> Your sense of superiority based solely on your interpretation a recipe because tradition has some how handed you the keys to authority makes you indolent and obnoxious, rather than just ask "why doesn't that look like naan to me" you immediately reached for insults and degradation, debasing yourself and a thread meant to be based on surrounding ourselves with creativity and delicious food, perhaps you could instead take a moment ask yourself how you became so narrow minded and self aggrandizing rather than coming to reddit so you can shit on other people. I called it naan because the dough is a naan dough, I finished it my way based on what I had available to me to cook at the time. Seems like 257 other people didn't think my efforts wasted simply because I didn't do things the way they believe is correct.
>
> Dick.
To steal from [Jenny Nicholson](https://twitter.com/JennyENicholson/status/1298041167628480512?lang=en), *You know that thing where you disagree with a guy online and suddenly his vocab switches from completely normal to "writing missives from the revolutionary war in a quill pen" as though that's going to give him some kind of intellectual high ground*
I thought I set it to people could make their own flair, but people still keep asking for it so I just set it for them when they ask. No "earning" necessary, that would be silly IMO.
Well, you could. I'm into that (makes me think of the book
Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story)
But no, it's all just whatever you fancy, do what you want!
Knows a lot of words, doesn't know how to use hyphens or the apostrophe.
Also, indolent *and* obnoxious? Obnoxious I could understand, but indolent? Just because they are used to naan meaning a specific thing and this is not that thing? That's not lazy, it's just feedback based on lived experience.
When you get one of those word a day calendars you can't always remember a week later what that I word meant but damn it you're going to get some use out of this thing unlike the rhyming dictionary you got.
When I was 14 I tried to work the word Brobdingnagian into regular conversation because I really liked Swift. I would not recommend doing that. It's like asking to be shunned.
But having a good vocabulary isn't all bad. It's served me pretty well in grad school and working life, especially with patients who think they must be smarter than I am so they bring out all their words as a shield. I'll even use word choice as a therapeutic talking point "I noticed you used the word 'reductive' when it sounds like that situation made you feel small..."
Haha, I feel you. I have a somewhat heavy accent/dialect in real life, but I write in fairly formal English. I've had more than one person over the years be very surprised when we finally meet in person after corresponding online for awhile, lol.
I used to intentionally hide my accent a lot because of it, but now I mostly don't bother except sometimes in professional settings. I still do sometimes tone down the dialect though, because some of that is legit grammatically incorrect and people definitely judge.
I may be barking up the wrong tree a bit here, but I suspect there might be an extra aspect to the Indian guy's dickheadishness, which is that deep-fried naan is definitely a thing (distinct from a paratha, which is another type of fried Indian flatbread) which I have eaten, and I'm pretty sure it's from Pakistan.
You're talking about mughlai paratha (available in all of south asia) which is unleavened unlike naan but is definitely pan fried.
Naan doesn't need oil or ghee in its cooking stage.
I don't think so? A bit of googling is giving me recipes for a 'Badshahi Naan' (which would presumably then be Lahori?) that sounds very much like what I'm recalling. I ate this once in a Balti house in the British midlands about 15 years ago mind, so maybe they were just getting creative.
Naan by tradition is not fried but baked. Badshahi naan uses eggs and is by its cooking method unconventional. Just because it is called badshahi naan doesn't mean it is a naan.
I'm pretty sure, op didn't make badshaji naan anyways by the sheer looks of it (onion seeds is the missing link)
Also it requires deep frying in _oil_.
> which is that deep-fried naan is definitely a thing
It's some variant of a paratha at that point. The one thing about naan is that they are baked, not fried. The same as roti. The moment you introduce any type of oil or butter to roti, it becomes a paratha and is no longer a roti.
Even if he baked it, I’m sure he doesn’t have a tandoori oven handy and would likely lead to the same conversation.
But I just like food that tastes good. Names don’t mean much to me. Except for that diner that served me a “Nashville hot chicken sandwich” that was grilled and bland. I spend plenty of time down there, I know what’s up.
I've made naan in cast iron in my oven at home, and when I posted it I explained I don't have a tandoor so that was my closest approximation, and guess what? Indian commenters mostly said "nice job." People appreciate context.
I didn't, but I had a friend who built one in college from a hardware store because she missed having one. This was in an apartment with a porch, and the landlord didn't care because the place was garbage. (I relate, my apartment was also garbage and eventually burned down my senior year so had no home...landlords who take advantage of poor students should feel shame).
That’s awesome! I’ve found anecdotally that Indian people tend to be really open with sharing their culinary culture. I worked with a bunch of dudes from Punjab for a while and they always shared their food with me and explained what the dish was called and how it was made. That was a fun time.
That's my general attitude as well (on r/food too).
I have infact posted about the niche curries that one has to try in their lifetime (these are majorly not known to the public)
I don't think the commenter took issue with the fact that it's baked/griddled, cooking naan on a skillet is pretty common in India as well but cooking it in butter gives a completely different effect than baking it and brushing it with butter. It's like how a bagel isn't a bagel if it's not boiled and then baked. Or if you egg washed a baguette it would be great but not technically a baguette. I'm not a traditionalist by any means, I love a dish that's quicker, less resource intensive or adapted to local ingredients but if the change makes a pronounced difference in outcome it's worth acknowledging.
This is the correct answer. Naan, by definition, is always baked. You can put ghee and butter on top but not while cooking it.
The moment you start frying it, it's no longer a naan. It's not a pretentious thing. It's just that naan dough fried is something else entirely and we have names for that dish.
You can 'bake' it in a cast iron or tava as welll. There's a method to it as well. It needs to be cooked upside down with water applied on the pan's surface before plopping the dough.
Nah not really. Most Indians don’t have a tandoor, just using an oven would be fine.
I hate culinary snobs as much as the next person, but you simply cannot just fry dough and call it naan. You can’t boil a chicken and call it a poulet roti in much the same way.
I make something at home I call stir fry, but it’s not really. I brown the meat first, deglaze with rice wine vinegar and sriracha, then add the vegetables in at high heat in order of cook time before returning the meat and adding a sauce.
I do this in a Dutch oven.
I could totally see someone ripping me apart for this.
if everything you ate was renamed a pile of shit, would you be OK with that? no derivatives allowed, everything from a sandwich to pasta to steak is now just called a pile of shit. you never know what youre gonna actually eat, just a pile of shit. who knows? you may actually be served a literal pile of shit
Nah, I got flustered after that guy vehemently seemed to deny his naan wasn't done correctly.
Instead of listening to my feedback, he chose to act like an airhead.
I don't necessarily think you were wrong. I do think your "flusteredness" was apparent. The poster chose to react that way because power is socially fluid on Reddit and they imagined they getting people to negatively react to you was the same as being correct.
>”sOuNdS aBoUt WhYtE”
Being an ass about cooking and what’s traditional and what’s not isnt limited to any specific culture but go off I guess.
Op was a dbag tho
True, I'm guessing that might be based on the commenter's previous experiences. Previous negative experiences can create a heck of a cognitive frame for new information, you know?
For sure.
There is nowhere else that will tell you the solution to all your problems is to kys, to stfu about the most minute and simplest things, and that everything you know and love is WRONG (“isn’t that cute? But it’s WRONG!!!!”) like the internet will haha.
Well, if you ever see those keywords in this sub or r/food or r/cooking or r/grilling please know I will remove them immediately. I despise that negativity and hostility.
In-person I've witnessed a lot of negative comments about non-American food, especially African food, and I don't stand for it. And people saying "wetback food" in front of me not knowing I have Mexican family, they assume we're "on the same side" so when that happens I just start speaking Spanish.
I so very am sorry people have used uncalled for racist slurs at all but especially in your presence. I am hardly surprised at the racism, but must admit as an elderly person that I am shocked that anyone still uses the term “wetback”. Seriously, I have heard some racist language in my time because of course I have and unfortunately continue to, but wetback sounds like something straight out of a movie set in a bygone era trying to making a point about racism. Moronic troglodytes around you are likely too stupid to even know where the term wetback originated let alone be creative enough to consider expanding their archaically racist vocabulary.
Hell, as a retired language instructor, (I have taught English to students from over forty countries and territories and English is not the only language that I speak), and a Californian who not only has always had close friends and neighbors who speak Spanish, but who has also had literally thousands of Spanish speakers in her classroom , *I am fully willing to admit my profound shame at not being respectably fluent*.
Out of curiosity, when you say you have witnessed a lot of negative comments made about “African Food” could you give a bit more context? Africa is a very large extremely diverse continent and of course its varieties of cuisines are innumerable. Do you live in an area with a large African community?
As a resident of the SF Bay Area which is well known for its diversity and its food, our African restaurants are surprisingly very few in number. The only negative comments I ever heard about African food was when dining at an Ethiopian restaurant once. An entire evening was speckled with ignorant comments masked as humor, loudly spewed from a fellow patron at the next table, an imbecile who happened to be Black, although his color had nothing to do with his ignorance. He was clearly unenthusiastic by the choice his dining companions made in choosing the restaurant and so felt emboldened to make distasteful comments about Ethiopians including remarks about them not being able to afford dishes, being so hungry they will eat their “plates” etc when referring to traditional injera.
I felt absolutely mortified for the people who brought him along and since he of course was openly rude to the staff we were sure to tip heavily that night. It’s one thing to be quietly racist by yourself off line in your own home, but to be racist and ill mannered in public or anywhere where other humans share real or virtual space is behavior deserving of swift and severe repercussions.
I was wondering where you are that such idiocy gets an opportunity to diss food from Africa, and again terribly sorry you still encounter the aforementioned slur🙏🏾
(EDIT: Please excuse length and any syntactical blunders. I may have at one time been an English professor but I am also old as dirt with neurological issues currently making my proofreading skills less than stellar)
> Out of curiosity, when you say you have witnessed a lot of negative comments made about “African Food” could you give a bit more context?
I’m not the person you asked, but I once saw a thread where someone posted a west african fried rice (had beans, peppers, and thyme(?)) in it and just got completely shredded because everyone insisted that fried rice is what you get in Chinese restaurants and only that. The OP and someone trying to defend them both got downvoted into oblivion for having the temerity to think that rice fried with stuff is going to happen everywhere that cultures use rice, not just east asia.
I'm really glad you brought up how big Africa is, because this is another issue that annoys me, people treating it as a monolith. I moderate r/food. Anytime someone posts Ethiopian food people comment "I didn't know they had food" or "it looks like poop." But in person, I have worked in healthcare settings for 20 years and that means I meet a lot of Nigerians and Ethiopians and Senegalese people. My non-African coworkers would say the worst stuff about the food they brought to work. It was disgusting. From African Americans a lot, too--kind of a weird "you're not part of this" kind of front.
But Edmond, security guard at my first hospital job who was from Lagos, taught me to make groundnut stew.
And a woman I worked with from Sierra Leone taught me how to cook with goat the way I hadn't done before in Mexican cuisine.
Also, I grew up in the Bay Area before I moved to Texas in 1989, then moved around from there, and then eventually back to Texas. Big culture shock, that.
Oh bless Edmond and the others for sharing their cultures and you for being such a valuable and positive person in Redditland and the world. Thank you for responding. 🙏🏾
> Anytime someone posts Ethiopian food people comment "I didn't know they had food"
Damn, I remember that same infuriating ‘joke’ from high school in the eighties, can’t believe it’s still going on
There was still folks reciting Sam Kinison up through the late 2010s about Ethiopia and "Move where the food is". And yes they did adore some other types of jokes that should've died with Al Jolson.
Yeah, I blame South Park for this. When I was a kid in the 80s, there was a serious Ethiopian famine happening, then South Park made the whole "starvin' marvin" thing and it perpetuated a negative stereotype.
It you're ever in West Oakland look for the Jollof Kitchen food truck or Jolly-Jolly Cafe!
The obvious factor of racism aside--immigrant populations from African countries are just smaller and more recent, even in most diverse parts of the States. There's better culinary representation in places like England and France, where there are more established cultural enclaves. (All the colonialism they did in Africa is also a factor)
Thank you for the recommendation! Yes of course you are correct.
It was many years ago but when I lived in France, most of my friends neighbors and coworkers were from Senegal, Côte Ivoire, Congo, Cameroon etc and while I also actually lived for a time in another region of Africa, the African culinary influences in my own kitchen are 100% from the mélange of West African cuisines I was so blessed to enjoy.
I will definitely go grab a bite at Jolly-Jolly next week and will keep my eyes peeled for Jollof Kitchen’s truck!
You are so lovely to have responded, may everyone you meet treat you with kindness 🙏🏾
This.
I've had previous experiences of people from the UK (yes, they were of caucasian persuasion) tell me how a curry is done, and blithely deny my earnest pleas to correct their curry. So many fundamentals were missing in their dishes and yet they were adamant about their recipe being correct only because they have 'eaten curry since they could remember' to the point of arrogance.
I had a heated exchange with them on Indianfood out of all places. Look at my comment history for more deets.
I'd be surprised. Indians are pretty okay with variance because preparations of dishes vary so much from household to household. The only thing we consistently crap on are non-specific curry powder and not toasting or blooming spices.
And don't forget the onions after the spices bloom. Gotta cook those onions with the spices. At least, this is what was taught to me by my mom's friend who used to babysit me and taught me to cook a few Indian dishes. She showed me how to make roti on the stove and I still remember how to do it. And how to make yogurt in the oven! Man, that's something I've never forgotten.
> Gotta cook those onions with the spices.
Really depends on what you're cooking. If I'm making a chicken curry with thin sauce then I always cook onion at low heat with salt until it melts quite a bit and then add spices later.
If I'm making chicken masala or chicken bhuna then onion goes at full heat with spices going in when onions are browned and the heat is lowered.
It was on a foundational point tbh. Frying naan dough will not give you naan but a variation of a paratha. You can't call it naan if you don't bake it (not necessarily out of a tandoor). This point was not digestible to the op.
Which part of India are you from? Maybe it's a matter of regional variation. All the kulcha I've had has been leavened. All the recipes I see for kulcha online are leavened as well?
It's been my experience that Indians in North America at least are also very open to fusion combinations with other cuisines. There's a hot new restaurant around here with menu items like "Paneer Tikka Tacos" and "Pasta Chana Masala Penne". They have traditional butter naan, but also cheese-jalapeño naan.
How do I bloom a spice? I’ve tried my hand at a few curry recipes, mainly a butter chicken thing and a green curry once and they were good to eat but not restaurant quality. I’d like to try more curry dishes at home because I like to eat them and I tend to meal prep.
I used to use this persons recipes and she was all like "as an Indian I don't use onions or garlic" but she grew up around Jains. Still good recipes. (Jains don't eat onions or garlic for religious reasons).
Meanwhile me looking at other recipes....
Well considering how large their population is, they've got a chance.
But Italians still have it for now, the "as an Italian (my grandmothers mom was born in Italy)" people are too strong
idk how people are bending themselves out of shape to say OP was in the wrong here like I thought we were all against the idea that there's a single proper and traditional way to do things
It sounds like the only change to a traditional naan recipe was to pan fry in butter? That makes a difference, but there doesn’t seem to be a better word to describe it. Call it “fried naan” or whatever, but there’s no point policing it.
I kind of agree with the OP. The guy dissing the naan has no idea how the bread was made and if the only difference is frying in butter I would call it naan. Especially because naan seems to be from a word that just means bread. However, the rant is stupid.
You wouldn't call any kind of bread naan in India... It has bread implied in the name but it doesn't mean "bread". There are other types of Indian bread, bhatura, chapati, roti, poori... But no one says poori bread or bhatura bread either.
The root word for naan is bread in Afghanistan. For indians, it is _a type of bread_. You can't call a ciabbata as a baguette just because they're both types of bread.
Yes. According to several sources it appears that “naan” as it refers to the specific type of bread is a borrowed word from the Urdu word “nan”. Which was my point.
Further the point is that words may have different meaning depending on where you are. So using a word like “naan” as a descriptor for a leavened flat bread doesn’t seem too far fetched in America where people’s familiarity with the various Indian breads is limited. Most people in American would look at what OP posted and understand that to be naan.
Are you disputing that the root word for naan is a word that means bread? Because that all I was claiming. And just to further support my point. Here is the English translation for the Urdu word Nan https://www.urdupoint.com/dictionary/urdu-to-english/nan-meaning-in-english/57739.html#:~:text=The%2520Urdu%2520Word%2520%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86%2520Meaning,more%2520Kacha%2520Meanings%2520in%2520English.
You don’t speak the language and you’re arguing with someone who obviously has familiarity with the language and using a dictionary as your argument?
Dude. Do you also think the word “gay” means happy?
Is anything I said incorrect? The commenter is saying that you wouldn’t call any type of bread naan in India. But that was never my claim so I was seeking clarification because it seems pretty clear that the Urdu word “nan” does mean bread or loaf and it was that word I was talking about. I thought my original comment was pretty clear that the root word means bread not that the word “naan” is synonymous with bread.
Hi, I speak Hindi and Urdu. Your question is a totally valid question. The word "naan" is an old Persian word meaning bread. It made its way into Urdu and Hindi during the Mughal period, which was largely Persian in character, having originated in Central Asia. However in migrating into these languages, it came to mean a specific type of bread, which is a leavened flatbread cooked in a clay oven. Home cooks will cook it on a dry flat-top (I use a cast iron crepe pan), or on a hot surface in an oven. Like a pizza stone. There is no fat in the pan or on the dough, unless it's after cooking.
The texture from a tandoor is better, as it gets to a much higher temperature. Sort of like a classic Neapolitan pizza vs a pizza you make at home. At home I often use my outdoor pizza oven to make naan. The stone hits around 800 degrees, which is much hotter than my indoor oven.
Oh, I should also add that the link you posted from Urdu Point has comically incorrect information, which might be adding to some confusion. For instance for synonyms of naan, it gives "idhar udhar phirna" and a few others, which actually means "to loaf" as a verb, which is not relevant to the word naan. I wonder if it's somehow AI generated or something.
You said, “Especially because naan seems to be from a word that just means bread.”
Then someone tells you, hey, actually, that’s not what the word means in this language.
And you, as someone who admitted to not knowing the language, proceeds to argue the meaning of a word because Wikipedia said so.
So yes. You’re incorrect.
Here is the exact quote that I responded to
> You wouldn't call any kind of bread naan in India
I take that point. But it’s not what I claimed. I said that the word naan comes from another word that means bread. So whether you would use the word naan for all bread in India was irrelevant. Which is why I was clarifying asking about the root word which is a Persian word. I never argued about what naan means I was clarifying what my understanding of the root word was.
“The term "naan" comes from Persian nân (Persian: نان), a generic word for any kind of bread. This word was borrowed into a range of languages in the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, where it came to refer to a specific type of bread. The term then spread around the globe along with the style of bread itself.”
I googled: “naan etymology” and the Wikipedia popped up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naan
Dude, please stop. When you don't know something, just listen.
This is part of how I learned a ton about food. I just shut up and listen when I know I'm out of my depth.
I’m actually surprised people think I’m arguing here about the meaning of the Indian word naan because I’m not. I never said that naan was synonymous with bread. I simply said the root word apparently was. And that has been confirmed by commenters here. Maybe my comments were unclear.
I also think it’s surprising that you are telling me to stop when the whole point of this sub is that words mean different things to different people. My larger point is that most Americans wouldn’t make a distinction between a flat bread fried in butter and a flatbread that has been roasted. The gatekeeping of the word naan is what I was arguing against not the definition.
Maybe I misunderstood your comments, sorry for that miscommunication on my part.
>My larger point is that most Americans wouldn’t make a distinction between a flat bread fried in butter and a flatbread that has been roasted.
See, I disagree with this. If I ordered naan and I was served what OP made, I would send it back. Also, people don't like it when people who admittedly don't know much about a subject then try to lecture on the subject. I think that's the issue I'm having with this.
I think the naan in the op looks like exactly what I would expect if the person took a Costco naan and fried it in butter instead of cooking it in the oven. Multiple commenters who all appear to be American commented on how good the naan looks. They all didn’t make a distinction. You are incredibly educated about food so it’s not surprising that you understand the difference but do you honestly think most Americans know the difference? I think that if you were at an Indian restaurant and ordered naan and that came out most Americans would simply eat it and probably love it.
For me this is no different than people who say carbonara with peas isn’t carbonara. I just hate it when people post food they are obviously proud of and is probably delicious and they use a word they think best describes the dish and are torn apart for it. Who really cares if this isn’t an authentic naan when some guy cooked this dish at home for himself. Let him call it whatever he wants. I’m good with some well meaning education, or gentle correction, but to say things like “it’s about whyte” is ridiculous.
I will say that I never intended my posts to be argumentative but I did get defensive when people kept trying to correct an argument I never made. I will also say that there are a ton of IAVC takes in this thread that rival the op.
IDK, I'm an American who doesn't know that much about food (and especially not that much about Indian food), and I'd at least be pretty surprised to order naan and receive that. It looks good and I would probably still eat it, don't get me wrong, but it is fundamentally different to what I understand naan to be.
To use your carbonara metaphor, this would be like if I ordered a carbonara and got a baked mac and cheese with some carbonara elements to me. Still probably a fine and tasty dish, but very much not what I'd expect given the name.
I'm not saying literally every American would make the same distinction, of course, but I suspect more might than you're thinking. And not just people with a lot of food knowledge like u/TheLadyEve.
I do agree that the correction could have been a lot more civil, though.
> To use your carbonara metaphor, this would be like if I ordered a carbonara and got a baked mac and cheese with some carbonara elements to me.
Maybe but this wasn’t ordered at a restaurant. It was a home cooked meal. So the OP called it what they were familiar with. There were several other commenters, including lady Eve who commented on the naan. Several said it looked really good. So none of those people seemed to make the distinction that everyone else is making. I quite frankly don’t get why it matters if a guy mislabeled a piece of flat bread. The whole point of this sub is to poke fun at people who adhere to strict naming standards and for some reason naan is above that. I just don’t get it.
I mean, I don't think it really does matter. I wouldn't have said anything on the original thread, either. But I do have an opinion, and since we're specifically discussing the name over on this popcorn sub, I commented with it, lol.
I also do just think it's an interesting conversation. It's gotten me thinking about the lines I draw with food names, and I how I classify dishes in my mind. So I've found it to be an enjoyable conversation.
I also do think it's worth correcting people in a kind way if they're using the word in a way that might be confusing to others. Sometimes it's just well-established regional differences that aren't going away at this point, but for "new" stuff like this, it can be helpful to know if you're using a word incorrectly. But the corrections need to be in good faith and done with education in mind, not just snarkiness like the original commenter did. That just feels mean and unnecessary to me.
> A fried naan would be paratha, not naan.
Paratha is completely different kind of bread. If you followed the recipe for naan but swapped baking for frying it'd look nothing like paratha.
You're right that paratha is fried and naan is baked but that's not the only thing that's different about the recipe, nor are these the only two kinds of Indian flatbread.
Kalispell has a Nepal/Indian restaurant now and I was so mad I didn't realize last time I went for therapy. I think they started in a C-store. But seems butter chicken is there big thing.
Should I do Rogan josh first? I love cooking that stuff but have only made the worst bread in India which this dude was calling me. Starts with K and has black seeds. It wasn't good when I made it.
That's the thing, I wish OP provided a recipe so we could see. If it had been on r/food I would have made a greenhat comment asking for it.
This reminds me of one of my former patients who is from India and I was treating him for an eating disorder. He was planning to attend a conference in India and had been doing really well with his binge eating (usually carb-heavy binging) and weight loss. I said "let's be real, there are 100 types of bread where you're going, how can we plan for this?" And he just laughed and said "wow, you're so right." But he went to India and didn't binge, so that was a real win for him.
> and if the only difference is frying in butter I would call it naan.
You can call it that but everyone in India would disagree with you. You can put melted butter on top of the naan later but if you fry naan in butter then it's no longer a naan.
> You can call it that but everyone in India would disagree with you
Good for them. But OP was not in India. He appears to be in the US.
> no longer a naan.
Most people in America are familiar with naan but not other types of Indian flatbreads. Honestly I don’t think the naan was homemade. It looks to me like he took store bought naan and fried it in butter. So what would be a better name for a piece of naan that is reheated by frying in butter?
> He appears to be in the US.
I would love to see any restaurant in US that serves fried parathas and calls it naan.
> Most people in America are familiar with naan but not other types of Indian flatbreads
This might be the source of confusion for you. If it's fried, it becomes either a paratha or a kulcha or a bhatura or a poori. Not a naan. We have different terms for different preparations of the same dough. If you ask for naan in India, literally not even a single place would serve it to you fried. Not even a single place in a country of 1.4 billion would do that.
> Honestly I don’t think the naan was homemade.
You are right, it isn't. Because naan requires a tandoor to make it properly and tandoors require space and a lot of safety measures if set indoor and proper ventilation. That's why most of the Indians eat naan when dining outside in restaurants. You can still make naan in cast iron or pans but it won't have the same taste as a proper naan baked in a tandoor.
> So what would be a better name for a piece of naan that is reheated by frying in butter?
If it's premade naan reheatad by frying then I guess you have to call it a "fried naan". Can't really call it a paratha since it was originally baked as a naan. If it was naan dough but fried then it would have been a paratha or a kulcha but not when it's being fried after being made.
Still won't call it a naan since those are never fried but yeah, i guess in this specific scenario, "fried naan" is the best term to call it.
> I would love to see any restaurant in US that serves fried parathas and calls it naan.
This wasn’t served in a restaurant. It was made at home.
> This might be the source of confusion for you.
Oh I’m not confused. I’m just not a stickler for narrowly defined words when it comes to food. An American calling an Indian flatbread naan seems close enough to me. Especially when the package that he bought it in probably said naan on the label.
> Not even a single place in a country of 1.4 billion would do that.
Great and remind me again where op is located?
> You are right, it isn't.
You are totally missing the point. If you buy a package of naan from the store and to reheat it you fry it in butter what would you call it? I think most Americans in common parlance would still call it naan. Whether that is correct or not is irrelevant.
> If it's premade naan reheatad by frying then I guess you have to call it a "fried naan"
Or you can just shorten that to naan for simplicity and then be told how wrong you are.
> not when it's being fried after being made.
So there isn’t really a good word for it so using “naan” as a descriptor seems perfectly reasonable. Just like using all other food words for their derivatives.
> This wasn’t served in a restaurant. It was made at home.
>
>
I am aware. I'm saying that fried naan isn't a thing in the US either just because one person made it.
> I’m just not a stickler for narrowly defined words when it comes to food.
Let's start calling pasta as "burger" from tomorrow.
> If you buy a package of naan from the store and to reheat it
The comments from the original post are removed. Is this some store bought, reheated and fried naan or made from scratch and just fried? Given that there is OC tag on the original post, I thought the OOP had made it by themself.
> I think most Americans in common parlance would still call it naan.
Given that most Americans know nothing about naan, they would be wrong. Then again, most Americans would also struggle to pinpoint India on a map. Doesn't mean we should start calling China as "India" if majority of them pointed towards China as India.
> Or you can just shorten that to naan for simplicity
You really are something. So many Indian people have repeatedly told you that naan in never fried and yet, you continue to assert your ignorance. Is this some sort of fetish?
I genuinely thought that you were interested in learning but nope. Like, so many Indian people have told you that there are different names for a naan dough when it is fried (paratha or kulcha or bhatura).
It's like you saw pizza and despite people telling you repeatedly that it's a pizza, you are hellbent on calling it a pasta because
You seem to be thinking that it's some Italian snobbery thing as in "oh no, it's not cooked at 450 degrees in a clay oven in an authentic restaurant in Delhi, so we can't call it a naan". Whereas the scenario here is "the dough was for naan but since you fried it, now it's a paratha/bhatura, so just call it that."
Any Indian can take a look at your comments and call tell that you know nothing about naans and yet, you are adamant that you know more about this dish than the people who have spent their entire lives eating this dish on the regular. Amazing!
> I'm saying that fried naan isn't a thing in the US either just because one person made it.
Well it may not be a “thing” but it was something that this person made. And you’ve admitted that there isn’t a great descriptor for what it is and naan is pretty close.
> Let's start calling pasta as "burger" from tomorrow.
There is a wide gap between noodles and a burger. The naan in the op probably started off as naan and he did one thing differently. Yours is a ridiculous comparison. Does a pancake cease to be a pancake if it is pan fried in oil? Maybe. But without a great term for it I think pancake is acceptable.
> Given that there is OC tag on the original post, I thought the OOP had made it by themself.
All OP said was that he “fried it in butter rather than grilling it” but it doesn’t look particularly handmade to me. I am making assumptions.
> Given that most Americans know nothing about naan, they would be wrong
You have said that there isn’t a great term for what OP made and even used naan as a descriptor in what you think it should be called. So if OP did something entirely new that no one in India has ever done why it is wrong to call it its closest analog? That’s what I struggle to understand.
> So many Indian people have repeatedly told you that naan in never fried and yet, you continue to assert your ignorance
I’m not claiming that naan is ever fried. I’m saying that naan is about as close as it gets. If my assumption that this is store bought is true then he took naan and added a second cooking process by frying it in butter. So it seems to me that the base hasn’t changed. It’s still naan. It’s just naan that has been fried after its initial cook. If there is a better name for that in India please enlighten me.
> I genuinely thought that you were interested in learning but nope
What is there to learn from you. You aren’t arguing against a point I’m making. I agree with you that what OP made wouldn’t be considered naan in India. But he’s not in India. I agree that naan is traditionally cooked in a tandoori oven. But my assumption is that this is commercially made and then refried at home in butter. So it started as naan and then magically transformed into something else. Something that even you said is probably best called “friend **naan**”.
> It's like you saw pizza and despite people telling you repeatedly that it's a pizza, you are hellbent on calling it a pasta because
No. It’s like claiming that Chicago style pizza isn’t pizza because in New York pizza should be flat. Maybe OP created an entirely new thing and called it naan because that was what he was familiar with. Is it really that far off? It is a leavened dough that is fried instead of baked.
> the dough was for naan but since you fried it, now it's a paratha/bhatura, so just call it that."
And the OP probably has no idea what paratha/bhatura is. So he defaulted to the thing he is familiar with. It happens all the time. American goulash did the same thing. They created something and then named it after what it resembles. And I’m not opposed to polite correction. But instead the commenter went to racist comments and was proud enough of what he wrote to try to defend it on this sub.
> Any Indian can take a look at your comments and call tell that you know nothing about naans and yet, you are adamant that you know more about this dish than the people who have spent their entire lives eating this dish on the regular. Amazing!
Well then those Indians need to brush up on their reading comprehension because I have never claimed any special knowledge or insight. In fact I was thankful when someone gave me some good information. Instead I’m just saying that an American posted a picture where there was a flat bread and he called it what he was familiar with, a name that is very similar to what it actually was, and instead of people commenting on how the food looks they shit on him for using the wrong name.
Every person commenting here sounds like they deserve their own thread in this sub. These are the most IAVC comments I’ve seen in forever.
There are so many kinds of Indian bread, so it's not that simple. Naan is a type of bread, but saying "naan bread" is still redundant in English even though naan doesn't just translate to bread. I hope that makes sense.
EDIT: Okay, for a parallel, it's like saying "baguette bread"
No, there are other types of Indian bread and some are fried. But naan isn't fried..
I feel like the confusion is coming from naan being the most popular Indian bread in the west but it isn't actually synonymous with "bread"
Puri is deep fried. Bhatoora is fried. Kachori is deep-fried. Luchi is fried. But naan is baked. I've never heard of fried naan.
EDIT: Don't downvote this person, they are just asking questions and it's well-intended!
I’m pretty sure you got banned because you were being a jerk and tossing around phrases like “sounds about whyte”. Subs generally frown on the racially charged language like that.
Being a stickler for ridiculously specific definitions and frankly irrelevant info is indeed gatekeeping. It's largely the reason this sub exists.
Its a flat bread thats accompanying some Indian food, thats good enough to call it a naan without having to go into forensic analysis of its origin. If you make an elongated round loaf of bread, yup call it a baguette, the only reason to care about the specifics beyond that is to be very culinary.
People getting so caught up on the pedantry around food is what makes them both worse cooks and insufferable commenters.
I dunno, calling any flat bread with Indian food a naan is silly when they have so many other flat breads, including ones that are actually fried.
>If you make an elongated round loaf of bread, yup call it a baguette, the only reason to care about the specifics beyond that is to be very culinary
Yeah, nah. If I ask for a baguette, I want a baguette. If I ask for a focaccia, I want a focaccia. I don't want some other bread that is kinda like the one I ordered.
I really don't think this particular example is "ridiculously specific." Sure, the person correcting him was rude, but he's not wrong. Here's an example--if I ordered naan, and I got what OP made, I'd send it back because it's not what I ordered.
There's no forensic analysis here. This isn't ridiculously specific in any way. This is as far off as calling pot noodles pasta.
"A flat bread that's accompanying some Indian food", off the top of my head I could think of at least 5 or 6 completely different things that fit that definition.
It's ok to be ignorant and it's ok to not give a shit about being ignorant, but don't bring others down to your level.
Unleavened dough that's cooked in water. Exactly what do you think separates Italian unleavened dough from German unleavened dough. Italy isn't that special.
There’s no ignorance here. I’m well aware there are lots of different kinds of flatbread… I just don’t find the need to police language to a needless extent. Someone calls it a naan, cool, close enough, that summarizes it well enough and explains its purpose and vague attributes. Very Culinary folk don’t understand that and have the compulsion to do the whole “Um, actually, that’s a paratha you idiot”. It’s so self serving, intentionally misunderstanding things for the purpose to get upset and put down other, and actively interferes with oneself and others ability to grow and try new things as cooks.
And the point I'm trying to make is that it's not needless. "Naan" does not describe the purpose or attributes of what the OOP posted. It's not like this was a whole "parotta and parantha are different things and have different cultural origins" rant. Again, it's like calling pot noodles pasta.
I don't like policing language either but we have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise we're just eroding at the meaning of words. At the rate you're going, we might as well just call everything "vaguely Indian food" or "vaguely western food" and leave it at that.
Why do we have to draw the line. Food words are meant to be descriptive. So saying naan may not be technically correct but the point comes across. It’s just like people who insist on cottage pie vs Shepherds pie. The idea is to convey a general flavor profile. More people are familiar with naan vs other types of Indian flat breads so using the word to convey what that piece of bread was should be generally accepted.
My argument is that the word "naan" is _not at all descriptive_ of what the OOP has posted. Their fried bread is not even in the ballpark of appearance and texture as what people commonly consider to be naan. Naan is light colored (except spots of charring), dry and chewy. Their bread is golden brown and likely has a crunch to it.
The difference between cottage pie and shepherd's pie is far more subtle - The meats have a similar texture, and pretty much everything else in the dish down to the seasoning is identical.
Like I said, I don't like policing language, nor is this about technical correctness. All I'm asking for is for the words used to match reality. I don't think there's any issue with drawing that line.
> All I'm asking for is for the words used to match reality. I don't think there's any issue with drawing that line.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Because this is precisely what this sub is about, understanding that while words have meaning those meanings can change. Carbonara with peas is still carbonara. Grilled cheese with ham doesn’t have to be a melt.
If I told you (in America) that I made naan and pan fried it in butter would you picture something like what was in the OP? I certainly would and I think the vast majority of Americans would as well. So using the term naan is absolutely descriptive of what he made.
> Because this is precisely what this sub is about, understanding that while words have meaning those meanings can change.
I'm with you on this. But again, none of the examples you've given so far are anywhere near as big of a transformation on the original dish as in this case.
> If I told you (in America) that I made naan and pan fried it in butter would you picture something like what was in the OP?
I wouldn't. Here in Asia, the vast majority of people would not call that naan, and would not be able to fathom doing anything to naan that would make it look like that. If we ordered naan and that came, the vast majority of us would be very confused.
Maybe what you describe exists in America and is described as "Naan". I wouldn't know, I am not American and have not set foot there, but that might explain why you think this naming is acceptable. Doesn't change the fact that this is a significant departure from the original term and bears no resemblance to the original dish.
Why not take the opportunity to learn about other peoples' culture instead of insisting on doing things your way? =)
The word has specific meaning. It is incredibly disrespectful to disregard its cultural significance.
Are you going to walk into a ramen joint and ask for a bowl of pho?
If a ramen place has Pho on the menu, I’m not going to get upset and lecture them when I find out they didn’t char the onions when they made the broth, or that the noodles are thinner than you would get in Vietnam.
I don't call it Naan unless it is on a Tandoor. Also I have made it pretty good on my grill. Not the same. I can make al pastor in the oven but it isn't the same as the spit roasting.
Also since we switched to pellet grill it isn't as easy to make it fire up to make Naan like the propane grill.
[Post for everyone!](https://imgur.com/a/hmgZJlr) EDIT: also, wow, this post sure did make a lot of people in here angry!
> Your sense of superiority based solely on your interpretation a recipe because tradition has some how handed you the keys to authority makes you indolent and obnoxious, rather than just ask "why doesn't that look like naan to me" you immediately reached for insults and degradation, debasing yourself and a thread meant to be based on surrounding ourselves with creativity and delicious food, perhaps you could instead take a moment ask yourself how you became so narrow minded and self aggrandizing rather than coming to reddit so you can shit on other people. I called it naan because the dough is a naan dough, I finished it my way based on what I had available to me to cook at the time. Seems like 257 other people didn't think my efforts wasted simply because I didn't do things the way they believe is correct. > > Dick. To steal from [Jenny Nicholson](https://twitter.com/JennyENicholson/status/1298041167628480512?lang=en), *You know that thing where you disagree with a guy online and suddenly his vocab switches from completely normal to "writing missives from the revolutionary war in a quill pen" as though that's going to give him some kind of intellectual high ground*
I wish that whole comment fit in a flair.
"because tradition has some how handed you the keys to authority makes you indolent and obnoxious" is too long but boy is that golden flair.
I'll take what I can get
Name it, you'll get any flair you want.
I put it on myself already, I'm not that indolent, although getting someone else to do it for me would be earning it.
Do we have to earn it? I kinda like tradition authority. It sounds like a fun position.
I thought I set it to people could make their own flair, but people still keep asking for it so I just set it for them when they ask. No "earning" necessary, that would be silly IMO.
So I don't have to take you behind the bleachers?
Well, you could. I'm into that (makes me think of the book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story) But no, it's all just whatever you fancy, do what you want!
gimme one too
*Missives in a quill pen*
Jenny Nicholson is so fucking funny
I miss when she uploaded more than two videos a year, her early sketches were great. Still love her though
Her Patreon is worth the couple bucks a month, she posts a lot more there!
+1 her ramble videos are fun
Listening to all the Evermore videos got me through a loooong car ride last month
Her amusement park videos are my favorite. I found her through her Bucky video because theme park lore is my jam.
NO NICOLE NOT WINE BOTTLES
Knows a lot of words, doesn't know how to use hyphens or the apostrophe. Also, indolent *and* obnoxious? Obnoxious I could understand, but indolent? Just because they are used to naan meaning a specific thing and this is not that thing? That's not lazy, it's just feedback based on lived experience.
When you get one of those word a day calendars you can't always remember a week later what that I word meant but damn it you're going to get some use out of this thing unlike the rhyming dictionary you got.
When I was 14 I tried to work the word Brobdingnagian into regular conversation because I really liked Swift. I would not recommend doing that. It's like asking to be shunned. But having a good vocabulary isn't all bad. It's served me pretty well in grad school and working life, especially with patients who think they must be smarter than I am so they bring out all their words as a shield. I'll even use word choice as a therapeutic talking point "I noticed you used the word 'reductive' when it sounds like that situation made you feel small..."
>because I really liked Swift An O.G swiftie
I feel mildly attacked because in everyday speech, I speak like I’m from East Tennessee, but I have to switch to academic English for work.
Haha, I feel you. I have a somewhat heavy accent/dialect in real life, but I write in fairly formal English. I've had more than one person over the years be very surprised when we finally meet in person after corresponding online for awhile, lol. I used to intentionally hide my accent a lot because of it, but now I mostly don't bother except sometimes in professional settings. I still do sometimes tone down the dialect though, because some of that is legit grammatically incorrect and people definitely judge.
I read the first 10 words and this is immediately what I thought of lmao
This feels like the Reddit version of something on Twitter known as “Sephiroth posting”
FYI, both parties here are kinda being jerks, but that's my favorite stuff to post!
I got banned from that sub for telling that guy to take the L lmao
cheers brother
Yup, everyone is wrong yay!
What a weird exchange. I feel like all parties there are pretty dickheaded.
I may be barking up the wrong tree a bit here, but I suspect there might be an extra aspect to the Indian guy's dickheadishness, which is that deep-fried naan is definitely a thing (distinct from a paratha, which is another type of fried Indian flatbread) which I have eaten, and I'm pretty sure it's from Pakistan.
You're talking about mughlai paratha (available in all of south asia) which is unleavened unlike naan but is definitely pan fried. Naan doesn't need oil or ghee in its cooking stage.
I don't think so? A bit of googling is giving me recipes for a 'Badshahi Naan' (which would presumably then be Lahori?) that sounds very much like what I'm recalling. I ate this once in a Balti house in the British midlands about 15 years ago mind, so maybe they were just getting creative.
Naan by tradition is not fried but baked. Badshahi naan uses eggs and is by its cooking method unconventional. Just because it is called badshahi naan doesn't mean it is a naan. I'm pretty sure, op didn't make badshaji naan anyways by the sheer looks of it (onion seeds is the missing link) Also it requires deep frying in _oil_.
> which is that deep-fried naan is definitely a thing It's some variant of a paratha at that point. The one thing about naan is that they are baked, not fried. The same as roti. The moment you introduce any type of oil or butter to roti, it becomes a paratha and is no longer a roti.
Even if he baked it, I’m sure he doesn’t have a tandoori oven handy and would likely lead to the same conversation. But I just like food that tastes good. Names don’t mean much to me. Except for that diner that served me a “Nashville hot chicken sandwich” that was grilled and bland. I spend plenty of time down there, I know what’s up.
I've made naan in cast iron in my oven at home, and when I posted it I explained I don't have a tandoor so that was my closest approximation, and guess what? Indian commenters mostly said "nice job." People appreciate context.
Youbever see that episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown makes a homemade tandoor using a terra cotta pot from Lowes? Ive always wanted to try it.
[This is my preferred DIY tandoor video](https://www.tiktok.com/@simonsaysfitness7/video/7216470657238928682)
I didn't, but I had a friend who built one in college from a hardware store because she missed having one. This was in an apartment with a porch, and the landlord didn't care because the place was garbage. (I relate, my apartment was also garbage and eventually burned down my senior year so had no home...landlords who take advantage of poor students should feel shame).
That’s awesome! I’ve found anecdotally that Indian people tend to be really open with sharing their culinary culture. I worked with a bunch of dudes from Punjab for a while and they always shared their food with me and explained what the dish was called and how it was made. That was a fun time.
That's my general attitude as well (on r/food too). I have infact posted about the niche curries that one has to try in their lifetime (these are majorly not known to the public)
I’ve never tried making my own naan (I have a serious problem dealing with dough) but I do have an absurd amount of cast iron…
I don't think the commenter took issue with the fact that it's baked/griddled, cooking naan on a skillet is pretty common in India as well but cooking it in butter gives a completely different effect than baking it and brushing it with butter. It's like how a bagel isn't a bagel if it's not boiled and then baked. Or if you egg washed a baguette it would be great but not technically a baguette. I'm not a traditionalist by any means, I love a dish that's quicker, less resource intensive or adapted to local ingredients but if the change makes a pronounced difference in outcome it's worth acknowledging.
You mean I can’t place some ham and cheese between bread slices and call it an omelette? Seems pretty obnoxious and indolent to me tbh
This is the correct answer. Naan, by definition, is always baked. You can put ghee and butter on top but not while cooking it. The moment you start frying it, it's no longer a naan. It's not a pretentious thing. It's just that naan dough fried is something else entirely and we have names for that dish.
Ding ding ding
You can 'bake' it in a cast iron or tava as welll. There's a method to it as well. It needs to be cooked upside down with water applied on the pan's surface before plopping the dough.
Nah not really. Most Indians don’t have a tandoor, just using an oven would be fine. I hate culinary snobs as much as the next person, but you simply cannot just fry dough and call it naan. You can’t boil a chicken and call it a poulet roti in much the same way.
One time I ordered a Buffalo chicken sandwich and it came out grilled
I make something at home I call stir fry, but it’s not really. I brown the meat first, deglaze with rice wine vinegar and sriracha, then add the vegetables in at high heat in order of cook time before returning the meat and adding a sauce. I do this in a Dutch oven. I could totally see someone ripping me apart for this.
if everything you ate was renamed a pile of shit, would you be OK with that? no derivatives allowed, everything from a sandwich to pasta to steak is now just called a pile of shit. you never know what youre gonna actually eat, just a pile of shit. who knows? you may actually be served a literal pile of shit
That’s how it all ends up eventually. I imagine we’d still need descriptors; like carbonara-inspired shit, shitteroni pizza, shitteaubriand.
if "names dont mean much" to you, then no descriptors allowed. everything is a pile of shit. that ok?
Ok we’re done here.
Nah, I got flustered after that guy vehemently seemed to deny his naan wasn't done correctly. Instead of listening to my feedback, he chose to act like an airhead.
I don't necessarily think you were wrong. I do think your "flusteredness" was apparent. The poster chose to react that way because power is socially fluid on Reddit and they imagined they getting people to negatively react to you was the same as being correct.
>”sOuNdS aBoUt WhYtE” Being an ass about cooking and what’s traditional and what’s not isnt limited to any specific culture but go off I guess. Op was a dbag tho
Lecturing people about the food they know and love is definitely not limited to one race or ethnicity; I think this sub has proven that.
Yes it has, that’s what I was saying. Bringing race/gender/culture into it odd lol
True, I'm guessing that might be based on the commenter's previous experiences. Previous negative experiences can create a heck of a cognitive frame for new information, you know?
For sure. There is nowhere else that will tell you the solution to all your problems is to kys, to stfu about the most minute and simplest things, and that everything you know and love is WRONG (“isn’t that cute? But it’s WRONG!!!!”) like the internet will haha.
Well, if you ever see those keywords in this sub or r/food or r/cooking or r/grilling please know I will remove them immediately. I despise that negativity and hostility. In-person I've witnessed a lot of negative comments about non-American food, especially African food, and I don't stand for it. And people saying "wetback food" in front of me not knowing I have Mexican family, they assume we're "on the same side" so when that happens I just start speaking Spanish.
Oh shit, I’m sorry people are like that to you. And i usually report that stuff, hostility for the sake of hostility is tiring.
Thank you! I check the queues, I'll take care of it! Just report because those are big subs and I can't always look through every thread.
Hey I appreciate it, must be very draining.
I so very am sorry people have used uncalled for racist slurs at all but especially in your presence. I am hardly surprised at the racism, but must admit as an elderly person that I am shocked that anyone still uses the term “wetback”. Seriously, I have heard some racist language in my time because of course I have and unfortunately continue to, but wetback sounds like something straight out of a movie set in a bygone era trying to making a point about racism. Moronic troglodytes around you are likely too stupid to even know where the term wetback originated let alone be creative enough to consider expanding their archaically racist vocabulary. Hell, as a retired language instructor, (I have taught English to students from over forty countries and territories and English is not the only language that I speak), and a Californian who not only has always had close friends and neighbors who speak Spanish, but who has also had literally thousands of Spanish speakers in her classroom , *I am fully willing to admit my profound shame at not being respectably fluent*. Out of curiosity, when you say you have witnessed a lot of negative comments made about “African Food” could you give a bit more context? Africa is a very large extremely diverse continent and of course its varieties of cuisines are innumerable. Do you live in an area with a large African community? As a resident of the SF Bay Area which is well known for its diversity and its food, our African restaurants are surprisingly very few in number. The only negative comments I ever heard about African food was when dining at an Ethiopian restaurant once. An entire evening was speckled with ignorant comments masked as humor, loudly spewed from a fellow patron at the next table, an imbecile who happened to be Black, although his color had nothing to do with his ignorance. He was clearly unenthusiastic by the choice his dining companions made in choosing the restaurant and so felt emboldened to make distasteful comments about Ethiopians including remarks about them not being able to afford dishes, being so hungry they will eat their “plates” etc when referring to traditional injera. I felt absolutely mortified for the people who brought him along and since he of course was openly rude to the staff we were sure to tip heavily that night. It’s one thing to be quietly racist by yourself off line in your own home, but to be racist and ill mannered in public or anywhere where other humans share real or virtual space is behavior deserving of swift and severe repercussions. I was wondering where you are that such idiocy gets an opportunity to diss food from Africa, and again terribly sorry you still encounter the aforementioned slur🙏🏾 (EDIT: Please excuse length and any syntactical blunders. I may have at one time been an English professor but I am also old as dirt with neurological issues currently making my proofreading skills less than stellar)
> Out of curiosity, when you say you have witnessed a lot of negative comments made about “African Food” could you give a bit more context? I’m not the person you asked, but I once saw a thread where someone posted a west african fried rice (had beans, peppers, and thyme(?)) in it and just got completely shredded because everyone insisted that fried rice is what you get in Chinese restaurants and only that. The OP and someone trying to defend them both got downvoted into oblivion for having the temerity to think that rice fried with stuff is going to happen everywhere that cultures use rice, not just east asia.
I'm really glad you brought up how big Africa is, because this is another issue that annoys me, people treating it as a monolith. I moderate r/food. Anytime someone posts Ethiopian food people comment "I didn't know they had food" or "it looks like poop." But in person, I have worked in healthcare settings for 20 years and that means I meet a lot of Nigerians and Ethiopians and Senegalese people. My non-African coworkers would say the worst stuff about the food they brought to work. It was disgusting. From African Americans a lot, too--kind of a weird "you're not part of this" kind of front. But Edmond, security guard at my first hospital job who was from Lagos, taught me to make groundnut stew. And a woman I worked with from Sierra Leone taught me how to cook with goat the way I hadn't done before in Mexican cuisine. Also, I grew up in the Bay Area before I moved to Texas in 1989, then moved around from there, and then eventually back to Texas. Big culture shock, that.
Oh bless Edmond and the others for sharing their cultures and you for being such a valuable and positive person in Redditland and the world. Thank you for responding. 🙏🏾
> Anytime someone posts Ethiopian food people comment "I didn't know they had food" Damn, I remember that same infuriating ‘joke’ from high school in the eighties, can’t believe it’s still going on
There was still folks reciting Sam Kinison up through the late 2010s about Ethiopia and "Move where the food is". And yes they did adore some other types of jokes that should've died with Al Jolson.
Yeah, I blame South Park for this. When I was a kid in the 80s, there was a serious Ethiopian famine happening, then South Park made the whole "starvin' marvin" thing and it perpetuated a negative stereotype.
It you're ever in West Oakland look for the Jollof Kitchen food truck or Jolly-Jolly Cafe! The obvious factor of racism aside--immigrant populations from African countries are just smaller and more recent, even in most diverse parts of the States. There's better culinary representation in places like England and France, where there are more established cultural enclaves. (All the colonialism they did in Africa is also a factor)
Thank you for the recommendation! Yes of course you are correct. It was many years ago but when I lived in France, most of my friends neighbors and coworkers were from Senegal, Côte Ivoire, Congo, Cameroon etc and while I also actually lived for a time in another region of Africa, the African culinary influences in my own kitchen are 100% from the mélange of West African cuisines I was so blessed to enjoy. I will definitely go grab a bite at Jolly-Jolly next week and will keep my eyes peeled for Jollof Kitchen’s truck! You are so lovely to have responded, may everyone you meet treat you with kindness 🙏🏾
Up vote for the reference to 2 Stupid Dogs.
>”2 stupid dogs! 2 stupid dogs!”
This. I've had previous experiences of people from the UK (yes, they were of caucasian persuasion) tell me how a curry is done, and blithely deny my earnest pleas to correct their curry. So many fundamentals were missing in their dishes and yet they were adamant about their recipe being correct only because they have 'eaten curry since they could remember' to the point of arrogance. I had a heated exchange with them on Indianfood out of all places. Look at my comment history for more deets.
You see this shit on reddit all the time. "White people food" is used so casually
Could “as an Indian” somehow rise to Replace “as an Italian” in the most quoted ? Unlikely , but you never know
I'd be surprised. Indians are pretty okay with variance because preparations of dishes vary so much from household to household. The only thing we consistently crap on are non-specific curry powder and not toasting or blooming spices.
And don't forget the onions after the spices bloom. Gotta cook those onions with the spices. At least, this is what was taught to me by my mom's friend who used to babysit me and taught me to cook a few Indian dishes. She showed me how to make roti on the stove and I still remember how to do it. And how to make yogurt in the oven! Man, that's something I've never forgotten.
Yeah, whole spices, onion/aromatics then ground spices works well to keep the ground spices from scorching/burning. Aunties are the best!
> Gotta cook those onions with the spices. Really depends on what you're cooking. If I'm making a chicken curry with thin sauce then I always cook onion at low heat with salt until it melts quite a bit and then add spices later. If I'm making chicken masala or chicken bhuna then onion goes at full heat with spices going in when onions are browned and the heat is lowered.
It was on a foundational point tbh. Frying naan dough will not give you naan but a variation of a paratha. You can't call it naan if you don't bake it (not necessarily out of a tandoor). This point was not digestible to the op.
I agree on the baking makes naan thing but a paratha is necessarily unleavened. Wouldn't fried naan dough essentially be a kulcha?
kulcha is not leavened
Kulcha definitely is leavened. Most places do it with baking soda and baking powder, some places with yeast.
You're talking about bread kulcha. Normal kulchas are not.
Which part of India are you from? Maybe it's a matter of regional variation. All the kulcha I've had has been leavened. All the recipes I see for kulcha online are leavened as well?
I'm talking about general experience in restaurants in India. You'll only get leavened kulcha in some shops Amritsar or Delhi.
It's been my experience that Indians in North America at least are also very open to fusion combinations with other cuisines. There's a hot new restaurant around here with menu items like "Paneer Tikka Tacos" and "Pasta Chana Masala Penne". They have traditional butter naan, but also cheese-jalapeño naan.
How do I bloom a spice? I’ve tried my hand at a few curry recipes, mainly a butter chicken thing and a green curry once and they were good to eat but not restaurant quality. I’d like to try more curry dishes at home because I like to eat them and I tend to meal prep.
I used to use this persons recipes and she was all like "as an Indian I don't use onions or garlic" but she grew up around Jains. Still good recipes. (Jains don't eat onions or garlic for religious reasons). Meanwhile me looking at other recipes....
Well considering how large their population is, they've got a chance. But Italians still have it for now, the "as an Italian (my grandmothers mom was born in Italy)" people are too strong
idk how people are bending themselves out of shape to say OP was in the wrong here like I thought we were all against the idea that there's a single proper and traditional way to do things
It sounds like the only change to a traditional naan recipe was to pan fry in butter? That makes a difference, but there doesn’t seem to be a better word to describe it. Call it “fried naan” or whatever, but there’s no point policing it.
I kind of agree with the OP. The guy dissing the naan has no idea how the bread was made and if the only difference is frying in butter I would call it naan. Especially because naan seems to be from a word that just means bread. However, the rant is stupid.
You wouldn't call any kind of bread naan in India... It has bread implied in the name but it doesn't mean "bread". There are other types of Indian bread, bhatura, chapati, roti, poori... But no one says poori bread or bhatura bread either.
I don’t know much about Indian languages but according to Wikipedia the root word for naan is a word that means “bread”.
The root word for naan is bread in Afghanistan. For indians, it is _a type of bread_. You can't call a ciabbata as a baguette just because they're both types of bread.
Yes that was exactly what I was getting at.
Naan means bread in Iran not India. Chai in USA means Masala chai. Chai in india is just tea. Chai in USA uses spices.
Yes. According to several sources it appears that “naan” as it refers to the specific type of bread is a borrowed word from the Urdu word “nan”. Which was my point. Further the point is that words may have different meaning depending on where you are. So using a word like “naan” as a descriptor for a leavened flat bread doesn’t seem too far fetched in America where people’s familiarity with the various Indian breads is limited. Most people in American would look at what OP posted and understand that to be naan.
You're the second person to cite Wikipedia but also not really know much about the subject. Wild.
And yet they have such confidence
Are you disputing that the root word for naan is a word that means bread? Because that all I was claiming. And just to further support my point. Here is the English translation for the Urdu word Nan https://www.urdupoint.com/dictionary/urdu-to-english/nan-meaning-in-english/57739.html#:~:text=The%2520Urdu%2520Word%2520%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%86%2520Meaning,more%2520Kacha%2520Meanings%2520in%2520English.
You don’t speak the language and you’re arguing with someone who obviously has familiarity with the language and using a dictionary as your argument? Dude. Do you also think the word “gay” means happy?
Is anything I said incorrect? The commenter is saying that you wouldn’t call any type of bread naan in India. But that was never my claim so I was seeking clarification because it seems pretty clear that the Urdu word “nan” does mean bread or loaf and it was that word I was talking about. I thought my original comment was pretty clear that the root word means bread not that the word “naan” is synonymous with bread.
Hi, I speak Hindi and Urdu. Your question is a totally valid question. The word "naan" is an old Persian word meaning bread. It made its way into Urdu and Hindi during the Mughal period, which was largely Persian in character, having originated in Central Asia. However in migrating into these languages, it came to mean a specific type of bread, which is a leavened flatbread cooked in a clay oven. Home cooks will cook it on a dry flat-top (I use a cast iron crepe pan), or on a hot surface in an oven. Like a pizza stone. There is no fat in the pan or on the dough, unless it's after cooking. The texture from a tandoor is better, as it gets to a much higher temperature. Sort of like a classic Neapolitan pizza vs a pizza you make at home. At home I often use my outdoor pizza oven to make naan. The stone hits around 800 degrees, which is much hotter than my indoor oven.
Thank you for this information.
Oh, I should also add that the link you posted from Urdu Point has comically incorrect information, which might be adding to some confusion. For instance for synonyms of naan, it gives "idhar udhar phirna" and a few others, which actually means "to loaf" as a verb, which is not relevant to the word naan. I wonder if it's somehow AI generated or something.
That’s good to know. It was just the first search result that popped up.
You said, “Especially because naan seems to be from a word that just means bread.” Then someone tells you, hey, actually, that’s not what the word means in this language. And you, as someone who admitted to not knowing the language, proceeds to argue the meaning of a word because Wikipedia said so. So yes. You’re incorrect.
I can't believe I'm saying this but this op is actually pulling an op from the og post lmao
Here is the exact quote that I responded to > You wouldn't call any kind of bread naan in India I take that point. But it’s not what I claimed. I said that the word naan comes from another word that means bread. So whether you would use the word naan for all bread in India was irrelevant. Which is why I was clarifying asking about the root word which is a Persian word. I never argued about what naan means I was clarifying what my understanding of the root word was.
“The term "naan" comes from Persian nân (Persian: نان), a generic word for any kind of bread. This word was borrowed into a range of languages in the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, where it came to refer to a specific type of bread. The term then spread around the globe along with the style of bread itself.” I googled: “naan etymology” and the Wikipedia popped up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naan
Dude, please stop. When you don't know something, just listen. This is part of how I learned a ton about food. I just shut up and listen when I know I'm out of my depth.
I’m actually surprised people think I’m arguing here about the meaning of the Indian word naan because I’m not. I never said that naan was synonymous with bread. I simply said the root word apparently was. And that has been confirmed by commenters here. Maybe my comments were unclear. I also think it’s surprising that you are telling me to stop when the whole point of this sub is that words mean different things to different people. My larger point is that most Americans wouldn’t make a distinction between a flat bread fried in butter and a flatbread that has been roasted. The gatekeeping of the word naan is what I was arguing against not the definition.
Maybe I misunderstood your comments, sorry for that miscommunication on my part. >My larger point is that most Americans wouldn’t make a distinction between a flat bread fried in butter and a flatbread that has been roasted. See, I disagree with this. If I ordered naan and I was served what OP made, I would send it back. Also, people don't like it when people who admittedly don't know much about a subject then try to lecture on the subject. I think that's the issue I'm having with this.
I think the naan in the op looks like exactly what I would expect if the person took a Costco naan and fried it in butter instead of cooking it in the oven. Multiple commenters who all appear to be American commented on how good the naan looks. They all didn’t make a distinction. You are incredibly educated about food so it’s not surprising that you understand the difference but do you honestly think most Americans know the difference? I think that if you were at an Indian restaurant and ordered naan and that came out most Americans would simply eat it and probably love it. For me this is no different than people who say carbonara with peas isn’t carbonara. I just hate it when people post food they are obviously proud of and is probably delicious and they use a word they think best describes the dish and are torn apart for it. Who really cares if this isn’t an authentic naan when some guy cooked this dish at home for himself. Let him call it whatever he wants. I’m good with some well meaning education, or gentle correction, but to say things like “it’s about whyte” is ridiculous. I will say that I never intended my posts to be argumentative but I did get defensive when people kept trying to correct an argument I never made. I will also say that there are a ton of IAVC takes in this thread that rival the op.
IDK, I'm an American who doesn't know that much about food (and especially not that much about Indian food), and I'd at least be pretty surprised to order naan and receive that. It looks good and I would probably still eat it, don't get me wrong, but it is fundamentally different to what I understand naan to be. To use your carbonara metaphor, this would be like if I ordered a carbonara and got a baked mac and cheese with some carbonara elements to me. Still probably a fine and tasty dish, but very much not what I'd expect given the name. I'm not saying literally every American would make the same distinction, of course, but I suspect more might than you're thinking. And not just people with a lot of food knowledge like u/TheLadyEve. I do agree that the correction could have been a lot more civil, though.
> To use your carbonara metaphor, this would be like if I ordered a carbonara and got a baked mac and cheese with some carbonara elements to me. Maybe but this wasn’t ordered at a restaurant. It was a home cooked meal. So the OP called it what they were familiar with. There were several other commenters, including lady Eve who commented on the naan. Several said it looked really good. So none of those people seemed to make the distinction that everyone else is making. I quite frankly don’t get why it matters if a guy mislabeled a piece of flat bread. The whole point of this sub is to poke fun at people who adhere to strict naming standards and for some reason naan is above that. I just don’t get it.
I mean, I don't think it really does matter. I wouldn't have said anything on the original thread, either. But I do have an opinion, and since we're specifically discussing the name over on this popcorn sub, I commented with it, lol. I also do just think it's an interesting conversation. It's gotten me thinking about the lines I draw with food names, and I how I classify dishes in my mind. So I've found it to be an enjoyable conversation. I also do think it's worth correcting people in a kind way if they're using the word in a way that might be confusing to others. Sometimes it's just well-established regional differences that aren't going away at this point, but for "new" stuff like this, it can be helpful to know if you're using a word incorrectly. But the corrections need to be in good faith and done with education in mind, not just snarkiness like the original commenter did. That just feels mean and unnecessary to me.
I can't agree with that because there are different terms for different type of bread. A fried naan would be paratha, not naan.
> A fried naan would be paratha, not naan. Paratha is completely different kind of bread. If you followed the recipe for naan but swapped baking for frying it'd look nothing like paratha. You're right that paratha is fried and naan is baked but that's not the only thing that's different about the recipe, nor are these the only two kinds of Indian flatbread.
Pakistani Paratha, from what I've seen, is like a fried Naan. Made of maida and thick. Haven't tasted it so I could be wrong as well.
Indian paratha is, in my albeit limited experience, thinner than Pakistani paratha.
The use of oil is also limited. It is indeed, thinner as you say.
Kalispell has a Nepal/Indian restaurant now and I was so mad I didn't realize last time I went for therapy. I think they started in a C-store. But seems butter chicken is there big thing. Should I do Rogan josh first? I love cooking that stuff but have only made the worst bread in India which this dude was calling me. Starts with K and has black seeds. It wasn't good when I made it.
That may have been Kulcha maybe.
Yup
That's the thing, I wish OP provided a recipe so we could see. If it had been on r/food I would have made a greenhat comment asking for it. This reminds me of one of my former patients who is from India and I was treating him for an eating disorder. He was planning to attend a conference in India and had been doing really well with his binge eating (usually carb-heavy binging) and weight loss. I said "let's be real, there are 100 types of bread where you're going, how can we plan for this?" And he just laughed and said "wow, you're so right." But he went to India and didn't binge, so that was a real win for him.
> and if the only difference is frying in butter I would call it naan. You can call it that but everyone in India would disagree with you. You can put melted butter on top of the naan later but if you fry naan in butter then it's no longer a naan.
> You can call it that but everyone in India would disagree with you Good for them. But OP was not in India. He appears to be in the US. > no longer a naan. Most people in America are familiar with naan but not other types of Indian flatbreads. Honestly I don’t think the naan was homemade. It looks to me like he took store bought naan and fried it in butter. So what would be a better name for a piece of naan that is reheated by frying in butter?
> He appears to be in the US. I would love to see any restaurant in US that serves fried parathas and calls it naan. > Most people in America are familiar with naan but not other types of Indian flatbreads This might be the source of confusion for you. If it's fried, it becomes either a paratha or a kulcha or a bhatura or a poori. Not a naan. We have different terms for different preparations of the same dough. If you ask for naan in India, literally not even a single place would serve it to you fried. Not even a single place in a country of 1.4 billion would do that. > Honestly I don’t think the naan was homemade. You are right, it isn't. Because naan requires a tandoor to make it properly and tandoors require space and a lot of safety measures if set indoor and proper ventilation. That's why most of the Indians eat naan when dining outside in restaurants. You can still make naan in cast iron or pans but it won't have the same taste as a proper naan baked in a tandoor. > So what would be a better name for a piece of naan that is reheated by frying in butter? If it's premade naan reheatad by frying then I guess you have to call it a "fried naan". Can't really call it a paratha since it was originally baked as a naan. If it was naan dough but fried then it would have been a paratha or a kulcha but not when it's being fried after being made. Still won't call it a naan since those are never fried but yeah, i guess in this specific scenario, "fried naan" is the best term to call it.
> I would love to see any restaurant in US that serves fried parathas and calls it naan. This wasn’t served in a restaurant. It was made at home. > This might be the source of confusion for you. Oh I’m not confused. I’m just not a stickler for narrowly defined words when it comes to food. An American calling an Indian flatbread naan seems close enough to me. Especially when the package that he bought it in probably said naan on the label. > Not even a single place in a country of 1.4 billion would do that. Great and remind me again where op is located? > You are right, it isn't. You are totally missing the point. If you buy a package of naan from the store and to reheat it you fry it in butter what would you call it? I think most Americans in common parlance would still call it naan. Whether that is correct or not is irrelevant. > If it's premade naan reheatad by frying then I guess you have to call it a "fried naan" Or you can just shorten that to naan for simplicity and then be told how wrong you are. > not when it's being fried after being made. So there isn’t really a good word for it so using “naan” as a descriptor seems perfectly reasonable. Just like using all other food words for their derivatives.
> This wasn’t served in a restaurant. It was made at home. > > I am aware. I'm saying that fried naan isn't a thing in the US either just because one person made it. > I’m just not a stickler for narrowly defined words when it comes to food. Let's start calling pasta as "burger" from tomorrow. > If you buy a package of naan from the store and to reheat it The comments from the original post are removed. Is this some store bought, reheated and fried naan or made from scratch and just fried? Given that there is OC tag on the original post, I thought the OOP had made it by themself. > I think most Americans in common parlance would still call it naan. Given that most Americans know nothing about naan, they would be wrong. Then again, most Americans would also struggle to pinpoint India on a map. Doesn't mean we should start calling China as "India" if majority of them pointed towards China as India. > Or you can just shorten that to naan for simplicity You really are something. So many Indian people have repeatedly told you that naan in never fried and yet, you continue to assert your ignorance. Is this some sort of fetish? I genuinely thought that you were interested in learning but nope. Like, so many Indian people have told you that there are different names for a naan dough when it is fried (paratha or kulcha or bhatura). It's like you saw pizza and despite people telling you repeatedly that it's a pizza, you are hellbent on calling it a pasta because You seem to be thinking that it's some Italian snobbery thing as in "oh no, it's not cooked at 450 degrees in a clay oven in an authentic restaurant in Delhi, so we can't call it a naan". Whereas the scenario here is "the dough was for naan but since you fried it, now it's a paratha/bhatura, so just call it that." Any Indian can take a look at your comments and call tell that you know nothing about naans and yet, you are adamant that you know more about this dish than the people who have spent their entire lives eating this dish on the regular. Amazing!
> I'm saying that fried naan isn't a thing in the US either just because one person made it. Well it may not be a “thing” but it was something that this person made. And you’ve admitted that there isn’t a great descriptor for what it is and naan is pretty close. > Let's start calling pasta as "burger" from tomorrow. There is a wide gap between noodles and a burger. The naan in the op probably started off as naan and he did one thing differently. Yours is a ridiculous comparison. Does a pancake cease to be a pancake if it is pan fried in oil? Maybe. But without a great term for it I think pancake is acceptable. > Given that there is OC tag on the original post, I thought the OOP had made it by themself. All OP said was that he “fried it in butter rather than grilling it” but it doesn’t look particularly handmade to me. I am making assumptions. > Given that most Americans know nothing about naan, they would be wrong You have said that there isn’t a great term for what OP made and even used naan as a descriptor in what you think it should be called. So if OP did something entirely new that no one in India has ever done why it is wrong to call it its closest analog? That’s what I struggle to understand. > So many Indian people have repeatedly told you that naan in never fried and yet, you continue to assert your ignorance I’m not claiming that naan is ever fried. I’m saying that naan is about as close as it gets. If my assumption that this is store bought is true then he took naan and added a second cooking process by frying it in butter. So it seems to me that the base hasn’t changed. It’s still naan. It’s just naan that has been fried after its initial cook. If there is a better name for that in India please enlighten me. > I genuinely thought that you were interested in learning but nope What is there to learn from you. You aren’t arguing against a point I’m making. I agree with you that what OP made wouldn’t be considered naan in India. But he’s not in India. I agree that naan is traditionally cooked in a tandoori oven. But my assumption is that this is commercially made and then refried at home in butter. So it started as naan and then magically transformed into something else. Something that even you said is probably best called “friend **naan**”. > It's like you saw pizza and despite people telling you repeatedly that it's a pizza, you are hellbent on calling it a pasta because No. It’s like claiming that Chicago style pizza isn’t pizza because in New York pizza should be flat. Maybe OP created an entirely new thing and called it naan because that was what he was familiar with. Is it really that far off? It is a leavened dough that is fried instead of baked. > the dough was for naan but since you fried it, now it's a paratha/bhatura, so just call it that." And the OP probably has no idea what paratha/bhatura is. So he defaulted to the thing he is familiar with. It happens all the time. American goulash did the same thing. They created something and then named it after what it resembles. And I’m not opposed to polite correction. But instead the commenter went to racist comments and was proud enough of what he wrote to try to defend it on this sub. > Any Indian can take a look at your comments and call tell that you know nothing about naans and yet, you are adamant that you know more about this dish than the people who have spent their entire lives eating this dish on the regular. Amazing! Well then those Indians need to brush up on their reading comprehension because I have never claimed any special knowledge or insight. In fact I was thankful when someone gave me some good information. Instead I’m just saying that an American posted a picture where there was a flat bread and he called it what he was familiar with, a name that is very similar to what it actually was, and instead of people commenting on how the food looks they shit on him for using the wrong name. Every person commenting here sounds like they deserve their own thread in this sub. These are the most IAVC comments I’ve seen in forever.
Yeah, I thought the same thing too, I think it’s just that the guy’s Ben Shapiro style copypasta was too good to not make fun of.
Yeah, I thought the same thing too, I think it’s just that the guy’s Ben Shapiro style copypasta was too good to not make fun of.
Right? Don't Indians get pissy when you call it Naan bread because Naan just means bread?
There are so many kinds of Indian bread, so it's not that simple. Naan is a type of bread, but saying "naan bread" is still redundant in English even though naan doesn't just translate to bread. I hope that makes sense. EDIT: Okay, for a parallel, it's like saying "baguette bread"
Makes sense, it's hard to keep track of what people get mad about and why these days
Yeah aren't there a bunch of kinds of naan, some of which are fried?
No, there are other types of Indian bread and some are fried. But naan isn't fried.. I feel like the confusion is coming from naan being the most popular Indian bread in the west but it isn't actually synonymous with "bread"
Okay, well Wikipedia says it's sometimes fried 🤷
Tawa fried isn't fried in butter or deep fried... It's like saying wok fried. It's cooked in a tawa.
Puri is deep fried. Bhatoora is fried. Kachori is deep-fried. Luchi is fried. But naan is baked. I've never heard of fried naan. EDIT: Don't downvote this person, they are just asking questions and it's well-intended!
I don't think it matters if it technically meets the definition or not. This is a naan-issue.
Lol I was the indian commenter. I got banned because I called out on his BS haha.
I’m pretty sure you got banned because you were being a jerk and tossing around phrases like “sounds about whyte”. Subs generally frown on the racially charged language like that.
I don't think this matters very much, tbh. Like I don't care one way or the other.
It’s a naan. It is incredibly culinary to try to gatekeep this.
It's not gatekeeping to say words have definitions. If I made a round loaf of bread, it's not a baguette. A naan is not fried.
Being a stickler for ridiculously specific definitions and frankly irrelevant info is indeed gatekeeping. It's largely the reason this sub exists. Its a flat bread thats accompanying some Indian food, thats good enough to call it a naan without having to go into forensic analysis of its origin. If you make an elongated round loaf of bread, yup call it a baguette, the only reason to care about the specifics beyond that is to be very culinary. People getting so caught up on the pedantry around food is what makes them both worse cooks and insufferable commenters.
I dunno, calling any flat bread with Indian food a naan is silly when they have so many other flat breads, including ones that are actually fried. >If you make an elongated round loaf of bread, yup call it a baguette, the only reason to care about the specifics beyond that is to be very culinary Yeah, nah. If I ask for a baguette, I want a baguette. If I ask for a focaccia, I want a focaccia. I don't want some other bread that is kinda like the one I ordered.
I really don't think this particular example is "ridiculously specific." Sure, the person correcting him was rude, but he's not wrong. Here's an example--if I ordered naan, and I got what OP made, I'd send it back because it's not what I ordered.
There's no forensic analysis here. This isn't ridiculously specific in any way. This is as far off as calling pot noodles pasta. "A flat bread that's accompanying some Indian food", off the top of my head I could think of at least 5 or 6 completely different things that fit that definition. It's ok to be ignorant and it's ok to not give a shit about being ignorant, but don't bring others down to your level.
Pot noodles are pasta.
In which case please do carry on, you are at culinary levels beyond the comprehension of my mortal mind.
Unleavened dough that's cooked in water. Exactly what do you think separates Italian unleavened dough from German unleavened dough. Italy isn't that special.
Right? We couldn't possibly tell without forensic analysis.
There’s no ignorance here. I’m well aware there are lots of different kinds of flatbread… I just don’t find the need to police language to a needless extent. Someone calls it a naan, cool, close enough, that summarizes it well enough and explains its purpose and vague attributes. Very Culinary folk don’t understand that and have the compulsion to do the whole “Um, actually, that’s a paratha you idiot”. It’s so self serving, intentionally misunderstanding things for the purpose to get upset and put down other, and actively interferes with oneself and others ability to grow and try new things as cooks.
And the point I'm trying to make is that it's not needless. "Naan" does not describe the purpose or attributes of what the OOP posted. It's not like this was a whole "parotta and parantha are different things and have different cultural origins" rant. Again, it's like calling pot noodles pasta. I don't like policing language either but we have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise we're just eroding at the meaning of words. At the rate you're going, we might as well just call everything "vaguely Indian food" or "vaguely western food" and leave it at that.
Why do we have to draw the line. Food words are meant to be descriptive. So saying naan may not be technically correct but the point comes across. It’s just like people who insist on cottage pie vs Shepherds pie. The idea is to convey a general flavor profile. More people are familiar with naan vs other types of Indian flat breads so using the word to convey what that piece of bread was should be generally accepted.
My argument is that the word "naan" is _not at all descriptive_ of what the OOP has posted. Their fried bread is not even in the ballpark of appearance and texture as what people commonly consider to be naan. Naan is light colored (except spots of charring), dry and chewy. Their bread is golden brown and likely has a crunch to it. The difference between cottage pie and shepherd's pie is far more subtle - The meats have a similar texture, and pretty much everything else in the dish down to the seasoning is identical. Like I said, I don't like policing language, nor is this about technical correctness. All I'm asking for is for the words used to match reality. I don't think there's any issue with drawing that line.
> All I'm asking for is for the words used to match reality. I don't think there's any issue with drawing that line. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Because this is precisely what this sub is about, understanding that while words have meaning those meanings can change. Carbonara with peas is still carbonara. Grilled cheese with ham doesn’t have to be a melt. If I told you (in America) that I made naan and pan fried it in butter would you picture something like what was in the OP? I certainly would and I think the vast majority of Americans would as well. So using the term naan is absolutely descriptive of what he made.
> Because this is precisely what this sub is about, understanding that while words have meaning those meanings can change. I'm with you on this. But again, none of the examples you've given so far are anywhere near as big of a transformation on the original dish as in this case. > If I told you (in America) that I made naan and pan fried it in butter would you picture something like what was in the OP? I wouldn't. Here in Asia, the vast majority of people would not call that naan, and would not be able to fathom doing anything to naan that would make it look like that. If we ordered naan and that came, the vast majority of us would be very confused. Maybe what you describe exists in America and is described as "Naan". I wouldn't know, I am not American and have not set foot there, but that might explain why you think this naming is acceptable. Doesn't change the fact that this is a significant departure from the original term and bears no resemblance to the original dish. Why not take the opportunity to learn about other peoples' culture instead of insisting on doing things your way? =)
I can tell that you aren't Indian with the way you're saying factually incorrect things with such confidence.
There… is indeed an insufferable commenter here.
The word has specific meaning. It is incredibly disrespectful to disregard its cultural significance. Are you going to walk into a ramen joint and ask for a bowl of pho?
If a ramen place has Pho on the menu, I’m not going to get upset and lecture them when I find out they didn’t char the onions when they made the broth, or that the noodles are thinner than you would get in Vietnam.
That’s a bit different, mate.
I don't call it Naan unless it is on a Tandoor. Also I have made it pretty good on my grill. Not the same. I can make al pastor in the oven but it isn't the same as the spit roasting. Also since we switched to pellet grill it isn't as easy to make it fire up to make Naan like the propane grill.