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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4869 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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No, I don't object to that, once I know in good time. But the bother of two separate sets of cooking vessels etc. is inconvenient, unless our vegans persuade us all to become vegans like them.

The meat water? Did you never hear of boiling vegetables (e.g. cabbage) in the same water you cooked the bacon in? Cuts down on cooking vessels (important if you don't have many or don't have much room) and imparts flavour to the vegetables.

An American would call ‘meat water’ broth(not that boiled meat is generally in high esteem on this side of the pond), ‘meat water’ sounds like something vaguely gross.

Corned beef and cabbage don't form much of a broth; I might pour a bit over the potatoes for seasoning, but it is indeed meat water. My husband, of Slavic descent, also thought it weird and has insisted that we start cooking even the corned beef for St Patrick's Day with some combination of crock pot and roasting, without the cabbage, which smells weird boiled.

Maybe a dialect difference, but I'd still call it 'broth' if I used it as a cooking liquid.

But the bother of two separate sets of cooking vessels etc. is inconvenient, unless our vegans persuade us all to become vegans like them.

Do they object to the same vessel being used for meat and then for veg or do they object to meat products used in preparation of the veg?

The meat water? Did you never hear of boiling vegetables (e.g. cabbage) in the same water you cooked the bacon in?

I've never heard of cooking bacon in water in my life. Growing up my Slavic parents would cook hot dogs in water but that's basically the only meat I've ever seen cooked by boiling as far as I can remember (I'm not counting stock here).

Why don't you fry or roast the bacon? Surely you are losing flavor by boiling it? @FttG do you people really boil your meat?

You can boil and then roast the Christmas ham (or roast it for cooking without boiling it first). Pork is generally roasted, bacon generally boiled.

Cultural differences! Cooking in a bastable on a crook over the fire is different to cooking in an oven! You can use it for baking, but roasting? Much more tricky!

Cooking in a bastable on a crook over the fire is different to cooking in an oven! You can use it for baking, but roasting? Much more tricky!

Well, I suppose, but I'm pretty sure you can fry stuff in a pan over a fire, and I'm sure the Irish people developed oven technology at some point. I also expected that today's Irish are a few generations away from the last time they had to cook over an open fire instead of on a gas hob.

We always boiled corned beef with cabbage and potatoes. Maybe it's an Irish thing?

Edit: Also, isn't that the basis of a lot of crock pot cooking? Making kind of a rudimentary stew by cooking the meat and vegetables in broth for a long time. I am confused about the "bacon," but I think American bacon is different from other places, I tried a center cut bacon, and it was more like ham.

I think the thing about crock pot cooking (or stews) that's different is that you eat the "meat water" (aka, in this case, broth). The idea of boiling a chunk of meat and then throwing out the water seems decidedly weirder.

Fair. My father cooked that way for Saint Patrick's Day only, and otherwise made normal stews. I cooked that way a couple of times, and had to throw the meat water into the yard refuse pit, not the normal trash, for decomposition, because it was too wet for the normal trash, and too greasy for the septic system. I wonder if they cook that way in cities, or if it's a country bumpkin thing, for the kind of people with a yard refuse pit? I assume some were poor enough they would eat the broth even though it isn't very good.

I do get the impression that both Irish and Scottish cook fires were literally just fireplaces, not ovens or stoves, for a surprisingly long amount of time. Reading Scottish novels from the late 19th Century, the rural folk are always frying oat cakes over the fire, for instance, rather than ever baking bread.

I've never heard of cooking bacon in water in my life. Growing up my Slavic parents would cook hot dogs in water but that's basically the only meat I've ever seen cooked by boiling as far as I can remember (I'm not counting stock here).

A friend of mine recommended cooking bacon in shallow water in the frying pan, as he said it got him the crispiest, most evenly-done bacon he's ever cooked in his life. I tried it a few times, but I could never get it to be any better than just frying on the pan normally. And in any case, the cooking process meant all the water boiled off anyway, so it doesn't apply here. My friend is Russian-born, though I believe he got this technique in his adulthood, long after he left behind Russia for America.

I've come to the conclusion that baking is the best method, though I have to be careful about the smoke triggering alarm.

I'm not sure I've ever encountered a food that is best cooked by boiling, excepting dry goods like beans or pasta. I suppose potatoes sometimes need to be boiled as a first step in preparation.

Do you eat stew? That seems like the most archotypical version.

True, foods that are in liquid are probably necessarily prepared by boiling.

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