🇮🇹 As an Italian living in the US, I keep hearing the wildest stereotypes… so today we’re finally debunking the BIGGEST myths people believe about Italians!
In this video, I go through the funniest, most common, and most unrealistic ideas people have about Italian food, cooking and culture. From “Italians make fresh pasta every day” to “Italians don’t use premade sauce” these stereotypes are WAY off. 😭
If you want to understand real Italian culture and what Italians actually eat, how we cook, how we drink coffee, how often we eat pasta, what we buy at the grocery store, this video is for you.
✨ WHAT I TALK ABOUT IN THIS VIDEO:
– Italians do NOT make fresh pasta every day
– Italians DO buy store-brand pasta
– No, we don’t simmer sauce for 4 hours every night
– We have modern technology
🇮🇹 If you’re new:
I’m an Italian who moved to the US and I make videos about Italian culture, American culture shocks, food myths, and the funny differences I notice every day.
👉 Subscribe for more Italian truth bombs and culture shock videos!
#italianstereotypes #italianinamerica #italyvsusa #italianreacts #italiangirl #culturshock #italianfoodmyths #authenticitalian #italianlife #italiangirlinusa
30 Comments
I always thought Italy used garlic. Thanks for the clarification. I’m a lover of it. Especially roasted
So…are you in the mob?
I love Barilla because the F1 racing pasta TV commercial was very good, also today's background on your TV is much better than that LSD trip screen saver last time.
What always baffles me is why there are 600 different types of pasta. Pasta is pasta is pasta. Spaghetti noodles don't taste any differently than lasagna noodles or fussellini or fettuccine or ravioli or fusilli or penne. Pasta is pasta is pasta. 🤷🏼♂️
This is NOT a myth, I can attest that Italian women ARE passionate. I dated two when I was young, one from Roma and the other from Milano. 🙂
I was born and raised in Bari, Italy. I first came to the United States for graduate school, and currently work in the United States, but go back home to both Rome and Bari, where my family live, and I think the most important thing for Americans to know is that we are all different, just like Americans.
My family will only make homemade pasta sauce. We never use store bought sauce. We also use plenty of garlic, which my family and I love. What region you are from in Italy often determines what generational ingredients you use in your food. Again, Italians and our cuisine is different not only from region to region, but sometimes, from family to family.
I started cooking Italian food in my 20s after watching a Linguine Arriabita recipe from a Dutch priest's podcast. The recipe was from Chow Ciao a Yahoo Screen show years back hosted by Chef Fabio Viviani. And boyyyyyy did I learn alot about Italian food.
In the beginning, I tried to make fresh sauce from Fabio, that would take me 2x as long as he would ( and would be a huge mess).
I live in Houston and one day I saw that Fabio was coming to promote his book. He said he could make fresh pasta in 5 mins, but it was closer to 7 mins. 😅😅😅
But, to me it was like yeah fresh pasta is the best, but not me making it…😂😂😂
Btw, Houston's humidity is unreal…. Out of the top 12 most humid cities, Texas has 5! Miami is the only Top 12 city that Florida has. 🌿🌿🌿
Garlic here is weak, so are tomatoes. I use 12 gloves of garlic, I can of crushed tomatoes, some pepper flakes, and store pasta sauce. I cook it down a bit then used a hand blender to make the sauce more consistent. My mom does make pesto from scratch. Absolutely delicious.
Couldn't immigrants from Italy also use more meat and cheese here in the US versus what they could back in Italy? Well that is actually true so I'm not sure why I posed it as a question.
🍅 you killed me with the wine comment. 😅 What I want to know is who made Italians the food police? And what is the big deal about breaking spaghetti. If I want to break the spaghetti I’m gonna do it. Something to remember is that most of the the “that’s not real Italian,” commentators are third or fourth generation Americans who think they’re Italian because their great grandparents immigrated to the USA in 1901 and they saw The Good Fellas when they were kids. It’s the same problem with us Latinos. Too many want to dictate what’s real Mexican because they think wear flannel makes them Mexican. Then we have the California Latinos fighting with the Texas Latinos over who’s more Mexican while Arizona and New Mexico Latinos are just staying out of it, even though none of us are Mexicans. We’re all Americans.
🍅Your point about garlic is interesting to me. Because I've seen Italian chefs say no no no to lots of garlic. But American garlic is hard to taste in small quantities. So I was always confused. Maybe these Italian chefs were garlic super tasters. So now I'm interested in trying Italian garlic.
What a wonderful, sometimes humorous, video. In 8 minutes you brought more humanity to our understanding of the Italian people and way of life, than the last 10 Italian Ambassadors. I also admire the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni.
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Italians rarely make fresh pasta. Dried pasta works better in most recipes. I've never seen someone make fresh spaghetti or short pastas.
Most garlic in the US now comes from China and is weak and not as good as California or Italian garlic 🧄
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2:44 you will change your mind here in America the first time you use Great Value Ziti and they all explode in the water after 7 minutes
what's funny is the stereotype does come from 60-100 years ago,
after the industrialization of boxed pasta and canned sauce….
during the restaurant boom when ton's of italian restaurants opening in the U.S.
and U.S. restaurants (like Uno's) used boxed pasta instead of homemade….
the italian restaurants and chefs claimed that true italians make their own pasta and sauce…
food made from factory produced pasta or sauces isn't true italian cuisine…..
so the americans rolled with the stereotype…
Some of these aren't so much wrong, as badly out of date, or in some cases over-generalized. A lot of Italians immigrated to America in the nineteenth century, so there are a lot of ideas about Italians over here, that come from that era. Additionally, more people came to America from southern Italy and from Sicily, than from northern Italy. Northern culture has become somewhat more dominant / standardized in Italy itself in the modern era, and so a lot of Italian-American cultural mores are rooted in a subculture that is no longer especially prominent in most of mainland Italy. This is somewhat analogous to the situation with mainstream modern German, which leans heavily into High German (i.e., the Germanic dialects from higher elevations, nearer the alps), albeit with some significant influences from the Berlin area; whereas, "Pennsylvania Dutch" is descended mostly from Low German, the portion of the dialect continuum traditionally spoken closer to the sea, in what is now northern Germany, southern mainland Denmark, and the Low Countries. (English itself is also descended from a Low German, but from a much earlier version thereof, and English has changed a lot more in the intervening millennium, especially during the Middle English period, which was just a whole lot of chaos, linguistically speaking.)
Trying to think of a stereotype I hold about Italians. My first love (long time ago) was a second generation Italian from Brooklyn. I do believe drivers in Rome are the worst drivers in Europe. I kinda had that bubble burst after some time being driven around moscow for a while. I have never been to Rome but they CAN'T be that bad. I can confirm making my own pasta sauce in a Texas summer keeps the air conditioning working over time. But so does doing sour dough, bagels, standing rib roast, and many others. Best left for this time of year instead.
Was a very entertaining and informative video. I think some of these beliefs come from Italian YT channels. I was so tired of the Italian Youtubers that turn their noses up at anything and everything that either isn't made by them, from their childhood, or from some small town in Italy.
Put whatever you want in your food no matter where you are from!!!! Live!!!!!!! Viva la Jess!!!!! Haha
all Italian chefs come to America to work and train at the Olive Garden. it's like a right of passage. it is only then that they become real Italian chefs
Italians never use garlic? BS. I use it every day. It depends on how much… Certainly not as much as in the French aioli!
Martha Stewart makes her pesto in a food processor. I live in north central WI and there are not many Italians around here. We do have an authentic Italian restaurant run by an Italian family. It's very different than going to an American Italian restaurant. It was very confusing to order the food and the Italians who worked there were not helpful, they were very unhappy and grouchy. The man in charge was like a big angry bull yelling at all the employees like they were worthless. It was not a good experience. I was very happy to get out of there and I never went back because it was so stressful and really expensive. The food was just OK. When I asked if I could get chicken with my alfredo the waiter looked at me like I was an alien. The portion sizes were very small it was disappointing. The worst part was how mean the manager was. It was like being a Greek restaurant, Greek managers are also very mean and rude to the employees. I have never met a regular Italian person in a social setting not even when I lived in Milwaukee where there are more Italians. When I watch travel shows to Italy the people do not seem friendly unless it's a man looking at a beautiful woman then he is very very very friendly. I do love Italian food or food that is called Italian.
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Lookup the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. Thats what your feeble critics are succumbing to. You keep doing you and views will follow!
American pizza varieties…your thoughts. I grew up in Detroit before pizza chains. When Little Caesars and Domino's opened we were disappointed not being able to go into a family pizzaria and watch it being thrown around or get a bubbly charred crust. Now I live in South Dakota and love both chains especially since they started in the Detroit area. My real question is what do you think about chains like California Pizza Kitchen and their BBQ chicken or Thai pizza. Personally I think anything that tastes good can go on a pizza. Some "Italians" swear it's an abomination. BTW I'm an American Italian (Sant' Elia)descent.
The garlic is the only one that really surprised me a lot.
🍅🍅🍅 always watching lol