The meme is funny :)
That being said, the only UK foods I’ve had were made by expats here in the states. None of it was bland, with the exception of breakfast beans, “because they’re meant to be mild to start your day” as I was told by a lovely liverpudlian.
She would do fish and chips, and the batter was well seasoned. Not heavily seasoned, but some pepper, a little paprika, and a bit of onion powder to give it some aromatic kick. Well balanced, and imo, as good as any of the southern fried fish recipes I’ve had.
The chips were obviously just salted and vinegar used per person.
But when we did pot luck at work, she would bring in what she called “good english food”, which included some curry a few times.
But her shepherd’s pie? Holy hell, that was some great stuff. She said it was really cottage pie because it was beef usually. But it had the usual pepper, onion, garlic, and herbs.
And the other expats I ate with were similar. Maybe different amounts of a given herb or spice, but it was in there.
I think the UK food thing is a meme in itself, and likely arose the way things usually do, with the majority of cooks just being bad cooks, rather than representative of a cuisine or the way things are done properly in that country.
The reputation comes from the US military being stationed in the UK during the height of WW2 rationing when there was an extremely limited list of ingredients to cook with. They were unable to associate a country under an attempted siege from U-boats with a reduced supply of food.
We do have a love of beige food at times, but it’s essentially our version of chicken tendies.
Ahhh, that makes sense. Kinda rough that the rep hasn’t gone away yet, though.
Boomers made that bland war time food linger. They were children during and just after WW2 so it was part of their childhood nostalgia and they fed it to their own kids. Also we’ve had Indian/ Chinese restaurants in the UK for a while but they were mostly just in major cities at first so the average person still had little exposure to foreign or exotic food until the late 1970s/ early 1980s.
Boomers weren’t children during WWII. Boomer means baby boomer, as in someone born during the baby boom. The baby boom happened after the war ended.
Good point. But rationing continued in the UK until 1954 so it did affect them.
Literally by definition boomers would have been born after WW2.
Yeah this one was the silent generation
My ex mother in law and her mom both can’t eat any food that’s not a certain level of bland. Too much of any spice at all and they set it aside like an autistic kid with arfid. Which… come to think of it…
Yep, this sums up everyone I know over 60 that is descended from British -immigrants- sorry expats.
Actual British people coming over now that still sound British seem to have much more refined taste. BIR-style curries are indeed very popular vs bland British “stew” / casserole
man if you make stew right it’s the most flavourful thing out there. half a bottle of red wine, couple cans crushed tomatos, chop up half your intended vegetables( Carrot, potato, onion, green onion stems, parsnips and celery for me), brown the beef, dump it all in except the other half of your vegetables, bring the level up with strong beef broth till everything is covered, and simmer covered till it all except the beef dissolves into a brown gravy, then add the other half of your vegetables and serve when they are cooked. Bay leaves and rosemary and thyme and pepper of course too. Garlic. Usually enough salt from the beef broth.
I went to the the UK when I was a teenager pre 9/11 and I remember the food being amazing imo.
But honestly I love savory food that just needs a pinch of salt to make it pop so maybe I’m the problem too.
Also as an American we don’t really have room to talk. Yes there’s the iconic southern foods but even then, grits are bland and meh. But for the most part a lot of traditional American food needed to have spices rediscovered. It seems like for a long time our attitude was to use sugar, pre ground pepper, and maybe salt as seasoning for something that had any good texture cooked out of it.
An aside here: but why is it that people from major cities aren’t considered average? In many cases major cities are major because they have a lot higher density of people leading to more development and resources.
We also had rationing for a good while longer than other countries after the wars (right into the mid-50s), so we have a whole generation who were pretty much raised with limited food options. That kind of national trauma sticks around and took a while to shake off.
It hasn’t gone away because countless students from across the globe have moved there and found it to be true. While there is good food available in the UK it seems as if the average Brit is content to eat very badly and then supplement a terrible diet with copious amounts of alcohol.
What else would you supplement a terrible diet with?
Coffee? Tea? Illicit drugs.
(They do all the above).
It’s the same with English beer. On the continent, people keep saying that Brits drink their beer lukewarm. When I was there, they actually had temperature displays at the tap in most pubs that usually showed something around 4°C (~39°F). For reference, that was in the Huddersfield area (between Leeds and Manchester) around 15 years ago.
Well in this case the reputation for “warm beer” is true and I’m willing to die on this particular hill.
Proper cask ale should be served at between 8 and 12C, AKA cellar temperature, cool but not cold. Nothing beats a traditional pint of ‘best bitter’ in an old pub!
Plenty of people in the UK drink lager and other styles of beer that are more highly carbonated, stronger ABV, and served colder. Personally I’m not a fan but each to their own.
I live about an hour from London in a rural area with loads of great pubs but I find it difficult to find a nice beer in most parts of London. It’s much easier to keep a keg of carbonated beer under pressure than a cask ale that you have to finish within a few days of tapping, which is why when a certain proportion of a pub’s clientele start drinking other styles it just isn’t worth it for the pub to keep real ale. Hopefully it won’t become a niche thing.
I’ve home brewed a lot of English ales and I agree that those ales should be served warmer. If you don’t, the cold mutes and kills the subtle and rich flavors.
Lagers are good, but a good British Ale is something to savory with good friends.
That’s because of a lot Englishales are drunk at room temp/ slightly below though not as cold as refrigerated.
True and thats because they were invented before refrigerators.
I don’t think I’d recommend chilli peppers with your user name.
It’s probably cause his spoon is too big.
Case proven, all the good cooks left.
My favourite “traditional” English meal is a good Steak and Kidney pie, made with an ale sauce. Seasoned with lots of pepper, Worcestershire sauce (anchovy sauce), onion and stock. Absolutely delicious.
I think the issue is mostly in the visuals. When you look for traditional English food, it is usually a plate full of beige stuff, sometimes paired with really unappetizing boiled carrots and beans. The gravy being on the side instead of part of the dish doesn’t do it any favors either.
Also I’d argue England has pretty low standards for what counts as “food”. I’ve had to work in England for a month, and finding something fresh, healthy and tasty to eat was a real challenge. I’ve never been as fat as when I came home.
The epitome of the wasted potential of English cuisine is the fact that it’s an island full of the best fishes in the world, yet the only fish you can find is battered cod. Why is it so hard to get a salmon fillet? You have Scottish salmon ffs!
We do have a lot of very bland food over here, but a lot of us like that.
It’s a lot more about the texture sometimes, some of us (not me) can do some amazing roast vegetables and everyone seems to have their own ancient tradition for how to make them
Shepard’s pie is Irish btw. Not a surprise a scouser would be able to make a good one when Liverpool has a large Irish community.
Common myth, not true.
First recorded recipe for Shepherds Pie is from a Scottish cookbook from 1849. First recorded use of Cottage Pie is 1791 by an English clergyman.
Cottage Pie was used for both lamb and beef varieties until recently and was a way of eating leftover meats.
I’ve heard that food in the US is generally bad, so maybe not the best comparison 😜 😂
He’s Canadian.
You cant trust those frozen tree suckers
How rude (although it was a clever insult and I literally laughed. I needed that. Thanks)!
Are the trees frozen or the suckers?
Depending on the time of year, yes.
They clearly never had soul food or Gullah/Geechee food.
I like the safety third crew but they’ve also ate dog food and didn’t find much issue with it.
That’s a really good point 😂
Lmao!
A lot of people everywhere don’t know how to cook. They don’t even bother to try and learn, so they rely on corporate packaged foods and restaurants. That’s a separate thing from the cuisine of a given place, or the cooking of people that do know how to.
That may seem like sophistry, but it is an important point to remember when talking about cooking when not joking around for fun. You can’t really use people that aren’t actually doing a thing, or have never learned how to do it as an representative example of what a country’s core is. It’s like athletics, you can’t say that Ethiopians are bad ice skaters if the average person can’t access time and equipment to ice skate in the first place. (Not picking on Ethiopia, it was just the first country that came to mind as not being very present in the world ice skating stage).
It’s legit to say that the US has a major food education problem, as does the UK from what I’ve heard, but that is a different issue than the national cuisine.
True, it’s not American cuisine that’s bad, apparently McDonald’s hamburgers taste better in NZ than the USA too, probably because all the beef here is grass fed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
heard that food in the US is generally bad,
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Meanwhile yanks with their two spices - butter and sugar
“Our food is the tastiest in the wuuuurld”
Aye but yous can’t afford that coronary eh mate 😂
Is this where we pretend that Brits don’t consume obscene amounts of sugar and butter?
No, there’s no point pretending they’re not fat cunts as well
But we’re pretending they don’t consume vast amounts of spices too. They’re fat smelly cunts tbh
pretty sure you mean canola oil and hfcs
Butter was a luxury prior to 150 years ago limited to a hard 20 mile radius of milk farms. 10 if you wanted it to taste good. Refrigeration changed this.
Sugar was similarly limited due to either trade with the far east or the establishment of colonies in the west indies. Russia didn’t have a sugar source until sugar beets in the late 1850s.
Most regional European cuisines were developed in the 1700s with the introduction of Tomatoes and Potatoes from the Americas. Both of the spices called out were still luxuries at the time.
I mean obviously you’ve never taken the time to explore the US. US food is utterly fantastic.
Our beer is better too.
American beer is not in anyway better than European beer or even English beer.
Something something tastes like piss.
I think you Americans are beginning the long road to good beer with all your craft ales, but you’ve got a way to go yet.
American modern beers - Just keep throwing hops at it until it stops tasting like piss. Doesn’t matter if it tastes more like a bunch of daffodils than beer, we’ll just call it “craft” 😂
daffodils are pretty and make me smile
“I wondered lonely as a cloud…”
Nice spelling, Wordsworth
😂. Wandered, wondered. Oops
Yeah, Prohibition killed all the beer we had and we did have good beer right up until then. And it’s been a long road back. Those large US breweries are still far more interested in cheap ingredients made cheaply.
But you can find good craft beers scattered amongst the bad craft beers if you look. And home brewing is maybe more popular in the US than Europe, but I’m not sure of that.
You make a good point about prohibition, I guess that will have had a significant effect. Maybe there are more artisan spirits in the US now having been driven by people with secret stills making moonshine in that period. It’ll be interesting to see where you guys go with the relaxation of marijuana laws. Maybe people will be home breeding new strains.
Oddly, moonshine and bathtub “gin” became quite the impetus for the popularity of cocktails, at least in the US. Since the added flavors tended to hide the rotgut taste of the illicit booze. And the loss of beer breweries had the effect of giving rise to ice cream parlors and soda fountains since saloons had to close. Plus as Minnesotan, I feel the need to apologize for the Volstead Act, as it became known, since Andrew Volstead was a Minnesota House of Representative and Chairman of the House Judicial Committee and was pretty instrumental in getting prohibition enacted. Scandinavian Protestantism ™ is not a good thing by in large.
Something something base an entire market off of a 30 year old meme. You have no clue what you are talking about. Just making up shit 🤣
How much time have you spent in the states?
What’s the difference between the US and a cup of yoghurt?
Yoghurt will have developed a culture after being left alone for 250 years. /j
Edit: Sorry, should have said "what’s the difference between white Americans.
We have so many unique individual cultures it’s absolutely ridiculous. E fuckin G, south central LA black culture, WASP rich ass folk, southern bumpkin, Texan, midwestern, New York. Those are a handful of examples, but each is so thoroughly unique, with different accents and culinary offerings, and dress styles ALL OF WHICH in some way influence cultures across the globe. Each state honestly has its own cultural offerings, but as a whole, to say that the U.S. doesn’t have culture is moronic.
We have so many unique individual cultures it’s absolutely ridiculous.
Fair enough that the USA has culture but that’s a bit far, considering the size of the place.
It’s a joke, relax.
You have your yoghurt. I’ll take the bbq, whiskey, and our massive dining industry that produces the best food on the planet.
Lol. You can keep your bland Whisky (I’ll take Irish, thanks) and your industrially processed junk food, filled to the brim with corn sirup.
I’m not even American but lol at calling triple distilled Irish whiskey less bland than bourbon.
Irish whiskey is like the lager of whiskeys, about as bland as it gets
You guys don’t age your common bourbons long enough though.
It depends on where the bourbon gets made. Very generally, the temperatures cycles vary a lot more more than in Great Britain. So the bourbon “ages” faster than Scotch or Irish whiskys. So bourbons have to be younger and that can make them somewhat sharper in flavor. Plus the requirement of using new oak barrels also cuts the time spent in the barrel.
Yank here. Most of us were raised on American Exceptionalism which has been pounded into our head since birth, for a few generations. There’s no point arguing this, because murica…
American here. I have never seen a fellow American refer to themself as a Yank. I thought that word was reserved for WWII British soldiers.
You never sang “Yankee Doodle,” or “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on July 4, even as a kid? I’m southern as can be and these were staples on the Fourth, Memorial and Labor Days, as well as bright red hotdogs, chips (crisps), soda and Budweiser and PBR.
I thought lemmy was leftie enough to not be pounced by jingoists right away. TIL
We’ll you’re arguing with Americans where “left” barely means “center” or “right
but not far right.” * See also the DK effect.- Edited. After just having read a reply to my saying that Joe Biden is a low bar set for a Democrat, being called a c*** and saying wished rooting in hell, I must retract the bit about ”not far right."
Irish whiskey? Triple pot stilled to strip out all the flavors? Dang near vodka for depth of flavor. (I jest - I do enjoy a good Irish whiskey myself).
Now bourbon is the drink of the gods. Rich deep complex flavors that fill your taste buds with joy. It’s so good the Scots and even the Irish use our used bourbon barrels to impart those complex flavors and taste to their whiskys.
🙄👌🤣
I bet your one of those people who shit on Louisiana while forgetting Hungary is a thing 🤣.
It’s always so obvious when someone who hasn’t stepped foot in the country and gets their entire life view based on
Redditlemmy comments.Edit: oh we’re on .ML of fucking course, this makes more sense. This is pointless you had your mind made up joining the instance.
Check my instance again, smartass.
Ididn’t get the suffocating prevalence of corn sirup in the US from reddit/lemmy, but rather from health resources and people from the US.
For real: all that cultural bashing is pointless to begin with. But claimingthat the US has “the best food” when Italy, the middle and far east exist: come on!
Edit: oh no! The 'muricans found my comments. Better prepare for a state funded coup, enforcing neoliberalism through fascists in my country.
It’s in everything, along with plenty of salt and cancer causing dyes and artificial flavoring. Even our locally sourced, home farm based meats and vegetables are laden with chemicals and virtually zero nutritional value because hardly anyone let’s soil lie fallow, and doesn’t use a tin of Miracle Grow and weed killer. I’m my specific area, you can’t even find chicken feed that’s nutritious for the birds and almost no one free-ranges. The closest you’ll find in my area are a pig that’s given table scraps in addition to feed, and no one knows what’s in either chicken or hog feed, unless it’s cracked corn, and well… You get it.
I’m very sorry and embarrassed most people from my country are this way, and very sorry for how you’ve experienced us itt. I really like Mediterranean and Thai food, though I’m not particularly good at making them from scratch. I did enjoy a decent-enough-for-frozen-but-by-no-means-decent eggplant Parmesan the other day, and the standard American version of pad Thai a couple of months ago, when I was out in a larger town. No lettuce rolls, though.
You seem very… defensive about your choices here.
I know you’re probably just trolling but LOL.
You’ve never had Cajun cuisine. Or good Tex-Mex. Or soul food. All brilliant when made by the right chef.
I have, and you’re right, it’s delicious. The silly, throwaway comment about beer was what sent me. 😂
American “beer” lol. Laughs in German.
Edit: Grumpy Muricans, your downvotes only prove my point!
We do dopplebock far better here.
But finding the actual great German beer, the blessed helles, is not super easy in US. People seem to think all these bocks are super common in Germany, but it’s actually helles what everybody drinks (and pils in the north). Helles is extremely hard to brew correctly, it requires a very specific temperature and pure ingredients.
I spent most of my vacation in US last year finding a good helles from a bar. I found one after many tries, and the closest I could get to a bavarian helles was in Weaverville, in Leveller Brewing Co. I went to thank the owner for this great beer, and he told me he studied brewing in Bavaria and brewing that beer took a lot of trial and error.
Edit: somebody soon comes to tell how easy it is to find helles in US. Yes, but it often doesn’t taste how it should. Or you get some old bottled stock of Augustiner that is not a same thing as fresh Augustiner in Munich.
I’ve never once been in a town without a beer place within 20 minutes that has more selection than you could try in your entire life before dying of liver failure. Christ most grocery stores have at least an aisle dedicated to food selection.
This is entirely made up.
So you say the only good beer you got is a beer you copied from us?
Lol. As if you’ve ever even tried the local bavarian breweries (the stuff they sell on Oktoberfest doesn’t count)! xD
While I haven’t lived there I’ve done several trips through the country. Maybe 7 weeks in total? I’d choose Belgium if I were to choose a regional winner.
American Pizza > Italian Pizza.
Correct.
American pizza= more greasy than Italian pizza. That’s why you think it tastes better
Some American pizzas are more greasy than Italian pizza, but not all. America has so many varieties of pizza that Italians would dismiss as not pizza.
Because they are pretentious. They’ll give you shit for ordering cappuccino at night.
What? Why would they give you shit for that?
Because it’s not culturally acceptable. Seriously, try it. It’s insane.
I’ve never had a decent American beer. PBR is the closest to decent I’ve ever had.
I appreciate you admitting you’ve never stepped foot in an American beer store.
And I appreciate your admitting you ASSume way too much. Murica, heck yeah!
If the best beer you can find was PBR you’re incompetent. Calling me an ass because you went directly to bitten of the barrel swill. Jesus Christ lololol.
Whoosh!
Let me break it down: I never said any of what you just ASSumed, twice now. You didn’t make an ass of me twice, however. And are quite intent on proving my point of American exceptionalism. You haven’t even the wherewithal to look it up, nor feel embarrassment for it, which is why other cultures generally find us not only ignorant, but obnoxious as well.
👌👍 you are just making shit up you read on the Internet and justifying with insane circular logic. Deranged shit 🤣
You’re really missing out! In my opinion, PBR is the best of the “cheap and shitty” tier of mass-produced beer that rednecks and poor college students drink to get smashed. It’s not good, exactly, but somehow nostalgic to me for drinking around a campfire. The U.S. has plenty of mass-produced beer that’s still mediocre, but better than PBR, and some that’s even pretty decent. It’s in the craft breweries that you’ll find the really great American beer, though.
When I was a kid, Old Milwaukee came 8 ponies to a pack for less than $3. It was extremely popular, especially the shotgunnable cans. Thank heaven a friend’s dad had a still, is all in saying.
I’ve been to craft breweries and several tastings at various ones. I just didn’t find much that agree with my palate, but as I said, I’m not a beer person, in general. My friend back home used to make a rather nice home brew. I believe he may have used molasses to some extent, but it’s been a very long time ago, and most of my alcohol consumption was from home brewed corn or fruit and heavily distilled. Except my grandmother’s fruit concoctions, consisting of preserves, jams, jellies and way too sweet wines. They still beat Boone’s Farm, MD and Triple Peach, though.
Haha, okay, so as not-a-beer-person, I guess you’re not really missing out. Fair enough.
No, but American beer is still nasty.
Depends what you are looking for.
I’ve had awesome stouts that were so stout they could double as a meal, and I’ve had island beers that were nice for a long hot afternoon of fishing or cooling down after out side work.
Tbf, im not a beer snob though and choose primarily based on activity and temperature of day.
I usually like Newcastle Summer, I’m not a fan of Stella. Blue Moon is acceptable. But since neither that nor Newcastle is sold as singles near me (and a 12 oz or pint not even once a week, at most twice a month is the most I’ll drink at one time), that usually means Heineken. I’ve 2 pint cans in the fridge now (I prefer bottles), but that is because I’m the last month, a neighbor has brought me three, in return for small favors. And the first was lovely, to wash* down a nice potato poon. It balances the sweetness nicely.
ETA: tbh I hate stouts, but I’m really not a beer drinker. When I drank liquors occasionally, I usually preferred a pricier tequila or single malt Scotch, and being on limited funds, that curbs that, nicely.
The only time I’ve ever had Irish whisky was in Bailey’s, but if anyone can recommend a good Irish, I’ll keep it in mind.
Newcastle Summer?
Beer that tastes like rain, wet sausage rolls and tracksuit armpits, I’m guessing
American beer! No thanks.
America has beer at the grocery store like Bud light, Coors light, and PBR, which all kind of taste the same to me. but most cities have local micro breweries for fresher beer, and more distinctive regional flavors.
C’mon, any Bud variety is bested by the others.
Bri’ish food is some of the best in the world too. Because we know how to use spices and not high fructose corn syrup
Name a British food that uses spices that wasn’t brought by colonization.
Are you a native American or one of those colonizers?
You already know …
That has nothing to do with the topic at hand, you’re just trying to change the topic, and think that somehow calling out America’s history of colonization (by not only Britain mind you) is some sort of “gotcha” moment.
But I’ll bite. Personally, European descent. But many native friends and family members, and lots of time volunteering with local native non-profits and political campaigns. Which is likely more than 99% of Americans could say about any sort of native support.
I’m on the west coast, you know where all the natives were forced to move. Many of the “illegals” the bigots complain about in my area are actually Native Americans or have native ancestry.
But none of that is about the topic at hand, food and Britain’s lack of utilizing the spices they spent so much effort to get.
🤪
Your asked them to name a spice they had that wasn’t brought by colonization. They were being entirely relevant to your question. I believe that’s called “moving the goal posts.” I also just stuck my foot in my mouth elsewhere. Lol
Wew lad
Eels
Used to be a speciality of the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire.
Sheperd’s pie
A major part of that is obviously potatoes, which originated in South America. They were brought back to Europe through colonization of the Americas. Just like tomatoes and corn.
For spices though, looking up a few recipes to check it looks like usually thyme, rosemary, and parsley are used, which are Mediterranean and Western Eurasia. So maybe… My memory of English colonialism and time-frames closer to home is more lacking.
Dammit, forgot the potatoes.
If I took a guess, then thyme, rosemary and parsley have been brought to the country waay back when the british isles where being conquered instead of doing the conquering.
And how, in your wee head, does the fact that it came about due to colonisation make it not British?
Been to the US a few times. Your food tastes extremely average and the only difference to anywhere else is that it has about 3 times the kcals and half the nutrition. I’ve had heartburn and constipation virtually every time I’ve visited.
And your beer is possibly the worst in the world. It’s pisswater.
With opinions like that I’d be surprised if you’ve even left your own state, let alone the country.
Where the heck did you eat? Corporate McSteakhouse? If the response when asked about beer is Bud or Coors then blink twice, you need help.
And your beer is possibly the worst in the world. It’s pisswater.
C’mon, stop it. We Americans are bad at many things, but no one can refute that Americans have created some damn good beer over the last two decades.
You are clearly making a poor joke, but… Butter is literally what the French are known for. Sugarcane is from the South Pacific and sugar itself originated in India.
Southern and Creole cuisine originated in America however, and that uses a ton of spices on par with native Indian cuisine.
Industrial use of high fructose corn sirup is all American Capitalism, though.
… And southern france hardly uses butter btw.
sugar itself originated in India
Lol, what? Also: it’s not about where the stuff came from but rather what the cuisine does with it. Italian or German cuisine doesn’t become south american all of a sudden cause of tomatoes and potatoes.
Just curious, but what does Southern France use as their fat to cook with, then? I’m visiting in a month.
Removed by mod
Olive oil, just like any other mediterranean cuisine. In that climate, butter goes rancid in a heartbeat.
Look I feel sorry for the Italians and the Germans but their food is American now. It’s just the way the world works. :)-
Chicken Curry is the most popular British dish as of about 10 years ago and It’s only gotten better since then.
It’s like a US state dish but given the size and population that’s fair. Even more important it’s good.
It’s also been developing for about 100 years. It’s the British/Indian equivalent of Pizza. And It’s beautiful.
Jamaican curried goat is divine, and it must be Jamaican curry, and added water must be tricked very slowly down the side of very hot, cast iron Dutch oven and simmered quite a while. I was fortunate enough to have a Jamaican neighbor show me the trick. And to my American compatriots, sweet potatoes are not yams.
Thank you Indians
Clearly you’ve never had rich friends, they’re notorious for having everything and never using it.
“Oh man, I didn’t know you play guitar. That’s a beautiful Orange double stack and Thunderverb.”
“I bought that when I tried to learn guitar, haven’t used it since.”
Most popular dish in the UK is Tikka Massala.
But:
Fat, carbs and protein do not come purer than fish and chips.
And vinegar so vinegary that it blows the taste buds of your descendants for 500 years
Exactly. Many people have an ignorant view of British cuisine, as though only foods grown in the British Isles are British. All kinds of foods and dishes from all over the world have been shipped, used, and adapted in Britain since at least the time of the Roman Empire. Heck, most of what a British, European or North American person would see on the menu of their local Indian restaurant is not traditional Indian food at all, but rather Anglo-Indian.
Yes, there have been a few comments mentioning Tikka masala, but can you name another British dish with flavor? I don’t think so.
None with flavor, plenty with flavour
Cornish pasty, apple crumble, scouse, trifle, haggis, rarebit, Sunday roast, shepherd’s pie, tatty scones… you can see why this “no flavour” joke is getting tiring.
Even shitty store brand haggis has a great flavor profile for a sausage. Yes, its a sausage: its meat, salt, spices, and other fillers in an animal casing. Fight me.
But its scottish food
I don’t eat animals myself but the vegan version is very good I have to say. Likewise with the vegan Cumberlands you can get, or at least could about five years ago from the Co-op.
pepper steak pie
How do you feel about thanks giving dinners and apple pie?
Edit: because they’re both British.
Turkeys are native to the Americas.
Now that I think about it, so are potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, corn and cranberries. Thinking about my own Thanksgiving dinner table, the only thing I can identify as an Old World food are yeast rolls.
That’s cause it was ham and duck with onions, leek and parsnips before.
Its almost as if they just swapped out the chicken for turkey, having discovered and been using potatoes for years beforehand.
Nothing on the apple pie then? Just the one you thought you could refute, it would seem.
By your wild “logic” that would make every pork dish ever Chinese and Southern fried chicken Indian, as the pigs we eat today and chickens come from China and India respectfully.
Yeah, apples aren’t native to the New World and apple pie wasn’t invented in the Americas. It’s not specifically British, either; it seems to have emerged independently across Western Europe in the middle ages, and was first brought to the Americas by the Dutch rather than the English. Hell, not even the quintessential American pie apple was invented here; the granny smith is Australian.
The British invented roast turkey about as much as they invented roast bison. You want to get into more specific recipes, I’d say chicken tikka masala is British and chicken parmesan is American, but I’m not letting the British have right of way over “get bird, add heat.”
Pumpkin pie is kind of a strange one; the first thing you’d call a “pumpkin pie” was more of a savory soup eaten by Dutch settlers in Massachusetts in the 1600s; the first pumpkin served in a pastry crust was French, and the modern pattern of “sugar pumpkin puree in a shortbread crust” was invented a few minutes after the US Constitution was ratified.
Sweet potato pie is less ambiguous; it seems to have popped into existence fully formed in the American south in the 18th century.
Basically all corn products including popcorn and cornbread were known to the Native Americans for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.
The first known recipe for cranberry sauce as we would recognize it today was written in 1796 in the United States.
Green beans are native to Central America, green bean casserole was invented in New Jersey in 1950…
Again, what of this is particularly British? An American thanksgiving meal is as British as pizza.
Beast of a comment. Found all of that really interesting 👍
Apple pie is from England, even if you don’t want it to be. Its not even about it not being American but it having flavour and being nice to eat.
They swapped out chicken for turkey and used the exact same recipe and cooking style. Declaring it unconnected changes nothing.
Green beans is a substitute for the exact same green veg you get with a British roast meal. If I put peas into a stir fry, it doesn’t make the meal not Chinese lol.
Again, how can you not see those mildy adapted British things as British?
Because I’m from a country with an actual national identity of its own, not some washed up little island whose national museum has on display a lot of things stolen from elsewhere and not much of its own, because their national culture has extremely little to show for itself.
I don’t have to pretend we invented (checks notes) cooking food to feel like have any kind of national identity. You do, and it’s hilariously pathetic.
Yes, there have been a few comments mentioning Tikka masala, but can you name another British dish with flavor? I don’t think so.
Let’s kick off with curries! We’ve been eating ‘curry’ since 1598, so longer than a lot of other countries have existed. As well as chicken tikka masalla, we’ve adapted or invented a few, such as:
- Madras curries
- Jalfrezi curries
- Balti curries
- Phall curries
For other British dishes with flavour, try (in no particular order):
- Any Sunday roast; beef with Yorkshires and horseradish sauce, pork with applesauce, lamb with mint sauce.
- Full English, full Scottish, Ulster Fry, Full Welsh
- Kedgeree
- Steak and kidney pudding
- Cream tea
- A proper ploughman’s lunch
- Sausage, mash, onion gravy with English mustard
- Cullen skink
- Shepherd’s pie / cottage pie
- Fish pie
- Irish stew
- Lancashire Hot Pot
- Marmite on toast
- Bacon sarnie
- Kippers
- Sheffield fishcake butty
- Welsh rarebit
I saw that marmite on toast in there, it’s my favourite breakfast
Money can’t buy you taste 😉
Well, the whole spice trade was literally wealthy people buying taste.
…eh…profiting in a commodity trade doesn’t mean you…Ever see any midwestern farmer actually eat chickpeas? They love the bushel price most years though.
Hey, they also needed more people to play cricket with.
Tell me you haven’t had proper British food without actually telling me.
Don’t blindly believe everything you hear.
Beans on toast can be done well also.
my favorite is when they serve it hot! yum
i do that all the time, but my own recipe, which is essentially hopped up chili beans on garlic toast. So i start with frying four pieces chopped up bacon in a bean pot, then add half an onion chopped n fry that soft, then a can of the heinz bbq chipotle beans, half a cup of E.D. Smith Baja Chipotle bbq sauce, half tbsp ancho powder, half tbsp jalapeno powder, quater tbsp white pepper, half tbsp garlic powder, simmer that all up and serve on and with thick cut buttered garlic toast. and to put the lie to any stereotypes bout regional cuisine, i’m doing this shit in western canada. I have a restaurant here, but this particular recipe is a bit too hot for most my customers.
That sounds good. I’ve never seen Heinz chipotle beans though (in Canada). I’ll have to keep an eye out.
They’re marked as Barbecue in the big print, the chipotle is in very small print underneath. You could just start with the more easily found deep browned beans or whatever.
My father is British. My grandmother was British.
There is no way to make British-style beans on toast palatable to people outside of Great Britain. I’m sorry.
There are plenty of British foods I will absolutely defend as terrific. I will murder a wedge of caerphilly cheese and I sometimes import Rowntree’s blackcurrant fruit pastilles, I love them so much… but beans on toast? I can’t go with you down that road. Also, Daddies Sauce. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Including my father. How do you put that shit in your mouths?
And don’t even get me started on Marmite.
That bloke is gently handling those pies.
I like the little flag. Classic move claiming fish fingers for the empire.
Fish don’t have fingers, dolt.
Embrace; Expand; Extinguish
i was told by a brit that american biscuits were “salty scones”
and i have never wanted to complain more in my life. Especially given the american propensity to make shit sweet as fuck.
It’s true, the “biscuits and gravy” biscuits are closer to scones than what a Brit would think of as a biscuit.
Also, biscuits and gravy, wtf
What’s wrong with biscuits and gravy?
Biscuits with sausage gravy doused in hot sauce and a couple fried eggs make a great breakfast
In this case I prefer fresh cracked black pepper to hot sauce. No other notes.
I think he’s a trucker. the biscuits and gravy at a Love’s I could see dumping hot sauce on. Not generally though.
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That fresh black pepper makes biscuits and sausage gravy killer!
Oh of course, I load up the gravy with more pepper than most folks like
he just hasn’t tried it made by a competent cook yet
Also, biscuits and gravy, wtf
I may lose my Yank card for this, but I’m not a fan myself. That said, it’s just scones and bechamel sauce. Hearty, meaty, salty and what you can do with the rendered fat from greasy breakfast sausage*. It’s basically hangover food that caught on.
(* There’s a subset of traditional American food that stems from doing a lot with very little, while having a complete disregard for cholesterol and calorie intake. Assuming that wheat and dairy are the cheapest things in your pantry, you get stuff like this. See “scrapple” for another example.)
do the brits not have bread?
That’s pretty much what a biscuit is here. Also what do you mean wtf biscuits and gravy slaps.
I had the distinct pleasure of explaining what biscuits and gravy were to a confused 6th Doctor Who actor Colin Baker. To his credit, he said he’d like to try it.
ah, it’s you again. Anyway. Gotta hate, i mean love the brits, and the wacky shit they get up to.
I’m everywhere!
judging by the amount of posts/comments, yeah, makes sense.
I heard once that when spices became so cheap that even the commoners could afford it, the upper class in Britain started to claim that really good food doesn’t need any spices to taste good and that bland food is the best. This supposedly made the British cuisine way blander.
I thought it was cuz they lost a bunch of ships during wwii and then they had the rationing of foods, and hadn’t recovered their flavor palate since then.
A lot of the “bland” food is just food that was made during the world wars that has evolved over time after the fact.
But to say British food has no spices completely disregards the whole curry scene over here. It’s not just curry from India. A lot of “Indian” dishes were invented in the UK.
Aye like a lot of time that people are making fun of English cuisine they’re usually just making fun of meals that poorer families would make or that no one regularly makes in their right mind.
I mean it’s usually just cheap, lazy food. I like a good beans on toast every once and a while. Sometimes you just want a no effort meal.
I don’t think flavor palates degenerate that quickly. Especially with that many Indian residents.
We use a lot of herbs, garlic and mustard traditionally.
Ain’t nothing wrong with fish and chips
I actually went and had some last night and jesus christ my palate was offended. Even when swimming in malt vinegar and tartar sauce, I just couldn’t stand it. I can fix this:
- Salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, cumin, and cayenne in the dry dredge
- A dry stout in the wet dredge mix instead of a lager or a pale ale, anything with a body really
- Maybe a layer of panko breadcrumbs I toasted beforehand
- A far more flavorful fish than cod, i’m thinking salmon fingers
The sun never set on the British empire, and they never used the spices they stole.
That kind of just sounds like you went to a bad restaurant.
No true…Englishman?
100%, they did. Good fish & chips doesn’t need fixing.
The thing about spices in cooking is that - as great as they are, and as much as they enhance flavour - you shouldn’t need them to make good food.
Fish & chips is the perfect synthesis of the “Salt, acid, fat, heat” theory of cooking. Truly delicious food starts with the combination of those elements in exactly the right amounts.
There’s a lot of great things you can do with spices. I love, love, LOVE Indian food, Thai food, Mexican food, Spanish food, Chinese food, Cajun food, etc, etc, etc. But if you don’t understand how to make something delicious without spices, you’ll never really understand how to make good food with them. It’s always about fundamentals.
Edit to add: Here’s another really good way to think about this; people to bring up British food and complain about a lack of spices, but you never see the same complaint about aglio e olio or caccio e pepe, two dishes that contain, respectively one herb and no spices, and one spice and no herbs (parsley, and black pepper).
It’s exceptionally easy to do as a tourist. Last I visited, first we went to a restaurant and ordered and it was subpar. So then we were told “you have to go to a Chippy, if you want real fish and chips” so we did… they should have told us which “Chippy”, they are not all the same.
That was the worst culinary experience of my life. I have never had a more oily nasty fried fish. The wet breading just fell off, and it tasted like very old oil. I threw out 2/3s of it, as did basically everyone else.
We ended up eating at indian restaurants the rest of the trip.
Oddly enough, I had the exact opposite experience last time I was in London. Amazing fish and chips, terrible Indian food. Worst saag paneer I’ve ever had. By far. And that’s a low bar because I’ve had some really disappointing saag paneer.
Also, I was entertained when the South Asian guy at the Chippie asked me stuff like, “do you have a big car and a big house?” when he heard my American accent. I had to disabuse him of the notion that we’re all wealthy. I wasn’t even paying for that trip, it was an especially good contract work gig.
Are you a breakfast person? We normally just ate the biscuits from the hotel room and starved until lunch, but one day my dad and I was going to meet up with my mom and her sister for a traditional English breakfast. However we got lost and ended up in some tiny Cafe, God knows where. They were serving lasagna for breakfast, and it was delicious.
My mom and aunt actually found the place and had some beens and toast and blood sausage, they were not impressed.
I am definitely a breakfast person and a full English breakfast, minus the horrific beans on toast, is great. I’m not sure about lasagna for breakfast though. Seems like kind of a heavy breakfast meal.
To be fair, this is not helped by the fact that British people are often very bad at recommending good places to eat. A lot of people value familiarity over quality.
We were actually there for my uncle in laws wedding, so you would think we would have gotten better advice. But I guess weddings are busy…
The food at the wedding was amazing though. I can’t even remember it all, they brought out so much food. I think there was venison and duck, and fish I have never even heard of before, it was over the top. But his parents were like old money wealthy, so I doubt that’s common. It was also in like a minor castle, and the grounds were just gorgeous. I could have spent days just inspecting all the plants, so much variety of foreign plants and super cool hardwood trees.
That was the only great food we had, although the Indian food pretty good. Got old after a week though.
Counterpoint: some people eat food so covered in spices/herbs/etc. they lose the ability to taste more subtle flavours.
well, I gotta say, I lived in the UK, their standard for fish and chips is oily af; it’s hard to enjoy the toppings and use the thing as a vehicle for sauces etc when it’s super greasy from breading to fish. I’ve had better fish and chips in Canada and Belgium.
It’s almost like some people have different preferences. Wild.
Don’t get high on your own supply.
Guv.
