Boiling raw beef... Boiling everything in fact. No seasonings at all- not even salt or pepper, it was just horrific.What were they doing with it? lol
Food Idiots (and also: are the Brits bad at cooking?)
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Where on earth did you go to deserve that LOL. It sounds like a Blackpool guest house from the 1950s, but they died out long ago. It wasn't just the food - go on holiday to one of those and they kicked you out at 9:30 and didn't let you back in till 4:30 in the afternoon, regardless of the weather. Those places used to stink of over-cooked cabbage and stale fish all the time. You've got to be an in-patient in one of our hospitals these days to get a culinary experience as remarkable, though it's different in content - I think they do that so you get the hell out of the place as quickly as possible.
Haha, I made beef and vegetable stew today. It's a relatively bland food, but it's satisfying, hearty, and true to the British influences in Australia.
I don't care for processed food, takeaway, or snack type food. And while I could have bought steak quality meat, and nicer vegetables, stew is a very easy to make basic healthy food (just chop up everything, and leave it simmering for a few hours). I made a big pot and froze a lot of portions for later, making it a convenience meal.
Perhaps roasting the meat, making buttery mashed potatoes, with dressed steamed vegetables would taste better, but it's definitely a lot more work, and a lot more fat.
I suppose some of my cynicism on this subject could just be my bias from watching """chefs""" online. There is much you can find online that is being presented as practical quality recipes that are in fact blueprints for rather nightmarish inedible slop
It's not that difficult to make healthy foods like vegetable stew taste good if you know what you're doing. Just a bit of salt and pepper maybe is all you'd need for that. Ideally you want food that's healthy and delicious but barring that at least having either health or flavor is still good enough. Food idiocy often results in neither healthy meals nor (good) flavor.
LOL I imagine there are households over here that eat such stuff. The really criminal food in the UK is the mass produced pap though - factory produced bread that tastes like cardboard with butter on, potatoes that are bred to last a bit longer on supermarket shelves than those that are edible, packet cakes that are wrapped to make them look twice the size they really are and are grossly over-sweetened. Instant coffee powder that's made using creosote. I could go on ....
I'm going to respectfully disagree here. I would honestly rather eat a factory produced snack cake that is 99.9999999 percent vegetable oil and sugar than to ever touch my taste buds against 'bean lasagna'.
I can't believe I've only just seen this thread.
The UK's main food export isn't fancy dining, but alcoholism in the form of pubs - but the Irish beat us in that regard. Pub grub is delicious at the very least, and probably best exemplifies what British food is - comfortable and modest food that does the job but doesn't necessarily blow you away. It's even better if you go a bit fancy and enter a gastropub.
Generally, the whole joke about British food being a bit bland is true enough - aside from a number of truly beautiful savoury dishes/snacks. That's why I'd say we're stronger in the baking department.
Our desserts are truly something else.
The UK's main food export isn't fancy dining, but alcoholism in the form of pubs - but the Irish beat us in that regard. Pub grub is delicious at the very least, and probably best exemplifies what British food is - comfortable and modest food that does the job but doesn't necessarily blow you away. It's even better if you go a bit fancy and enter a gastropub.
Generally, the whole joke about British food being a bit bland is true enough - aside from a number of truly beautiful savoury dishes/snacks. That's why I'd say we're stronger in the baking department.
Our desserts are truly something else.
You must be fun at parties.
You guys make good cider.
Goes well with salt and vinegar crisps too.
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I just ate a whole bag of salt and vinegar chips a couple days ago
May I tempt you both to a British delicacy then which definitely doesn't emphasise any stereotypes
Crisp sandwich
Absolutely. Fruit crumble with ice cream or custard, jam roly-poly, parkin, carrot cake and cream, raisin scone fresh out the oven with blackcurrant jam and clotted cream, black bun (Scottish this), and so on ....
But there's good savoury stuff too - our craft cheeses are some of the best in the world, and we now have our own wine to go with them that's been beating the French to international awards. And anyone who says hot-cross buns, toasted and with melting butter, are boring has clearly never tried the real things. The best Brirtish beef is very good too, and we still make brilliant pork pies if you can find them amongst all the cardboard replicas the supermarkets sell.
I read somewhere that in fact British cuisine was once the envy of the world up until mid-Victorian times, but it was abandoned. That's because it typically took several days to prepare each meal and only the large stately homes with lots of domestic staff and a huge kitchen could prepare it.
One part-British culinary invention that has stood the test of time all over the world is curry - it was developed after we colonised India in 18th Century and to my surprise I learnt that many curry dishes we eat in Indian restaurants in the Western world were invented by the soldiers and their families to match British needs and tastes.
But the average meal in a motorway service station is the pits - stale, greasy fast food full of E numbers and tasting dreadful. Unfortunately a lot of our food is little better.
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May I tempt you both to a British delicacy then which definitely doesn't emphasise any stereotypes
Crisp sandwich
Can't say I've ever had just chips and bread together, seems too dry for me
Putting chips in sandwiches of all kinds is legit tho
German shadow world government:
"Eat ze boogs, live in ze pod"
Norf England shadow world government:
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When I think of a crisp sandwich, itʼs the golden bread of a melt, done low and slow, such that bites have proper tooth, with soft yield after the initial crisp.That doesn't look nutritious.
Now Iʼm dreaming of a tomato and avocado melt with tahini and olive tapenade.
Nom nom,
Ian
But you're wrongThat doesn't look nutritious.
it has
Add some butter for seasoning, but for me the lightly salted crisps is already a bit much.
Maybe I'll go with roast chicken and thyme if I'm feeling adventurous with the fLaVoUr