Lasagna soup anyone? American recipes that just never sound quite right...

[MaryIsA]

www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/lasagna-soup-2268968

Partly its all the low sodium chicken broth, half and half, sticks of butter - but very often its the actual recipes. Just a bit off?

When I was in the US most of the food was really nice. There was just one thing I wasn't keen on - bacon seemed to be soused in maple syrup. I don't much like maple syrup at the best of times but on bacon which should be salty, not sweet - no. To add insult to injury it was cooked to the max crispiness which I love - but ruined by the bloomin' syrup.

They were talking about Dorito casserole on schitts creek the other day - sounds absolutely revolting!

@Guineapigsarepigs

American frugal cooking sites are great for cooking from scratch and meal planning. I love the cup system but butter sticks confuse me.

Butter here is sold in one-pound boxes. Each box contains four four-ounce sticks, each wrapped in a special paper I've heard called "butter paper" here on MN. Each four-ounce stick is half a cup. The paper wrapping is usually marked with lines for tablespoons, so you can just cut off a portion without measuring it.

oh yes, honey mustard or blue cheese salad dressing.
I tried to rellicate this at home and failed.

hamburger helper = spices and corn starch for mince. a bit like a cottage pie base.

as a rare treat I get the peanut butter filled m&m. in (even more) garish colourings of course.

I find cup measuring annoying and it's so inconsistent. I'm fine with a stick of butter - that's just 4oz. Not fine with tablespoons of butter. That's just so fiddly. And when you have a recipe with sugar and flour in cups and butter in tablespoons, then you can't just use any cup and expect a consistent result.

And don't get me started on their funny short 16oz pints.

I always get sucked in by the American recipe blogs,
Find recipe for 'best ever chicken taco casserole'
Scroll for an hour to get to the recipe which is inevitably
Cooked shredded Chicken
Tacos
One jar of Authentic American best ever taco casserole seasoning
Every.Single.Time.

And despite googling I still don't understand what hamburger helper is.
For a long time I thought it was a character like the Hamburgler

I follow quite a few American vloggers (mostly MOrmon families) and they boast a lot about their home made, cheap and nutritious meals. Nearly EVERYTHING is from a tin though, they have massive pantries with shelves of chicken and mushroom soup which seems to be a staple for every single meals. The weirdest thing is a tater tot casserole that is a layer of hash browns, a layer of tinned veg, a layer of tinned turkey and then several tins of mushroom soup poured over the top and baked in the oven [boak]. They think this is really healthy .

When I lived in the US for a short time (nearly 30 years ago, and in a semi-rural area with not a lot of food shopping options), the food you could buy for yourself wasnt great, huge tasteless fruit & veg, sugar in everything, "cheese".

The snack food though mmmmmmm

And the food you got eating out from sandwich shops, deli counters, bars, restaurants - bloody delicious.

I don't think I'd ever really had a sandwich until I'd had an American sandwich. Spoiled me for pathetic UK single slice of ham with a sad tomato sandwiches forever.

Not fine with tablespoons of butter. That's just so fiddly.

I would never use a measuring spoon for butter. I just use them for liquids and dry solids, like vanilla extract or cornstarch. With butter always think in terms of weight. A tablespoon is a half ounce. This is also why butter papers are marked so that you can just hack off a tablespoon.

Been to a number of restaurants in California that serve grits

Southern food had become popular fried grits with fried chicken could see the appeal. The chicken was delicious. Have tried grits I wasn’t keen

.

I remember when they had flan on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It wasn't flan as I know it and was more like a set custard. Very strange.

Not fine with tablespoons of butter. That's just so fiddly.

All the butter - even the artisinal ones or imported kerrygold - comes in packages marked out in tablespoons so it is really not fiddly.

I made burger buns once, dh carefully tried one freshly baked and asked if they were meant to be scones.

I thought all the sugar was to make the yeast rise quickly and it would get used up.

Still ate them but with jam.

@MissConductUS

Not fine with tablespoons of butter. That's just so fiddly.

I would never use a measuring spoon for butter. I just use them for liquids and dry solids, like vanilla extract or cornstarch. With butter always think in terms of weight. A tablespoon is a half ounce. This is also why butter papers are marked so that you can just hack off a tablespoon.

That makes it so much harder to translate to over here, though. Our butter packs might be marked into 25g amounts but foiled packaging is increasingly used, instead of paper, so there's often no markings at all.

that flan was probably like the spanish flan

Hamburger helper is a bit like rice a roni - a box of mysterious dried things that live in the cupboard to add to ground beef and water, cook in one pot on the stove. It comes in lots of interesting varieties like cheeseburger.

I love and miss all the shameful 80s food like:

Canned tamales
Little Juan frozen burritos
Welch’s grape soda
Velveeta
Canned succotash

I don’t miss:

Slabs of pork fat in canned beans
Misleadingly named chicken of the sea
Pacific red snapper
Hungry hombre!

Like this

Tuna casserole seems to be mentioned quite often in film and tv. I imagine a tin of tuna with veg in some type of gravy?

it is hard to translate recipes the other way too. I bought a scales eventually so I could bake from my Irish and british cookbooks.

That makes it so much harder to translate to over here, though. Our butter packs might be marked into 25g amounts but foiled packaging is increasingly used, instead of paper, so there's often no markings at all.

If all else fails, convert tablespoons to ounces then ounces to grams

www.rapidtables.com/convert/weight/ounce-to-gram.html

then use a digital kitchen scale to weigh the correct number of ounces or grams.

Flan here is considered a Mexican dessert, so it being similar to Spanish flan makes sense.

Mmm I love American banana pudding, which seems to be banana, some sort of biscuit or cake and shit loads of cream mixed together. Heavenly.

And layers of custard. Banana pudding is essentially a trifle. It is indeed delicious and the iconic dessert of the southern US.

It’s a strange food culture, but no stranger than ours, I guess. I’ll never forget the first time my Italian friend had a roast dinner and her utter revulsion at gravy

Likewise, I will never forget the second or third day when I was first in the UK as a student and was served beans for breakfast.

By the way, those of you objecting to gravy on biscuits; that's regional within the South and seems to have migrated to much of the rest of the country. In my part of the South, it's just butter and jam or, my favorite, butter and honey. And of course, the biscuits have to be made well: crusty on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. If you want good biscuits, come to Georgia.

@pallisers

that flan was probably like the spanish flan

Just googled it and it was similar. It seems to be a US thing or they've adopted it.

For over 50 years I have believed a tablespoon = 1oz. This has doubtless contributed to my lack of success in the kitchen,

@Notgotanyidea

Tuna casserole seems to be mentioned quite often in film and tv. I imagine a tin of tuna with veg in some type of gravy?

The better versions are what we would call a tuna pasta bake. The dodgier ones feature the dreaded mushroom soup....