pasta

Many food publications have come under fire recently for either completely bastardizing a culture's cuisine, or neglecting to correctly credit a dish's influence. While we've enjoyed all the drama surrounding Bon Appetit's various failings, the latest culprit of food crimes is none other than The New York Times. 

The publication stoked the ire of readers back in 2018 when they referred to Yorkshire Pudding, an English supper special, as a dessert. Their latest misstep? Publishing a recipe for a dish called "Smoky Tomato Carbonara."

For those of you who may not be versed in Italian cuisine, they take their recipes - and methodologies - very, very seriously. Carbonara is a pasta dish (usually using Spaghetti) that combines guanciale (pork jowl), black pepper, pecorino cheese and egg to create a wonderfully rich and savory treat. Unfortunately, especially stateside, many home and professional chefs bastardize this preparation either by using substitutions such as bacon for guanciale, or, even worse, adding cream to the sauce. While the dish does have a creaminess to it, the decadence comes from the last step of the cooking process, when a mixture of raw egg is added to the cooked pasta while off the heat. It cooks into a creamy coating when done correctly. Adding cream or milk isn't just a cop out, to many Italians it's a sin. 

If the addition of dairy or use of bacon is so offensive, it's no wonder this "smoky tomato" recipe has inspired such animosity. And Italians are not ones to mince words. One chef from Rome, the 'Carbonara King' Alessandro Pipero, told Corriere della Sera "It would be like putting salami in a cappuccino or mortadella in sushi. OK, fine, but then let's not call it sushi, similarly with this one – carbonara with tomato is not carbonara. It's something else." Other opponents chose to voice their disgust on Twitter - mostly in response to the tweet that was supposed to promote the controversial recipe. But the condemnation of bastardized Italian dishes on social media is nothing new. In fact, one of our favorite Twitter accounts is an impressive archive of heated, angry comments in response to images of ketchup-soiled pasta, or pizzas with pineapple on them. The account, Italians Mad At Food, has been pumping out the entertainment since 2015, and has amassed a pretty impressive following of 100k fans. If you're entertained by this kind of food criticism, you'll definitely enjoy the screenshots they so diligently upload. We've put together our favorites from the last month or so for your convenient enjoyment, but you can see more on Twitter as well as on their newer Instagram. The anger and scathing remarks really never get old.  

If you've been on Twitter at all in the past 24 hours, you've probably seen that Prego is trending. No, the pathetic excuse for a pasta sauce has not been abolished from grocery store shelves. Instead, the gullible people of the internet are expressing their shock and horror at yet another white person who thinks that smearing food over a shining kitchen island is a "hack." 

Obviously the video above from "Josh and Lisa" is disturbing. It's even more disturbing with sound as its participants pretend this is a serious party trick. The dry noodles. The premade...everything. The counter. It's enough to send Gordon Ramsay into a coma. Also disturbing is the fact that people are completely eating this charade up. Which is more than we can say for that pasta. 

If a person with deductive reasoning (hello) does even a little bit of digging, it becomes obvious that this video - and many like it - are the brainchild of attention-hungry influencers who film "pranks" with clickbaity titles. The same goes for that nacho hack that horrified us around the Super Bowl. Following repeated viewings of that scarring video, we realized its creator, Taylor Watson, had included the controversial clip in a folder called "Pranks!" 

Josh and Lisa's videos look eerily similar to Taylor's. They even filmed a "nacho hack" of their own. It's got to be the most pathetic plagiarism we've seen in our lives. Many of their earlier "works" include a pretty damning disclaimer:

Thanks so much for watching this video! I do hope you enjoy it. Please note that this page features scripted dramas,PARODY HACKS, parody and satire. The events that take place in this particular short-film video are for entertainment purposes only. 

It's safe to say that this Prego-laced abomination belongs in that category. While some people may say it's all in good fun, we had a feeling these milquetoast "creators" knew exactly what they were doing. And according to a piece from Eater - we were right. It turns out that all of these despicable shows of "cooking" from polished Facebook personalities lead back to Rick Lax, a Facebook-famous magician with a penchant for using gross concepts to create viral videos. He and his network know they can capitalize on the trope that white people can't cook. And they will continue to do so as long as the views come pouring in. Do they want clout? Do they want engagement so they can start shilling light projectors like viral Twitter users? Or are they in it for fun, as Lax claims? We're not really sure, but it's really time that we stop feeding into their food-wasting, unfunny bullshit. 

Edited 1:29 pm to include the revelation of Rick Lax's involvement.

If you read this title and you're rather confused, pici is a type of pasta, ancient in origin. These memes contain stereotypes galore, so if you're actually Italian, then we're sorry ahead of time. 

If for some reason you have a hankering to browse through the best Italian memes of 2017, well, it's your lucky day!

This dank meme is so universally understood because if you've ever eaten leftover spaghetti out of tupperware then you have with 100% certainty experienced this irritating phenomenon. One day your brand new tupperware is crystal clear and squeaky clean, and then you fill it with literally anything red and it's suddenly orange-tinted for life. RIP tupperware.

In case you thought you were a bad cook...think again. These people really f*cked up their attempts at cooking so badly that you'll feel really good about your own cooking skills, even if you can't cook for sh*t. Like really, how hard is it to boil water for pasta? Is this some kind of Millennial phenomenon??

The U.S. is pretty well known for its bastardization of other cuisines. We gobble down crab rangoon, California rolls and rainbow bagels with sheer delight. The debate over whether or not pineapples belong on pizza exists solely because some demented genius decided to place the fruit on a classic Italian dish. We see the backlash all over social media. so it should come as no surprise that there's an entire Twitter account dedicated to the infuriated Italians eager to reject these crimes against their cuisine. 

Italians Mad At Food is basically an aggregator of enraged Italian commenters bemoaning the culinary abilities of anyone who, well, isn't Italian. The comments are hilarious, lofty, and oftentimes hard to decipher - which arguably makes them even funnier. While we do believe an apology is in order for Olive Garden and Chef Boyardee, the existence of this Twitter account and its heated comments has left us grateful for our criminal takes on Italian cuisine.

If you're looking for stupid internet trends, you've come to the right place! After The New York Times published a recipe for "parsleyed noodles," Twitter user Ariel Dumas noticed, and subsequently tweeted, that people were posting ridiculous comments making fun of and meme-ing the slightly pretentious way the recipe was worded.