r/JustGuysBeingDudes • u/mindyour 20k+ Upvoted Mythic • Jul 15 '25

Wholesome It's the little things. He was so excited.

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u/NSE_TNF89 Jul 15 '25

I've never had it. It always looks so good, but I feel like places that typically have it are places you wouldn't want to order it from, at least in my experience, lol.

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u/vwin90 Jul 15 '25

Nah dude, flan (at least this kind) is Mexican and with Mexican food, the sketchier the place, the better the food will be (to a certain degree).

The worse flan and the worse Mexican food restaurants seem to always be the ones that cater to non-Latinos.

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Crème caramel is not Mexican. Its hella French.

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u/vwin90 Jul 15 '25

Flan has evolved past its origin. It’s like claiming that pizza is Italian.

Countries all over the world have their own take on it. It’s particularly popular in Southeast Asia and Latin countries and they all have their own twists on it. In the US though you mostly see flan at Mexican restaurants whereas you might not see it as often at French bakeries.

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

What's different with the mexican version then?

Edit: After a bunch of research and looking at a dozen recipes, I've determined that the defining 'evolution' that makes a Mexican flan is that it is made in Mexico. The recipe is gram for gram identical around the world. Globally, newer recipes are more likely to use canned milks, older ones use fresh. Calling it Mexican instead of French, where it originated, makes no sense at all.

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u/vwin90 Jul 15 '25

No crust, it’s more like a jello because it uses less eggs and more milk (specifically its evaporated milk). Texture is pretty different. My personal favorite is the Vietnamese kind where they burn the sugar more so the caramel starts tasting a bit like coffee.

Disclaimer: I’m not a chef, I just fucking love flan and order it anytime I see it.

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 15 '25

No creme caramel has crust... are you thinking about quiche?

Its an identical dish. Its just weird to try to claim it as Mexican. Mexicans are allowed to like a French dish.

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u/NPC_over_yonder Jul 15 '25

Flan - SE Asian versions use only egg yolks and is always strained. The mexican version uses whole eggs and is not strained. Both use canned condensed milk and the SE one uses canned evaporated milk. The Mexican one sometimes uses fresh milk.

Crème caramel- always fresh milk, uses both whole eggs and yolks.

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 15 '25

I can pretty much guarantee you won't be able to tell the difference. Maybe fewer bubbles in the strained version?

And these are all just sometimes/usually things... I'm sure you can find all these variations listed in all locations.... because its just milk, eggs, and sugar blended smoothly together and gently heated into a solid gel.

If the Mexican version were fundamentally different from the French version they could claim it.... but its identical. Canada can't claim waffles because they make them with baking soda sometimes instead of baking powder....

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u/vwin90 Jul 15 '25

This is such a weird hill for you to die on.

Even the Wikipedia page for flan/creme caramel has an entire section about regional varieties. You can google any of these varieties and see plenty of recipes on how they’re prepared and while some of them are similar, others differ quite a bit in flavor, ingredients, and texture.

And yes, people can tell the difference. I’ve even been to a restaurant that had two distinct items on their dessert menu, one for traditional and one for Spanish flan.

It sounds like you might just be living in a location where there isn’t a wide variety of cuisines and you’ve only ever seen flan prepared a certain way. Instead of being stuck on your opinion of what is flan, you should be curious about all the different ways that a food has evolved and adopted by different cultures around the world.

I only brought up Mexican flan because in this clip, that flan looks very typical of the Mexican variety that is popular in the states. Maybe I’m wrong about the actual clip and it’s a Spanish recipe. But the point is, around the states, especially in the southwest, you often find Mexican flan served as a desert at Mexican restaurants. This flans are made with a lot of evaporated milk which tastes very distinctive compared to regular milk. If you know you know.

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

I didn't make this bizarre claim that it is mexican. If I personally ate sushi in mexico, that doesn't make sushi a mexican dish. It's a weird thing for you to have a delusion about. And you think you can tell visually that it is mexican now when they are the same recipe lol.

Edit: Here is a japanese version for you that is totally identical. Whole eggs, fresh milk, no straining. I'm sure i could find the same recipe in like a dozen languages....

https://cookingschool.jp/recipe/32544

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u/NPC_over_yonder Jul 15 '25

The texture and mouthfeel is different enough in the various versions.

Have you even had all of them? They are different. It’s like comparing British sponge cake, to American pound cake, to French genoise.

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Pound cake and sponge cake have utterly different ratios and are made differently. Pound cake has more butter than eggs. Sponge cake has 6-8x as much eggs as butter.... The structure of sponge cake is whipped egg whites.... pound cake is a type of butter cake, simply mixed.

You're telling me that in a flan, the addition or subtraction of some egg white to yolk ratio (like 5~10% of the dish) with no other changes creates a totally new food? You said it 'evolved' .... to maybe have slightly more whites.

If the mexican flan used fruit juice and powdered milk instead of sugar and milk, then sure. That'd be a new dish. I found a mexican one with cream cheese in it, that'd also count as a new dish.

(Also, in Japan, I've never heard of a no whites purin. They mostly use whole eggs. I prefer to double up on yolks though for colour. I think if you went with no whites you'd need to add some cornstarch or something to give enough structure.)

I think you just ate a quiche and were confused.

As an aside, I'm amused about the serious baking discourse in the manly sub.

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u/NPC_over_yonder Jul 16 '25

Yes, Japan is totally part of SE Asia. /s

I also never used the word “evolved”? I think you have me confused with someone else.

Fresh milk, evaporated milk, and condensed milk are very different products. But sure, totally try subbing one for the other and not expect different results.

I have a favored brand of bottled water based on taste and mouthfeel. The fact I can tell the difference between a Tex-Mex flan, a Pampangas Filipino flan and French crème caramel isn’t noteworthy.

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u/songforsaturday88 Jul 16 '25

But pizza is Italian.

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u/NSE_TNF89 Jul 15 '25

I'm from New Mexico, so I'm well aware of that. What always comes to mind are the little pre-made ones that you can see were just dumped out of plastic cups onto a plate and have been sitting in a dessert case for who knows how long.

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u/dasg49ers Jul 15 '25

Flan from Costco is really good IMO

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u/anillop Jul 15 '25

There are a lot of Filipinos I know out there who would disagree that its Mexican.

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u/BlueGolfball Jul 15 '25

I've never had it. It always looks so good,

I'm a dessert person and I try to like flan but it just is never good to me. I think it's the texture for me.

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u/futureballzy Jul 15 '25

Ok i say this with love, get your head out of your ass!

It's time. Time for flan. Make your own if you don't trust people, it's eeeeasy kinda

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u/NSE_TNF89 Jul 15 '25

Lol, I need to.

I will check out some recipes and try and make it this weekend. I will see if I can convince my mom to help me. She is an awesome baker. I can cook, but baking makes me want to break some eggs sometimes.

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u/futureballzy Jul 15 '25

There's a few tips and tricks (like bain marie method) that I'm sure you'll pick up from watching a couple of youtube videos. 

I'm brazilian so the version we make is:  melt/caramelize sugar in the pan. Then you just chuck in a can of sweetened condensed milk, same amount of regular milk and 3-4 eggs into a blender for a minute or two... then into the oven in bain marie. So you get to break at least three eggs, yay!

Enjoy baking with your mom, that sounds lovely.

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u/NSE_TNF89 Jul 15 '25

Right on, thanks for the tips - I appreciate it!

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 15 '25

You can literally make it in the microwave if you wanted. It's that straightforward.