Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#31

Post by ch4s3 »

tuvix wrote: post #30
ch4s3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of anyone doing this among any Italian Americans I know. Is this something you've seen first hand?

Haven’t heard of forever sauce but my family makes sauce by cooking it pretty much all day. If we ate it every day then yeah we might as well keep a pot on the stove all the time

If you cook the tomato too long you lose the tomato flavor[1]. My Italian-American neighborhood has a sauce competition at the community center every year, and the winners never do an all day cook.

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-ame...

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#32

Post by ButlerianJihad »

guessmyname wrote: post #17
ch4s3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of anyone doing this among any Italian Americans I know. Is this something you've seen first hand?

Why Italian Americans instead of just normal Italian? Aren’t Italian Americans just regular Italians? Or are you asking about the customs of Americanized Italian families or people who were born and raised in America but with Italian ancestry?

Are you a non-American?

It is typically the custom of Americans to hyphenate our ethnicity and claim descent from some European country or another. (Or African or Asian, or wherever the family had migrated from.)

Indeed, an Italian-American is not a "regular Italian" because they enjoy neither citizenship nor residence in that sovereign territory. Italian-American cuisine is also unique, and distinct from "regular Italian" cuisine. Sure, they draw a lot of ideas from the Old Country, but c'mon: tomatoes originated in the Americas!

I could be known as an "Irish-American" but really, I was adopted by a non-Irish family, and the Irish clergy/religious who educated me were fully inculturated into the United States, so we learned a patriotism for our homeland, along with a very American faith and culture, and not a futile nostalgia for some long-lost European territory. There was not a trace of Celtic spirituality or "Irish Republican rebellion" taught to me or my classmates.

I do appreciate Irish culture from afar, and I enjoy the St. Patrick's Day festivities that are not drunken orgies, but I am constantly reminded that I was never "Irish" and I do not derive my identity from hyphenating such things.

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#33

Post by madcaptenor »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #18
guessmyname wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Italian Americans instead of just normal Italian? Aren’t Italian Americans just regular Italians? Or are you asking about the customs of Americanized Italian families or people who were born and raised in America but with Italian ancestry?

Probably because they don't know any Italians (in Italy), just Italian Americans.

I am an Italian-American and would presume to speak for Italian-American foodways but not the foodways of Italians living in Italy.

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#34

Post by tuvix »

ch4s3 wrote: post #31
tuvix wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven’t heard of forever sauce but my family makes sauce by cooking it pretty much all day. If we ate it every day then yeah we might as well keep a pot on the stove all the time

If you cook the tomato too long you lose the tomato flavor[1]. My Italian-American neighborhood has a sauce competition at the community center every year, and the winners never do an all day cook. [1] https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-ame...

Interesting! I’ll have to try a cooking the recipe for shorter. I am a bit skeptical since my family’s sauce is the best in the world already :)

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#35

Post by spelk »

This was something I was genuinely excited to try while in Bangkok, took a Grab across town to make it happen, but it was it is honestly not good, the Google reviews seem to coincide with the consensus that while the concept is cool, the execution isn't and it tastes very meh.

I do wonder if there’s some pluralistic ignorance going on, where travelers convince themselves it must be amazing because everyone else seems to think so.

It didn't give off the vibe of years of collected flavors; it was a thin broth and it didn't taste like much else other than beef broth from a fancy instant noodle packet and a ton of MSG (and to be clear, I'm normally a proponent of MSG but it genuinely was overdone here).

Maybe it really is just the volume that they're going through that's affecting the taste and composition, because they were doing decent business, but this was the biggest disappointment on my short visit to Bangkok.

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#36

Post by pphysch »

ilamont wrote: post #25

Many years ago I saw a Japanese TV program that explored the food of southern Taiwan and one of the stops was a restaurant that had a 106-year old vat of broth. It was tall and narrow and had a giant hump of crust on one side. If it's still open, it would be going for 130+ years at this point. ETA: Found it. Established 1895, the year Taiwan was annexed by Japan. It's not soup, it's a meat sauce (滷肉) used on a noodle…

Cool. The pot is surprisingly small. Is the sauce in it highly concentrated or something?

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#37

Post by toast0 »

guessmyname wrote: post #17
ch4s3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of anyone doing this among any Italian Americans I know. Is this something you've seen first hand?

Why Italian Americans instead of just normal Italian? Aren’t Italian Americans just regular Italians? Or are you asking about the customs of Americanized Italian families or people who were born and raised in America but with Italian ancestry?

Italian-american cuisine is quite distinct from Italian cuisine (which is really a lot of regional cuisines with a shared language and some shared staples)

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#38

Post by Brendinooo »

spelk wrote: post #35

This was something I was genuinely excited to try while in Bangkok, took a Grab across town to make it happen, but it was it is honestly not good, the Google reviews seem to coincide with the consensus that while the concept is cool, the execution isn't and it tastes very meh. I do wonder if there’s some pluralistic ignorance going on, where travelers convince themselves it must be amazing because everyone else seems…

Seems reasonable to conclude that people might do it to say that they did it, for the same sort of reasons why one might get a warm pint in a run-down, cramped, 500-year-old pub instead of a cold pint at a newly-opened, comfortable pub

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#39

Post by ilamont »

pphysch wrote: post #36
ilamont wrote: post #25

Many years ago I saw a Japanese TV program that explored the food of southern Taiwan and one of the stops was a restaurant that had a 106-year old vat of broth. It was tall and narrow and had a giant hump of crust on one side. If it's still open, it would be going for 130+ years at this point. ETA: Found it. Established 1895, the year Taiwan was annexed by Japan. It's not soup, it's a meat sauce (滷肉) used on a noodle…

Cool. The pot is surprisingly small. Is the sauce in it highly concentrated or something?

Yes, 滷肉 ("braised meat") is highly concentrated. You can't eat the sauce by itself like a stew, it would be too rich. So it's usually served on white rice or in this case noodles.

The ingredients are typically finely minced fatty pork with soy sauce and strong flavorings like dried mushroom, garlic, star anise, and a fermented bean sauce that's super salty. Plus other ingredients that make the taste unique to the chef or shop.

Re: The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup

#40

Post by julianlam »

Forever soup isn't new, of course.

Poor families do it to cheaply make long lasting meals.

My late maternal grandmother used to have a pot of forever soup on the stove, and she would put whatever she had on hand in.

Spare ribs, check. Leftover veg, check. McDonalds fries, gross, but check.

Post reply on HN