People mistakenly think American cheese isn't real cheese because they think all American cheese is like Kraft slices. Regular American cheese is just basically a type of mild cheddar and Colby that are blended with an emulsifier so that it melts easier. This is a joke about French people believing it
They've also never heard of the Wisconsin cheese industry. Every cheesemaker in Wisconsin has to go through a state-regulated apprenticeship program which France doesn't even require.
That's cute! France has 47 AOP cheeses where the milk, geography, production and aging are legally tied to specific millenia old traditions and terroirs
...where exactly do you think American cheese making knowledge came from? "Millenia old traditions" yes, and some of people carried those traditions to America 300 years ago. It's just that here, unlike France, we understand that sometimes you can actually change things without the whole world ending lmao
Welp then, they should. There was that Netflix spécial on the nun that got a french recepie and could not sell her cheese due it didnt followed US régulations-like she aged them in a woodbarrel instead of stainless Steel cilinders, did not used emulsifiers nor chemicals, etc. Then, a bunch of cheese got infected with a bacteria, and the only one left was hers, cause the cheese made home in the wood, and killed the pathogèns and whatnot.
So, industrialization for mass production and a miopic hyperfocus on production techniques résulted in subpar indefensible cheese.
Thanks for trying to shoehorn in some over-exposed political commentary into this discussion about cheese, it's very helpful. Also, that's not what anyone who came here for the World Cup seems to have said. Shockingly, when people actually come to America and learn more about it than whatever their local news fear mongers about, they tend to love it here. Or they came in poor faith with the express purpose of finding things to bitch about, and those opinions honestly don't matter a lick.
That's true of technique but you're skipping over all the other things that make french cheese so deep and unique: local breeds, pastures, climate, microbes etc.. (terroir) you can't just transpose those things. I also don't doubt that Wisconsin can make good cheese but overall it's a lot harder to come by in the States than it is in France
I don’t know if you know this but everywhere in America has good cheese options, every major supermarket has bins filled with different cheeses from all over the US and the world. Cheese shops are not an uncommon sight here. Our farmers markets have local cheesemakers, I just bought a lovely goat cheese from the cheese shop down the road that was made a few miles from my house.
People here like cheese so there is a market for good cheese, common sense.
Moreso the whole “cutting off heads and surrender in a war thing” which you know, the comment i replied to was complaining about someone else doing with the shooting thing?
I'm in a small mountain town in the South and my local grocery store has an entire isle of specialty cheeses. They've got a section for most major regions, a Spanish one, a Switzerland one, a German one, an English one, and a huge French and Italian section. Full of stuff from over the world, with plenty of location dependant kinds along with various Wisconsin types. I counted once and they had 7 or 8 different kinds just of Italian cheeses that I regularly buy, probably more in there that I haven't looked for. And that's just different kind, with multiple brands for each kind.
That's just here, I can find even more in the slightly bigger small town near me.
For reference, my town is so small and shitty that we're the town where the Squidbillies in the adult swim show came from. They just gave it a different name.
Even in the middle of nowhere we have a good selection. In a city you can get literally anything.
Right? I live in rural PNW and we have a huge selection in our tiny grocery store, and we have a few cheese shops. I can get all the cheese I want and I don’t even live in a city. Americans like cheese, it’s idiotic to think that our dumb capitalism isn’t trying to make all the money they can off that. I would even argue that Americans eat a much more diverse cheese selection since we don’t have as much snobbery around our own cheese being the better option. Why just eat American cheese when you can try all the cheese?
Europeans will tell you their shit smells like roses
No but we will point to our local techniques which are much more sophisticated, our local regulations which protect us much more against factory slop, and the end products which are on average of much higher quality.
I'm sure there's some amazing artisan gourmet shit going on in the US that rivals EU quality, but the point is our industrial-grade supermarket-bought stuff is orders of magnitude better than yours. It's just the natural result of a stronger quality culture, from field to factory to shelves.
Think about it, it even applies to McDonald's. It would be illegal to sell us what they sell you so their products are vastly different if you get them in Europe.
There is no need to be pretentious about X
Yeah, so says every culture that is just not very good at X. It could be worse, i mean look at Mexico jesus christ those guys suck even harder at making cheese.
Think about it, it even applies to McDonald's. It would be illegal to sell us what they sell you so their products are vastly different if you get them in Europe.
McDonald's was the same garbage in Germany as it was back in the States. Shocker, garbage is garbage.
our local techniques which are much more sophisticated
"Ah, you see Pierre, those stupid Americans will never understand the rustic subtleties of force feeding geese more than they would ever eat in their lifetimes so we can harvest their liver"
Then I basically went behind a dumpster in Rome and there was a small pizza place that looked like they never fixed it after being bombed during WW2. Even that place had better pizza with fresher ingredients than what you'd find in the US by picking a random pizza place.
And the reason that happens is precisely because Italians are so obnoxious about food. Same for the French.
You call it pretentious, I realized they just have high standards. Americans will eat anything as long as it's deep fried and has sugar added.
There are a lot of bad restaurants in Italy just as there are in the US. I still need to go out of my way to find quality food. I know because I am here now. Even the top rated places I find recommended by locals are hit or miss.
I'm gonna guess you're in Rome and were recommended tourist trap restaurants since you exhibit the grace of a tourist. I'm happy to make recommendations. Good luck having the same experience in Toscano, Lombardia, or Emilia-Romagna lol
The quality of produce used in Italian restaurants BLOWS AWAY the 95%+ of American restaurants who use bio-engineered, tasteless, processed foods from Aramark and Sysco whose onions, garlic, mushrooms, milk, butter are all substandard. Go to /r/KitchenConfidential if you don't believe.
American food is drenched in fat and salt to hide the noticeable drop-off in quality. Then you pay 3-5x for the privilege of eating standardized slop. Dystopian.
So you can’t just walk into any restaurant and get good food in Italy? Thanks for proving my point.
Go ahead and post the restaurants. I’ll bet many of the places I’ve been to are on your list. The suggestions all came from Italians I worked with in the food industry in the US and Italy (Eataly).
Also you do realize there are restaurants in the US that don’t use Aramark and there are restaurants in Italy that use Sysco…
The idea that every restaurant in Italy is sourcing artisanal ingredients is nonsense.
If I want a good variety of the best food in the world I’m taking NYC over anywhere in Italy or France any day of the week.
Correct, it is my fifth language. Ah, yes the growing climates are similar.. This is exactly why American wines from Kansas, Long Island, and Idaho are world-renowned and Bordeaux and Loire are up-and-comers. Wisconsin gets rain and can grow green grass; therefore, the milk, cultures, and cheese taste exactly the same if not better. It's because of the free-dumb tariffs.
Telling the person who understands horticulture to touch grass is delicious.
"Those techniques can be used anywhere. You're just being ridiculous"
This is why there is no noticeable difference in quality with a Wisconsin Parmesan and a DOP Parmigiano-Reggiano. Or a Grand Cru Château Margaux and Uncle Willy's Bathtub Ripple.
Same fermentation techniques and a grape is a grape, you know.
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good thing I haven't done any of that then. there's this thing called "users" and if you look above a post you can see the name of the user who made it. helps to avoid confusion.
The guy having hard time understanding what you say is proving your point.
Edit: ah mais je comprends mieux t'es français, des que tu commences à parler de savoir-faire, de terroir, de traditions millénaires les américains tu les perds, pour eux même la nourriture c'est un cahier des charges avec une check liste à cocher.
In general, American cheeses are often crafted through industrial processes, using advanced technologies to ensure consistency and affordability. In contrast, European cheeses often adhere to time-honored, artisanal methods, prioritizing tradition and terroir. However, the differences extend beyond production methods; ingredients also play a pivotal role. American cheeses may incorporate additives and stabilizers for longer shelf life, while European counterparts typically rely on simpler, more natural components.
In general, American cheeses are often crafted through industrial processes
often
Not always. We have artisanal producers all over the place. Because they're artisanal they don't have market penetration nationwide and are only sold regionally, much like the producers in Europe.
By your own admission these are not wildly sold so the majority of Americans consume readily available brands.
Because artisanal producers exist, this means industrial producers who make, what like, 90-95% of overall US cheese consumed, is the same quality product?
At no point have I said America can't make something that approximates a decent copy of the original. All I've been saying is you literally cannot make AOP Brie or DOP Parmigiano-Reggiano in America. It's literally illegal, 1. 2, the quality is simply not the same. Sure you can make a chèvre but it will taste not anything like a Crottin de Chavignol.
There are over 350 million people in the US and it geographically spans an entire continent. There is no way to sell cheese to that many people without industrial processes.
We have entire convenience store chains even dedicated to organic and artisinal goods and you can find authentic food from every culture in anywhere with a decent amount of people. There's just also the cheapo slop options and the kinds of people who consume only that garbage.
I swear reddit is a race to the bottom in reading comprehension.
If you think you can feed a different cow breed a different diet and graze on different grass in different climates to produce different milk that is differently aged in an environment with different bacteria reacting differently in different air on different substrates to create different chemical products... And then expect it taste the same bc Murica...
They said American cheesemaking process was the same as European and yielded the same quality as AOP/DOP cheeses made using traditional methods and specific cow breeds fed specific diets endemic to restricted territories.
In Italy, the real cheese costings is about $14.86/lb from €28.90/kg. Before your president carried our Russia and Israel's bidding to blow up your economy, and devalue your dollar this was about $12/lb
So if you believe your domestic "Parmesan-like cheese product" quality made from cows fed soy, corn, or industrial byproducts like disstillers grain and fermented silage, who's pasteurized milks are filled with wood cellulose and potassium sorbate for accelerated aging and extended shelf life is on parity with DOP grass-fed, cave-aged raw milk, then by all means go ahead and buy the knockoff for the same price as the real original.
I personally don't rate Canal Street knockoffs of Quadrilatero della Moda high fashions the same as the authentic articles. But you are welcome to pay the same price for an inferior product if you'd like. That is your free-dumb as an American!
yeah sure, all of the best artisanal cheeses must use the worst possible process by the nature of the fact that they are located within the same continent... /facepalm
This is why people keep telling you you're insufferable. You ascribe all of the worst possible characteristics of the craft when it comes to American artisans but infer that all Fr*nch cheese makers only use the finest ingredients when that is demonstrably false.
You're not arguing in good faith and it makes you look childish
I cannot stress enough how much a crock of bullshit this is, lol. You're just saying "our local cheese is better, and even though you have all of the same things, except flavored by your specific regions and tastes, it'll never match up against our, exactly the same product (except slightly different by only the metrics that are conveniently uncopy-able)
Did you expect anything different from the same people that think obsess over where wine is produced? You can literally use the same grapes, same soil, same fertilizers, same climate and they will pretend it's somehow different.
It's just people getting high off their own farts.
Not only that, Oregon has AMAZING climate for growing certain types of wines (especially Pinot Noir). Growers in the region have been buying up property in cooler, higher altitude and wind swept areas in anticipation of climate change, so when weather and ecosystems shift in the near future, they will have nice soil for those types of grapes.
The French are also doing this, but the ones that are are moving either way up north (out of their little magical historical winemakers regions) and in many cases out of France entirely.
So congrats France, you want to be snooty about your microbiomes and regions?... They aren't going to be yours much longer. You'll be growing your grapes in England soon.
American cheese and wine is amazing and people who act like Frech cuisine is the best have been embarrassing themselves since the 80s.
You literally cant use the same grapes, same soil, same fertilizers and same climate.
Literally every difference ends up changing the product.
Not to say US wines are bad and French wines are the best, but its pretty much impossible to make the exact same wine in 2 different locations
If you think there aren't people literally taking soil from france and using grapes from france in a green house simulating the exact same levels of watering, sunlight, and humidity then I have a bridge to sell you.
We know when the sun rises and when it sets at any given spot on the planet, for each day of the year. We know the weather. A random fuck can do this in their greenhouse I promise you large corporations are doing exactly this on scales you can't even fathom
Large corporations cant even make the exact same wine from the same batch of grapes.
What youre suggesting is controlling literally everything about not only the plant growing process, but the aging, the material youre aging in, the environment youre aging in, and another thousand different factors that all matter.
You could take all those things, put em in a greenhouse, and it still wouldnt be the same
Genuine question. Are you claiming that people are incapable of performing a task in a controlled environment because of random variables, while claiming that the same task can be completed in an uncontrolled environment with more random variables?
No, im telling you that theres no way to control every circumstance to the point that you can create an exact replica of a different wine made in a different place.
You could have the exact same grape grown the exact same way and the wine will still end up different due to aging, bottling, storage, transport or any of the factors that go into winemaking.
Ive had to send back half pallets of wine because part of the batch, from the same winehouse, same year, same production process and same place, was significantly sourer than the rest.
It's the same thing Europeans day about American beer. Nevermind that any brewer in the world will agree that American beer sits right up there with Belgium and Germany.
Yes, even those light beers. While I don't personally like them, the process to create a clean beer at that scale is very difficult.
Eh, i don't agree about those light beers. Generally, the true "mass beers" from the US are bad to only middling to me, but they again have that in common with a lot of European mass-brewed lowest common denominator beers. The only difference there might be, and this could totally be a wrong perception from movies and tv shows: apparently, bringing bud light to a boys' night or other party is acceptable in the US, while few would dare bring the cheap, watery stuff to a similar event here, unless they want to communicate to the host that he's a pillock not worth better beer.
American Adjunct Lagers are just easy drinking, inoffensive beers. They're perfect for a hot day outside, whether it's tailgating before a sports game, sitting on a boat or the beach, playing softball in the park, or just playing yard games with friends. They're also incredibly cheap, so if your goal at a party is to get drunk you can bring a 30 pack for the same price as a 6 pack of really good beer.
And what is impressive about those beers is the insane consistency. Bud and Bud light are the 2nd and 4th most produced beers in the world. I've never had Snow(the largest), but I have had a not insignificant amount of Tsingtao(3rd largest) and it does not have near the consistency of Bud and Bud Light.
What's impressive is brewing at that scale and getting the exact same beer with no off notes every single time. Especially when it's a style with as little flavor as an American Adjunct Lager, there is absolutely nowhere to hide any mistake.
I would never describe them as "good beers", just inoffensive and well-brewed.
California wines only became popular because they beat French wines in a blind taste competition a few decades ago. Made a whole movie about it, great watch. Why else would those wines even exist? We are talking about Northern California specifically not Los Angeles
We know the rest of the world is better than us at a lot of things, assuming you aren't only listening to the dumbest of us, which you really shouldn't do. Math, trains, healthcare, basic human decency, there are plenty of things the US is shit at. Food is not one of them, we have some of the best and most varied food culture you'll find anywhere in the world. It is pure stereotypical French self-superiority to think that they have the best cheese and wine in the world. I think the Italians do both better, for what it's worth
Italy is a least in the conversation, the US is not. And you're really ignorant if you think France is not a least a solid contender for being n1 for both cheese and wine
You're the ignorant one for thinking American wines and cheeses aren't in the conversation. Do me a favor, look up The Judgement of Paris to read how US wines beat French wines in 2 seperate blind taste competitions held in Europe. And for cheese, Rogue River Blue, an American blue cheese, was named World Champion at the 2019 World Cheese Awards. American cheeses regularly feature in the top 10 of those awards as well
You look down on us with the disdain of the old French monarchs without bothering to ask yourself if your assumptions are even correct. For
Oh wow they won in some competitions 😮 that changes everything France has never won any competitions and if you look at the top 10 most prestigious PDO in the world most of them are defo not french, that's for sure. No one outside of america see's a bottle of california wine and thinks it's gonna be a good price value, because they arent.
Same goes for your cheese (if we can even call most of what you produced cheese)
The irony of an american talking about other countries having a supriority complex 🤣🤣🤣
Blue cheese is cheese made with Penecilliam mold, that's it. It has nothing to do with where it's made you insufferable European douchebag.
And guess what, not all Americans think they're superior to the rest of the world. I'm one of them. I'm not trying to argue that we have the best cheese or wine here, just that it's not th horrific monstrosity you seem convinced that it is. You, however, clearly have a superiority complex with your inability to admit that maybe we make cheese and wine that's just as appreciated as yours.
To hell with you and your upturned gentrification nose. I'm going to bed
"nOT aLl AmERicANs tHinK tHey SuPeRioR" after being absolutely butthurt at the idea that other countries could be better at anything. France, Italy, Argentina, Spain and even some smaller producers like chile or australia take a dump on your "wine"
America has a lot of good things, food culture is certainly not part of it
The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, also known as the Judgment of Paris, was a wine competition to commemorate the United States Bicentennial, organized in Paris, France, on 24 May 1976
lmao they won something 50 years ago and still brag about it
'murica food culture is mac and 'cheese' and dont tell them its dog food, or they will bark at you lol
Literally nearly all French grape vines were imported from California, buddy. You are drinking wine made from American grape vines. We saved France from a vine blight that wiped out nearly every single grape vine in France, and California had legacy French vines it imported in the mid 1800s.
You're taking a less relevant sub-point and commenting on that instead of the main point, which is that, unlike France, the cheese eating culture in America does not center around the consumption of artisinal cheeses, but rather mostly commercialized cheese products optimized for melting.
What is the actual point though? That's just lumping a bunch of unrelated things together and contrasting some kind of average of the collection against some other arbitrary set of concepts vaguely associated with France.
It doesn't make any sense or carry any useful meaning to combine all consumption of products marketed as cheese that happens in any country, region, or subdivision of the world under the label of its "cheese eating culture". Some Americans get quesadillas for lunch; some put Parmesan on their spaghetti; some have brie on their toast; some go to a dinner party and eat a varied selection of the artisanal cheeses widely available in any moderately large American city before writing pretentious posts about cheese on Reddit.
They functionally have no effect upon or relationship to each other whatsoever. It seems like this only conveys that France is smaller or more culturally homogenous or something else irrelevant to any individual's experience with cheese.
What's your point? That culture doesn't exist and every country is just a collection of individuals with zero association?
The point I was making is that if only 5% of the cheese consumption in the US is artisinal or farmstead (quick Google check) and the remaining 95% is commercial "cheese products", then the comment that Americans largely eat garbage cheese and don't have a well established fine cheese culture is entirely valid on a demographical basis.
Even the parmesan on pasta you mention, do you mean actual proper parmessan or the dried dust stuff you guys sprinkle out of a shaker?
There's a pretty pervasive trash food culture in the US, and the existence of better dining options doesn't cancel that out if they are considerably less prevalent.
To the rest of the world, you are the country in which spray can cheese is a commercially successful product and has been for 6 decades.
Region absolutely makes a difference. Bizarrely, I've found a dairy herd in the USA that originates from my place of birth and while incredible, the products taste very different. The butter and ice cream from an American herd of the same cattle are less creamy in both texture and taste. The colour and consistency of the butter is similar, but the ice cream is nowhere near as thick.
Maybe it's the different additives, maybe it's process since in baking, a different speed on a mixer can give different results when making icing or batter. A lot of it is probably determined by them being fed on different grass in a different climate, but any food product that is produced 6000 miles away from each other is going to be different even if many variables are the same.
You're getting downvoted, but I totally agree with you, because you're primarily talking about process and not inalienable differences. I'm not saying region makes no difference, but the parts of regionality that are unable to be copied do not provide a difference in objective quality in 99.99% of cases. American butter standards have it produced at (typically) a lower butter fat than European creameries. I imagine that's the difference in taste and texture.
There's also then weird things like how many Californian wines are actually more French than many French wines, as the grape vines grown in California were brought over from France in the 1800s, and France has had some Grape blights that wiped out all of their wine strains, and then had to import grapes from California!
Yes, people tend to downvote when they percieve negativity. However, I didn't actually say I didn't find the American products absolutely delicious. They were.
But I think we are also biased towards familiarity. Just like most people can tell between regular and diet colas, different additives do affect taste. The difference in colour between British and American fanta is a great visual example of a company altering their recipe according to where their product is being made and sold.
So french cheese is deep and unique because of things that dont have to do with cheese? And microbes CAN be transplanted, which is how some cheeses can be made in different places, unless you seriously mean the regional germs on the hands of cheese makers.
By your own logic, the cheese wouldn't be good if it were consumed either on its own or somewhere else entirely. You are indirectly saying that the appeal of french cheese is being in france
French people literally cannot have a conversation without haughtily talking down on other cultures. It’s like a cultural thing that literally they all do, I don’t think they can actually stop themselves from doing it.
If you keep that in mind when you interact with them they aren’t too bad.
Not to say they have but you totally can transpose cow breeds and microbes across the Atlantic, even back then. And Wisconsin climates are very similar to Continental Europe in many ways.
Also it's not hard to come by good cheese here, it's everywhere. Rogue River Blue, Humboldt Fog, Harbison, Cabot Cheddar, Hickory-Smoked Colby, Pleasant Ridge Reserve, Cougar Gold, the list goes on. Almost all of those are made in different states and have histories that begin with Europeans bringing their techniques here and refining them over a hundred years or more.
My local grocery store in my small town has hundreds of cheeses from all over the world. Its not harder to get anything here. If anything we have the best selection of anything we could possibly want.
You sound like one of those people who think good pizza or good bagels can only come from New York. It’s just simply not true; not to take away from French cheesemongers
This is just ignorance. If you had any idea how carefully these people make cheese you wouldn't be saying this dumb stuff. They're professionals at both places using the best modern techniques. All the way down to replicating the cows and their feed and water sources to be chemically the same.
if you actually understood the difference, you'd understand that a lot of the very specific kinds of cheeses that are unique to France can't actually be made in the US because it's illegal for cheese to not be pasteurized where as France allows for unpasteurized cheese production.
99% of the rest could all be recreated were it legal to do so, but it isn't so no one bothers, beyond that it's not like everyone in France eats 47 different kinds of cheese, it's niche there too, it just has recognition because France wants to protect and market their old traditional styles.
This isn't that deep, good cheese can be found everywhere.
Apart from perhaps local microbes, you can, but... Ship of Theseus and all. It's quality that varies. In the US, quantity over quality usually wins. And to do that, you need to cut some corners to speed or scale up. It's not like France doesn't have mass-produced crappy cheese either, even if a much lower market share. Guess where 'La vache qui rit' comes from.
In Europe, low-run artisanal cheeses can fetch high prices, so it's economical to do so. But there are plenty of cheese varieties that died out compared to the 18th century, say.
It's not hard to come by good cheeses at all you just have to go to places that sell good cheeses. If you're shopping at walmart and family dollar yeah your options are limited because youre going to a place driven by trying to get the lowest prices on goods possible. I hate to break the sterotype but we do shop other places lol.
don't doubt that Wisconsin can make good cheese but overall it's a lot harder to come by in the States than it is in France
My dude, there are like a thousand amazing cheeses available by the wheel or the pound for me to buy at any time of the day and night and I live in fucking Albuquerque. The US has so much cheese, that a lot of it goes bad and has to be thrown out.
Are you saying that there is no climate, no microbes, no pastures, and no local breeds in America? Did you know that the land in France isn't any older or more established than land anywhere else?
There are other places on the planet with their own climates and local variables.
I think you forget that America is 15.5 times BIGGER than france. You have great cheese, you have bad cheese, and you have mid cheese. Bc we almost have 400 million people. Ya fucking jagoff.
The primary reason why good cheese is hard to come by in the US isn't the environment, the tradition, the farmers, or even people using emulsifiers, it's the regulation.
All cheese in the US must be both pasteurized or aged for 60 days, for soft cheeses, to be legal. S
o you don't get things like Camembert de Normandie or anything delicious. You just get kinda everything tasting the same. Caves in different regions definitely taste different, but the FDA kills all that nuance.
In order to sell across state lines you must adhere to these standards, you might be able to find local artisans that do things "the right way", but no one alive today has tasted what American cheese could taste like.
I have a feeling most people on this comment thread didn't eat American cheese in the 1980s. Back then it was mostly filler and oils and no one should have ever called it cheese. It was cheap on purpose.
This couldn't be any Fürther from the truth If you claimed that Santa clause isn't real. If france wouldn't adhere to thosenspecific Rituals to create tons of Camembert, chevre, coulommiers, trappista, saint albray, Port Salut, bucheron etc etc, for the daily sacrifice in between thenmain course and Dessert, cthulhu will rise Form the ocean and throw a temper tantrum
No one is saying that American and French cheeses are the same cheese. I'm saying we got American cheese by taking European cheese making traditions and tweaking them to make something unique, but not inferior. Perhaps you are confused
It's just that here, unlike France, we understand that sometimes you can actually change things without the whole world ending lmao
How things change in France: usage of solar panels to cool your grape vines means you lose your designated origin status.
How things change in the US: vanilla is expensive, it is cheaper to raise beavers, kill them and use their anal glands to create something that tastes like vanilla, so we'll do that. Enjoy your vanilla ice cream
Frozen Dairy Desert.
Stop buying bottom shelf slop and assuming the trash you're buying is representative of the entire market. Everything of half-way decent quality is made with vanilla imported from Mexico.
High quality vanilla is generally imported from Madagascar (over 80% of global supply) even though the island isn't a native growing location. They take quality standards really seriously if you're dealing with a reputable source. Ironically vanilla extract is preferably derived from grade B vanilla due to the easier extraction process.
You know that we have all the “real” products in America as well, right? You’re pretty much just making fun of the poor here. I’m not poor, but I still consider that a dick move
You can't just use a different milk from a different cow fed a different diet in a different climate and expect it to taste like the real thing. Americans don't know what a real Brie tastes like, they know what a copy of a copy of a copy tastes like.
The reason Brie de Meaux is AOP protected is because of attempts by corporations to mimic the original product at a fraction of quality while charging a premium benefitting from name recognition. Literally to protect decent cheese from the McDonaldsification mass produced slop. Not dissimilar from me making and marketing my own Big Mac except they'd actually enforce brsnd protection laws for McD's
It's overall shocking how poor quality (taste, smell) produce Americans get yet pay 2-3x what Europeans do for worse quality.
You can barely find garlic that smells and tastes like garlic or a decent baguette, which are far easier to make than cheese.
Go buy a gallon of milk, ignore the necessary cheese cultures required, and make an AOP Brie de Meaux. I'll pay for shipping and will wait the 4-6 weeks. Put your money where your loud, fat, ignorant, /r/confidentallyincorrect mouth is.
There is or there can be no difference between European cheese and cheese found at your local shops. Unless you live in the EU, where cheese cultures are trademarked so you have to buy a specific cheese from a specific geographical region to experience the same taste. In places like North America and Australia, these cheeses can be grown locally at much better prices since they don’t have to pay to use that name. The science behind developing a certain type of cheese is pretty straightforward especially now that we can categorise and identify cultures.
Tldr: European cheese is overrated and overpriced, just buy local.
Do you honestly think that what you buy as a lookalike Parmigiano Reggiano is the same as the italian one, just without the name? I really hope I misunderstood your point. ofc a european cheese imported to the US would be overpriced, as it would be a US cheese imported to the EU. But the latter doesn't exist in reality cause there's no cheese worth importing from there
Yes. A Parmigiano Reggiano made in the USA is identical to a Parmigiano Reggiano made in Italy if they are made from the same type of milk and bacterial cultures (and whatever else goes into cheese that I don't know because I don't make cheese).
The ingredients and process matters. The location is irrelevant.
and whatever else goes into cheese that I don't know because I don't make cheese).
there's no need clarifying that, anyone with a working brain can get that in an instant. I don't know what to tell you, either you never tasted both or you are just brainwashed from the "America best" propaganda
You seem to be under the impression food can ONLY be mass produced in America and that to do otherwise is illegal. Don’t get me wrong Americans love the mass produced garbage, but if you spend 5 minutes looking outside a Walmart there is plenty of small “craft/artisanal” options for basically everything.
You know you can find good cheese in North America too. While cheddar is the most common in Canada every mid-sized city has a fromagerie that serves a variety of local and imported cheeses. I'm sure it's common in America as well. In my experience the best of the Canadian cheeses (which come in a very wide variety of styles) is better than the best of the imported French cheeses (though I stand by thinking the Dutch make better cheese than the French as well).
Or maybe you never had good french or italian cheese and are basing on nothing. The only support we both have for each own opinion is what comes from the food sector workers, where you won't find a single one actually thinking USA cheese is even comparable quality wise
Nope, I am a cheese lover and have had many different French and Italian cheese. Many of which are among my favourites. I stand by my opinion based on having tried many cheeses, you stand on your opinion based on hearsay
There's a lot of European products that have good equivalents in the Americas; two others are wine and olive oil because California naturally has great terrain for both. If I'm looking for a particular type or flavor the European version might be superior, but often the American version is equivalent in total quality.
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u/Remarkable_Rough_649 16h ago edited 16h ago
People mistakenly think American cheese isn't real cheese because they think all American cheese is like Kraft slices. Regular American cheese is just basically a type of mild cheddar and Colby that are blended with an emulsifier so that it melts easier. This is a joke about French people believing it