• ryedaft@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    Making vodka from potatoes (instead of grain) was so awesome that the woman who did it became the first female university professor in Sweden.

    Edit: no it wasn’t Martha Stewart you fucking idiot

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
      13·
      1 day ago

      the definition of vegetable is very vague. anything from a plant can be vegetable.

      i personally prefer using words like root, leaves, fruits and nuts, but strawberries put that to the test

      • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 day ago

        Anything from a plant can be a vegetable

        Is bread a vegetable because it is made of wheat?

        Edit: you can downvote me but you’re still incorrect. It isn’t vague and potato is objectively not a vegetable. Same goes for grains like wheat, corn, and rice.

        • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
          7·
          1 day ago

          Tell that to the National Potato Council. Potatoes may take the place of grains in some dishes, but that doesn’t make them a grain. Radishes, beets, turnips, and other tubers may also be used as a starchy base for a dish, but I doubt you’d question the legitimacy of them as vegetables

        • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
          12·
          1 day ago

          You’re also dumb and wrong from the very loose culinary definition btw, potatoes aren’t a grain, they fall under the “root VEGETABLE” category along with beets, carrots, onions etc…

            • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
              12·
              1 day ago

              So you might be arguing with the wrong person if you want to pull culinary technicalities. When I open my copy of Escoffier Le Guide Culinaire to page 498 I find Potatoes listed in the vegetables section

              But wait, let me check my copy of Jaques Pepins Complete Techniques ah, okay, on page 323 he describes potatoes as “a versatile vegetable”. Maybe The Joy of Cooking? Ah, here, on page 245, under vegetables, and a root vegetable puree recipe featuring potatoes. Fascinating…

              I’m afraid I don’t have a copy of the CIA textbook currently though I’m fixing that soon, and my Japanese cooking technique textbooks don’t specifically categorize potatoes. Want me to get back to you when I can borrow a copy of Modernist Cuisine from my chef friend?

                • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
                  7·
                  1 day ago

                  “Starch” isn’t a plant categorization at all, stupid. In fact, pretty much any source you can find will tell you potatoes are classified as a vegetable, and while most veggies are lower in starch, a great many are considered starchy vegetables, Including peas. A vegetable having starch in it doesn’t make it a starch. That’s like calling Cabbage a fiber instead of a vegetable, because it has a bunch in it.

          • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 day ago

            Culinarily, you can define vegetables using the basic food groups. Grains and starches are a distinct group and not part of the vegetable food group, despite the fact that they come from plants. It is easy to see that not all food that is plant-based is, culinarily, a “vegetable” when you consider things like fruits and nuts, which people have no trouble distinguishing from vegetables.

            And yes, many things we culinarily consider vegetables actually fall under the scientific definition of fruit, and some “fruits” do not fall under that definition.

            • Stovetop@lemmy.world
              10·
              1 day ago

              Starches are just something a vegetable has, though, not something they are. Like protein and fiber.

              If you exclude anything with starch from being vegetables, you’re also excluding beans, squash, lentils, carrots, peas, parsnips, corn, etc.

                • Stovetop@lemmy.world
                  5·
                  1 day ago

                  I think the distinction you’re thinking of is when something is milled. Wheat is milled into flour. Rice is milled to remove the husks. Corn is milled into meal. At that point you’re not eating the plant, you’re eating a processed plant product. Of those three, corn is the only one that can really be eaten as-is, so perhaps the distinction of when it’s a grain or a vegetable is more about if it was dried and milled first.

                  But all of that seems unrelated to potatoes, which are roots. You can make bread out of potatoes, and I don’t think anyone would try to argue that potato bread somehow counts as a vegetable. But a potato on its own, minimally processed and eaten relatively whole, seems to fit the definition of a vegetable by most definitions, culinary or otherwise.