The food, the weather and the women created a seafaring nation.
Yeah, I get this sentiment. I don’t particularly like cooking, but I like cooking a lot more than what my partner prepares.
Don’t worry, it’s not a trad misogynist belief that women belong in the kitchen. It’s just a widdle bit of cute racism.
I think you mean bigotry not racism.
But seriously i had a roast at an English friends house, have you guys ever heard of slow cooking? Braising? Grilling? Marinating? Just throwing a roast in boiling water or in the oven for an hour isnt gonna cut it
I was gonna say hey, that’s what I do and mine turns out fine, then googled to see what braising means and apparently that’s what I do with my roasts.
Do you mean the brits just… Straight up boil roasts, fully submerged and without browning firat?
Not sure but my ex used to serve salt beef boiled with carrots potatoes and cabbage all boiled in one pot. It was fine but also very plain and not very flavourful
Sounds like eighteenth century peasant food.
You’re welcome to come over and try it, but I can’t help you if you end up in the village stocks.
British food is great. Chicken tikka, pizza, Chinese, lasagne… The list goes on.
In all seriousness, there’s some great British food and people get too territorial about what constitutes as what food belongs to whom.
Definitely - foods like British / Scottish / Irish / Ulster fry, pork pies, bangers & mash, fish & chips, Sunday roast (carved meat, roast potatoes, yorkshire puds), shepherd’s pie, beef wellington to name a few. Plenty of deserts too. And ingredients like worcester sauce, English mustard, marmite etc.
A Sunday roast / carvery is basically what Americans get when they order prime rib. The cut of meat is slightly different due to different classifications but for all intents and purposes it’s a Sunday rib roast. For some bizarre reason in the US it’s regarded as fine dining with a price 4x as much as it would be for a better Sunday roast meal / carvery in a British pub. Over two decades ago I went to dine in a Lawry’s Prime Rib in Chicago - big mistake - massively overpriced for what it was.
Out of the food you mentioned only Beef Wellington and English Breakfast/Ulster Fry/ are uniquely British. Everything else is either not a dish (fried sausage and potatoes definitely is not a dish you philistine :P).
Pork pies, fish and chips, roast, shepherds pie - it is eaten in Britain, but is not unique to them, as was historically eaten across the whole Europe (I mean it is fish and chips, it didn’t need “inventing”)
I think we need these smaller distinctions to have a meaningful conversation about food. If not, French crepes would be too similar to Norwegian pancakes, pizza and quiche could be the same if you ignore the yeast and tomato sauce, and if you really want to stretch it you could group Japanese ramen and Polish pasta soup together. In some ways I want to agree with you, for good ideas usually pop up multiple times and places, but I am too fond of traveling and tasting different food traditions to give in.
Fair.
Polish rosół is much more similar to French consomme than to ramen though. The stretch to ramen would be rather significant.
Yes all those other things are distinctly British. Britain didn’t function in a vacuum and I’m sure there are influences to everything. But if you eat a British pork pie you absolutely know what it is. Same for fish and chips. Same for all those things.
Since we’re comparing to Italy where do you think tomatoes came from? Do you think pasta wasn’t independently invented in many places? Do you think olive oil, or bread, ragus, salted pork etc weren’t also done elsewhere?
And if you were to say, for example, that pasta with tomato sauce is an Italian dish, I’d argue it’s not, as pasta was eaten across the whole Europe, and likely first added tomato happened in Britain.
Bolognese sauce with pasta on the other hand would definitely be Italian dish. Do you see the distinction?
England had to utilize military force to control India to get the spices, to make the blandest food on the planet.
Curry is practically the national dish in the UK now and a few variants were even invented there
What’s that old saying?
British women and British food made British sailors the best in the world.
They sold the spices to other nations for major profit to enrich themselves. They never intended to eat said spices.
Never tried English mustard or fresh horseradish sauce then?
I’m italian, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want me in your kitchen
The absolute best breakfast in the world is square sausage and potato scones.
British cuisine is abysmal, but Australia doesn’t even have a cuisine at all.
Australia has wonderful cuisine. I’m not Australian born but now love here. People take food very seriously and there is great Japanese, Thai, Chinese Greek, Italian French cuisine here. Mexican, not so much. Other countries, depends on the area.
Modern Australian cuisine (known as mod Aus here) takes a fusion of one or more of these combined with some local ingredients.
Australians in general take cooking and food quite seriously. It’s a foodie paradise.
Could you provide a link to what you might call a very normal-looking Australian menu? Just any random restaurant.
Well, why not look at the best food that wins awards. We don’t have Michelin stars here, but a local system of chefs hatted restaurant. Here is a list for New South Wales, where I live. These will generally be more expensive but should show the best of what’s on offer without doxxing me, lol.
I have several thousands of millions of food intolerances, so I love that British simplicity
Curry is the greatest dish of English cuisine.
What about doner kebab and garlic sauce?
The best German dishes are Döner, Spaghetti and Lasagne.
But käsespätzle…
Fuckin schnitzel doesn’t matter or anything!?
Well Schnitzel is in the top 10. But only the one from Vienna
Sure it does, but the Japanese perfected it.
Somehow I completely believe that, and schnitzel and Sapporo sounds really good
Tonkatsu is amazing.
While I’ve never had the privilege of doing so in-country, it seems straightforward to make and would absolutely pair with Japanese beer*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsudon
* - Also something the Japanese refined from the Germans.
Nah, Germany has the best sausage.
199398500A is the only one popular abroad tbh
More popular than bratwurst? I guess maybe that could be true somewhere, but I’ve never heard of that VW sausage before, and I’ve had bratwurst many, many times outside of Germany.
Nah, the Spanish and Italians have way better sausages.
France favorite dish is couscous
He’s Scottish though, not English
The Scotts will one up the English at any chance they get out of pure spite if for no other reason.
Yeah and it must have been really hard to on-up them on terrible food. But they did manage to come up with Haggis in the end.
Also deep fried mars bars apparently
There are other reasons?
The cow that made that cheese should sue him for assault.
A classic. For sure that’s a dope sando tho
jokes aside, i’d say british cuisine is definitely taking more flak than what it deserves.
Maybe…
What I don’t understand is how they can be on an island, surrounded by some of the best fish in the world (including the fantastic Scottish salmon) and the only piece of fish you can find in the whole country is freaking cod with four layers of batter applied to it and fried until the only flavor you can perceive is that of mediocre burnt oil.
They make good meat dishes (roasts, meat pies), but then they pair them with the most uninspiring sides… The UK cuisine has a few good things, and they have good ingredients, but more often than not they cook them in boring ways and stop there, calling it “good enough”
They make good meat dishes (roasts, meat pies), but then they pair them with the most uninspiring sides…
I mean… British were always shafted by their nobility. The land wasn’t known for fruits or sweet veggies, the rent in UK paid to the landlord was relatively high, so most peasants ate pickles, chutneys or different mushed veggies as sides.
That’s pretty sad and true about the fish situation. Even fish and chip shops mostly just do cod and haddock, and I’ve only rarely seen one offer a wide variety of fish that would help avoid overfishing.
We also have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to seafood, but most people don’t even touch it apart from the occasional prawn. The day after Brexit came into effect there were tables of cockles and muscles, clams, scallops etc just sitting going off because they couldn’t get them to France.
I once read that a group of Rotterdam Housewives wrote a collective letter to their fishermen husbands, that they would abide no more then 2 days of salmon dinner a week. Maybe having an abundance of it makes it unbearable after decades. I mean, complaining about salmon dinner seams crazy to me, so who knows what you can get fed up with :)
Fish used to be poor people’s food. It was plentiful around the sea, but it kept for just a few hours without modern refrigeration, so you couldn’t really transport it to the main city market and sell it. It didn’t give you much food security or much money, and it wasn’t as luxurious as meat, which was the food of choice for the higher classes.
The only fish that was eaten by the higher classes were the ones that could be preserved by salting, drying or smoking, and they were eaten mainly during lent, as a “lean” alternative to meat. It was mostly viewed as a sacrifice. During the late Middle Ages and early modern era, the herring trade started to really flourish, with Holland being a major exporter of herrings, while the Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden exported lots of salted cod and Stockfish (dried cod).
So I’m sure it was at a moment where eating fish was seen as a humiliation, rather than a treat, like it is today. In North America lobster was considered as very poor food, cockroaches of the ocean, fed to those who couldn’t afford anything else or to prisoners. Sometimes they were even used as fertilizer for the fields.
Tbh, british food is mostly just salt-deficient. Add salt to it and a lot of it tastes really good.
A lot of you still cooking like the Germans are still flying over your heads NGL
We still are, but now it’s Lufthansa, not Luftwaffe. Big difference.
A-tier joke lmao
Like the Von Saxen-Coburg und Gotha’s became the Windsors
Well de are, but instead that the English read the dropped recipe books they use it as toiletpapers!
Of course it does. I grew up in the UK and it’s fun taking jabs but then you have a bunch of people who just keep doubling down as if they’re God’s gift to the kitchen.
My favourite take of theirs is always what they exclude from English food but they’ll talk about American food and include everybody else’s cuisine …
In fairness, a lot of people will only experience or know what’s brought out as quintessential English for at holidays or other special occasions, which isn’t always the best thing there is to offer from the cuisine. It’s something else entirely if you actually go there for a couple of weeks and pay attention to all the delicious stuff you’ll eat while there.
Plus, you get plenty of weirdos from every country who seem to have Stockholm syndrome with the most bland/boring aspects of their cuisine and will wholeheartedly recommend their absolute most terrible dish as the pinnacle of their country’s cuisine. I have a coworker from Ireland who won’t touch a spice bag if his life depended on it, but will tell anyone who listens how wonderful beans on buttered brown bread is and that it should be more common everywhere.
lol I actually quite like Irish food. Went to a random pub in Galway and had some stew and it was so good! Irish beef is awesome.
I have friends kinda like what you described though. No spices and they love bland food, lol.
I’m okay with people taking jabs at British food to be honest. Like, my first year back when I was an adult I didn’t know what to eat and I actually cooked more because I didn’t know what to get. It wasn’t until I made some friends that I knew places to check.
What’s crazy is all the trash they talk about American food, and somehow managed to completely forget that Louisiana is in America…
I’m not much of a fan of many traditional British dishes, and there are some things many British people seem to enjoy make me wonder about their taste buds. OTOH, Britain once had a worldwide empire, and it brought back a lot of dishes from that empire to the mainland. Indian curries are the obvious example, but there’s also Caribbean food, Chinese food, even other curries from South-East Asia.
It may not be as nuanced, but it’s pretty damn good.
Yeah their curry is awesome.
Waitasecond…
Yeah, tikka masala is awesome. And yeah fish and chips is amazing too. It’s just that brits also have stuff like boiled roasts
I do believe tikka masala is British but it is funny that it’s the first thing you said because it’s also very clearly Indian
Yes, that was intentional to attempt to be humorous. It was invented by brits returning home attempting to recreate Indian food.
There is a whole category of British-Indian food which is from immigrants creating completely new types of curries that dont exist in India.
indian the same as pizza is italian. invented elsewhere by emigres to another country who then had family bring back the crazy new fusion food for the people of the homeland to go “oh that’s good.”
Pizza was invented in Italy though.
what am i thinking of then that’s an itallian-american dish that got popular back in italy. i was thinking the phenomenon was called pizzafication but maybe it’s… lasagnafication?
Idk man, Fettuccine Alfredo? But then I wasn’t able to find information about it actually being popular in Italy.
This may just be a myth. The Wikipedia pages you linked seems to believe something anyway.
it is the pizza effect, it’s just about how the specifics of pizza have shifted over time, not about the overall creation of the thing:
The fuck is a boiled roast?
Something I’ve seen brits complain about on the internet before, Something about Sunday roasts involving far too much boiling and not enough seasoning
Yeah, you all definitely have… 8 or maybe 9 edible things that aren’t beer or curry.
All the same, I’d rather have a full English breakfast than 90% of French food and 98% of German food. Kidneys in cream, or raw pork crackers, or bread and cheese like they invented it or whatever.
Very ignorant take because everything a full English offers is also very German. This includes the pig blood which isn’t french but you probably didn’t think of that anyway.
English are a kind of German
Branding and beans for breakfast. That’s why the English get the win here, which is also occasionally called a full Irish breakfast if there’s no Brits looking. Plus, the English hardly have any indigenous culinary variety or spices. Why else colonize with such a passion?
And I’m actually very much ok with black pudding, that’s not the issue. I don’t like northern French cuisine because it’s just “how much butter and cream can we pump into this snail or these poor mushrooms or a potato that was fine all on its own? Can we drown this perfectly mediocre cut of beef in cream and butter to make it seem fancy?” I’m far more partial to living below the butter/olive oil border. Southern France on the sea is tolerable, they’re also below the border.
Snails are not a northern France thing though (unless you have a loose definition of north). It’s mostly central, with a huge correlation with tourist hotspots
Well, my objection is to the way they’re prepared in France, not the snails.
I’ve had snails in Morocco and giant forest snails in Ghana. The big ones are delicious if they’re wild caught. If they’re farmed, they taste like the rotten lettuce they get fed.
They confused Central French with Northern French, but it’s true that classic French cuisine, both northern and central, use too much dairy.
I mean I love France with all my being, but there’s no denying the use of cream and butter (or cheese in Northern French cuisine.
I guess you’re not into bread, because Germans have incredible bread
I left the 2% for pretzels, sausage, and Haribo gummies.
And Italians also make bread, you’ll notice they’re not on the exclusion list.
Italians make bread without salt… Bah!
That’s just the Tuscans
Yeah, but Italian bread and German bread…
Germans make pasta too, but I’m not talking about maultaschen here
The French have good bread as well. Not as good as what we have in Italy of course, but well, they’re doing their best!
The French have good bread as well
I dunno, the last baguette I ate tasted like pain.
They sure like talking about their bread a lot. No one beyond their borders understands why however.
That’s what I thought until I started working at a German bakery. Now I’m converted (as someone who isn’t from here and grew up with fresh home baked sourdough every day). You should try more of it.
Germans have roughly one kind of bread that they’re very good at.
Germany has tons of Turkish immigrants, but Germans won’t buy pita bread unless they’re getting a doner. They share a massive border with France but mostly ignore delicious French breads like croissants, baguettes, etc. They’re right near Italy but you won’t find much focaccia. Forget about naan, bagels, bao, corn bread, crumpets, injera, etc.
In comedy, timing is everything. This cut down TikTok ruined the joke :(
idk man. I went to the UK to sample some of the cuisine thinking it can’t be that bad and I have mixed feeling afterwards. Like the food is edible at least.
What did you have because you can go to a crap pizza place in Italy.
Yeah, no, Italians can’t make breakfast for shit.
Coffee and a cake does not breakfast make.
I hate Italian breakfast. My stomach doesn’t fare well with coffee, sugar, or wheat. I skip breakfast when I’m there.
English breakfast might be considered an acceptable meal if it wasn’t served at the time of day it is.
I mean even scrambled eggs is too much for any Italian hotel or breakfast restaurant I’ve been to. Like literally as if they made it mediocre on purpose.
Huh? It’s a passable breakfast, I don’t really see it being much of a lunch or dinner. Okay MAYBE lunch.
Eggs: okay admitting this is a breakfast staple. Sausage and/or beans: instant lunch or dinner category.
That’s better than my Israeli coworker. Coffee and cigarette.
“Everybody get the fuck out of my way and don’t touch anything”
-Me, in the kitchen
Seriously, you don’t enjoy cooking with a partner or family member or anything?
I actually really enjoy it. Apparently for my friends it’s like real life Overcooked levels of screaming.
Oh I definitely enjoy cooking in the presence of a partner or family member
-Me, in the kitchen
correction:
-Me, in MY kitchen
I tell people to “get out of my kitchen” all the time. I keep it neat, I keep it functional, don’t leave your dirty dish there you heathen, get out!
Guest cooks are welcome, at which point I will get out of their way too, but when I’m head chef, I’m the LAW.
-Me, in OUR kitchen
