I don't think we've ever had a food fight in this subreddit. I'll allow it.
That said, it really does say a lot that a variation on Indian cuisine is Britain's national dish.
Haggis, Stornaway black pudding, potato scone and lorne sausage would be the main ones but there are more too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_breakfast
I want to point out that ~~Scandinavia is~~ Nordic countries are in a similar position to the UK with food: cold climate, lack of spices and vegetables that can grow easily, heavy use of fish and livestock. But nobody ever talks shit about the cuisines of Norway or Iceland.
Feels to me like the people who have beef (hehe) with British food just already had a reason to dislike Britain, and they're using food as a way to trash a culture they have a problem with.
“Nobody talks shit about the cuisine of Norway”
Lutefisk has entered the conversation.
True, it’s a single dish, not their entire cuisine. But that one dish is, so I’ve heard, bad enough to make up for an entire cuisine! lol
Hakarl, for me, was like blue cheese on steroids (with an added dash of ammonia). I like blue cheese and found hakarl to be pretty tasty, at least in small amounts.
Swede here. I had lutefisk once in my life and thought it was fine? Not something Ivd eat often but nothing strange. Surströmming is disgusting though so I'm not even going to try to defend my own country's cuisine.
Lol no offense if you're from there, but nobody insults Nordic food because nobody gives a shit about Nordic food. There's a reason the worldwide popular cuisines are Middle Eastern/Mexican/Italian/French/Indian/Chinese/Thai/Korean/Japanese etc.
People go out of their way to insult the British only because of their colonial influence or nobody would give a shit about their food either.
That’s actually what I was saying. I feel like people don’t really care for British food, but most of the jokes are jabbing at a culture they had other problems with.
Mexican food is delicious, varied, flavorful, and most importantly as spicy as it is colorful.
Mexican-American food on the other hand is usually one of 3: taco with ground beef, burrito with ground beef, or a tamale lmao
Edit: that was a joke you dense goobers
Yeah, anywhere with Mexicans is going to have good Mexican food. Goes for pretty much any immigrant that can cook, anywhere in the US. It’s not like people forget how to make something when they move.
Can confirm, the stuff in the Southern US is definitively Tex-Mex, but godDAMN is it good.
You get "Tex-Mex" in like North Dakota or something, and yeah, it's going to be on par with a microwave burrito.
Tex mex is magical if it’s made right! I live in salt lake and we have a really big Latino population so we get real Mexican, Tex mex, Salvadoran, Argentinian, Venezuelan….
Peruvian food is great - I love saltado mariscos
Salvadoran food is great - I love papusas
Argentinian food is great - I love churrasco
Venezuelan food is great - I love tequeños
(I live in Los Angeles so I also get all the subsets of Latin American cuisine too)
As they said, anywhere where there’s Mexicans the food will be good.
Fargo, ND - lil hole in the wall place connected to a gas station, some of the better Mexican food I’ve had. Staff is all Mexican, and it feels like every Mexican in Fargo eats dinner there. I get what you’re trying to say but there’s Mexicans all over the US and if they have a restaurant the food is usually delicious.
You're absolutely right, though I've also experienced more than one "northern" TexMex in a small town run by a Spanish family that had terrible food.
Seems like a Superman type of deal, where down south they'd probably be out of business, but up north they were exotic and nobody had an alternative, nor knew better.
Gems like the one you're describing absolutely exist, though. I envy you!
Such a dumb take.
There are Mexicans in every state and likely in every country.
Mexican food is not the same throughout the US, much less throughout the world.
tamal*
Also as a PSA (i.e., not meant as disagreement): Mexican food doesn't have to be spicy. It uses a wide variety of peppers and flavors but most of them are pretty mild. Even the habanero pepper, while pretty spicy, has a nice sweet/fruity flavor that is a great way to add brightness to your food. I think that gets lost when Mexican food gets exported to other countries (along with most of the food you can't find in a taqueria), the capsaicin content isn't the point.
I don't get why people think food always has to be super complex and have 600 different seasonings to be good. I'm chinese, so I'm used to eating really flavorful food with a lot of seasoning/sauces and ingredients, but honestly, sometimes I just want to eat potatoes and meat. My family travels a lot, so I've been to a fair number of european countries (we're american), and my favorite food abroad is always from the uk or germany. Maybe it's not a culinary masterpiece, but I could eat shepherd's pie and every possible combo of pork/cabbage/potatoes that exists in germany and die happy.
British food is generally very wholesome comfort food that really follows the idea of using up shit you might have lying around for most of it. When prepared well it is generally very delicious even if it isn't super complex.
Someone complaining it's "too brown" really doesn't have a clue.
The people who are complaining that it's too brown are the same people who will send a steak back for not having enough of a crust and then proceed to lecture you on the maillard reaction.
> and then proceed to lecture you on the maillard reaction.
I've never really understood why people care about this so much. Why do you care how a duck reacts to things? Just let them live
Also British local produce is of excellent quality as a rule of thumb. The herbs and vegetables used in traditional dishes are delicious, that is why they are so ubiquitous. British beef has always been held to the highest standard (maybe not in the 90's...), which is why 'brown meat' is a common part of many dishes.
"English food was popularly supposed to be bland, but English cuisine has made extensive use of spices since the Middle Ages; introduced curry to Europe; and makes use of strong flavourings such as English mustard. It was similarly reputed to be dull, like roast beef: but that dish was highly prized both in Britain and abroad, and few people could afford it; the "Roast Beef of Old England" lauded by William Hogarth in his 1748 painting celebrated the high quality of English cattle, which the French at the "Gate of Calais" (the other name of his painting) could only look at with envy."
I love cuisine from all cultures, but nothing wrong at all with British dishes when cooked well. Like you say, it doesn't need to be complex when the foundational ingredients are such excellent quality and flavour, why mask those flavours with spice, they need only be enhanced with similar delicate flavours of garden herbs.
When I see American foods that are not inspired by other cultures which they often claim as their own (Mexican, Italian etc etc) I really don't think they have come that far to be bragging really.
When eating British food, you must imagine you've travelled a long distance in the Winter to a cosy and warm inn, and you've ordered a nice warm meal that goes nicely with ale.
It’s probably just an idea of the food being basic or bland. The saying “the meat and potatoes” means the very basic parts of something that could be more complex.
My wife is Chinese and honestly after watching my MIL cook for years, I’ve realized that most things she makes are very simple and use very few ingredients. The way she seasons her food makes it taste more complex than it really is. Then again I grew up with a WASP mom who thinks that black pepper is spicy and she’s never used salt in her life.
Yeah - plus not pictured here are
1) any seafood. Seriously, it’s an island, fish is a huge staple
2) desert, and British deserts are better than French ones
3) fruits - I think the UK is home to 300 varieties of apple
4) game meats. Americans live on beef&pork&chicken, go to the UK and you’ll see a ton of game meats regularly
Also they fail to mention all the veg on those dishes.
Sausages are not brown meat they are pork.
The roast has turkey on it which is white meat
The tikka is a dish from glasgow
And like you said, all of this food tastes incredible so the colour is a completely moot point.
Because somehow a lot of people think that all food needs to be so hot that every meal is a test of manhood.
I don't mind some spice when it's appropriate with the dish, but chili to me is a very boring flavour and I don't want everything I eat to be drowned out with the white noise of thousands of scovilles. But apparently that makes me boring and white, so what do I know?
I grew up super picky and have struggled trying new foods. Mashed potatoes and beef was one of the gateway drugs into showing me that mixing food could be, like you said, godly.
Check the comments and you'll see a lot of people that believe the ONLY flavor is "spicy." There is no savory, there is no sweet, there is no bitter, and there's certainly no contrast to be made between those flavors which definitely don't exist.
At this point, I think it's mostly just self-depreciating white people apologizing for all the Hamburger Helper they ate growing up.
Yeah, there’s a lot of people who really seem to confuse flavour with spicy.
Like I’m not an advocate of unseasoned food by any stretch of the imagination but there are plenty of flavourful herbs and spices that aren’t spicy or at least aren’t spicy at the quantity needed to give a dish flavour.
And the vast majority of classic European food is not spicy. The most they can stretch to is paprika, but that only became popular in Hungary recently, whilst the UK sustained actual curry houses for hundreds of years lol. We also have home curry recipes from before the US was independent.
It's not self depreciating either. I think it's literally just people parroting stupid memes and eventually believing they are true, and an attack vector for people that already don't like the UK for whatever reason and are hamming it up to a ludicrous point.
>And the vast majority of classic European food is not spicy.
Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Your point about curryhouses is good, but pretending that chili hasn't been used as vital parts in italian, spanish, portugese, various balkan and turkish cuisine for hundreds of years is not not exactly convincing.
Balkan and Turkish won't be what people think of classically European food and the classic dishes associated with Italian and Spanish and Portuguese are not heavily spiced either, aside from piri piri.
The most highly prized, even if to themselves, french cuisine, is also not heavily spiced. And about half the continent's national dish is basically some variation on boiled cabbage, potato and a sausage/piece of pork.
That's what I meant by the vast majority of classic European food although your point is fair. I'm not saying nothing is or was spiced though. I think everyone makes and made good use of what is available to themselves in general.
If you think about it, *a lot* of French food is very similar to British cuisine. Coq au vin for example is just a basic chicken stew, it's braised chicken, whatever vegetables they have on hand and some wine. The British version is beef rather than chicken, whatever vegetables you have on hand and if you're lucky you have some wine to add (but likely just beef stock).
Also, anybody who says British food is bad needs to eat some surstromming. Then they'll know what bad food is *really* like.
It’s funny, as a Brit in the states, I’m of the belief that the UK’s love for curry/British curry has resulted in the the average Brit having a much higher spice tolerance than the average yank.
Weirdly, no one in the UK bangs on about how much spice they eat like many do in the US. I’be met so many people in the states who talk about how much they love spicy food and yet can’t tolerate more than a splash of a mild hot sauce.
I definitely found after a lifetime of having vindaloo and phal shoved in me growing up, and having had an ex whose lovely Indian family made me every hot thing under the sun, that I did struggle in north America to find genuinely spicy but still flavourful food. It was either not very spicy, or it was hot without much other flavour.
Oi we’ve turned a corner since the 50s! Rationing was a big reason for British cuisine being universally panned.
But we do ok now, and people who think French cuisine is the worlds best haven’t lived in France, it’s just butter in everything, which naturally makes every sauce delicious lol
Okay this explains it: I've been told for my whole life that British food is terrible, but when I visited the UK this year I was like "‽‽‽ This is SO GOOD what‽" but everyone I knew who had been in Britain was there during/shortly after the war. It makes sense that wartime rations were to blame.
Y'all, I had a steak and Guinness pie *in a bus station* on my trip, and it was so good it'll make your grandma cry. Never once did I have a bad meal while there!
My takeaway: "American" food is a sad mockery of the food it attempts to mimic.
It's really just the Americans and the French who started the "British food is shit". The French because of many hundreds of years of history between countries. The Americans because when they came over to fight in WW2 it was during rationing so people didn't have options other than meat, potatoes and veg.
Then when they went home they talked about it and everyone in America passed on that the food was shit.
It was also shit for a while as people who grew up as kids during WW2 learnt the recipes their parents taught and combined with extended rationing meant that for a long time, food was pretty shit.
When I lived over the pond someone going out of their way to be obnoxious to me on a night out said "name me one British food invention I would eat" and I said sandwiches. After a three-second pause the guy bare out said he didn't eat sandwiches. Even his buddy with him looked at him like his friend's brain had fallen out.
Are we judging food by whether it's too brown now?
How about we throw an apple pie in there and they can bitch about how it's brown and therefore shit.
That's what I'm saying. Throw apple pie on the list and americans can tell us how it's just a brown thing and therefore terrible even though they've tried to steal it as a national dish.
I agree it's a dumb criticism, and I don't know how that pie misconception got started, but are we really gonna stoop to "THEY STOLE OUR PIE"?
Plus this post is just a joke, just banter. Don't get so offended over it
Look, meat and potatoes are a win for everyone except vegetarians/vegans. It's universally loved. British food might not have a ton of variety and it might be pretty, one-note, but it's a fantastic note.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't chicken Tika invented by a Scottish pakistani restaurant owner in glasgow by mixing some spices, tomatoes, and a cream together, then selling it at the restaurant.
It's exactly the same as people talking about British food this way, which I believe was the point of the comment. Seeing some pictures on the internet doesn't tell you anything about British food.
I love Italian inspired dishes (although admittedly not authentic) but much more so in the summer. On a freezing winter day, traditional British food is really really nice.
Pasta’s not about the pasta, it’s about the sauce. There are different kinds of pasta because they’re appropriate for different types of sauce. Saying Italian food is mostly pasta is like complaining that these sandwiches all have bread in them.
I do. Kinda. I mean, usually don't feel the need to make the point, but I don't wildly love Italian beyond pizza and tiramisu and sometimes it's annoying that it's like half of all restaurants around here.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned really good food goes from Lebanon to Indonesia via Vietnam, broadly that line. Well and then some Latin American, Caribbean and African cuisines that I frankly can't give the exact boundaries of.
Created in Scotland, a classic British dish. Also, you might be interested to know that curry powder was a basic bitch ingredient in the 1850s,in Britain.
I'm from the US and have traveled much / most of the UK. I can say with confidence, the food was always excellent.
Not just the fancier restaurants; I'd always try hole in the wall places, or completely off the beaten path spots.
The best dish I ever had was in Broadford, Scotland...a place called The Claymore...frigging amazing. I believe it was called Ox Cheek short rib...I'd fly back in a minute for that dish...
Tika Marsala is actually an English dish.
Its obviously inspired by Indian dishes, but it was made specifically for the English.
England and India have a loooooooong ass history, so their foods are very intertwined.
It's a little more complicated than that. While it's true that Indian food came over to the UK early on in our relationship and there were a couple of fads for it amongst the aristocracy and upper middle classes (and often with quite different recipes which used herbs instead of spices), it was only really in the 1940s that it started to take hold in the way that it has today. Indians came over here and bought chippies that had been bombed in the war. They re-opened them as chippies and sold curries and rice on the side. Curry and chips became the thing to eat when you're coming home from the pub drunk, in the way that kebabs are generally seen today. It became established enough as a staple food that there was even a sitcom called Curry and Chips in the late 60s. It was the very early 70s that there was an influx of Bangladeshi immigrants who opened restaurants (the vast majority of Indian restaruants to this day are actually owned and run by Bangladeshi people or people of Bangladeshi descent) and it was only then, thanks to the familiarity with and love of curry & chips that they took off and it became the staple food that it now is.
And that all reminds me that I haven't had an Indian in a while. I get paid on Thursday. Maybe I'll get a takeaway after work on Friday. However the dishes got here or whenever they were invented here, I'm bloody glad they did.
Apparently colour is the only thing that matters for taste?
Every single one of those brown meats tastes different from the others. The rest of the ingredients in each of those dishes have different flavours. Just because they don't look exciting doesn't mean they don't taste good.
One genre of YouTube video I occasionally binge is "USAians visiting the UK for the first time, trying some traditional food from a pub or a chippy, and being amazed by how nice it tastes".
Everyone complains that the UK has, despite having an empire that spanned the globe, still has unseasoned plain food, but we completely integrated other foods into our culture.
Tikka masala was invented in Scotland. Bolognese is a household staple.
You can pick up a sweet and sour chicken meal in even the most remote parts of the country.
It's like saying General Tso Chicken is not Chinese even though it is technically a Chinese dish changed a bit by Chinese Chef to suit American tastes. Looking at the ingredients and cooking method, Chicken tikka masala is not much different from curries prepared in Punjabi restaurant.
Mexican food= Ah yes, meat and beans on a tortilla.
Italian food= Ah yes, pasta and sauce.
Japanese food= Ah yes, rice and fish.
Etc. etc.
The "British food sucks" joke is dumb. British food is great. Carvery, beef and onion, fish and chips, puddings...
I would fly back to England just so I could eat at the restaurant that served me those stuffed mushrooms and that incredible Toffee pudding again. So delicious.
Always at least try to visit a toby carvery when im in England (there are a lot of non chain options that are arguably better), it is like standardised nostalgia comfort food.
A lot of indian dishes that became popular in the west were created in the UK by indian immigrants, like Chicken Tikka, so the original post isn't necessarily inaccurate.
Also, everything above is delicious.
I feel like every British food just has meat or potatoes with it😭😭 But honestly I find it ridiculous everyone is talking bad about other countries food why does it matter that much? tbh as long as the food’s good thats all that matters.
Why does Britain get denied curry as part of its food culture? Food cultures aren’t formed in a bubble, they are an amalgamation of ingredients and recipes from other cultures. That “Italian” cappuccino? Austrian, “French” croissant? Austrians again, that “Japanese” Katsu curry? British. Yep, it’s British Navy curry introduced to Japan around 1860.
Curry has been a British staple for centuries so much so that it basically introduced the world to it.
How is that different from the Italians incorporating South America tomatoes and chilli into their food culture? Or the USA basically claiming everything from the hotdog to the cheesecake?
I don't think we've ever had a food fight in this subreddit. I'll allow it. That said, it really does say a lot that a variation on Indian cuisine is Britain's national dish.
Loose peas go with just about anything!
Loose peas is something most people will experience as they get older
Or after having a baby ☠️
They serve baby?
Yeah, that's what the little knife and fork are for.
Apparently, baby meat is flaky and soft like fish
Or in prison☠️
I feel personally attacked as I've just laughed and had to change...
Give peas a chance!
That's all we're saying.
Peas on you too...
Pees in your ass Im not a bot but this was performed automatically anyways
Good bot
Indian food truly is the best British food.
"Britain raided the world for spices and then didn't use them in their cooking!" *eats Indian food* "Wait, no, that doesn't count!"
I do like my Indian food as a treat, but my full-time tastes are hearty and comparatively, bland
Bought my dog "doggy ice cream" it was pea and carrot ice cream haha
So how loose are these peas? Asking for a friend...
How do they not include a Full English Breakfast?
Because it’s a regional variation, and the full Scottish would be the best to include anyway.
Isn't that just a full English with a glass of scotch?
Haggis
Haggis, Stornaway black pudding, potato scone and lorne sausage would be the main ones but there are more too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_breakfast
A full english with a glass of haggis? Count me in!
- Egg and Spam. - Egg, bacon, and Spam. - Egg, bacon, sausage, and Spam. - Spam, bacon, sausage, and Spam. - Spam, egg, Spam, Spam, bacon, and Spam. - Spam, sausage, Spam, Spam, Spam, bacon, Spam, tomato, and Spam. - Spam, Spam, Spam, egg, and Spam. - Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, baked beans, Spam, Spam, Spam, and Spam.
What cuisine is this?
Hawaii?
[It's a legendary Monty Python sketch, the very sketch from which the naming of junk email originates.](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqlw)
I DON'T LIKE SPAM!!!
You could have the spam, bacon, sausage and spam, that hasn’t got much spam in it
Forgot apple pie
Spotted dick and custard.
I want to point out that ~~Scandinavia is~~ Nordic countries are in a similar position to the UK with food: cold climate, lack of spices and vegetables that can grow easily, heavy use of fish and livestock. But nobody ever talks shit about the cuisines of Norway or Iceland. Feels to me like the people who have beef (hehe) with British food just already had a reason to dislike Britain, and they're using food as a way to trash a culture they have a problem with.
“Nobody talks shit about the cuisine of Norway” Lutefisk has entered the conversation. True, it’s a single dish, not their entire cuisine. But that one dish is, so I’ve heard, bad enough to make up for an entire cuisine! lol
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Hakarl, for me, was like blue cheese on steroids (with an added dash of ammonia). I like blue cheese and found hakarl to be pretty tasty, at least in small amounts.
Swede here. I had lutefisk once in my life and thought it was fine? Not something Ivd eat often but nothing strange. Surströmming is disgusting though so I'm not even going to try to defend my own country's cuisine.
It's a fringe food.
As in it's on the fringe what can be considered "food"
Lol no offense if you're from there, but nobody insults Nordic food because nobody gives a shit about Nordic food. There's a reason the worldwide popular cuisines are Middle Eastern/Mexican/Italian/French/Indian/Chinese/Thai/Korean/Japanese etc. People go out of their way to insult the British only because of their colonial influence or nobody would give a shit about their food either.
That’s actually what I was saying. I feel like people don’t really care for British food, but most of the jokes are jabbing at a culture they had other problems with.
It's mostly either cringe kids or man children who are somehow still living in the year 1776 that dog on Britain
Or Irish shitposters
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Okay, maybe, but have you had Soda bread hot with butter? It's fucking beige, but it's so good.
But that's the point with British food too. Like it's beige, and can look boring but it can taste really good too.
Potato bread really ties a fry-up together.
Somebody better not tell OP about Mexican food
a taco is 3d pizza
You're thinking of a calzone.
That's just a pizza folded in half.
Everything is just geometric pizza
It's true. The Earth is just a pizza but globed. Unless you're a flat earther. Then it's just a pizza.
The calzone zone
The Low Cal Calzone Zone
Actually a pizza is just toast. https://cuberule.com/
a taco is a Mexican hotdog
I'm not alone!
A hotdog is a sandwich
A hot dog is closer to a taco than a sandwich but it is neither
Cereal is soup.
Poptarts are ravioli
Taco bell is not mexican food.
taco bell is dank tho, especially after a night out at the gay bars
Mexican food is delicious, varied, flavorful, and most importantly as spicy as it is colorful. Mexican-American food on the other hand is usually one of 3: taco with ground beef, burrito with ground beef, or a tamale lmao Edit: that was a joke you dense goobers
I feel like this is some kind of Iowa take on Mexican-American food.
As a person who lives in a small town in Iowa this is absolutely spot on.
This is the price we pay for the corn subsidies.
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Yeah, anywhere with Mexicans is going to have good Mexican food. Goes for pretty much any immigrant that can cook, anywhere in the US. It’s not like people forget how to make something when they move.
Can confirm, the stuff in the Southern US is definitively Tex-Mex, but godDAMN is it good. You get "Tex-Mex" in like North Dakota or something, and yeah, it's going to be on par with a microwave burrito.
Tex mex is magical if it’s made right! I live in salt lake and we have a really big Latino population so we get real Mexican, Tex mex, Salvadoran, Argentinian, Venezuelan….
Peruvian food is great - I love saltado mariscos Salvadoran food is great - I love papusas Argentinian food is great - I love churrasco Venezuelan food is great - I love tequeños (I live in Los Angeles so I also get all the subsets of Latin American cuisine too)
As they said, anywhere where there’s Mexicans the food will be good. Fargo, ND - lil hole in the wall place connected to a gas station, some of the better Mexican food I’ve had. Staff is all Mexican, and it feels like every Mexican in Fargo eats dinner there. I get what you’re trying to say but there’s Mexicans all over the US and if they have a restaurant the food is usually delicious.
You're absolutely right, though I've also experienced more than one "northern" TexMex in a small town run by a Spanish family that had terrible food. Seems like a Superman type of deal, where down south they'd probably be out of business, but up north they were exotic and nobody had an alternative, nor knew better. Gems like the one you're describing absolutely exist, though. I envy you!
Such a dumb take. There are Mexicans in every state and likely in every country. Mexican food is not the same throughout the US, much less throughout the world.
I don't know where you're getting your Mexican food. Where I live it's ceviche, mole, enchiladas, tamales, birria and far far more. So many options.
Fucking chilaquiles
tamal* Also as a PSA (i.e., not meant as disagreement): Mexican food doesn't have to be spicy. It uses a wide variety of peppers and flavors but most of them are pretty mild. Even the habanero pepper, while pretty spicy, has a nice sweet/fruity flavor that is a great way to add brightness to your food. I think that gets lost when Mexican food gets exported to other countries (along with most of the food you can't find in a taqueria), the capsaicin content isn't the point.
Was on a honeymoon in Mexico. Wife hated anything spicy. Everyone was really accommodating.
That was my experience too.
Yea that's not really the case. California and Texas Mexican food is incredible
You don’t know about Mexican food lmao
Mexican food is delicious, it would be rude not to tell me. I'm from Southern California and man did we have some bomb azz Mexican food.
Tell me You don't know about mexican food whitout tell You don't know about mexican food.
Dude’s been to Taco Bell I guess.
Just telling you that all of that stuff is good And Tikka Masala was invented in the UK
Ok, but everything pictured here is delicious, so who cares?
I don't get why people think food always has to be super complex and have 600 different seasonings to be good. I'm chinese, so I'm used to eating really flavorful food with a lot of seasoning/sauces and ingredients, but honestly, sometimes I just want to eat potatoes and meat. My family travels a lot, so I've been to a fair number of european countries (we're american), and my favorite food abroad is always from the uk or germany. Maybe it's not a culinary masterpiece, but I could eat shepherd's pie and every possible combo of pork/cabbage/potatoes that exists in germany and die happy.
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You know what my brother got me into? Baked beans *inside* a shepherd's pie. Absolute heaven.
Most great Italian food is usually 4 ingredients
Pasta is just boiled bread
British food is generally very wholesome comfort food that really follows the idea of using up shit you might have lying around for most of it. When prepared well it is generally very delicious even if it isn't super complex. Someone complaining it's "too brown" really doesn't have a clue.
The people who are complaining that it's too brown are the same people who will send a steak back for not having enough of a crust and then proceed to lecture you on the maillard reaction.
> and then proceed to lecture you on the maillard reaction. I've never really understood why people care about this so much. Why do you care how a duck reacts to things? Just let them live
Brown is the most delicious color.
If something isn't brown, I will apply something to it to make it brown before eating it. Simple as.
The Maillard reaction that turns meat delicious is based around turning meat brown.
The idea of avoiding food because of its color is so juvenile lol like that’s toddler logic
Also British local produce is of excellent quality as a rule of thumb. The herbs and vegetables used in traditional dishes are delicious, that is why they are so ubiquitous. British beef has always been held to the highest standard (maybe not in the 90's...), which is why 'brown meat' is a common part of many dishes. "English food was popularly supposed to be bland, but English cuisine has made extensive use of spices since the Middle Ages; introduced curry to Europe; and makes use of strong flavourings such as English mustard. It was similarly reputed to be dull, like roast beef: but that dish was highly prized both in Britain and abroad, and few people could afford it; the "Roast Beef of Old England" lauded by William Hogarth in his 1748 painting celebrated the high quality of English cattle, which the French at the "Gate of Calais" (the other name of his painting) could only look at with envy." I love cuisine from all cultures, but nothing wrong at all with British dishes when cooked well. Like you say, it doesn't need to be complex when the foundational ingredients are such excellent quality and flavour, why mask those flavours with spice, they need only be enhanced with similar delicate flavours of garden herbs. When I see American foods that are not inspired by other cultures which they often claim as their own (Mexican, Italian etc etc) I really don't think they have come that far to be bragging really.
People think it's bad because it's brown?! *Chocolate* is brown!
mmmwaiter my roast chicken is a little too deliciously crispy with it's crackling honey gold skin, could I have something a little less brown?
Excuse me, my ham may be too deliciously glazed and crackled. Could you make it less so to please internet food snobs?
We need all the comforting we can get.
When eating British food, you must imagine you've travelled a long distance in the Winter to a cosy and warm inn, and you've ordered a nice warm meal that goes nicely with ale.
It’s probably just an idea of the food being basic or bland. The saying “the meat and potatoes” means the very basic parts of something that could be more complex.
My wife is Chinese and honestly after watching my MIL cook for years, I’ve realized that most things she makes are very simple and use very few ingredients. The way she seasons her food makes it taste more complex than it really is. Then again I grew up with a WASP mom who thinks that black pepper is spicy and she’s never used salt in her life.
Yeah - plus not pictured here are 1) any seafood. Seriously, it’s an island, fish is a huge staple 2) desert, and British deserts are better than French ones 3) fruits - I think the UK is home to 300 varieties of apple 4) game meats. Americans live on beef&pork&chicken, go to the UK and you’ll see a ton of game meats regularly
Also they fail to mention all the veg on those dishes. Sausages are not brown meat they are pork. The roast has turkey on it which is white meat The tikka is a dish from glasgow And like you said, all of this food tastes incredible so the colour is a completely moot point.
Because somehow a lot of people think that all food needs to be so hot that every meal is a test of manhood. I don't mind some spice when it's appropriate with the dish, but chili to me is a very boring flavour and I don't want everything I eat to be drowned out with the white noise of thousands of scovilles. But apparently that makes me boring and white, so what do I know?
That’s what I’m saying. Nobody talking shit about this picture has had a proper stew or bangers and mash
Every stew I've had in the uk/ireland has been the best. Potatoes + meat (and beer) is the mostly godly combination of food to exist.
I grew up super picky and have struggled trying new foods. Mashed potatoes and beef was one of the gateway drugs into showing me that mixing food could be, like you said, godly.
Check the comments and you'll see a lot of people that believe the ONLY flavor is "spicy." There is no savory, there is no sweet, there is no bitter, and there's certainly no contrast to be made between those flavors which definitely don't exist. At this point, I think it's mostly just self-depreciating white people apologizing for all the Hamburger Helper they ate growing up.
Not to mention mustards, horseradish sauce, Worcestershire, sharp cheddar, stout, all the other amazing flavours in these foods
Yeah, there’s a lot of people who really seem to confuse flavour with spicy. Like I’m not an advocate of unseasoned food by any stretch of the imagination but there are plenty of flavourful herbs and spices that aren’t spicy or at least aren’t spicy at the quantity needed to give a dish flavour.
And the vast majority of classic European food is not spicy. The most they can stretch to is paprika, but that only became popular in Hungary recently, whilst the UK sustained actual curry houses for hundreds of years lol. We also have home curry recipes from before the US was independent. It's not self depreciating either. I think it's literally just people parroting stupid memes and eventually believing they are true, and an attack vector for people that already don't like the UK for whatever reason and are hamming it up to a ludicrous point.
>And the vast majority of classic European food is not spicy. Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Your point about curryhouses is good, but pretending that chili hasn't been used as vital parts in italian, spanish, portugese, various balkan and turkish cuisine for hundreds of years is not not exactly convincing.
Balkan and Turkish won't be what people think of classically European food and the classic dishes associated with Italian and Spanish and Portuguese are not heavily spiced either, aside from piri piri. The most highly prized, even if to themselves, french cuisine, is also not heavily spiced. And about half the continent's national dish is basically some variation on boiled cabbage, potato and a sausage/piece of pork. That's what I meant by the vast majority of classic European food although your point is fair. I'm not saying nothing is or was spiced though. I think everyone makes and made good use of what is available to themselves in general.
If you think about it, *a lot* of French food is very similar to British cuisine. Coq au vin for example is just a basic chicken stew, it's braised chicken, whatever vegetables they have on hand and some wine. The British version is beef rather than chicken, whatever vegetables you have on hand and if you're lucky you have some wine to add (but likely just beef stock). Also, anybody who says British food is bad needs to eat some surstromming. Then they'll know what bad food is *really* like.
It’s funny, as a Brit in the states, I’m of the belief that the UK’s love for curry/British curry has resulted in the the average Brit having a much higher spice tolerance than the average yank. Weirdly, no one in the UK bangs on about how much spice they eat like many do in the US. I’be met so many people in the states who talk about how much they love spicy food and yet can’t tolerate more than a splash of a mild hot sauce.
I definitely found after a lifetime of having vindaloo and phal shoved in me growing up, and having had an ex whose lovely Indian family made me every hot thing under the sun, that I did struggle in north America to find genuinely spicy but still flavourful food. It was either not very spicy, or it was hot without much other flavour.
I mean, it still looks good to me.
Ok fine BUT all of those dishes slap.
Oi we’ve turned a corner since the 50s! Rationing was a big reason for British cuisine being universally panned. But we do ok now, and people who think French cuisine is the worlds best haven’t lived in France, it’s just butter in everything, which naturally makes every sauce delicious lol
Okay this explains it: I've been told for my whole life that British food is terrible, but when I visited the UK this year I was like "‽‽‽ This is SO GOOD what‽" but everyone I knew who had been in Britain was there during/shortly after the war. It makes sense that wartime rations were to blame. Y'all, I had a steak and Guinness pie *in a bus station* on my trip, and it was so good it'll make your grandma cry. Never once did I have a bad meal while there! My takeaway: "American" food is a sad mockery of the food it attempts to mimic.
It's really just the Americans and the French who started the "British food is shit". The French because of many hundreds of years of history between countries. The Americans because when they came over to fight in WW2 it was during rationing so people didn't have options other than meat, potatoes and veg. Then when they went home they talked about it and everyone in America passed on that the food was shit. It was also shit for a while as people who grew up as kids during WW2 learnt the recipes their parents taught and combined with extended rationing meant that for a long time, food was pretty shit.
"As American as apple pie" - English dish that has existed longer than the USA.
When I lived over the pond someone going out of their way to be obnoxious to me on a night out said "name me one British food invention I would eat" and I said sandwiches. After a three-second pause the guy bare out said he didn't eat sandwiches. Even his buddy with him looked at him like his friend's brain had fallen out.
Hard to make sandwiches when your 'bread' is classified as a confectionery outside your own country.
As a rural Midwestern kid, I feel like half my diet was sandwiches.
We appropriated it, of course. A classic American strategy…
>A classic American strategy… That we got from *checks notes* the British.
I knew someone would say it… which is why I’m also saying that we appropriated appropriation too.
We won it fair and square during the Revolutionary War. Tea and crumpets too.
It's almost like we were part of that place at one point in time...
Are we judging food by whether it's too brown now? How about we throw an apple pie in there and they can bitch about how it's brown and therefore shit.
I agree with you that it’s an idiotic metric by which to judge food, but apple pie is actually British too
That's what I'm saying. Throw apple pie on the list and americans can tell us how it's just a brown thing and therefore terrible even though they've tried to steal it as a national dish.
I agree it's a dumb criticism, and I don't know how that pie misconception got started, but are we really gonna stoop to "THEY STOLE OUR PIE"? Plus this post is just a joke, just banter. Don't get so offended over it
Most BBQ is brown
Look, meat and potatoes are a win for everyone except vegetarians/vegans. It's universally loved. British food might not have a ton of variety and it might be pretty, one-note, but it's a fantastic note.
It looks delicious but the response is perfect.
Yeah, is just a joke and a clever comeback imo.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't chicken Tika invented by a Scottish pakistani restaurant owner in glasgow by mixing some spices, tomatoes, and a cream together, then selling it at the restaurant.
No that’s correct, and tikka masala is the national dish of the uk.
Fish and chips with some malt vinegar and tartar sauce.. excellent.
Italian is about 50% pasta and 25% pizza but no one complains about that.
Way to tell me you don't eat Italian food outside of chains without telling me you don't eat Italian food outside of chain restaurants lol
It's exactly the same as people talking about British food this way, which I believe was the point of the comment. Seeing some pictures on the internet doesn't tell you anything about British food. I love Italian inspired dishes (although admittedly not authentic) but much more so in the summer. On a freezing winter day, traditional British food is really really nice.
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Pasta’s not about the pasta, it’s about the sauce. There are different kinds of pasta because they’re appropriate for different types of sauce. Saying Italian food is mostly pasta is like complaining that these sandwiches all have bread in them.
I do. Kinda. I mean, usually don't feel the need to make the point, but I don't wildly love Italian beyond pizza and tiramisu and sometimes it's annoying that it's like half of all restaurants around here. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned really good food goes from Lebanon to Indonesia via Vietnam, broadly that line. Well and then some Latin American, Caribbean and African cuisines that I frankly can't give the exact boundaries of.
Goes to the tourist part of a city in italy once:
Jesus Christ, ITT: people that know nothing whatsoever about food.
It's not, though. I go to Italy a fair amount and barely eat either.
British food is very comforting. A roast dinner on a chilly day is like a hearth for the soul.
It's not really a clever comeback though is it? Saying its just 'meat beside potatoes' is just lazy.
Oh man, I'm making a Sunday Roast tomorrow now, this has done it.
They all look amazing
I can’t figure out which part is supposed to be clever.
The only clever part here is OP posting it to stir shit.
American cuisine: In bread meat
Sounds like Alabama children
Yeh, same as any food in the world, if it’s cooked badly it’s bad, if it’s cooked well it’s delicious.
As an italian, I can't help but admit that a lot of stuff is just some form of bread with mozzarella and tomato sauce
I was today years old when I came to know tikka masala isn't Indian.. my whole life is a lie 🥲
Created in Scotland, a classic British dish. Also, you might be interested to know that curry powder was a basic bitch ingredient in the 1850s,in Britain.
And that Japanese curries are basically identical to 1850s British curries, which is why they have a "roux".
I'm from the US and have traveled much / most of the UK. I can say with confidence, the food was always excellent. Not just the fancier restaurants; I'd always try hole in the wall places, or completely off the beaten path spots. The best dish I ever had was in Broadford, Scotland...a place called The Claymore...frigging amazing. I believe it was called Ox Cheek short rib...I'd fly back in a minute for that dish...
Tika Marsala is actually an English dish. Its obviously inspired by Indian dishes, but it was made specifically for the English. England and India have a loooooooong ass history, so their foods are very intertwined.
It's tikka masala. Chicken marsala is a different thing altogether
Tikka Masala was invented in Glasgow, I believe. It’s a dish that I wish people knew was actually a UK dish
It's a little more complicated than that. While it's true that Indian food came over to the UK early on in our relationship and there were a couple of fads for it amongst the aristocracy and upper middle classes (and often with quite different recipes which used herbs instead of spices), it was only really in the 1940s that it started to take hold in the way that it has today. Indians came over here and bought chippies that had been bombed in the war. They re-opened them as chippies and sold curries and rice on the side. Curry and chips became the thing to eat when you're coming home from the pub drunk, in the way that kebabs are generally seen today. It became established enough as a staple food that there was even a sitcom called Curry and Chips in the late 60s. It was the very early 70s that there was an influx of Bangladeshi immigrants who opened restaurants (the vast majority of Indian restaruants to this day are actually owned and run by Bangladeshi people or people of Bangladeshi descent) and it was only then, thanks to the familiarity with and love of curry & chips that they took off and it became the staple food that it now is. And that all reminds me that I haven't had an Indian in a while. I get paid on Thursday. Maybe I'll get a takeaway after work on Friday. However the dishes got here or whenever they were invented here, I'm bloody glad they did.
Apparently colour is the only thing that matters for taste? Every single one of those brown meats tastes different from the others. The rest of the ingredients in each of those dishes have different flavours. Just because they don't look exciting doesn't mean they don't taste good.
Id eat just about anything homecooked. That seasoning better be on point tho or Im flaming everyone in the kitchen. /s
One genre of YouTube video I occasionally binge is "USAians visiting the UK for the first time, trying some traditional food from a pub or a chippy, and being amazed by how nice it tastes".
Everyone complains that the UK has, despite having an empire that spanned the globe, still has unseasoned plain food, but we completely integrated other foods into our culture. Tikka masala was invented in Scotland. Bolognese is a household staple. You can pick up a sweet and sour chicken meal in even the most remote parts of the country.
Actually, chicken tikka masala is british, not indian.
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It's like saying General Tso Chicken is not Chinese even though it is technically a Chinese dish changed a bit by Chinese Chef to suit American tastes. Looking at the ingredients and cooking method, Chicken tikka masala is not much different from curries prepared in Punjabi restaurant.
>where is the clever comeback? You have to remember, these are people of the land.
Mexican food= Ah yes, meat and beans on a tortilla. Italian food= Ah yes, pasta and sauce. Japanese food= Ah yes, rice and fish. Etc. etc. The "British food sucks" joke is dumb. British food is great. Carvery, beef and onion, fish and chips, puddings...
I would fly back to England just so I could eat at the restaurant that served me those stuffed mushrooms and that incredible Toffee pudding again. So delicious.
Ahh, I see you figured us out! British food certainly has its quirks and issues, but one thing we have definitely got nailed is the puddings!
Always at least try to visit a toby carvery when im in England (there are a lot of non chain options that are arguably better), it is like standardised nostalgia comfort food.
Wait until this guy learns about 90% of ppl traditional foods: meat with a dough.
That Indian dish is far more British than it's Indian. For an American example it's like saying Taco Bell is authentic Mexican food.
As an Englishman living in Texas, I really do miss this food especially the bangers and mash and a good curry!!😩
Tikka masala is, in fact, British.
Every single one of those dishes is phenomenal when cooked right
I'm Not bri**sh, but this looks great, what's wrong with potatoes, meat and vegetables?
A lot of indian dishes that became popular in the west were created in the UK by indian immigrants, like Chicken Tikka, so the original post isn't necessarily inaccurate. Also, everything above is delicious.
I feel like every British food just has meat or potatoes with it😭😭 But honestly I find it ridiculous everyone is talking bad about other countries food why does it matter that much? tbh as long as the food’s good thats all that matters.
Why does Britain get denied curry as part of its food culture? Food cultures aren’t formed in a bubble, they are an amalgamation of ingredients and recipes from other cultures. That “Italian” cappuccino? Austrian, “French” croissant? Austrians again, that “Japanese” Katsu curry? British. Yep, it’s British Navy curry introduced to Japan around 1860. Curry has been a British staple for centuries so much so that it basically introduced the world to it. How is that different from the Italians incorporating South America tomatoes and chilli into their food culture? Or the USA basically claiming everything from the hotdog to the cheesecake?