• eatthecake@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I watched a vegan vooking show where they added turmeric to scrambled tofu. They emphatically and repeatedly stated that the turmeric was solely there as a food colouring so it would look like eggs. I was embarrassed for them tbh, if scrambled tofu tasted good they would not need to do this.

    • ghostdoggtv@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Tofu absorbs whatever other flavors you cook it with, you don’t season your food? I mean obviously I’m not the show writer but even when I did consume eggs it they’d have salt and pepper at minimum.

      If anyone told me they were using spice as food coloring I’d be embarrassed for them too. It’s too bad there are so many fake ass people in media who don’t know the first thing about the things they like to talk about.

    • businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      if tofu tasted good they wouldn’t need to make it yellow? what?

      also do you just eat plain eggs, no salt or anything? seasoning your food doesn’t imply that the food tastes bad lol

      • eatthecake@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        They were adamant about the fact that it wasn’t seasoning, only food colouring. If it tasted good they why the need to try and trick their minds into thinking it’s eggs? Im sure they added seasoning, as do I, but i don’t use food colouring to make things look like somethkng else.

        • businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          ah yes non vegan cooking is famous for being completely free of food colorings and any other ingredients or techniques used for purely visual flair. notorious for being illegal to look like another food item.

          nobody is tricking themselves into thinking it’s eggs, it just looks better and people are familiar with a yellow pile of mashed breakfast food instead of a white one. it would look gross with no colorings added, maybe something red like paprika would work just as well.

          i find your aversion to making tofu scramble yellow strange, and i assure you when the turmeric hits the pan my mind does not go “ooh now it’s eggs”

          • eatthecake@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Making your food look like some other kind of food that you don’t even eat seems very silly to me. I watch a ton of cooking shows and this is the only time i’ve seen a chef do this. By all means make your tofu scramble however you like it, i don’t even see why it would look gross if it wasn’t yellow. It’s not about the colour, it’s about their expressly stated desire for pretense. They repeated several times tbat this was to make it look like eggs. If scrambled tofu is tasty then present that, it could be great with paprika, but if you have to make your food look like something else then i’m inclined to think it can’t stand on it’s own and probably sucks.

            • businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              6 months ago

              idk man i didn’t invent tofu scramble i just like the way it tastes and find tofu with no dressing/coating/browning/whatever to look relatively unappealing - especially tofu scramble because you aren’t browning the tofu at all (at least i don’t)

              also i wrote and deleted like 7 different reasons why i thought people do this with tofu scramble specifically but i think i just agree with you lol. i guess its mostly to give people who are transitioning to or trying out veganism a direct analog to a food they already are familiar with and feel like they are giving up? i’m more partial to food that is unabashedly plants over of the faux meats/etc, so i hadn’t considered that angle so much.

              • eatthecake@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                i guess its mostly to give people who are transitioning to or trying out veganism a direct analog to a food they already are familiar with and feel like they are giving up?

                I understand this reasoning, it just doesn’t work for me personally, it has the reverse effect, and they were really over the top about how they put it in solely to make it look like eggs, if they’d said it was to make it look nice i probably wouldn’t have reacted. I love paprika though and i think i would try that.

    • weastie@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Tumeric is used for coloring food a ton. Presentation of food matters way more than most people think.

      If you went to a halal restaurant and they served you white rice wouldn’t that feel weird? I promise that the turmeric they add to the rice isn’t making that significant of a flavor difference, it’s mostly there for coloring.

      • eatthecake@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        If you went to a halal restaurant and they served you white rice wouldn’t that feel weird?

        No, i have no idea why halal rice would not be white.