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?

This thread has got me excited about enchiladas with passata and chipotle paste! Thank you.

Oh those irritate the shite out of me!! All I want is the ingredients and the recipe. Not 10,000 words on how it was discovered and half a life story to go with it

I'm sure I read somewhere (probably here) that is to do with making you spend time on the page/scroll down enough. Either for search engine optimisation or for advertising revenue. You see it everywhere now. Collations of funny tweets, or whatever, come with paragraphs of drivel between each one to make you scroll more and stay there longer. It's bloody annoying all round.

I grew up in America and I don't get marshmallow and sweet potato either! And Kraft mac n cheese (a frequent school lunch) is why I can't stand the stuff - no matter how it's made.
But really people, trifle is so gross! It seems an absolute staple here and it just makes me heave.

@SilentBob

I have loved reading this thread!

I have a question for those who have mentioned it- what is in an American breakfast burrito? I do my (northern English version) of them in my bistro and they're really popular- I am intrigued to see if they relate in any way to the US version! I do a meat, vegetarian and vegan version.

Well it's a burrito, so it can be somewhat changeable depending on local custom. I'm on the West coast and here it will be some combination of avocado, salsa, scrambled egg, sausage (maybe chorizo, but more likely American style), cilantro (coriander), cheese and black beans. Maybe mushrooms, maybe bell peppers. Sometimes rice too, though I always think what makes it a breakfast burrito rather than a regular burrito is replacing the rice with egg.

I went to New Jersey for 6 weeks when I was 12 on a programme for disadvantaged children from NI. We stayed with a host family and the mother tried her best to make food that she thought I would eat. So plenty of chicken, potatoes and vegetables. I went home raving about the delicious new vegetable I had discovered there and made my own mother search for it and buy it. It was broccoli. NI was quite a backward place in the 80s.

I follow Natasha's Kitchen on Facebook. She is an American blogger who seems to cook everything from scratch.

@SusannahSophia

This thread has got me excited about enchiladas with passata and chipotle paste! Thank you.

Oh dear.

I am a little butt-hurt that you guys are so critical of "American" food. As an American person, it makes me feel a little sad, especially since I've eaten shite British food but I don't hold it against y'all. Sure, some of the recipes that so many of you described were pretty bizarre but please remember that not all American people make food like that. The country is huge and has a plethora of cultures and our regional food reflects this.

Enchiladas with Passata and chipotle powder?

To a Mexican American, such as myself, that's just a bit of a no.

Enchiladas are made with corn tortillas and dried chiles that are reconstituted in water. There are no flour tortillas and definitely no passata. It is not tomato-based. I can forgive them being made with flour tortillas, just, but it's only because I know you can't really get corn tortillas in the UK but stay away from the passata! Obviously, "American" recipes tell you to grind spices and put it with tomato sauce. I am sure the recipe will turn out fine but please don't think of that as Mexican food. That's an American's interpretation of my culture and it isn't quite right.

I guess I shouldn't be so bothered. I remember living in England back in 1995-2004 and it was a Mexican food desert and it's nice to see that people are enjoying the cuisine but it's not quite right. Follow a Mexican or a Mexican-American food blogger and you'll be amazed at the difference.

@LongPauseNoAnswer

I fucking HATE the measuring system. A tablespoon of melted butter?! A cup of flour?’ WHY DO YOU USE VOLUME FOR WEIGHT AND LIQUID MEASUREMENT FOR SOLID FOODS

Because people on the frontiers didn’t have scales only cups/spoons.

But also Frito pie/

A Green bean casserole recipe I read a few years ago was the worst. To avoid making a white sauce the woman suggested tinned mushroom soup instead. Now I can understand people in the wild l west needing to do that due to lack of dairy but why the fuck would a modern person subject themselves to that when they didn’t have to??

@GrumpyHoonMain

A Green bean casserole recipe I read a few years ago was the worst. To avoid making a white sauce the woman suggested tinned mushroom soup instead. Now I can understand people in the wild l west needing to do that due to lack of dairy but why the fuck would a modern person subject themselves to that when they didn’t have to??

I often think the same about gravy granules in the UK.

I received an email by accident last Fall from an American inviting me to their Thanksgiving dinner, they even included the menu it sounded lush

An American diner when you are ravenous is a glorious place to be. Omelettes with fried potatoes, chili with cornbread, endless cofee...
Love them, better than our British caffs by miles.

Slightly off topic I suppose, but when my MIL visits us, she always forgets the UK doesn't sell half and half, so makes do with full fat cream in her coffees!

She makes a mean chicken tortilla soup with hominy and dressed with loads of toppings like avocado, radishes, lime, raw red cabbage, coriander leaves etc, always feels super healthy

@Midlifephoenix

I grew up in America and I don't get marshmallow and sweet potato either! And Kraft mac n cheese (a frequent school lunch) is why I can't stand the stuff - no matter how it's made. But really people, trifle is so gross! It seems an absolute staple here and it just makes me heave.

I’m not sure trifle is a staple....

But honestly a good English trifle is a lovely rare treat. The stuff with jelly in from supermarkets, not so much.

I miss an American brunch too.

@elp30 oh god yes, we should start a while other thread about Mexican food. My first ever experience of Mexican, real Mexican, food was as an 18 year old who’d been bought up on watery mince by my Scottish mum who disliked cooking. In the states and it was eye popping lay good and tasty and fresh. I’d never had avocado before never mind cilantro.

Love it but have eaten a lot of American Mexican that really wasn’t the same in pursuit of good Mexican.

I think there’s been a lot of love of American food on this thread as well as some gentle piss taking.

I’m English living in Australia. A few years ago I started weightwatchers and joined a Facebook group that turned out to be mostly American. The recipes were all packets and tins and resulting orange goop. I had no idea how they were losing weight on that stuff.

I really want to go to the USA one day and do a bit of a Diners, drive-ins, and dives tour. I gave up on weightwatchers obviously

There has been a lot more than gentle piss taking. I do not recognise the cuisine so many of you are gleefully posting about.

WHY DO YOU USE VOLUME FOR WEIGHT AND LIQUID MEASUREMENT FOR SOLID FOODS
The measuring and conversion to cups, etc. has already been done for you. What's not to love?

I follow quite a few American vloggers (mostly MOrmon families) and they boast a lot about their home made, cheap and nutritious meals.
Well there's your problem, right there.

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.

I may be repeating information others have posted here:
Butter comes in one pound packages, separated into four 'sticks', each weighing a quarter pound, and individually wrapped in parchment paper that is marked into eight tablespoons. You cut off the number of tablespoons you need.

A cup is 8 US customary fluid ounces. Iirc, that is somewhere between 200 and 250 ml by weight. If you have a container that can hold this much you can manage cooking by volume.

You can buy yourself a US measuring cup set in the UK - the prices range from about £8 to £20ish for a complete set including spoons.

I miss the coffee and milk places.
a bit like the places in 'friends' full of comfy sofas.
drinks are all sorts of coffee and hot milk flavoured with all sorts of syrups.
and cookies as snacks.

You can use a knife to gently mark your foil wrapped butter into equal increments too, then slice off what you need.

@Drinkingallthewine

Those stupid mile long narrative recipes with no actual substance solely exist for the ad revenue they’ll get from you scrolling all the way down the page and all the adverts you’ll see on the way.

This thread is really interesting. I'm a British scratch cook married to an American. I was very surprised when 'Aunties amazing courgette loaf' was a box mix and his mums 'home made' lasagne that 'nobody makes the same' was a jar of sauce, lasagna sheets layered with ricotta and mascarpone. Wtf?! I don't even see that as cooking. When MIL made it over here she used dolmio sauce.

Agree that lots of the family recipes are packets & box mixes put together which I found the strangest. I really struggled on visits when we were eating pancakes, steak, buffalo wings and burgers everyday when we went out. I was desperate for a light salad but they were really hard to find (in the restaurants they were taking me to), I learnt quickly to get the dressing on the side or it would be swimming in creamy, cheesy yuk. What I did discover when I went out alone is a great health culture with amazing fresh salad, fruit and seafood but my American family just don't eat that way. On our last trips we've snuck out and bought fresh salad and lovely fruit which I really crave after a few days of meat, fries and chips.

I make and enjoy the full thanksgiving meal now (we skip the marshmallow sweet potato) but the sweet cornbread stuffing won't ever taste right for me! I do like pumpkin pie but I make it from a home grown pumpkin and not a tin and it's better with cardamom in.

I have to say I'm sold on maple syrup, pancakes and bacon after slowly acquiring the taste. Although like pumpkin pie, once a year is just fine for me!

yep, butter packets in uk are marked as well. just in grams not tablespoons.

spoons & cups are fixed measurements. it's not any size cup or any eating spoon from your drawer.

an american bbq is a thing of beauty. preferably something slow cooked with slaw. maybe a funnel cake as dessert.

Also blueberries! American blueberries are delicious, very rarely have I found them with any taste at all over here!

I am in Italy and already have to hide Mumsnet ordinary lasagne recipes from the family, never mind lasagne soup.
That said, the entire town is having a lot of fun at the moment with an "influencer" who has come here for a couple of months to fulfill the residency requirements for her citizenship and is teaching Italians how to cook pasta and pizza. It's going down well, as you can imagine. A particular hit was the pureed red cabbage pesto used in place of tomato sauce on the pizza.

Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should.