don’t make me bring up the mountain of grease-soaked fried foods that brits find acceptable as a meal. even as an american, i haven’t seen so much fried food in one place. and i’ve been to the southern united states many times.
Bay leaves contain several different fatty acids which, when cooked, are transferred into your food. Fatty acids have a large effect on the flavour and nutrition of food. Next time to cook plain rice, add a few bay leaves to the pot and you will notice the change in flavour.
True, as a native English speaker, English sucks lol. There are a bunch of similar words but their meaning is different and they’re only to be used in certain contexts.
This reminds me of an old post I remember seeing where it depicted the contrast between anime food and English film food with some eggs. The anime ones were drawn with utmost care to look downright heavenly, while the English film eggs were very scraggly.
Except it isn’t though. You have shitty fast food like the rest of the world, but we also have Michelin star restaurants too. This is just yet another excuse for people to be xenophobic to the British.
And there are loads of excuses already. No need to manufacture an extra one! I wonder how many Michelin star restaurants in the UK claim to serve traditional British food though.
But genuinely, does the rest of the world dislike fish and chips, roast dinners, fried breakfasts, and pies? I know the stereotype has been around forever but I always had trouble believing that most non British people wouldn’t really like those foods.
My understanding is a lot of them. The majority of restaurants in the Michelin guide certaintly are British cuisine. The stars, I’m not so sure. I would say there isn’t really any reason to be xenophobic or racist to anyone.
No, it isn’t. I have dined exceptionally well in the UK. Our Christmas dinner is based on an a recipe from an English cook. We have a Scottish cafe/diner in town which serves excellent food.
OK, I’ve dined horribly, too, but it is definitely not the norm - I made the mistake of ordering half a chicken in a fish and chips shop. My recommendation: Don’t repeat my mistake.
Legitimately, though: I listened to my sister tell her 4-year about “yummy spices” at Thanksgiving. The example she used was “like salt!” I was horrified.
She also made & brought the absolute worst green bean casserole I have ever tasted in my life. It was like wet, crunchy green beans covered in French-fried onions (which came from a can, which is why it’s pretty much the only thing she got right).
She used “no added salt/sodium” cream-of-mushroom soup, the green beans, and the canned fried onions, and added nothing else.
I love green bean casserole, as it’s one of my favorite Thanksgiving foods. Even offered to make it for everyone this year! But she insisted that she wanted to do it.
The only thing that was salty this Thanksgiving was me.
Salt is just a major part of their cuisine/flavouring
It’s not exclusive to Japan if you’re worried about stereotypes but they tend to celebrate it more than other countries that look to burn your mouth off
I recently discovered #16 black pepper. It truly can make things spicey. But table ground? Ha!
I know someone allergic to capsaicin. I’ve seen him eat the mildest salsa and turn red. He also sweats to black pepper. Maybe your father has a similar allergy.
What is “#16 black pepper?” Isn’t that just a grind size?
I didn’t know people used preground at home. Not any cheaper and tastes like actual dust. With a regular old pepper mill you can change that grind size easily. And no matter the grind size it doesn’t have the ability to make food “spicy” as in “hot.”
I grind my own pepper too, but #16 aka coarse ground is much larger pieces of ground pepper. #16 is the die size. You technically could grind it coarse yourself, but you’d have to sift it and only keep the bigger pieces. Here’s an example: Amazon Brand - Happy Belly Black Pepper, Coarse Ground, 18 Oz a.co/d/8e7AWHT But you should be able to find it at any big grocery store. I get it at Costco. It’s great for rubs and spicing up stuff just a bit. I think it’s the oil that remains in the course pieces as opposed to the smaller grind that allows the oil tooxidize quickly, which mutes the heat in the oil. I learned about it when I got into smoking meat. It’s used to crust a smoked brisket.
Fucks me up as a German, too. Globalization gave us all kinds of tasty spices, but go to any public event and you’d be convinced our greatest culinary achievement is sausage with tomato ketchup and curry powder.
Also wenn du mich so fragst, hätte ich gerne so Döner-style Fladenbrot mit Kümmel, Schwarzkümmel und Senfkörnern im Teig. Das dann von innen bestrichen mit etwas Erdnussmus. Dann das übliche Döner-Grünzeug rein, aber kurz scharf in einem Wok angebraten und in Soja-Sauce getaucht. Darüber frisch gemalener bunter Pfeffer und ein guter Esslöffel kaltgepresstes Rapsöl. Und dann Champignons geschnetzelt + ordentlich angebraten und mit Gyros-Gewürzen mariniert noch darin einbetten.
Ich denke, das sollte man gut in so einem Imbisswagen zubereiten können. 🙃
Also habe jetzt natürlich übertrieben. Keine Ahnung, ob das noch gut ist. Aber habe tatsächlich schonmal so Champignon-Geschnetzeltes in einem Fladenbrot gemacht und das war extrem geil. Seither hätte ich tatsächlich gerne mal einen vollwertigen Döner damit…
But “Currywurst” (curry sausage) was invented in Berlin. Indian wouldn’t use curry powder without vegetables in this way, or currypower at all (correct me if I’m wrong)
I’m no expert either, but yeah, I believe the lazy method of making the curry dish (Indian, Thai etc.) is to use curry paste. Our curry powder barely resembles the taste of the curry dish. In particular, it’s lacking tons of chili. 🫠
I was once explained that curry in the Indian sense is a rice vegetable dish with a lot of spices. To make it easier for the Brits, the powder was developed so that you don’t need all the fresh spices.
Curry in India is usually a side-dish served with rice or chapathi (flatbread). It contains a lot of vegetables, various herbs and spices, and optionally fish or meat. But the rice itself is not a part of the curry. Also we do use curry powder, mainly when we don’t have time or space to mix the spices properly.
As an American, going to any German-themed public event (read: Oktoberfest and uhh… that’s about it) convinces me that your greatest culinary achievement is sausage with mustard and sauerkraut. Not too shabby, TBH.
we also had schupfnudeln with sauerkraut, but with chopped bacon added.
asside from that, i also know mashed potatos with kassler (cured pork),
Leberwurst(loose sausage that is usualy used as a spread)
and blutwurst(blood sausage)
boiled in sauerkraut, as a Christmas classic.
(both sausages were loose and squeezed out of the casing)
i also remember grandpa snacking on cold raw plain sauerkraut for dinner.
but he was the only person i know that ate it like that.
but i dont remember any other dishes ive eaten with sauerkraut in it.
Well, yeah, to some degree these are just very easy to prepare. To some degree, they’re just the lowest common denominator, though, which is what I’m mainly annoyed by. Lots of these simpler foods could be easily improved by adding some spices, or we could even adopt some of the many street foods in Eastern Asia, to bring in more variety…
to be honest, I dont know a single fellow american that thinks that “american food” (whatever that even means) is better than just about any other variety. Yet what you said is true nonetheless lmao
If we’re to insist on it being a specific country’s food, it really should be Indian no? It was invented by Indian diaspora in the UK as (IIRC) a take on traditional Indian food using ingredients that are easier to obtain in the UK.
IMO saying tikka masala is British food is like saying General Tso’s Chicken, which was invented by Chinese diaspora in the US for similar reasons, is somehow American food. I don’t think the country it was invented in can really claim credit in either case.
Tikka Masala is an Indian-Inspired dish which was invented in the UK by people with Indian cultural heritage. That’s about as concise a description as you can get without running into difficulties of definition - there’s no consistent way of defining what “being a dish” means without running into contradictions.
In fact General Tso’s is the perfect counter-example: Multiple Chinese people have told me they enthusiastically disown General Tso’s Chicken and explicitly call it American food. So if we say “a dish belongs to a country if it’s invented there”, then Tikka Masala is British (which I agree “feels” wrong); but if we say “a dish belongs to a country if it was inspired by the cuisine of that country”, then General Tso’s is Chinese, which, apparently not!
And that’s without even considering the question of how far “back” you should go with inspiration - what if a dish was inspired by how the Indians used food they got from the Persians who traded it with the Chinese - is it Indian food or Chinese food? (Idk if that’s historically nonsense, but you get my point) Why is the most-recent ancestor more important than the environment of creation?
I respectfully disagree with one major caveat. I’ll get that out of the way first; I think there should be a name for these foods that recognize the creators (e.g. Italian American food is American food that comes from Italian immigrants). We’ve traditionally been bad at giving credit or, worse, using names to mark a cuisine as “other” and weird.
The thing is that there really isn’t a food of a place. People use ingredients that are available and use techniques from the people around them. When cultures interact, they create remixes of cuisine that take unfamiliar ingredients and techniques and create something new.
Let me use the food of my own home, New Mexico, as an example. The food of the region is a mixture of Spanish colonizers, later Mexican immigrants, and Native American foods using a crazy combination of techniques and ingredients from all three. It isn’t Spanish food. It isn’t Mexican food. It isn’t Native American food. It is New Mexican food, a thing that arose from a place and its history. Now, with Asian immigrants moving in, the food has started to incorporate stuff from those cultures too.
This is a subjective, but would be pretty universally laughed at in the culinary world especially when compared to France, Italy, Tokyo, or any American city.
restaurants weren’t even prevalent until the early 1900s, way past the introduction of spices.
Outside of London the UK has a very low presence of Michelin rated restaurants compared to Europe, the US, and Japan. Not the best metric, but there’s no reason why Britain’s restaurants, who would stand to benefit from such rating, is being unfairly treated.
Btw I actually like British food, and have spent a lot of time in the UK. Just think your comment is funny, and the upvotes are funnier.
I get your point number one, but any American city better restaurants than London? You cannot seriously believe that. Sure, NY, Chicago, etc but common.
That weirdly applies to museums as well. The best museums in the world are in London. Of course, they don’t serve English stuff. The Brits just knew to bring the best stuff home.
Also, what do you call English food in other countries? Prison food.
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