A comment on this earlier AskLemmy post inspired me to ask this question. I think there’s lots of delicious British food/it really depends on how you cook it, as with any cuisine.
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I’m a Brit, and personally, I think a lot of the staples we are weirdly defensive of are not that exciting. A Sunday roast? Sure, it’s probably associated with family and comfort or whatever, but give me Thai, Mexican, Italian, Japanese food, etc., over it any day.
That said, the two I will defend to the grave are a decent fish and chip supper and an English/Scottish breakfast.
Fish and Chips
Is shepherd’s pie British? Or is that Scottish/Irish? 🤔 I like that, too.
Fun fact: ‘fish and chips’ was introduced to England by a Jewish migrant, same as pastrami for the USA. And shepherd’s pie is British, but it’s unclear whether it was northern England or Scotland.
Something-something ‘cottage pie’ is usually what’s referred to when people refer to ‘shepard’s pie.’
Scotland is British, just not English.
Nothing beats a proper English breakfast
OMG
Having a proper Full English at a farm-stay, on the way down to Cornwall, was a standout lifetime meal.
The same exact one cooked by the wife for the farmer, to last him all day out in the field. Glor-i-ous.
Frying the toast slices in the bacon oil was next level.
Had beef wellington for the first time recently, and it was way tastier and less gimmicky than I expected. The mushroom mixture does a lot more work than you would expect from pictures.
Nothing beats a proper English breakfast
English Breakfast is a brilliantly balanced meal and it helped me get comfortable with eating a wider range of things (mushrooms, ratatouille, tomatoes) when I was younger. Love it.
Also, beef wellington is pretty great if done right.
I’ve never actually had one - always been told it is more effort than it’s worth. Looks good though - one day I’ll have my prize
I’ve never actually had one - always been told it is more effort than it’s worth.
Beef Wellington isn’t even English, it started as a French dish and was refined and popularized in the US. And yes it’s way too much work to cook.
Maybe the French disowned it then. “Too much pastry and too much meat, this meal is practically English!” They seem to like more fancy-shaped pastries in France.
ratatouille
What madness is this?
It’s good on buttered toast, but yeah not exactly an English dish.
Haha yeah, we just have it from the can because it goes on potatoes and things and means you’ve got half your vegetables sorted for the meal.
I buy it canned most of the time too.
The canned stuff is almost identical to the homemade version anyway as there’s only like 8 ingredients in a ratatouille and 6 of them are always going to be the same vegetables in approximately the same ratios.
My grandmother was British, and she’d cook the most amazing roast potatoes I’ve ever had. Its just a shame she made them by sacrificing the roast beef…
huel
Also, everyone (including me in my other post) is going savoury — how about sweet? Aero bar, in mint. Perfection. Bark candy mostly only comes in chocolate, or dark chocolate. Sometimes vanilla (white chocolate, which is not chocolate, it’s vanilla and vanilla should own it because “white chocolate” is awesome, though it should really be called “Vanilla candy bark,” but “bark candy” is really only known as… chocolate… hence “white chocolate”). Fun fact, I’ve had all kinds of bark candy. When I was a kid, I got it in orange and raspberry as well. Now it’s only chocolate and… what I mentioned. Oh and mint chocolate, like Andes mints, but also those pastel-coloured mints that sometimes have the little white balls of hard sugar on them (I think those are just straight up mint bark though).
Again why TF don’t we have bark candy in other flavours?
WTF is ‘bark’ candy?
I’ve had a lot of good food in Scotland, but one of the most memorable meals was in the Crinan Hotel’s seafood bar - a big plate of langoustines that had been caught that morning, served with perfect chips and aoli. On the menu they were called Loch Crinan jumbo prawns.
That image is playing major perspective tricks on me, lol. They look giant
I’ve been to London twice … and the best food I’ve ever eaten the whole time there was fish and chippy from a street vendor by tower hill.
Only the Brits would colonize half the world looking for spices and then refuse to use them in their food.
Only the Brits would colonize half the world looking for spices and then refuse to use them in their food.
Oh, do fuck off. It’s such a tired cliché and wrong. Our traditional dishes predate conquering almost the entire fucking world. So, no, they don’t tend to feature spices other than pepper and nutmeg because that was all we had 500 years ago.
But now our national dish is chicken tikka masala. We love our BIR curries, like Madras; Jalfrezi; Vindaloo; Korma; Pathia; and Balti. These were invented here, in the UK, for UK palates. So you can fuck off and shove whatever cuisine your country has up your fucking arse while you’re at it. Cunt.
TIL: I should have explored more when I was over there … I just went to “pubs” and what I thought were British places … never thought of venturing on that side of the culinary spectrum.
Sounds like I need another trip soon LOL
If you’re going to go to the pubs for British food don’t do it in London. Don’t do it in a city at all, to be honest, all the really good ones are out in tiny villages or the middle of a moor.
“We stole other countries foods and made them ours.”
Pop them in a museum and you’d complete the picture.
I love spicy food, and once tried to order vindaloo at a family-run Indian place in Cornwall, but the owner convinced me to have Madras instead. Lucky thing, because the Madras was right at the perfect edge of my heat tolerance. I wouldn’t have been able to eat the vindaloo lol.
Honestly fish and chips in terms of a meal.
As part of a meal, Yorkshire pudding is unlike anything I’ve had in America, and nothing like what it evokes in the typical American.
More like popovers almost.
Vindaloo.
Classic. Also a fun one to say to troll people who don’t know much about british food.
Phall. If you know, you know.
When I lived in the states for a while, I’d often crave a curry. Me and another Brit would head out to an Indian restaurant and usually order a Vindaloo. The waiter would say “Are you sure, it is quite spicy hot.” And we’d tell him we were British and he’d say “Oh, I understand.” and give us what we’d asked for without further comment.
Spotted Dick
I’m from the EU, but I love making shepherd’s pie. It’s pretty easy and when done correctly, it is an absolutely fantastic dish.
Visited Scotland
Walked into a little mom-n-pop fast restaurant
Wondered wtf is a “deep fried pizza”, ordered one.
Dude took a “frozen” pizza out of the fridge
Dude folded it in half and stuck it in an oil deep fry.
OMFG never tasted such sweet sin… crispy flakey crust on the outside, melty cheesy inside
Totally worth the 10 million calories and arterial hardening
I’m flabbergasted that I’ve never seen that dish in the US. Well done rando Scot!
What, did you think that was the one bit of Americana that didn’t cross an ocean?
Nah, thought Scots like themselves enough to not eat like that.
Oh, this isn’t ‘rando’. Chippies in Scotland will deep fry any fucking thing. Pizza? Standard. Mars bar? Of course! In some chippies you can even take something you’ve bought somewhere else and ask if they’ll batter and fry the fucker for you and they’ll say yes.
Whenever I get home to Scotland, my personal supper of choice is the haggis supper - a sausage of haggis meat, battered and deep fried, and served with beautifully fried chips, of course. The second night I’m home (especially if the wife isn’t with me) is a haddock supper. Fuckin’ grand.
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I’m told by those who do that the deep fried Bounty is just the wrong side of the acceptable line of deep fried sweet shit.
I’ll never forget passing my local chippy when I lived in Edinburgh and seeing they’d handwritten “almost” on the “WE WILL DEEP FRY ANYTHING” sign.
Behind every sign there’s a story.
I used to do a star bar tempura as a dessert.
There’s something about a sunday dinner on a rainy day…the day after a night out.
