How Did Chop Suey Become a Staple of Chinese American Cuisine?(catapult.co)
catapult.co
How Did Chop Suey Become a Staple of Chinese American Cuisine?
https://catapult.co/stories/comic-shing-yin-khor-chop-suey-chinese-american-food-history
26 comments
Living in Quebec and eating Banh Mi is entertaining to think about. A fusion Vietnamese-French dish that has now been brought to another former French colony by Vietnamese immigrants.
Hakka cuisine is also interesting since it is originally Chinese-Indian but now that people have brought it to Canada I guess the kind we get here would qualify as Chinese-Indian-Canadian.
Hakka cuisine is also interesting since it is originally Chinese-Indian but now that people have brought it to Canada I guess the kind we get here would qualify as Chinese-Indian-Canadian.
I discovered Indian Chinese food while living in the Toronto area and it was mind blowing. I love the Manchurian chicken dishes but I particularly enjoy the vegetarian Hakka stir fry.
It has all the comforting qualities of a Chinese stir fry but is spicy to boot. Interestingly I’ve noticed that most patrons of Hakka restaurants are South Asian, not East Asian, which means more latitude to deploy stronger spices.
It has all the comforting qualities of a Chinese stir fry but is spicy to boot. Interestingly I’ve noticed that most patrons of Hakka restaurants are South Asian, not East Asian, which means more latitude to deploy stronger spices.
Hakka is not Chinese-Indian. The Hakka ancestors who went to Canada might have Indian links but that's a very obscure subset of the Hakka clan and definitely not representative of it.
...and in Chinese restraunts in India they usually have 2 chop sueys on menu. American Chop Suey (red sauce) and a Chinese Chop Suey (white sauce).
What do you mean by Hakka cuisine being Indian? Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup in China. Did the ones in Canada come via India or something?
I had the same question, which led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_cuisine#Hakka_cuisine_in...
Apparently there was a large wave of Hakka immigration into India, where they developed a kind of fusion cuisine, which they brought with them when later moving to Canada.
Apparently there was a large wave of Hakka immigration into India, where they developed a kind of fusion cuisine, which they brought with them when later moving to Canada.
The old joke is that when the British colonized a country they left behind railways and a legal system, while when the French colonized a country they left behind baguettes and coffee.
Unsurprisingly, Vietnam is also a major coffee producer.
Unsurprisingly, Vietnam is also a major coffee producer.
Hong Kong got that weird breakfast cuisine that looks like it’s made out of wartime rations— among other things condensed milk spread on toast and that coffee/tea mix.
A lot of those products became popular because Hong Kong is a tropical city reliant on food imports. Things like condensed milk, luncheon meats, etc. became popular because they were shelf-stable without refrigeration, and thus were affordable to keep around.
see also: hawaii + spam
(also, spam is surprisingly good. I had it for the first time as a ~40 year old American recently and realized I've let public righteousness / shitty opinions keep me from something good)
(also, spam is surprisingly good. I had it for the first time as a ~40 year old American recently and realized I've let public righteousness / shitty opinions keep me from something good)
"Luncheon meat" is the generic term I've seen for it in Hong Kong English, since Spam is still a trademark.
The problem is mostly that your average American does not know how to properly treat it.
It is technically edible out of the can but you really want to brown it in a pan. And you need a relatively large amount of carbs to soak up all the sodium (so for Asians and Hawaiians, rice.)
The problem is mostly that your average American does not know how to properly treat it.
It is technically edible out of the can but you really want to brown it in a pan. And you need a relatively large amount of carbs to soak up all the sodium (so for Asians and Hawaiians, rice.)
I had never heard of the Chinese Exclusion Act until I read this piece. And I've lived in the US for over 20 years.
Shocking trip down the Wiki entries.
Thank you to the author.
Shocking trip down the Wiki entries.
Thank you to the author.
Understand the frustration, but it is incomparable.
I ask the same thing, but about Nu Metal: https://loudwire.com/chop-suey-one-billion-views-youtube-sys...
I had absolutely no idea chop suey was that popular on YouTube. I feel like it wasn't played on the radio at all in NJ, as opposed to say In the End which was on once an hour at its peak.
I always figured that it's essentially the same dish as the Fujian/Peranakan/Indonesian cap cai (雜菜), pronounced "chap chai" and meaning literally "mixed vegetables":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_cai
Depending on dialect, cai can be pronounced choy, tsoi, sai etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_cai
Depending on dialect, cai can be pronounced choy, tsoi, sai etc.
Here is something funny.. I've heard the term, of course, but have never associated it with an actual dish!
Chop Suey was my late father's favorite dish to order when we visited a Chinese restaurant. He remembered first having it as a boy in the 1920's in Detroit.
In fact I've seen Detroit pictures from that era and you can see big signs advertising Chop Suey restaurants.
But sometime in the eighties it began disappearing from Chinese restaurant menus and I'm not certain why? Perhaps it became less popular over time.
In fact I've seen Detroit pictures from that era and you can see big signs advertising Chop Suey restaurants.
But sometime in the eighties it began disappearing from Chinese restaurant menus and I'm not certain why? Perhaps it became less popular over time.
http://conniewenchang.bol.ucla.edu/menus/index.html
You might find this interesting - it seems like every few years we get a new history / analysis of chinese-american food like this, and this student project is one of my favorite versions (I'd seen it shared previously in the comments of another article on the same topic) . It uses an NYPL database of historical restaurant menus and proposes some ideas about why the menus changed over time.
You might find this interesting - it seems like every few years we get a new history / analysis of chinese-american food like this, and this student project is one of my favorite versions (I'd seen it shared previously in the comments of another article on the same topic) . It uses an NYPL database of historical restaurant menus and proposes some ideas about why the menus changed over time.
Chinese restaurants in the Chicago area still have chop suey on their menus. I had some a few weeks ago. I also bought some for a homeless person a few months ago —- they specially mentioned they wanted chop suey.
You do have to go to an American Chinese restaurant though - these are usually the ones located in strip malls or in the suburbs. Newer Chinese restaurants tend to be run by more recent immigrants and therefore don’t serve American Chinese — American Chinese is a different cuisine from Chinese.
You do have to go to an American Chinese restaurant though - these are usually the ones located in strip malls or in the suburbs. Newer Chinese restaurants tend to be run by more recent immigrants and therefore don’t serve American Chinese — American Chinese is a different cuisine from Chinese.
That's funny, because I grew up making and consuming Japanese "chashu" and didn't learn that Chinese "char siu" was the same chop suey I'd seen and heard from old cartoons until recently.
Roast pork is a wonderful thing, and while I find a lot of commercial styles cloyingly sweet, the recipe is fairly simple in a convection oven or sous vide with a broil at the end.
Roast pork is a wonderful thing, and while I find a lot of commercial styles cloyingly sweet, the recipe is fairly simple in a convection oven or sous vide with a broil at the end.
Wait, what? Char siu is 叉燒 and chop suey is 杂碎, they are two totally different dishes.
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Vietnamese food is also very popular in Australian capital cities, especially banh mi. The fact at some stage a crusty French bread roll merged with delicious Vietnamese meats is one of those pleasant parts of otherwise complex and questionable colonialism.
In Australia, we're still yet to properly come to terms with some of the unsavoury elements of our colonial history, and I'm reminded of this when I enjoy Australia's most popular foods: the mix of food cultures of the many migrants who have settled here is wonderful, even when their other cultural elements are less visible.