Gordon Ramsay is not known for being sensitive. In fact, he has a reputation for insulting home cooks and belittling professional chefs. His abrasive personality is often refreshing or entertaining to his audience as he prepares international dishes. Even when he is friendly, his cooking can be a thorn in the side of some people. Ramsay was recently criticised for trying to make pegao (a Puerto Rican fried rice dish).A recent video by Gordon Ramsay posted to his YouTube channel, Can Gordon Ramsay Make Puerto Rican Crispy Rice? Ramsay welcomes viewers from Puerto Rico. He clearly loves the dish and is eager to recreate it.Some chefs still disagreed with Ramsay's pegao approach. Reina, a Puerto Rican chef, posted the following tweet: This isn't pegao. Reina wrote that it was frustrating to see white men chefs being applauded for only knowing a few things about certain cuisines and then be hailed as experts.Although Ramsay's final dish looks delicious, many people found fault with Reinas pegao version. Pegao is a specific type of rice. One user tweeted, "Don't get me wrong, it looks amazing!" Pegao is the rice that sticks to your pan during cooking. This makes it crispy and sticky.Another Twitter user was more direct in his assessment of the dish. Every Puerto Rican who has ever lived.Ramsay is not the only one who has been in trouble for using recipes from other cultures. In 2019, Ramsay's London restaurant Lucky was the subject of a heated debate about cultural appropriation. Critics claimed that the menu treated pan Asian cuisine as one monolithic dish with interchangeable dishes.However, there were others who were more open to Ramsay's interpretation of pegao. A YouTube commenter said, "The Puerto Rican delegation accepted Gordons Ramseys Boricua citizenship application."Reina is not the only one to comment that celebrity chefs of white men often make a point of promoting cuisines that were once cooked by underrepresented groups for many generations. This idea is well-known in the restaurant and food industry and one many chefs are only beginning to grasp. It is worth asking how chefs market and claim credit for dishes that are not part of their culture.Ramsay's intention might have been to honor Puerto Rican cuisines, but many of his critics are unhappy that he called his dish pegao. This dish has a very precise definition. Ramsay decided to reinvent pegao according to his culinary preferences. He simply misunderstood his facts. Eric Rivera, a Seattle-based chef, wrote in a tweet that you wouldn't use a cast iron pan to make pegao. If it's a traditional preparation, you would use an aluminum caldero. He added that adding butter would not be a problem.Rivera summarizes Ramsay's failure to cook pegao, writing, "You are showing people the wrong name for the dish, or the wrong technique." He then suggests that Rivera get a Puerto Rican person to sit on the camera, talk, and then let them cook. You can learn, practice, and then make a video with the original Puerto Rican.It's okay to adapt dishes from other cultures for a chef's specific taste. It is easy to understand why many people feel that white chefs are calling their interpretations of marginalized cultures dishes the wrong name.
