British food is actually top tier. The big difference with something like Italian food for example is Italian is quicker and easier to make, so your average person can put together a pasta dish pretty quickly as a weekday evening meal. Whereas youre not going to come home and quickly make a roast dinner or a beef wellington or a proper steak and ale pie, so instead you’ll just bang some fish fingers and chips in the oven and 20 minutes later have some perfectly good scran for while you watch EastEnders.
Oh no! No it is not!
If you want a real Bolognese sauce, know it needs to simmer for a looooong time, and if you’ve never had this, you never had a real Bolognese sauce! Nothing you will find pre-made in a jar will ever match the fresh one!
It’s just like pizzas: fresh made are incomparable to frozen ones.
Italian food was made “quick-and-convenient” by the food industry because it is top-tier, not because it was initially quick and convenient.
And industry italian-style food is of a much lower standard than genuine italian cuisine.
Eh, I will sometimes make a big batch of sauce and then either keep in the fridge a few days or freeze it. But that’s besides the point. I can still make a pasta Bolognese in about an hour if I’m trying to make a quick but tasty weekday meal, since you don’t actually HAVE to simmer it for hours.
Like to take a beef wellington for example, you can’t really cut corners on it and make one on Wednesday night after work. Even if you were to buy a pre made one, you would still have to roast it for ages.
And even then a lot of Italian cooking is legitimately quick, even doing it “properly” a carbonara for example is super quick and easy to make from scratch, if you just buy the bread instead of making it Bruschetta is super easy, or if I’m feeling super lazy I will sometimes make a frittata with leftovers, that takes like 15 mins to make. In the other hand no one quickly throws together a chicken and leek pie, or make a pasty from scratch, or even something as relatively simple as a roast. The only British food I ever really make for easy meals is a stew because you can make it in a slow cooker, but stew isn’t even a uniquely British dish.
As a British person myself, I completely disagree that our food is anything you would call top tier.
We have some nice food (as you mentioned) but it’s the exception, rather than the rule.
As a child I was forced to eat a lot of Sunday roasts at the grandparents that were bland and anemic and mushy, with veg boiled within an inch of its life, and where the meat was the only good part. I don’t think my experience was atypical.
British food these days is getting better all the time, but mostly because modern British food is a cultural fusion of tastes and techniques from everywhere in the world, and thanks to the Internet people are actually learning how to cook. Good roasts these days have sweetly caramelised oven-roast veg with olive oil and herbs and seasonings, and are a million miles from the mush I was served as a child.
But has British food historically been good? No, it has not.
As a child I was forced to eat a lot of Sunday roasts at the grandparents that were bland and anemic and mushy, with veg boiled within an inch of its life, and where the meat was the only good part
And I used to date an Indian lass who was the worst cook I’ve ever met in my life, the food she made was truly disgusting. But that doesn’t mean all Indian food is bad.
I know self-flagelation is a time honoured tradition of ours, but the whole “Britain bad” circlejerk is just getting annoying now.
I’m not being self-deprecating for the sake of it - I’m speaking what I feel from personal experience. And on the basis of that experience I would rank the average state of British food well below the average state of food in a pretty wide spread of other places.
And that’s what I’m basing it on - averages, not exceptions.
This affirms my hypothesis that the problem with British food is that they still have their nobility. France is the textbook example of the process - after they guillotined their nobles the good chefs that once served the elite had to offer their services to the general populace. But Britain? Only the nobles (or otherwise wealthy people) can have their servants at home prepare “a roast dinner or a beef wellington or a proper steak and ale pie”, while the comments have to settle for “some fish fingers and chips in the oven”.
British food is actually top tier. The big difference with something like Italian food for example is Italian is quicker and easier to make, so your average person can put together a pasta dish pretty quickly as a weekday evening meal. Whereas youre not going to come home and quickly make a roast dinner or a beef wellington or a proper steak and ale pie, so instead you’ll just bang some fish fingers and chips in the oven and 20 minutes later have some perfectly good scran for while you watch EastEnders.
Macaroni & Cheese originates from England, and there’s few simpler recipes.
Stopped reading. Actually, gonna block you right after writing this message. I don’t want to know anything from you ever again lmfao.
Oh no! No it is not!
If you want a real Bolognese sauce, know it needs to simmer for a looooong time, and if you’ve never had this, you never had a real Bolognese sauce! Nothing you will find pre-made in a jar will ever match the fresh one!
It’s just like pizzas: fresh made are incomparable to frozen ones.
Italian food was made “quick-and-convenient” by the food industry because it is top-tier, not because it was initially quick and convenient.
And industry italian-style food is of a much lower standard than genuine italian cuisine.
Eh, I will sometimes make a big batch of sauce and then either keep in the fridge a few days or freeze it. But that’s besides the point. I can still make a pasta Bolognese in about an hour if I’m trying to make a quick but tasty weekday meal, since you don’t actually HAVE to simmer it for hours.
Like to take a beef wellington for example, you can’t really cut corners on it and make one on Wednesday night after work. Even if you were to buy a pre made one, you would still have to roast it for ages.
And even then a lot of Italian cooking is legitimately quick, even doing it “properly” a carbonara for example is super quick and easy to make from scratch, if you just buy the bread instead of making it Bruschetta is super easy, or if I’m feeling super lazy I will sometimes make a frittata with leftovers, that takes like 15 mins to make. In the other hand no one quickly throws together a chicken and leek pie, or make a pasty from scratch, or even something as relatively simple as a roast. The only British food I ever really make for easy meals is a stew because you can make it in a slow cooker, but stew isn’t even a uniquely British dish.
As a British person myself, I completely disagree that our food is anything you would call top tier.
We have some nice food (as you mentioned) but it’s the exception, rather than the rule.
As a child I was forced to eat a lot of Sunday roasts at the grandparents that were bland and anemic and mushy, with veg boiled within an inch of its life, and where the meat was the only good part. I don’t think my experience was atypical.
British food these days is getting better all the time, but mostly because modern British food is a cultural fusion of tastes and techniques from everywhere in the world, and thanks to the Internet people are actually learning how to cook. Good roasts these days have sweetly caramelised oven-roast veg with olive oil and herbs and seasonings, and are a million miles from the mush I was served as a child.
But has British food historically been good? No, it has not.
Oh boy. You should Google that, because you couldn’t be more wrong.
Edit:
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury XIV century cookbook. Damn, oldest known recipe for macaroni and cheese comes from it.
XIV - XV century whole Europe was jelly for English cuisine.
XVI you were the capital of pastries and sweets.
And I used to date an Indian lass who was the worst cook I’ve ever met in my life, the food she made was truly disgusting. But that doesn’t mean all Indian food is bad.
I know self-flagelation is a time honoured tradition of ours, but the whole “Britain bad” circlejerk is just getting annoying now.
Sure, there are always exceptions.
I’m not being self-deprecating for the sake of it - I’m speaking what I feel from personal experience. And on the basis of that experience I would rank the average state of British food well below the average state of food in a pretty wide spread of other places.
And that’s what I’m basing it on - averages, not exceptions.
Yeah I’m getting a bit tired of it myself. It’s fun to banter but there’s not really much banter left.
This affirms my hypothesis that the problem with British food is that they still have their nobility. France is the textbook example of the process - after they guillotined their nobles the good chefs that once served the elite had to offer their services to the general populace. But Britain? Only the nobles (or otherwise wealthy people) can have their servants at home prepare “a roast dinner or a beef wellington or a proper steak and ale pie”, while the comments have to settle for “some fish fingers and chips in the oven”.
16 years after the Terror, the nobility was restored under Napoleon.