was actually disappointed when he couldn't get that dish anywhere back home.
+Isaac Kuo "Mu Shu Pork" is not invented by Chinese American. It's a traditional dish in Shandong (Northern China) and has been included cookbook for hundreds of years.
Yes, it's a traditional dish from northern China. Not many restaurants in Taiwan serves the dish, but you can find "Mu Shu Pork"(木須肉) in Taiwan. Not sure if it would taste the same as in US.
I just watched the documentary, "The Search for General Tso." It was very interesting. Tso's chicken was created by Chef Peng of Tawian who was inspired by Hunan flavors and named the dish after the General. It was created by a Taiwanese chef who could not even speak English so that is authentic enough for me and even if it wasn't the meal is delicious. Who cares what you eat or don't eat. if you don't eat it, you're missing out.
I was at a restaurant with a foreign exchange student & she asked "Is this what Canadians & Americans actually think Asians eat?" after she skimmed through the menu lol >X-]
So funny, this is exactly my experience but in reverse of watching Chinese people in "western" restaurants in china. seeing someone dipping fries into icecream was one particular favourite, or attempting and failing to eat a whole pizza slice with chopsticks. And they have the weirdest combo of foods on one plate like every nationality of white-people-food all mixed up together. Bananas as pizza toppings lol. tomatoes on cream cakes...
Fries dipped in ice cream is very common in the western U.S. especially if the fries are very crunchy. The fries themselves are just a different sort of starch that is the carrier for the salt. The taste is a contrast of the sweetness of the icecream and the salt from the fries. That said, the rest of your examples sound umm... experimental. ;)
Firestormlover It's kind of fun to see how even little things like that change from region to region. Even though my province and my Uncle's state aren't very far from each other, he still gave me this very surprised look when I put vinegar on my french fries because he'd never seen anyone do it before. Apparently the same thing happened with my mother (sister to my uncle) when she saw my dad do it for the first time.
Chinese ppl dont eat a lot of cheese...??? more like no cheese, at least in China. Except me. I love cheese. String cheese, cheddar, extra cheese on my pizza!!!!!
In the modern era, cheese is a by product from other milk products. Like Low-Fat or Skim Milk. All that extracted fat is made into cheese and marketed to people.
They have cheese in china/Taiwan now. It's just not the same, and it's used in cooking differently. And lactose intolerant people can eat cheese. It really depends on the individual persons allergy, but many lactose intolerant people just can't drink milk and need to supplement with processed dairy like cheese and yogurt. I mean, Beijing is famous for yogurt, Chinese people can't all go into shock from dairy products right?
Sonny Zheng true because the reason most Asian countries don't sell dairy products much like cheese is because most Asians are lactose intolerant which might have changed over time but a big percentage still are
I am chinese but I love cheese. But for chinese restaurant food I only eat the steamed rice noodles with beef, the beef meatball, and that's about it. the rest are okay but id rather eat the beef meatballs or steamed rice noodles with beef inside.
you don't have to care if it's authentic or not, just don't come to a chinese supermarket and ask us for stuff like "sweet sour sauce". THERE IS NO SUCH THING. and ppl return sauces because they don't taste "authentic" like the ones they have in the restaurant.
I sometimes go to a Chinese buffet and will see busloads of Chinese tourists eating there (I've literally seen tour buses offloading Chinese tourists in the parking lot several times). Funny thing is that they get served special dishes that are not on the buffet in a separate room - but they also eat from the buffet. I actually don't like most of the items mentioned and I do prefer spring rolls over egg rolls. Most of the "Chinese" food served here in the US is too sweet for me. Btw, my ex-wife was Cambodian/Chinese and her spring rolls are awesome. She can also make some delicious dishes that I've never seen in restaurants and there is no English name for. But I draw the line at balut (duck egg) or some of those smelly pickled things she would eat.
Balut is a very intake experience if yr not Asian. Philippine friends took me to have some. shopkeeper & all the ppl around the store gathered to watch "white boy" eat balut. offering advice and laughing in surprise as I took the first bite. not bad, more of a textural thing.
I usually like these videos, but this just seems judgemental and myopic. I don't eat any of these things (I'm vegetarian), but clearly dishes inspired by the cuisines of one part of the world gets modified when brought to another part of the word to: appeal to the tastes of the other location include ingredients that are locally available to incorporate cooking techniques/ingredients more familiar to the other location. Sure, that doesn't mean that people from the original culture have to like it but it is what it is.
What's judgemental or myopic about pointing out that what you believe is Chinese food is actually American? I usually don't eat at Chinese restaurants because they're pretty much the same with the exact same menu in my town. I'm a vegetarian, too. In my experience, you have a greater chance of getting something more authentic and vegetarian at a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant. Authentic vegetarian Japanese is a lot harder to come by. It seems so many Japanese dishes that look vegetarian are flavored with fish-based dashi. So, you have to be careful with that (as a vegetarian).
Hey Paul, are you an American? If you are, it would be like somewhere in china, they serve taro paste filled pineapple with XO sauce and serve it in "Authentic American Cuisine" If you're a brit.... well, I apologise for your lack of tasty food, and I don't know, imagine they made that as a tea flavour or something.
Bane Williams McDonald's in China serves pineapple pies and taro pies. It's different from what's served in the states, but I wouldn't go and judge those who order it or look down at them and say, "That's not real McDonald's food."
Next time I go camping and someone pulls out hotdogs and marshmallows at the campfire, I'm dropping elbows and pulling out some egg rolls. Great video.
Most of these dishes were created by Chinese immigrants who moved to America. They made dishes they thought would appeal to American taste. So blame yourselves. These were not created by Bobbi Joe in Alabama of what he thought Chinese food was like, but twist on Chinese food that they thought would fit in. In short the immigrants are to blame for this.
+Matthew Hood They made dishes that would be franchised out and be sold across one of the world''s largest countries and be enjoyed by the majority of the 350m people in it. I don't think the term "blame" is the right thing to say.
+Nicole zhong I know! What's to blame? They incorporated the ingredients that we have in North America and made something fabulous with it. Very inventive and creative. Don't you just hate food snobs!!?? WE should be darn grateful that we even have food!! So many go hungry on this planet! And believe me, the Chinese know all about going hungry!! I once heard a chef say that if it has crawled, walked, slithered, flown, or swam on this earth....the Chinese have eaten it! Who else would think of making soup out of a bird's nest??!!! The problem we North Americans have is we just plain eat TOO much!! LOL LOL!!
I live in the Florida panhandle. All the Chinese restaurants here have Mexicans cooking the food. In my apartment complex, my neighbors above me are all Hispanic and all work at a local Chinese restaurant. So what Im saying is my people are diversified!! Viva La Raza!! lol
+Frank Guadiana Yeah Frank, I looked at your photo and right away thought Negro. Then I thought Scandinavian with blonde hair and blue eyes. What does it matter. Food doesn't worry about race. Don't you just love going to an ethnic restaurant for some authentic American style Chinese, Mexican, or Italian food? Seriously, you're not Scandinavian? :)
+Frank Guadiana We are all American if we liveand Born in America... I think you wanted to say that you are From the United States, people born in Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama are also American cause America Is a Continent NOT a Country. LOL
Dude. You're puzzled by where this stuff comes from? Google is your friend. It's really easy. So most of these dishes and foods was created in America by Chinese owners of Chinese restaurants because they couldn't get Chinese ingredients that were edible, because they weren't fresh. Who wants to eat six-month-old bamboo shoot that's limp and has fungus growing on it? So they adapted to the vegetables they found in America. Some foods were also created for railroad workers by Chinese cooks who were trying to make something that both the white (usually Irish or other immigrant) and Asian workers would eat. What you got was "fusion" food before that was fashionable. Authentic is good for food snobs, or for people who want to make "home food' for the emotional comfort, or who just want to know that they're eating the thing that people who invented the cuisine really eat. But if you can't get fresh ingredients, you have to have the nostalgia or it tastes NASTY. Chop Suey was invented in San Francisco during the gold rush. They couldn't get a guaranteed supply of the same fresh vegetables so they just got what they could, cut it up the way they would have done with "authentic" vegetables, and then tossed it into a quick stir-fry and threw in some noodles and maybe a few teaspoons of meat because they could sell it for cheap, because it was IN DEMAND. (This I knew from pre-google) The "General Tso's Chicken" recipe really is one of six easy ways to use the same slightly-too-much-batter deep fried chicken breast. (If you do it in-house it comes out a lot like velveted chicken, but if you buy the pre-battered frozen chicken chunks like WAY too many places do, it comes out like deep fried chicken chunks everywhere.) It's also popular for restaurants that feed a lot of people because you can make six sauces, deep-fry or fast stir-fry the chicken, throw it in a fast or pre-made sauce to heat it and you get an edible food that can give the illusion of extreme variety. If it's by some miracle made fresh, it uses a 'tempura' technique which is Japanese not Chinese and was invented by some food scientists working for agribiz who wanted to provide a faster way to mass-produce "velvet" meat, and failed miserably. The stories behind the foods are all a marketing trick Spring rolls from south Asia are made with a translucent (sometimes wheat usually rice) flour rolled thin, and not cooked. They seldom have meat unless you get the Thai or Vietnamese version which may have thin sliced pork, tofu, and/or steamed shrimps in the wrapper (and will be served with peanut sauce.) They usually have rice noodles and/or bean sprouts and maybe some other vegetables, cut in long thin sticks. Fried spring rolls (Chinese) are made with super-thin wheat flour wrappings and look almost exactly the same as Filipino "Lumpia" -- which are always deep fried. Lumpia contain meat, and 'authentic' fried spring rolls contain a small amount of ground pork along with shredded cabbage, carrots and bamboo shoot. Same food, minor regional differences. Egg rolls were invented by a Chinese-American chef in New York in the early 1930s, and are made with thicker "wonton" wrappers which makes them have the tougher texture and the bubbly surface, almost always contain cabbage and pork and carrots, but originally had "“bamboo shoots, roast pork, shrimp, scallions, water chestnuts, salt, MSG, sugar and pepper" as fillings. They were deliberate fusion cooking, finding something that appealed to the New York customers. Really, Egg Roll and (fried) Spring Rolls have about the same amount of oil, if you eat the same volume. Egg Rolls are just bigger. Fortune cookies were almost certainly invented by Makoto Hagiwara, who created San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden, as a snack for guests to nibble as they went through the gardens. However, because they were popular, people asked for them in any Asian restaurant so they caught on from there. No restaurant owner would refuse to serve a thing that people asked for a lot, even if it wasn't "authentic" especially since they were made in huge volumes in a factory. Duck sauce: Yeah, it's gross. Hoisin or Plum sauce go with duck, not Turkish Apricot sauce. Unless it's Turkish duck? However, what's up with OYSTER sauce? It's like it usually hasn't even seen an oyster. (I didn't even realize that you could make it by just cooking oysters the right way.) Pu Pu Platter. HAWAIIAN. The word "pu-pu" is Hawaiian slang from the 1950s for 'snack food'. This one's REALLY easy to find. Google is your friend when you're faced with confused outrage over cultural strangeness. They started serving them in a few Chinese-American restaurants in the late 1960s because it was POPULAR. The nasty blue thing is "sterno gel" -- gelatinized alcohol. It's used to heat the tiny grill so you can WARM the food if it's gotten cold, and is otherwise just a gimmick because the stuff they normally served in AUTHENTIC HAWAIIAN settings was a reference to hibachi cooking (imported from Japan) and some of the foods weren't fully cooked until you put them on the little hibachi thing. Nearly all these gimmicky foods? Innovations by Chinese and Chinese-American restaurants to bring in customers and make their experiences special, so they'll come back. Not sure why Duck sauce though. (Checking google) Ah. Yeah. It was available as a nearly-the-same-flavor as Plum sauce. So it's used in the same places you would use Plum sauce.
Actually, in order to make a living, those early Chinese chefs simply junked Chinese dishes by adding more sugar, oil, salt and colors to make the dishes extremely tasty to attract western customers. That's the reason of western Chinese food. But still, these junk dishes are not Chinese food. Not at all. Similarly, many Asians think Pizza Hut is authentic Italian pizza, would Italians agree with that?
Stephen Hutchison So, you're point is that the answers are easily found online, but then you go on to include your own interpretations, or copies, of said answers?? Fyi, some of your (likely copied and pasted) info is wrong: For example: The terms spring roll and egg roll are used interchangeably in English-speaking countries, so your entire explanation on them is both pointless and only minimally accurate under very specific circumstances. Hell, in the PNW -they usually call the fresh, uncooked rolls "salad rolls", instead of "spring rolls" like you'd hear up and down California (usually ONLY in SE Asian restaurants). BTW, I'm Filipino: there are different types of lumpia, not all of them fried, just like there are different types of egg or spring rolls. -You need a hobby. Well, a different hobby.
the duck sauce is actually plum sauce and it is used as a dip for Cantonese style roasted ducks. So if you Chinese and you from da south, you would actually eat duck sauce with duck. And most fruits and vegetables Chinese people eat now are all imported into china in the later dynasties, mostly during Ming and Qing. Most native plants that ancient Chinese people ate would be considered inedible weed by modern Chinese. Only native plant ancient and modern Chinese people both ate was chives.
no that's not true, China is really big and there are a lot of farms and places where they grow fruits, it's just that different fruits grow in different seasons, and you will mostly get to eat some fruits only in some seasons.
Xirui Yang na the op means the daily vegetables Chinese people now eat originally were imported into China. Doesn't mean they don't grow them in China, just the origin. It's partially true, not entirely, there's a trend to eat traditional Chinese veg now because of health reasons.
I always thought egg rolls were just what Americans called spring rolls. I didn't realise they had an extra layer of actual egg. We just have spring rolls in Australia and the flaky pastry on the outside is the best part!
+daynightandsarah I'm American and I'm still confused. I order eggrolls and may get something light and flaky like a spring rolls, or I may get a heavy eggroll. Or I order a spring roll from a Thai joint and get a something cold wrapped in really thin rice paper. All can be delicious, but when you are in a new place it's a damn crap shoot.
What Chinese people call spring rolls is actually not fried at all and is literally like the healthiest thing ever because it's not deep fried at all. It's usually on the cool side and wrapped in rice paper. And yes other people from areas around China also eat this.
+daynightandsarah Chiko Rolls are the Australian egg roll equivalent - no Chinese were used in inventing these - designed to be frozen then chucked into a deep fryer. The Australian 'Chinese' invention that is going back to China is 'Prawn Toast' - a flattened prawn sandwiched between two thin slices of bread and then deep fried, sesame or other spices optional.
If I may, a close friend of mine is from a diplomatic family with close ties to the Nationalist Government that left Mainland China to preserve its culture in Taiwan. He's told me that his grandfather, who was part of Chiang Kai-shek's government, said that General Tso's Chicken was a dish developed by Peng Chang-kuei, the banquet chef for the National Government. In fact, the restaurant he founded in Taiwan still serves his original recipe to this day.
General Tso's Chicken was invented by a Chinese chef in Taiwan. It was stolen by another Chinese chef and made in NYC. He was getting famous for it when the original inventor found out about it, got upset, and came to the US to set the record straight - by giving out the recipe on TV. That's when it started spreading across the US. The guy is still alive (and serving it at his restaurants in Taiwan). What you get in Chinese restaurants in the US is very unlike what he originally made, though.
You can see a really great and funny documentary about this called "The Search for General Tso".
genjii931 It's nice to see someone besides me who watched it
Was General Tso in Chang Kai Sheik's army?
@James Chumsa-Jones lol it's like saying "Was Lincoln a friend of Obama?"
genjii931 he died in November last year, though
No, he lived hundreds of years ago.
Whenever I hear 'Chop Suey', I wake up, grab a brush, and put a little makeup.
TheN0odles I love this song :D
Why'd you leave the keys upon the table?
frank ortiz , cause you wanted too
\m/
system of a down
Pupu platter actually comes from Hawai'i. Pūpū means appetizer or relish in native Hawaiian. One story I've been told is because the food used to be served on small shells, which are also called Pūpū, but I'm not sure if that's actually true. And because there are so many people of East Asian ancestry in Hawai'i, of course the the appetizers are going to be Chinese or Japanese or Korean in nature.
Hey Stopthat your correct ! Also you don't cook the chicken and already cooked items on the fire... we made the beef skewers rare and you put them on the fire to med - rare or well, depending on your tastes... this gave them a true Hawaii BBQ taste.
It's Hawaiian cuisine then.
@@mad_max21 yes it's Hawaiian fusion cuisine, but not Native Traditional Hawaiian cuisine. Our traditional cuisine is a lot more like other Polynesian island cuisines. So instead of using ingredients only found off island and therefore imported, Native Hawaiian cuisine uses only the resources indigenous to the island or the ones brought by Canoe voyage by Polynesians. It stresses a lot of fresh and local foods, and minimal complexity while maximizing the natural flavors of food.
All these butthurt people in the comment section. Nobody told you not to eat these dishes....
Tamago For real. The video's simply Mike sharing his opinion as a Chinese American. People are easily defensive.
My wife is from Hong Kong, and she already told me everything that you said in this video. She agrees with you 100% and she is always going on and on about what is "real authentic" Chinese food. Because of her, I have also come to appreciate authentic Chinese cuisine. Nevertheless, I still love the American Egg Roll, with Shrimp and cabbage......dipped in duck sauce. The point is to enjoy your food and love what you eat and not be a Food Snob.
I am italian, here NONE of this exist and when you go to eat to a chinese restaurant there is no trace of milk or cheese in any dish
sure there are dishes with milk, not every Chinese cook know how to make them though.
Lol, because Europe actually cares about health.
Earl Taylor it is bologna to think Chinese don't eat healthy. Almost all Chinese household know the benefits of eating certain things. i.e. hot tea, ginger, garlic, tofu, just to name a few. It is when western food go to China that ruin Chinese health, potato chips, fried chicken, French fries, pretty much all western fast food are junk food.
+dragondescendant1....are there now? Such as?
***** dragondescendant1 claims there are Chinese dishes that use milk. I am asking which dishes
I heard this story about chop suey: In the 19th Chinese workers were brought to the US to assemble the Trans-Continental railroad, paid low wages, then sent back to China. While in the US either they couldn't afford good food or were trying to save money to send home. Basically they fried up scraps that other people were ready to discard but seasoned them well. The seasonings they used were so fragrant and inviting that Americans came around and asked to buy plates. When asked what they called this wonderful food, the Chinese said, "We call it chop suey," which means garbage. 150 years later and chop suey still on menus in the US.
Many came from southern China, where an authentic form of _chop suey_ originated. The chop suey we know today is actually an derivative of the southern Chinese original.
Sacto1654 That makes sense. I looked it up and found chop suey has several origin stories, but what you said is most likely right. When I think about it, China is such a vast country it is probably best to take claims that anything is inauthentic with a grain of salt. It's unlikely any one person knows all the dishes from every part of China. As soon as someone says something is not authentic because his or her famy never made it, somebody else knows somewhere in China where it is traditional. Fun conversations anyway!
Most of these chinese Trans-Continental works were sold as slave from China or got duped by someone in the US telling them that gold can be found in abundant.They are worked to the point of death and the only way out for them is to sneak out from their employers.
Chopped sewage.
Similar to sub gum which is chinese, but would have more than one type of meat in it.
I go to Panda Express for the same reason I go to Taco Bell. It's cheap, it's filling, and it's good, not because it's authentic.
I miss Panda Express living away from the States, I really like their lo mein and beef and broccoli.
Some people actually like learning about other cultures, and respect other peoples traditions and cultures. Of course its interesting to know whats authentic or not!
Everything we eat is genetically modified. Compare a domestic turkey to a wild one. Find me a wild Jersey cow. They don't exist. We've altered them to suit our needs. How about corn? Comes from maize, and we've bred it into several different plants. We've been modifying food since we first started cultivating it. Just because it's in a lab instead of a greenhouse with selective pollination doesn't mean jack. We're all gonna die anyhow. I'd rather eat whatever I want and enjoy it, rather than worrying over whether that McShit burger is gonna take 5 or 7 minutes off of my life.
plants and animals are organisms dude so it applies
where do you live?
I honestly don't see what's wrong with western broccoli... My parents make broccoli all the time... They came here from China. In fact even my grandparents make dishes with western broccoli and they still live in Qigong
Qidong* my bad
Beef/pork/chicken broccoli is common here in hk.
Broccoli, cauliflower, sprouts, turnips, swede...all absolutely disgusting in my opinion. But that's just me, brought up in the UK.
Add parsnips to the shitpile too. Carrots, peas potatoes and onions are basically the only ones I like >.
Damn. Those are my favorites. I love all those veggies, except swede, which I have never heard of. Don't overcook them. Steam them if you can.
OK, I am Chinese, born in Hong Kong, fluent in spoken and written Chinese. came to the US at 12. Here is what I think:
1. Most Chinese are lactose intolerant
I don't know about that. Condensed milk was highly popular in Hong Kong, just because markets with refrigeration were rare.
2. General Tso's Chicken
According to the documentary The Search For General Tso, it was actually invented by a Chinese in Taiwan and was brought to the US.
3. Chop Suey
I lived in Hong Kong for 12 years, watched hundreds of Chinese movies both before and after, and never heard Choy Suey used as a swear word. It does not have negative connotation either.
4. Mongolian Beef
Mongolian Beef is not stirred fried with onion, but rather scallion. That's a big difference and why it is so good. I used to think this is a Chinese dish, not sure why it was called Mongolian Beef.
5. Egg Roll
Now THAT is a pure Western invention. And typically made with roast pork, not ground beef. But I do like to eat them with Chinese mustard. Spring rolls in Hong Kong are typically eaten with Lea & Perrins, which is of course a Western invention.
6. Broccoli
I actually like Broccoli much better than Chinese Broccoli. Broccoli with anything is actually very much a Chinese dish, but substituted with Western Broccoli for Chinese Broccoli.
7. Duck Sauce
Of course Chinese eat duck sauce with ducks. In Hong Kong, when you buy a boiled duck, they always give you duck sauce on the side. Duck sauce is not called duck sauce in Hong Kong, it is called Tardy Berry Sauce. Anyone who doesn't know what duck sauce really is is probably not born in an Asian country.
8. Pu-pu Plater
Supposed to be Hawaiian. But I don't know.
Condensed milk is processed dairy. Lactose intolerant usually just means a person can't drink milk, but can eat processed dairy. But even then cheese gives old people the runs, regardless of food allergies.
I am from HK and don't know about a lot of Chinese have lactose intolerant. Chinese people or for what I know about HK people don't eat much cheese or other dairy products when compare to western countries because it is EXPENSIVE in early days and we have a mindset that those will make you fat. Lol.
Hong Kong doesn't count though. For 99 years (and your life time) Hong Kong was a British Colony. All of the food and lifestyles of Hong Kong Chinese are actually a Hybrid of European and Chinese cultures. That includes the foods.
What do you mean most of us are lactose intolerant.... hongkong is a western influenced place duck sauce is actually most served in a dipping dish it is thick and never called duck sauce
Lea and Perrins is a Worcestershire sauce which is based on a Chinese recipe brought to Europe in like the 18'th century.
Do you know how many Americans judge Chinese by the types of foods they eat? -----> Zero. We really don't care...seriously.
+Zoe TheCat As long it is free and plenty!
+Zoe TheCat I am not so sure about that....my husband's classmates used to meow every time he would open his lunch at school when he was a kid. And no, he's never eaten cats or dogs.
+Zoe TheCat Yeah honestly, growing up in America I've never heard judgement about what people in other cultures eat, because we eat everything from all sorts of cultures. However for some reason, many Americans have a problem with vegans. Like seriously, you mention that you eat a vegan diet to someone and they get all defensive as if you're attacking their morals and the way they eat.
***** Well, if that is true, I recommend discarding your "friends" and finding some REAL friends ;-)
Here's some more advice: "If you loan a good friend $20 and you never see him again....it was worth it!"
+A Tam
Yeah... that is really fucked up. I mean. I have been around A LOT of racism and stereotyped assumptions but damn! How old were these classmates. What year was this? What country?
I'm German and we have loads of "germanized" Chinese restaurants as well and even though they're not authentic I still like the food. A couple of years ago I went to Greece on holiday and we ate some Chinese food with sweet and sour sauce. The sauce tasted like sweet and sour sauce but at the same time it tasted so incredibly Greek that it had us laughing for hours. Don't get me wrong it was delicious but it really had us wondering how German the German sweet and sour sauce tastes to someone from Greece - or even worse, from China!
I've seen "German" food opened by Chinese people. I think Germans eat pork knuckle like Chinese people right?
glockenrein haha funny observation
We do, google Schweinshaxe or Eisbein for pictures.
It would be interesting to travel around the world and try all of the local variations on Chinese food and see how Chinese food differs from country to country.
glockenrein What you describe is similar in Canada. I live on the border and Canadian Chinese restaurants serve a differing variant from what you’ll get from an American Chinese restaurant. The egg rolls in Canada are smaller, there are very few restaurants that offer PuPu platters on the menu in Canada, Teriyaki beef is almost never on the menu in Canada. And the red sauces do have completely different flavours and consistency.
I am laughing my old ass off! I thought before I watched "I bet nothing I eat will be on there, my dads Asian friends always show me how you say, to eat properwy" dang! The were all on there! I love Chicken or beef chow mein (aka) chop seuy. How about a video with AUTHENTIC dishes so we can be food snobs?!? I have really enjoyed your videos, I have health problems right now and am on bed rest. I need to watch something besides zits being popped! Me love you long time! 🐣
+Valerie Foster thanks for watching!
yo me too!!!
+Strictly Dumpling Isn't Lo Mein considered Chinese? Or is that considered Western?
***** Oh, okay.....thanks for the info
+Daniel McDermott "Ramen". It's Chinese. Call it la mian.
The broccoli is incorrect... I've lived with Chinese people from China who ate it almost daily. They blanch it then stir fry it with roughly chopped garlic and soy.
+Nymeria Meliae That is how I ate it in Beijing, from a little Chinese Restaurant call the White Horse Inn in San Li Tun. A great little place we ate there so frequently that the staff new what we wanted and just checked with us on the menu. It was great.
+Nymeria Meliae
Yes but the point is that that type of broccoli was not eaten 'til modern times. Late 70's, early 80's. Again, to appeal to the western diner. So of course through the years it has branched in to the everyday diet and menus. But there are no authentic Chinese recipes that have head broccoli. Which I love by the way.
And the method you said your Chinese friends would cook it is very common. It can and is done with all kinds of green veggie. So it would make sense that they would eat a common ingredient in a traditional way.
bah-Dumb bum666
that is still 25-35 years of eating it. How long does a food have to be in circulation before it is considered 'Chinese'?
I mean we could dismiss most food in the world as 'traditional' when we consider that potatoes, chili, and tomatoes were not around outside of the Americas before the 16th century.
+Nymeria Meliae : Agree on the broccoli. Every vegetable market here in Shanghai sell broccoli and it is common in other cities as well.
The 'Chinese broccoli' that is mentioned in the video (gai lan, or jie lan, or 芥兰) is actually not that often seen in northern China. It is more common in south China and especially popular in HongKong and surrounding area.
I like all of them!
Yeah we always eat broccoli
In HK, we do have dishes like "western broccoli stir-fry chicken" or "western broccoli stir-fry beef" or "western broccoli stir-fry pork", really yummy
Filipinos eat Chop Suey. Our cuisine has Chinese influences tho.
Correct. In fact, Filipino cuisine has both Spanish and Chinese influences because 1) the Philippine islands are close to southern China and 2) the Philippines were under Spanish control for several centuries.
fun fact chop suey was invented in LA and its basicly all the left over vegies at the end of the day thrown into a pot and recooked because "americans are morons so they wont know the difference" also i think it was invented in the 30s -40s
The Abortion This is true it is very easy to trick most American shopers so as one of the few who know of this flaw of my people I can take advantage of this for my own profit MWHA HA HA HA
Chinese dishes
Bitch ain’t nobody trying to talk about fillipinos
I love the beef with broccoli lol dont matter if its authentic or not still bomb
+Food is love Food is life I love 'em too, which is just like Alfredo to the Italian dishes.
+elleimagine - Actually, Alfredo was invented by an Italian living in Rome in order to please his pregnant wife.
+Greyswyndir Durian was found to be edible by a man who was trying to divorce his wife.
+Food is love Food is life My favorite dish, yes lol
I'll still be ordering beef broccoli. lol
The Pu Pu Platter is an American invention by the owner of a Polynesian-themed restaurant. "Pu Pu" is a real word; Hawaiian for appetizer, canapé, or hors d'oeuvre.
Having lived & traveled in Asia, I learned to cook Asian dishes. I still make/order, eat & enjoy these dishes, but I don't have any false expectations about their history.
Please don't take this wrong Mike, I'm not trying to be mean, but it does need to be asked, why were your parents serving this sort of food? Westerners wouldn't eat these inauthentic foods if they aren't served inauthentic foods to begin with. And I am not talking about corporate drones like Panda Express, but so many of the Mom and Pop places that make up the vast majority of Chinese restaurants. If people are taught (fed) wrongly by someone they believe to be knowledgeable, who is really at fault for them for not learning any differently?
I'm Chinese and when I'm out with my family at a Chinese restaurant, I don't judge what people of other ethnicities order... That's kind of rude don't you think? When I walk into a Vietnamese, Italian or French restaurant, I wouldn't want other people judging me either. Besides, it's expected that Chinese takeaway/restaurants in America, Australia, Canada etc will be influenced by western foods. When I walk into a restaurant, I just want to have a good time and not be judged.
Authenticity doesn't play a factor in my food choices. I like what I like.
Then you can ignore this video XD
Enjoy eating garbage
I will still eat egg rolls though... because I'm Chinese Indonesian, and we Chinese Indonesian like our lumpia!
Holy cow! You Indonesians love lumpia too?
Of course!!
+Theo Buniel lumpia are the best things.
I C actually yes I just realized I made the mistake
+Calvin Limuel Yeah, egg roll is thick skin casing.While lumpia, risole, etc are different.
Chinese -American cuisine is what you are talking about. it's not fake. it's a result of. two cultures combining cooking methods to form a new dish. it happens in melting pots. while I understand you are e promoting authentic chinese dishes don't down play the other so much. if there was no combining dishes together we wouldn't have many of the dishes people eat around due world today.
Good response.
Then there's Japanese-Chinese food.
Especially since he said he eats some of it and his parents cooked all of this stuff in their restaurant LOL. They don't eat it but have no problem making money off of it.
Ebony Arnold
Yeah, Half the dishes used in even acient china are possible thanks to other countries trade! spices like garlic, and others didnt exist. It breaks my heart when some one insults an entire nations cuisine by sampling the simple stuff. Food can taste bad, but cuisine, or the actual recipes vary from person to person. He makes fun of his own heritage without joking.Its sad.
CartoonCritic You're right but people don't know and still consider it as just "Chinese food"
Hey Mike, this is a really late comment but I just saw this video for the first time. As an FYI, the reason the sterno-packed flame is in the middle of the pu-pu platter is that in the original Polynesian restaurant versions of the appetizer, popularized by Don's and Trader Vic's in the US, the "teriyaki beef-on-a-stick" was served raw. The customers would then cook the beef on the flame to desired doneness (this was explained by the waiter to the table). This has genuine origins in South Pacific raw skewered meat dishes; another similar version would be satay beef in SE Asia. My understanding is that, at some point, restaurants went away from the raw beef for various reasons and simply precooked the beef before serving. The pu-pu tray with flame was still used, but only for decoration and continuity.
I am definitely showing my age for having known this. In fact, I can actually boast of hearing a waiter's description of how to cook that beef at my table decades ago.
My whole life has been a lie.
Phoenixspin You were a lie.
I suspect the universe is simply a computer simulation.
God! Then do we truly have free will?
aTorsion X The program code could have been written to allow us to believe that we have free will when in fact we don't.
Phoenixspin That's just ridiculous.
i don´t care, if is tasty, i wanna eat it.
damn right
I dont care if you dont care, some people actually enjoy learning about other cultures, and respect them. 'Muricans......
Really? There is nothing wrong with getting inspiration from other countries and doing something different. That is the beauty of food! I'm American and if I had the chance to try any sort of authentic food from any other country I would. And honestly, these unauthentic Chinese foods are good!!
I'm going to hope you aren't saying Americans dislike learning about other cultures and that we disrespect them because that would be ignorance at its finest.
Yep, egg rolls are awesome. I've never had it until I went to America. Crab rangoon is disgusting imo.
Phil W
I've never called them crab rangoons. I've always known them as wontons. I'm aware that a wonton is a soup dumpling, but they are also the "crab rangoons" when I did a Google search. I know I got confused when he said crab rangoon. Also I've tasted ones that actually had crab in them. I dunno. I like cream cheese! xD
you just reviewed my dinner!
I've eaten in American-style restaurants in Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Spain, and Italy, and none of them served particularly authentic American food. But I didn't judge the locals for putting their own spin on American-style food.
So, why would Chinese people (as this guy says in the first minute of this video) judge Americans for eating americanized Chinese food?
Because we do.
Yeah, just like the way Italians are so accepting of pizza hut, Mexicans with taco bell... wait a minute
I relate a lot to this video but there are some wrong facts. As a 100% Chinese, we do use western broccoli in our dishes, but mainly for decorational purposes. Also, duck sauce is originally known as plum sauce(酸梅醬). We usually put the sauce onto roast duck(燒鴨)or roast geese(燒鵝) here in Guangdong and Hong Kong.
Obviously this dude doesn't have the chance to taste on real Hong Kong cuisine.
it's like those unauthentic food he called are those we HK people eating everyday.
Gotta be honest man, I'll never stop eating general tso's
They might not have changed the oil when mike was a child in his parents restaurant, but these days we have health codes and inspectors, they're not gonna get away with that for long one would hope. Particularly with a popular dish.
I know the buffets around here have gotten a lot more diligent checking temperatures and stuff as the years have gone on.
Lol
Authentic or not, I love crab Rangoon.
@Yifan Zhu You're not weird. Crab Rangoon is a nice tasty little treat.
God yea
@Yifan Zhu cause its nummy
@Yifan Zhu not at all ❤️
8. Crab rangoon (full of cheese, many Asians are lactose intolerant)
7. General Tso's chicken (real general, Chin Dynasty, but not his chicken)
6. Chop suey
5. Mongolian beef (not really Mongolian)
4. Egg rolls (Chinese like spring rolls, not egg rolls)
3. Any dish with broccoli (Now you've hurt broccoli's feelings! - Broccoli not Chinese)
2. Duck sauce (No idea why it's called that, or what it's put on. Made with Turkish apricots.)
1. Poo poo platter.
John V. Karavitis
+John Karavitis qin dynasty not chin
武大郎 Same to you.
John Karavitis ??????
武大郎
!!!!!!
+John Karavitis I eat chop suey a lot, yes it's crap, but it's cheap and convenient. Suitable for the lowest of working class like me. egg rolls, hmm... I'd rather eat the japanese tama.
Mike has a really northerner taste, as a southerner I do love my noodles, but northerner foods are somewhat waaaaaay too thick and dense for me type.
Love this! When my family interests on Chinese buffet, I straight up ask the servers.. is this what you really cook at home? They say.. no! So I ask.. bring me what you eat at home then! Lol
THeres a netflix documentary on general tsao chicken dish. The documentary said it originated from Taiwan. However, the major factor is that in Taiwan the dish isnt sweet and isnt served with broccoli.
From the same documentary, Chopped Suey was invented down south from Chinese immigrants in order to appeal to American folks.
Basically, most c hinese immigrants in the restaurant business found out that Americans just liked fried chicken coated in a sweet type sauce and yueahhhhhh
+Kenny Kwong Pretty much
broccoli is one of my favorite vegetables
Love your channel! It's really surprising how many "westerners" have no idea hat your typical Chinese restaurant is not authentic. Countless times i have gotten in arguments with people over this fact.
Keep the great videos coming!
Chris in NY
'What do people even put this on'
'probably those nasty egg rolls'
LOOOOOOOL
And yet, the spring rolls don't have much in them as the egg rolls...ergo...stingy. When you bite into them you're going "Where's the beef". The roll itself maybe better, but the filling ain't really filling.
+1958debs, They're actually meant to be light as they are appetizers. They're already fried, so making them with a little filling keeps it from spoiling your appetite. Maybe you've just had some bad ones?
DDJ. No, they just seem a little light. Mike seems to state that he mostly goes for meat...in a spring roll? Now an egg roll,. that's where the meat is.
DDJ. It's kinda like going for thin crust, and then realizing that you can't put much on it.
I lived in Chengdu, Dujiangyan, and,WenJiang in Sichuan for a long time and I so miss the spicy food and hotpot. Here in the USA did you guys ever notice the stove is not as hot as in China ? Water boils much faster in China. I can't eat American Chinese food any more but my students taught me to cook real Chinese food, luckily.
Barbara Hallanger yes once you eat real chinese food, there is no going back
***** Sounds like somebody plays Dynasty Warriors :P .
Probably altitude difference. Also depends on what kind of stove it is
A pupu platter would be Hawaiian not chinese. Never in my life seen it at a chinese restaurant. It is far more similar to Japanese food than chinese, consisting as it does of raw fish (poke), sushi, vegetables, poi etc.
It's interesting how Chinese-American food is so different from Chinese-Canadian food
I feel like most Chinese people who hate on western Chinese food are young Asian hipsters who think it's cool to knock on what's popular. I myself am Chinese who was born in Beijing and while I admit western Chinese food doesn't taste as good as the authentic stuff back home, it still tastes pretty damn good. Most older Asian people I know who try western Chinese food think it tastes pretty good as a fast food kind of thing.
The spring roll is much easier to bite into than the egg roll.
sometimes when i'm hanging out with my non asian friends, they want to accommodate me by going to a chinese restaurant or ordering chinese.. it makes it extremely awkward because i don't like any of these food
It's OK if you don't like Western broccoli, but if authenticity in food means only prehistorically-correct ingredients, half of the world's cuisines are in serious trouble. Nearly everyone uses peppers abundantly, and those originated in South America. And where would the peoples of the Mediterranean region be without the tomato, or Northern Europe without the potato, both of which are also from South America?
ikr, seriously nonsense about the origin of the ingredients that make a dish authentic.
Kind of ironic given Mikey's voracious appetite for Sichuan food and chili oil
Persian food doesn't actually use any peppers, hence why its not spicy, but they do use tomato
@@wing_c doesn't seem like Chinese peasants in 200 would have much access to western broccoli, tho.
yet, they are distinctly Mediterranean. This though was made by an American who didn't like chinese
I grew up in the 80s in the land of chop suey. My parents owned a Canadian Chinese restaurant in a small town and served this kind stuff. Now in my late 30s, I still crave it sometimes and I'm always on the lookout for authentic Canadian-Chinese food! Good egg rolls and meaty fried wontons aren't so easy to come by anymore.
I absolutely love you, I laughed so hard at this because I've eaten almost every dish on here at one time or another. The one I didn't like was the crab rangoon (rangoo? sp?) anyway, my daughter-in-law makes home-made spring rolls and her own sauce. She makes fried rice all the time, and believe me what she makes is awesome. I came to visit my son and daughter for the first time and she sent me on the plane with coconut rice, and spring rolls and fresh sauce for the spring rolls, and the entire plane wanted to know what I was eating and where did I order it from. I proudly told them, my daughter made it.
Kare Reno wow, awesome that you have access to such great food :-)
***** As are my daughter-in-law's spring rolls, light, with shredded carrots, basil, maybe some cilantro, lightly cooked strips of chicken, and rice noodles, the rice roll.
*****
Yet, not enough meat.
Fried rice is easy to make if you've seen it made at a japanese hibachi a few times. Not that they aren't much better at it than you'll be, but just to make something to eat it's not hard.
Authentic or not. Good food is good food. That first bit sound petty af tho lol
YOU SAID A MOUTH FULL!!!
Xavier Randall I typed 3 sentences but ok
+Xavier Randall nono... He said it ~with~ a mouthful of good food
authentic food is a culture, is a respect of root.
Some people like Taco Bell, some people like Chipotle.
Hong Kong 's big chinese restaurant(酒樓) serves dishes with western brocolli
and I think that the duck sauce look like the sauce of the cantonese roast duck and goose(which is made by plum).
Yes there is broccoli in china now, and it works well with Chinese people.
it's just bunch of ABC don't know much about chinese food from different part of China.
Western broccoli is delicious, you take that back...
Razzy1312 it’s just that Chinese broccoli is better than western broccoli
I feel like authentic or not authentic is the wrong term here. The food is still "authentic" American-Chinese food. It's just food invented in America. Same as Canadian-Chinese food is different from American-Chinese. And Indian-Chinese food different from the first two. (Have you ever had Chili Paneer with Hakka Chow Mein? That's a couple of my fav Indian-Chinese.)
and etc. You just can't call it Chinese food from China. Maybe influenced by. It's a new style. And people like whatever they like. To each their own.
So you're pointing out the difference between authentic American-Chinese vs Authentic Chinese-Chinese. You just have to state where it comes from.
I would say it might be the same for other culture dishes.
Indo-Chinese food is Delicious i love Gobi Manchurian
Sounds like nonsense. Like saying, "Eskimo-Quebecian is raw fish on a baguette...". Look, if I want Chinese Food, it better be Chinese and if I feel like American food, the Clam chowder and turkey-gravy better be authentic...
Mike, time to do your all time favourite top 10 authentic Chinese foods. Go!! 😍
During my 7 years in Beijing I did in fact come across western brocolli in a simple garlic salt sauce, which was almost every time I went to a chinese restaurant
Yes they have broccoli in china now. It's just a modern thing. I think they will get avocados soon.
This guy is just biased
I'm Chinese. I've eaten every dishes shown on this video and will continue to eat them in the future.
Yeah Panda Express is ok in a pinch
kingkong714 you do you boo-boo
Bravo
So will he lol
u r chinese american, that's not the same sht
I admit that i love general tso chicken and yes everyone makes it the same way(battered and deep fried chicken breast with dark sauce) but the best two places i ever had it at unfortunately both have closed permanently. Both places used cut up boneless skin on chicken thighs topped with fresh ginger green peppers carrots and green onion. May not be authentic but over white rice it was damn good
What if you LIKE the stuff? I know full well that they aren't authentic, but I love 'em.
Timothy Page No problem in getting American Chinese food, but the true authentic Chinese food tastes so much better. Like BMW vs Honda
Same. I eat authentic chinese food all the time due to my family being from China, but I absolutely love egg rolls. Everything else, not so much. The Crab rangoons I honestly thought were fried wontons filled with meat until I tried one. It was weird. Why call it crab rangoon when it doesn't even contain crab? It doesn't even look like a crab!
If you like you like. That's not the point of this vid. It to inform those who don't know there is a difference between Chinese-Chinese cuisine and American-Chinese cuisine. Most Americans will never visit China or venture outside the tourist quarters so they will not realize the difference in taste and methods of cooking. I've often hear it said "Chinese food is Chinese food" by those who never sampled other than what they know. That naivety is what is being addressed.
I'm Chinese and I like Panda Express. I just don't call it Chinese food. And I only ever eat fried rice there.
Anything you like is good. As a non-parochial, non-insular Chinese, I assure you that Chinese food cooked by Chinese is different all over the world. Nowadays, if I cook something for my friends and they ask if it's Chinese food, I tell them, "Yes, it is. I cooked it, didn't I?"
2:12 well, I’m eating string cheese and Cheerios in half and half right now, sooooooooooooooo, yeah.
Chinese takeaways are different in the UK. Here, we brits love ordering sweet and sour. The average UK Chinese takeaway is also a fish and chip shop. Most of the dishes that you mentioned don't appear on a UK Chinese menu. Although I did once make the mistake of ordering chicken in a lemon sauce. The effect of the sauce on the inside of my mouth is something I won't easily forget. How about investigating the authenticity of British Chinese food?
Now do "8 Chinese foods no American would want to eat."
Selena C hahahaha ok...
*Only* 8??? LOL
I'd put stinky tofu (chou doufu) near the top of the list... you can smell that $4!t for a km when they open a "fresh" jar at a street-front restaurant in China... "pure" putrefaction...
You're saying all this time I wasn't eating real Chinese food? I'm at a lost.... Then what's real Chinese food?
Peking Duck, Pineapple Buns, Dim Sum, Fish, Shrimp, Crab, Techinally Sushi, Zongzi (Rice with meat and peanuts inside wrapped with bamboo leaves), and like 1,000,000 other things
you can't finish all chinese food with your whole life
The main staple is probably dog... or cat... or cat and dog with authentic chinese broccoli
Duck sauce is actually plum sauce. Roasted goose and duck is served with plum sauce in Hong Kong, I go to Sham Tseng for roasted goose and they always have it there.
No, it isn't. Plum sauce is a similar, but different sauce. Both are found in Americanized Chinese.
What would be interesting would be to know why Western Broccoli came to be used so much in Chinese-American restaurants. I can see how a single dish like General Tso's Chicken could be invented here and become popular but what explains the broad use of a particular ingredient that is not authentic at all ... and not very popular on its own in the first place?
doriangz I have a theory...it's because broccoli doesnt shrink when cooked and is cheap...
Also, to a lot of people, broccoli actually tastes pretty good. My wife is a Chinese immigrant, and she loves the stuff, and so does her brother's wife...
It is best when just blanched, then tossed with garlic - kind of how the Italians will serve it most often.
I did need to teach my wife that cutting up the big woody stems into little chunks just gives you little woody chunks - if you want *tender* broccoli, you need to buy smaller heads, which haven't begun to turn woody, and even then, you need to throw away the bigger stems...
That lesson was a culture shock for her...
Chinese brocili is better😑😑😑😑😑😑😑😑😑👲👲👲👲👲👲👲👲👲👲👲👲👲👲
Cheap, takes up room, lets you tell your mom or wife you ate vegetables when nagged about it. (unless you pick around it like me)
Whenever I go to my best friend's house (usually with other people), they order "Chinese" food ALWAYS AGAINST MY WILL. They love that crap, and I hate it soooo much. They do the classic one liter of soy sauce per grain of rice stuff, and I want to die. They sound like pigs too! I'm like: once you go to China, this will become disgusting. And then they laugh and spray their sweet and sour spit all over my face. That was my daily rant. Back to studying for AP Euro.
Modern Chinese Speaker LOL that was nice
When you did chinese in quote you meant americanised
"Chop Suey," as I heard it, was leftovers. Some California gold miners came in after a Chinese multi course meal and asked for something to eat. The restaurant owner gathered up what hadn't been eaten and served it up. The gold miners pronounced it great and asked the Cantonese cook what it was. Along with the stretched-with-leftovers rice, that's how American Chop Suey came to be. (American Fortune Cookies came along much later.;)
Wow. I was prepared to severely disagree with this video because dishes invented by Chinese Americans back in the day are still "authentic" in their own way (adapting dishes to the locally available ingredients is necessary).
But...honestly, I would never eat any of the abominations listed in the video, except for egg rolls. I may love spring rolls more, but the bumpy egg rolls have a crazy weird appeal all their own. But yeah, all the other stuff is horrible and awful.
Still, our family's favorite Chinese American invented dish is "Mu Shu Pork". My father, a Taiwanese immigrant, was actually disappointed when he couldn't get that dish anywhere back home.
I have to agree. I grew up in a very chinese-american neighborhood. Yes, I was that one Hak guai, who hung out with all the Asians
+Isaac Kuo "Mu Shu Pork" is not invented by Chinese American. It's a traditional dish in Shandong (Northern China) and has been included cookbook for hundreds of years.
Yes, it's a traditional dish from northern China.
Not many restaurants in Taiwan serves the dish, but you can find "Mu Shu Pork"(木須肉) in Taiwan. Not sure if it would taste the same as in US.
Ok, I'm glad you schooled me on this stuff. However, I'm still going to eat it cuz I love it so much.
I just watched the documentary, "The Search for General Tso." It was very interesting. Tso's chicken was created by Chef Peng of Tawian who was inspired by Hunan flavors and named the dish after the General. It was created by a Taiwanese chef who could not even speak English so that is authentic enough for me and even if it wasn't the meal is delicious. Who cares what you eat or don't eat. if you don't eat it, you're missing out.
I was at a restaurant with a foreign exchange student & she asked "Is this what Canadians & Americans actually think Asians eat?" after she skimmed through the menu lol >X-]
So funny, this is exactly my experience but in reverse of watching Chinese people in "western" restaurants in china. seeing someone dipping fries into icecream was one particular favourite, or attempting and failing to eat a whole pizza slice with chopsticks. And they have the weirdest combo of foods on one plate like every nationality of white-people-food all mixed up together. Bananas as pizza toppings lol. tomatoes on cream cakes...
What! Tons of people dip fries in ice cream!
urgg gross!
Fries dipped in ice cream is very common in the western U.S. especially if the fries are very crunchy. The fries themselves are just a different sort of starch that is the carrier for the salt. The taste is a contrast of the sweetness of the icecream and the salt from the fries.
That said, the rest of your examples sound umm... experimental. ;)
Firestormlover that's really gross. people do some weird stuff in the US.
Firestormlover
It's kind of fun to see how even little things like that change from region to region. Even though my province and my Uncle's state aren't very far from each other, he still gave me this very surprised look when I put vinegar on my french fries because he'd never seen anyone do it before. Apparently the same thing happened with my mother (sister to my uncle) when she saw my dad do it for the first time.
I'm loving this channel.
Chinese ppl dont eat a lot of cheese...??? more like no cheese, at least in China. Except me. I love cheese. String cheese, cheddar, extra cheese on my pizza!!!!!
In the modern era, cheese is a by product from other milk products. Like Low-Fat or Skim Milk. All that extracted fat is made into cheese and marketed to people.
you reply is crude and pointless.
They have cheese in china/Taiwan now. It's just not the same, and it's used in cooking differently.
And lactose intolerant people can eat cheese. It really depends on the individual persons allergy, but many lactose intolerant people just can't drink milk and need to supplement with processed dairy like cheese and yogurt.
I mean, Beijing is famous for yogurt, Chinese people can't all go into shock from dairy products right?
Sonny Zheng true because the reason most Asian countries don't sell dairy products much like cheese is because most Asians are lactose intolerant which might have changed over time but a big percentage still are
Sorry... but in Macau we love broccoli. Any Chinese restaurant we sometimes use broccoli as a decor and dish 2 in 1.
Everyone gather round the fire eye brough chopsticks punctured thru egg rolls and whos got the duckauce. LOL
I am chinese but I love cheese. But for chinese restaurant food I only eat the steamed rice noodles with beef, the beef meatball, and that's about it. the rest are okay but id rather eat the beef meatballs or steamed rice noodles with beef inside.
Not entirely true. It really depends on which part of China you live in.
This is the first video I saw from this channel. Since subscribed and been following it for a couple years now. Ah, memories.
you don't have to care if it's authentic or not, just don't come to a chinese supermarket and ask us for stuff like "sweet sour sauce".
THERE IS NO SUCH THING. and ppl return sauces because they don't taste "authentic" like the ones they have in the restaurant.
I sometimes go to a Chinese buffet and will see busloads of Chinese tourists eating there (I've literally seen tour buses offloading Chinese tourists in the parking lot several times). Funny thing is that they get served special dishes that are not on the buffet in a separate room - but they also eat from the buffet.
I actually don't like most of the items mentioned and I do prefer spring rolls over egg rolls. Most of the "Chinese" food served here in the US is too sweet for me. Btw, my ex-wife was Cambodian/Chinese and her spring rolls are awesome. She can also make some delicious dishes that I've never seen in restaurants and there is no English name for. But I draw the line at balut (duck egg) or some of those smelly pickled things she would eat.
DGPrepper same
Balut is a very intake experience if yr not Asian. Philippine friends took me to have some. shopkeeper & all the ppl around the store gathered to watch "white boy" eat balut. offering advice and laughing in surprise as I took the first bite. not bad, more of a textural thing.
michael martin everyone watched the yellow boy eat a hot dog
Must have been fun! Not everyone gets fully immersed in a different culture in their own country. Did you have just the one?
SoupDoup MoupLoup must have been fun! Not everyone gets fully immersed in a different culture in their own country. Did you have just the one?
I have legit never even seen these dishes...
I usually like these videos, but this just seems judgemental and myopic. I don't eat any of these things (I'm vegetarian), but clearly dishes inspired by the cuisines of one part of the world gets modified when brought to another part of the word to:
appeal to the tastes of the other location
include ingredients that are locally available
to incorporate cooking techniques/ingredients more familiar to the other location.
Sure, that doesn't mean that people from the original culture have to like it but it is what it is.
What's judgemental or myopic about pointing out that what you believe is Chinese food is actually American? I usually don't eat at Chinese restaurants because they're pretty much the same with the exact same menu in my town. I'm a vegetarian, too. In my experience, you have a greater chance of getting something more authentic and vegetarian at a Thai or Vietnamese restaurant. Authentic vegetarian Japanese is a lot harder to come by. It seems so many Japanese dishes that look vegetarian are flavored with fish-based dashi. So, you have to be careful with that (as a vegetarian).
Hey Paul, are you an American?
If you are, it would be like somewhere in china, they serve taro paste filled pineapple with XO sauce and serve it in "Authentic American Cuisine"
If you're a brit.... well, I apologise for your lack of tasty food, and I don't know, imagine they made that as a tea flavour or something.
Bane Williams McDonald's in China serves pineapple pies and taro pies. It's different from what's served in the states, but I wouldn't go and judge those who order it or look down at them and say, "That's not real McDonald's food."
+Paul Lambert but it is... The fries and mc chicken and filet of fish and pancakes and sausage egg mcmuffin are all spot on (creepily so).
Couldn't go two minutes without mentioning you're a vegetarian. Typical.
I'm Chinese. I have never seen or heard of these foods
I assume you aren't an American chinese? :D
+kingofsapi I'm Australian Chinese if that counts
Yes! I think so anyway.
Oooh! Then I'm curious, any chinese dishes over there that were invented to cater for the local palette? :D
+kingofsapi no not really. Australia seems to try to copy whatever the Americans do anyways :p
Most of these are American Chinese dishes. Pupu is from Hawaii. I'm not sure how it got to be Chinese. Maybe Hawaiian Chinese.
How about an episode on what to order when you are stuck in an Americanized Chinese restaurant.
now i want chinese food
Celesx3 should always want chinese food!
sadly everything i eat from the Chinese restaurant was featured in this video lols
+Strictly Dumpling I prefer Vietnamese food. I can eat that all the time
+CelesWorld Yes! Steamed chinese broccoli in oyster sauce.
yeah but Chinese food that Chinese people don't eat!!
It is authentic, just isnt Chinese food, it is Chinese-American, which is what america is all about!
Next time I go camping and someone pulls out hotdogs and marshmallows at the campfire, I'm dropping elbows and pulling out some egg rolls. Great video.
Most of these dishes were created by Chinese immigrants who moved to America. They made dishes they thought would appeal to American taste. So blame yourselves. These were not created by Bobbi Joe in Alabama of what he thought Chinese food was like, but twist on Chinese food that they thought would fit in. In short the immigrants are to blame for this.
+Matthew Hood - Why blame them, we should praise them for creating a new an awesome cuisine.
+Greyswyndir hear hear
+Matthew Hood They made dishes that would be franchised out and be sold across one of the world''s largest countries and be enjoyed by the majority of the 350m people in it. I don't think the term "blame" is the right thing to say.
+Matthew Hood why blame? Americans like these.
+Nicole zhong I know! What's to blame? They incorporated the ingredients that we have in North America and made something fabulous with it. Very inventive and creative. Don't you just hate food snobs!!?? WE should be darn grateful that we even have food!! So many go hungry on this planet! And believe me, the Chinese know all about going hungry!! I once heard a chef say that if it has crawled, walked, slithered, flown, or swam on this earth....the Chinese have eaten it! Who else would think of making soup out of a bird's nest??!!! The problem we North Americans have is we just plain eat TOO much!! LOL LOL!!
I don't care if it can't be found in China, I'm just grateful someone invented them! They taste dang good! LOL.
In other words: "Fried chicken = good eatin'"....
Cringe
I love watching your videos, I learn so much, and then want authentic Chinese food.
I live in the Florida panhandle. All the Chinese restaurants here have Mexicans cooking the food. In my apartment complex, my neighbors above me are all Hispanic and all work at a local Chinese restaurant. So what Im saying is my people are diversified!! Viva La Raza!! lol
I went to Mexico and the Chinese people over there were cooking Chinese food. It looked even nastier than the one here in the U.S.
+Frank Guadiana Viva La Blanco Raza!
Really bro?? My name is Francisco Jose Guadiana.. I'm American
+Frank Guadiana Yeah Frank, I looked at your photo and right away thought Negro. Then I thought Scandinavian with blonde hair and blue eyes. What does it matter. Food doesn't worry about race. Don't you just love going to an ethnic restaurant for some authentic American style Chinese, Mexican, or Italian food? Seriously, you're not Scandinavian? :)
+Frank Guadiana We are all American if we liveand Born in America... I think you wanted to say that you are From the United States, people born in Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama are also American cause America Is a Continent NOT a Country. LOL
Dude. You're puzzled by where this stuff comes from? Google is your friend. It's really easy.
So most of these dishes and foods was created in America by Chinese owners of Chinese restaurants because they couldn't get Chinese ingredients that were edible, because they weren't fresh. Who wants to eat six-month-old bamboo shoot that's limp and has fungus growing on it? So they adapted to the vegetables they found in America. Some foods were also created for railroad workers by Chinese cooks who were trying to make something that both the white (usually Irish or other immigrant) and Asian workers would eat.
What you got was "fusion" food before that was fashionable. Authentic is good for food snobs, or for people who want to make "home food' for the emotional comfort, or who just want to know that they're eating the thing that people who invented the cuisine really eat. But if you can't get fresh ingredients, you have to have the nostalgia or it tastes NASTY.
Chop Suey was invented in San Francisco during the gold rush. They couldn't get a guaranteed supply of the same fresh vegetables so they just got what they could, cut it up the way they would have done with "authentic" vegetables, and then tossed it into a quick stir-fry and threw in some noodles and maybe a few teaspoons of meat because they could sell it for cheap, because it was IN DEMAND. (This I knew from pre-google)
The "General Tso's Chicken" recipe really is one of six easy ways to use the same slightly-too-much-batter deep fried chicken breast. (If you do it in-house it comes out a lot like velveted chicken, but if you buy the pre-battered frozen chicken chunks like WAY too many places do, it comes out like deep fried chicken chunks everywhere.) It's also popular for restaurants that feed a lot of people because you can make six sauces, deep-fry or fast stir-fry the chicken, throw it in a fast or pre-made sauce to heat it and you get an edible food that can give the illusion of extreme variety. If it's by some miracle made fresh, it uses a 'tempura' technique which is Japanese not Chinese and was invented by some food scientists working for agribiz who wanted to provide a faster way to mass-produce "velvet" meat, and failed miserably. The stories behind the foods are all a marketing trick
Spring rolls from south Asia are made with a translucent (sometimes wheat usually rice) flour rolled thin, and not cooked. They seldom have meat unless you get the Thai or Vietnamese version which may have thin sliced pork, tofu, and/or steamed shrimps in the wrapper (and will be served with peanut sauce.) They usually have rice noodles and/or bean sprouts and maybe some other vegetables, cut in long thin sticks.
Fried spring rolls (Chinese) are made with super-thin wheat flour wrappings and look almost exactly the same as Filipino "Lumpia" -- which are always deep fried. Lumpia contain meat, and 'authentic' fried spring rolls contain a small amount of ground pork along with shredded cabbage, carrots and bamboo shoot. Same food, minor regional differences.
Egg rolls were invented by a Chinese-American chef in New York in the early 1930s, and are made with thicker "wonton" wrappers which makes them have the tougher texture and the bubbly surface, almost always contain cabbage and pork and carrots, but originally had "“bamboo shoots, roast pork, shrimp, scallions, water chestnuts, salt, MSG, sugar and pepper" as fillings. They were deliberate fusion cooking, finding something that appealed to the New York customers.
Really, Egg Roll and (fried) Spring Rolls have about the same amount of oil, if you eat the same volume. Egg Rolls are just bigger.
Fortune cookies were almost certainly invented by Makoto Hagiwara, who created San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden, as a snack for guests to nibble as they went through the gardens. However, because they were popular, people asked for them in any Asian restaurant so they caught on from there. No restaurant owner would refuse to serve a thing that people asked for a lot, even if it wasn't "authentic" especially since they were made in huge volumes in a factory.
Duck sauce: Yeah, it's gross. Hoisin or Plum sauce go with duck, not Turkish Apricot sauce. Unless it's Turkish duck? However, what's up with OYSTER sauce? It's like it usually hasn't even seen an oyster. (I didn't even realize that you could make it by just cooking oysters the right way.)
Pu Pu Platter. HAWAIIAN. The word "pu-pu" is Hawaiian slang from the 1950s for 'snack food'.
This one's REALLY easy to find. Google is your friend when you're faced with confused outrage over cultural strangeness.
They started serving them in a few Chinese-American restaurants in the late 1960s because it was POPULAR. The nasty blue thing is "sterno gel" -- gelatinized alcohol. It's used to heat the tiny grill so you can WARM the food if it's gotten cold, and is otherwise just a gimmick because the stuff they normally served in AUTHENTIC HAWAIIAN settings was a reference to hibachi cooking (imported from Japan) and some of the foods weren't fully cooked until you put them on the little hibachi thing.
Nearly all these gimmicky foods? Innovations by Chinese and Chinese-American restaurants to bring in customers and make their experiences special, so they'll come back.
Not sure why Duck sauce though. (Checking google) Ah. Yeah. It was available as a nearly-the-same-flavor as Plum sauce. So it's used in the same places you would use Plum sauce.
Stephen Hutchison A
Actually, in order to make a living, those early Chinese chefs simply junked Chinese dishes by adding more sugar, oil, salt and colors to make the dishes extremely tasty to attract western customers. That's the reason of western Chinese food. But still, these junk dishes are not Chinese food. Not at all. Similarly, many Asians think Pizza Hut is authentic Italian pizza, would Italians agree with that?
Stephen Hutchison
So, you're point is that the answers are easily found online, but then you go on to include your own interpretations, or copies, of said answers??
Fyi, some of your (likely copied and pasted) info is wrong: For example: The terms spring roll and egg roll are used interchangeably in English-speaking countries, so your entire explanation on them is both pointless and only minimally accurate under very specific circumstances. Hell, in the PNW -they usually call the fresh, uncooked rolls "salad rolls", instead of "spring rolls" like you'd hear up and down California (usually ONLY in SE Asian restaurants). BTW, I'm Filipino: there are different types of lumpia, not all of them fried, just like there are different types of egg or spring rolls.
-You need a hobby. Well, a different hobby.
Making me soooo hungry!
🍱 I'm not brocisist. 🌳 I am PRO-BROCOLLI !🍜
the duck sauce is actually plum sauce and it is used as a dip for Cantonese style roasted ducks. So if you Chinese and you from da south, you would actually eat duck sauce with duck. And most fruits and vegetables Chinese people eat now are all imported into china in the later dynasties, mostly during Ming and Qing. Most native plants that ancient Chinese people ate would be considered inedible weed by modern Chinese. Only native plant ancient and modern Chinese people both ate was chives.
i grew up in Hong Kong and remember having duck sauce as condiments along with roasted duck.
Makes sense as Mike is northern Chinese.
no that's not true, China is really big and there are a lot of farms and places where they grow fruits, it's just that different fruits grow in different seasons, and you will mostly get to eat some fruits only in some seasons.
Xirui Yang na the op means the daily vegetables Chinese people now eat originally were imported into China. Doesn't mean they don't grow them in China, just the origin.
It's partially true, not entirely, there's a trend to eat traditional Chinese veg now because of health reasons.
He used to live in Hong Kong though right? Shouldn't he know about this?
I've never heard of most of these dishes mentioned.
because you live in China
+Stephen Doggart Me neither and I grew up occasionally eating Chinese takeaway food! :-D
From his aforementioned list, I only know of Chop Suey ...
Dude... that accent when mimicking the parents... I freaking died.
my mother is from Taiwan and I've lived there for more than a few years. They do use Western broccoli quite a bit there actually.
I always thought egg rolls were just what Americans called spring rolls. I didn't realise they had an extra layer of actual egg. We just have spring rolls in Australia and the flaky pastry on the outside is the best part!
+daynightandsarah I'm American and I'm still confused. I order eggrolls and may get something light and flaky like a spring rolls, or I may get a heavy eggroll. Or I order a spring roll from a Thai joint and get a something cold wrapped in really thin rice paper. All can be delicious, but when you are in a new place it's a damn crap shoot.
+Sc Z We call the cold one 'cold rolls' lol. Language is a funny thing.
What Chinese people call spring rolls is actually not fried at all and is literally like the healthiest thing ever because it's not deep fried at all. It's usually on the cool side and wrapped in rice paper. And yes other people from areas around China also eat this.
+daynightandsarah Chiko Rolls are the Australian egg roll equivalent - no Chinese were used in inventing these - designed to be frozen then chucked into a deep fryer. The Australian 'Chinese' invention that is going back to China is 'Prawn Toast' - a flattened prawn sandwiched between two thin slices of bread and then deep fried, sesame or other spices optional.
Bruce Lee Oh! Chiko rolls. Now I know what egg rolls are like anyway. I've got something for comparison :)
love your vids Mikey!
If I may, a close friend of mine is from a diplomatic family with close ties to the Nationalist Government that left Mainland China to preserve its culture in Taiwan. He's told me that his grandfather, who was part of Chiang Kai-shek's government, said that General Tso's Chicken was a dish developed by Peng Chang-kuei, the banquet chef for the National Government. In fact, the restaurant he founded in Taiwan still serves his original recipe to this day.
Eh I'ma eat whatever. I don't care if it's authentic if it's tasty.
i love all your videos!
i am Chinese and i don't think everything is true in this video.
I am from HK and they are some "real" chinese food to me.
Wing C yup! I'm from HK as well btw
HK isn't really "Chinese" though, just because the brits foolishly gave it back to the reds. It's its own distinct place.