• Donkter@lemmy.world
    133·
    16 hours ago

    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.

      • Ummdustry@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        4 hours ago

        Why do americans refuse to recognise the genetic distinctiveness of true thoughoughbred Europeans. I can assure you those guys from the next village over are indeed monsterous fishmen, and our Earl Jeremy Flaxwheet the sixth was right to kidnap and employ all their hideous children in his mills.

  • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
    14·
    19 hours ago

    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

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      17 hours ago

      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?

      • Ummdustry@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        4 hours ago

        [Source: proud anglo]

        The closest thing my family do is boiled ham:

        Thigh of a pig is stuck on a low boil for ages, lid on pot. Maybe bayleaf, black papper, rosemary, thyme, salt etc… but very much lightly seasoned compared to italian food. The ham comes out with a soft texture, cut it into slices and serve with potatoes, butter, green veg, english mustard, relish, pickle etc… It’s less flavourful than a porkchop but:

        1. You are serving it with powerful flavours anyway
        2. The ham flavour is now all in the water, adding split peas and herbs makes a large quantity of excellent soup which you can heat and eat at your convienence. Finish friday with ham and lunch thoughout the weekend is set.
        3. There is usually ham left over, and this will be cooked again into something like a ommlette, pie or stirfry.

        we would not call it a “roast” though, that’s reserved for roasts.

      • TwodogsFighting@lemdro.idEnglish
        51·
        5 hours ago

        No, we don’t. Op is talking out of his arse. Or he’s the last surviving member of a platoon that landed at Normandy, talking of his experience of wartime rations.

      • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
        2·
        12 hours ago

        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

  • n7gifmdn@lemmy.caEnglish
    203·
    22 hours ago

    England had to utilize military force to control India to get the spices, to make the blandest food on the planet.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    21·
    23 hours ago

    British food is great. Chicken tikka, pizza, Chinese, lasagne… The list goes on.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
      51·
      20 hours ago

      In all seriousness, there’s some great British food and people get too territorial about what constitutes as what food belongs to whom.

      • arc99@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        18 hours ago

        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.

        • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
          31·
          17 hours ago

          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) or not distinct enough.

          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”).

          • originaltnavn@lemmy.zip
            4·
            17 hours ago

            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.

            • withabeard@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              5 hours ago

              Saying Kimchi and Saurkraut are the same thing is heresy in some parts. Salt water, cabbage, spices, time. Same damn thing the way I cook.

              I am not a chef.

            • TwodogsFighting@lemdro.idEnglish
              2·
              5 hours ago

              Chef here. I have at least 100 recipes for various types of pancakes the world over.

              Never underestimate an Americans willingness to take their single racist heirloom joke and run it into the Martians trench thinking it’s a fact.

            • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
              2·
              17 hours ago

              Fair.

              Polish rosół is much more similar to French consomme than to ramen though. The stretch to ramen would be rather significant.

          • arc99@lemmy.worldEnglish
            21·
            17 hours ago

            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?

            • ohulancutash@feddit.ukEnglish
              1·
              2 hours ago

              Fish and Chips is Jewish food, and became popular in Britain in the Victorian era with the coincidence of a large wave of Dutch Jews arriving in the country and the development of a rail network sufficient to deliver fresh fish anywhere in the country.

            • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
              3·
              17 hours ago

              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?

  • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
    128·
    17 hours ago

    Yeah, no, Italians can’t make breakfast for shit.

    Coffee and a cake does not breakfast make.

    • mika_mika@lemmy.world
      5·
      17 hours ago

      English breakfast might be considered an acceptable meal if it wasn’t served at the time of day it is.

      • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
        2·
        17 hours ago

        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.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
        11·
        17 hours ago

        Huh? It’s a passable breakfast, I don’t really see it being much of a lunch or dinner. Okay MAYBE lunch.

        • mika_mika@lemmy.world
          1·
          14 hours ago

          Eggs: okay admitting this is a breakfast staple. Sausage and/or beans: instant lunch or dinner category.

          • fishy@lemmy.todayEnglish
            1·
            18 minutes ago

            But there’s literally breakfast sausages here in the US and like half of all breakfast sandwiches are sausage egg and cheese?

            Trying to categorize food is basically impossible.

  • bitchkat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    14 hours ago

    The absolute best breakfast in the world is square sausage and potato scones.

    • Bluewing@lemmy.world
      1·
      21 minutes ago

      Nope. Biscuits and gravy is the very best breakfast. A pair of fresh handmade biscuits hot out of the oven and smothered in a white gravy with bits of spicy pork sausages and loads of black pepper for bite. A meal fit to fight whatever the day throws at you. Although fried chicken and waffles is a fine substitute. And smoked ribs, brisket, or pork butt cooked low and slow and infused with hours of hardwood smoke might be perfection itself. If you have the desire, your patience will be rewarded with meats that are unrivaled in this world.

      But, like everything else in this world, cuisines are built upon whatever scraps of food that were handy and flavored with whatever seasonings that could be bought or scrounged. Local cuisines died when the first trader brought home something new to eat. It’s all just a mish-mash of ideas and methods now. And good food is as easy to find as bad food is.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
      1·
      20 hours ago

      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.

  • nialv7@lemmy.world
    925·
    2 days ago

    jokes aside, i’d say british cuisine is definitely taking more flak than what it deserves.

    • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      4 hours ago

      Food is like music. You can have very strong tastes for a particular genre. But I reckon real lovers will always find something to love wherever they go.

      Like, I love scones, and carrot cakes and I fondly remember a simple ham and potatoes I had one Christmas in Ireland. And fantastic fish. That smoked salmon filet with herbs and spices from M&S is still in my mind all those years later.
      There is always something to love, if you give it a fair go.

    • Rinox@feddit.it
      142·
      1 day ago

      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”

      • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
        2·
        16 hours ago

        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.

      • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
        2·
        17 hours ago

        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.

      • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
        4·
        24 hours ago

        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 :)

        • Bluewing@lemmy.world
          1·
          13 minutes ago

          In the very early days of the colonial Americas, indentured servants along the eastern seaboard would sometimes go on strike to protest all the lobster they were fed because it was abundant and very cheap.

          So yes, people get tired of the same old, same old foods every day.

        • Rinox@feddit.it
          2·
          7 hours ago

          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.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
      202·
      2 days ago

      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 …

      • hraegsvelmir@ani.social
        15·
        1 day ago

        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.

        • lobut@lemmy.ca
          9·
          1 day ago

          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.

      • HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world
        51·
        1 day ago

        What’s crazy is all the trash they talk about American food, and somehow managed to completely forget that Louisiana is in America…

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      41·
      1 day ago

      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.

    • hansolo@lemmy.today
      169·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • FreeBeard@slrpnk.net
        251·
        2 days ago

        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.

        • hansolo@lemmy.today
          32·
          1 day ago

          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.

          • Bluewing@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 minutes ago

            French cooking is cheap peasant foods with lipstick applied and loads of makeup to try and cover up that fact.

          • Miaou@jlai.lu
            6·
            1 day ago

            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

            • hansolo@lemmy.today
              1·
              21 hours ago

              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.

            • j_overgrens@feddit.nl
              2·
              1 day ago

              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.

        • Damage@feddit.it
          3·
          1 day ago

          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!

        • hansolo@lemmy.today
          6·
          1 day ago

          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.

        • Miaou@jlai.lu
          1·
          1 day ago

          They sure like talking about their bread a lot. No one beyond their borders understands why however.

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
            4·
            1 day ago

            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.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
          55·
          1 day ago

          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.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      52·
      1 day ago

      Yeah, tikka masala is awesome. And yeah fish and chips is amazing too. It’s just that brits also have stuff like boiled roasts

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 day ago

          Something I’ve seen brits complain about on the internet before, Something about Sunday roasts involving far too much boiling and not enough seasoning

      • Drew@sopuli.xyz
        13·
        1 day ago

        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

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
          4·
          1 day ago

          Yes, that was intentional to attempt to be humorous. It was invented by brits returning home attempting to recreate Indian food.

        • JackFrostNCola@aussie.zone
          3·
          1 day ago

          There is a whole category of British-Indian food which is from immigrants creating completely new types of curries that dont exist in India.

        • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
          29·
          1 day ago

          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.”

            • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
              2·
              1 day ago

              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?

    • idunnololz@lemmy.world
      41·
      2 days ago

      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.