Sources: All of the information stated in this article is based on reliable sources, and is detailed at the end of the article
Written by Tachibana
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Preface
Generally speaking, we have to stir-fry and cook every day in our lives, and Chinese restaurants in European and American countries are also very popular, such as Kung Pao Chicken, Zuo Zongtang Chicken, Mapo Tofu and other stir-fried dishes, which are even more famous.
But have you noticed that one of the interesting things is that foreigners like to eat stir-fried food, but why don't they cook it at home? Do they only boil and simmer this way of cooking?
Cultural differences?
Europeans and Americans love to eat stir-frying, but stir-fry has a certain threshold, which is more difficult for them to get started, and not everyone can easily master it.
Go to the supermarket and buy bread and milk, make a simple sandwich, with some raw vegetables, dip it in a sauce, and a simple white man's rice is ready, so we will find that cooking is really too simple in Europe and the United States.
We like the strong aroma of food after it has been stir-fried at high temperatures, and Europeans and Americans prefer frying, which is a primitive and rough way of cooking.
Take steak as an example, Chinese like more than seven or eight points, or even fully cooked, can not accept steak with blood, as if returning to the primitive society of Ru Mao drinking blood, Xi cooked food Our taste is very different from Europe and the United States.
Foreigners express their incomprehension of this, they prefer to eat the original taste of the ingredients, beef is the taste of beef, chicken is the taste of chicken, they like medium rare, or even medium cooked beef, basically belongs to the appearance of just cut off, or directly raw, feel that the nutrients in the food will be lost after high temperature.
The Chinese people shouted incredible. So what else is there besides eating raw or cooked, don't worry, let's move on
Different standards of requirements for gastronomy
For Chinese, eating is a very important part of life, a good dish in addition to the real matching, taste is the most important, no matter how hard you get off work, you have to fry a dish to treat yourself.
Since ancient times, it is to eat well when there are conditions, and when there are no conditions, we must also find a way to eat well, and we can always find a way to make delicious food when we run in the water when we fly in the sky and the ground, which is the dedication to eating engraved in our bones, and the wisdom of life obtained in the long-term struggle for survival.
But Europeans and Americans do not have such a high standard for the taste, eat balanced nutrition, reasonable meat and vegetarian matching, and they are more concerned about the problem they like to eat large pieces of beef, no thorny fish, what ingredients are what taste, generally speaking, will not dominate.
They believe that high temperature will destroy the molecular structure of the food itself, so they generally choose the cooking method of boiling and frying, and vegetables are made into salads and eaten raw.
Western food originated from Italian court cuisine, the social etiquette of the aristocracy, the table culture is a very important part, and elegant eating reflects the class privileges and etiquette of the aristocracy.
Therefore, they will have a certain purpose to eat, for example, for business banquets, they usually like to eat hamburgers and steaks, which are nutritionally balanced and satiety.
So, why are there so many differences in eating Xi between China and the West?
Environmental differences, deciding what to eat
A long, long time ago, there was a serious disaster, the people had nothing to eat, the leaves, bark, and weeds on the road were eaten to the stomach, and the people were not able to make a living, and the emperor was puzzled after hearing this, and asked, since there is no rice, why not eat meat?
This story has always become a joke, but on the other side of the ocean, this is not a joke, the European diet has always been more meat, less food, so why do our staple food eat grain, and they eat meat, let's analyze it together.
The geographical environment and the type of food create the framework of the food structure, Europe is affected by the atmospheric circulation, has abundant water vapor, the formation of rainfall, the weather is humid and rainy, this weather is not suitable for growing crops, vegetables are also prone to rot and spoilage, not easy to store.
However, the unique geographical environment is unexpectedly very suitable for the growth of pasture, and the grass that grows contains various nutrients makes the local animal husbandry highly developed, rich in cattle and sheep, milk and other animal food, meat and dairy products are easier to obtain.
Eating meat, drinking milk, and liking to eat sweets constitute the characteristics of the European diet, which likes to eat meat, and the cooking method is the more traditional primitive cooking method of boiling and roasting.
In China, on the other hand, the vast expanse of land provides convenient conditions for farming
Chinese's enthusiasm for farming is engraved in the blood, the earliest can be traced back to the primitive social period, the continent is vast, the climate is diverse, the temperature difference between the north and the south is large, with the Qinling Huai River as the boundary, divided into the south and the north, the south is high temperature and rainy, the north is cold and dry, the climate is different, the main crops are also different.
Millet was first cultivated in the north, and wheat is now widely cultivated after development, while the south is watery and produces sweet, high-quality rice.
The abundance of crops makes our food choices very rich, but what has not changed is that cereals are the staple food, paired with fresh vegetables and vegetables, and meat is always in a secondary position.
The diet of the Chinese is light, the animal husbandry industry in the agricultural country is not developed, and meat is not easy to obtain in ancient times, and there is not so much meat, so the intake of fat and protein is not high. Ordinary people will increase their meat consumption during the New Year's holidays.
With a pot, you can stir-fry
A long time ago, the way of eating was relatively simple, pottery can not complete the production of stir-fried dishes, mostly boiled, roasted this relatively primitive is also the easiest way to operate cooking, now Guangdong likes to make soup, is to follow the diet of the ancients Xi habits, with the development of time, people's taste buds are not satisfied with the current taste, began to look for new ways of cooking.
At the beginning, people stir-fried vegetables were made of meat oil extracted from fat, for the ancient times when food was scarce, stir-fried vegetables were very expensive, although the meat oil stir-fry would be greasy, cold and fishy, and it was only eaten by the elite class, ordinary people used clay pots, clay pots, pottery could not be stir-fried at high temperatures, and it was only suitable for the processing of simple stewed soup.
When China probably began to use iron pots for stir-frying, stir-fry was only circulated among the upper classes. Because if you want to make stir-frying, you need to have a durable and fast heat conduction pot, but at that time, eligible bronze was expensive and politically significant, and ordinary people could not have it.
The smelting technology of iron and steel is also backward, and it is very difficult to obtain iron, so it does not have the conditions for the widespread use of iron pots. The economy of the Song Dynasty was prosperous, scientific and technological progress made great progress, the output of iron and steel increased substantially, and the price of iron pots could be bought by the people, and began to become popular among the people.
As early as a thousand years ago, the ancestors had recorded the originator of stir-frying, so in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the ancestors had already eaten scrambled eggs, and the practice of stir-frying vegetables gradually began to become popular among the people.
The culinary history of European countries is relatively short, Western food comes from Italy, two thousand years ago the ancient Roman court cuisine has been very mature, elegant and exquisite is represented by the court cuisine, pasta, cheese is famous all over the world.
When iron pot stir-fry was popularized in China, pottery was still used in Europe, and the skill of stir-frying could not be mastered under the productivity, and the method of stir-frying began to appear after the Industrial Revolution
Boiled dishes and barbecue have always been the main cooking methods of Europeans, and later through the progress of industrial technology, cooking tools suitable for stir-frying also began to appear, but after thousands of years of eating Xi habits are not so easy to change.
They still like to eat large pieces of meat, and they usually discard the internal organs, heads, claws, etc., which the Chinese like, because they feel troublesome and simply don't want it
Stir-fry is inseparable from oil
After stir-frying vegetables with meat oil for a long time, people began to master the extraction of vegetable oil, and people found that stir-frying vegetables with vegetable oil is refreshing and delicious, not greasy, and can stimulate the aroma of food more.
So the clever ancients began to study how to obtain large quantities of vegetable oil.
Therefore, all kinds of oil crops are widely planted, after thousands of years of development, China's oil extraction technology has been very developed, oil and iron pot is the golden partner of stir-frying, without either can't. Now that we've seen what kind of oil we use, let's take a look at what kind of oil foreigners use.
We found that foreigners cook with olive oil, they think that olive oil is relatively healthy, olive oil has a low melting point, suitable for vegetable stir-frying, not suitable for stir-frying, the smoke smoke is large, the smoke alarm of foreign houses is very sensitive, if the alarm is triggered because of stir-frying, it is really making people cry and laugh, is it just because of the fear of oil smoke not stir-frying?
Cultural fusion, the collision of stir-fry and fast food
The high frequency of work and life makes people pay more attention to time efficiency, a simple and convenient meal is the choice of most people, hamburgers, fried chicken, this kind of fast food tastes good, meat and vegetarian matching, strong satiety, and quickly won people's recognition.
For foreigners, although they also like to eat stir-fried food, it is not easy to make it yourself, and if you want to eat stir-fried food, you can go to a Chinese restaurant to feast on it, and the sweet and sour dishes are especially popular.
In addition to Western-style fast food, Chinese-style fast food is also very popular, such as rice bowls, fragrant and soft rice poured with hot and delicious stir-fried vegetables, a rice bowl is completed, it is more in line with the Chinese stomach of fast food, different flavors of stir-fried dishes to meet different tastes of choice.
Author's point of view
Chinese and Western diets have also penetrated each other, produced a spark of experience, developed American Chinese cuisine, and also in Chinese burgers, etc., integration, mutual understanding, complementarity and compatibility is the trend, experience different food cultures, penetrate each other, respect and understand each other, no matter which cooking method is chosen, it is the wisdom Xi of different nationalities for life
Article References
Baidu Encyclopedia, the development history of stir-frying
History of Western Cuisine