Americans are lazy cooks

[Dogonthebed]

I’m an avid Pinterest collector of recipes. I see something I like the look of then pin to that’s week meal plan only to find out it is an American recipe Recipe stretching it as they seem to have shortcuts for everything we can’t get in the UK. Can they actually cook? It is the equivalent of us making a cottage pie from a Coleman mix. Anyone else find it bizarre how much help they get for basic recipes then having the cheek to set up a blog as recipes??? They could just read the back of the instructions fgs!

I'm going to need to know what dump cakes are so I can get rid of the horrible mental image my brain just conjured up. 😂

This. I’m American and I never bash other countries or cultures like some of the people on here. I love learning about them instead and even if it’s something I don’t understand or agree with I wouldn’t bash the entire culture.

I make cakes from scratch, I’ve rarely found a recipe online that uses boxed cake mix so I find it strange that all the recipes found are always with processed ingredients. I make many meals from recipes online and I don’t see that very often so I’m not sure where everyone is looking.

I will agree there are recipes that call for a can of mushroom soup. But unless people always cook from fresh ingredients and never eat out (because many restaurants use shortcuts too) then you can’t be critical of people that use shortcuts.

Your search engine clearly knows you well and only takes you to the lazy blogs. Anybody actually interested in cooking would know that there’s plenty of good cooking in the us just as there is plenty of terrible. Some of my favorite well used recipes are from American blogs and I used to dream of a cooks illustrated subscription, plus I have a number of their classic cookbooks and everything I describe above is great cooking, no cheats involved.

Those videos on FB are fairly gross - the fat and carb content must be mind boggling! But I grew up there and my siblings are there and I promise you plenty can cook and very well too. I guess some are very good at monetising their 'food' creations!

What an idiotic sweeping statement!! You can’t have any clue how big “America” is,or what a diverse place it is!!

I lived in Italy for many years and my closest friends there were Americans.They were amazing cooks.I have a recipe book written by English speaking women living in Milan,most from the USA,it is one of my favourite recipe books.

A friend in Louisiana buys all her fruit and veg from the local farmers market.I am sure she is not the only one!

OP you need to do a bit of research before coming out with such shite.

There are many great American cooking sites - I love Serious Eats, Epicurious, Martha Stewart, Sally's Baking Addiction and The Woks of Life, among others. Cup measurements are a bit annoying and certainly less exact than weighing ingredients, but not bad enough to put me off an otherwise good recipe. I always find using cup measurements creates more mess and washing up, especially if you have to measure wet and dry ingredients. So much easier to just pop the packet or the mixing bowl on your kitchen scales.

Who on earth uses a tablespoon to measure butter?

You seem unaware that the American tablespoon is a standard unit of volume equal to half a fluid ounce.

Just fyi, so you dont make a spectacle of yourself again for the entire online universe to see, butter in the US is sold in one pound packets, and within each packet, the butter is separated into quarter pound units, cut lengthwise, known as 'sticks'. The paper wrapper of each stick is marked into half ounce units, also known as 'tablespoons'. There are obv eight tablespoons per quarter pound.

You simply slice off a tablespoon of butter using the handy marking on the wrapper. No actual tablespoons are needed.

Though there are standardised measuring spoon sets with tablespoon, half tablespoon, teaspoon, half teaspoon, quarter teaspoon, and one eighth of a teaspoon spoons. You dont have to go digging in your cutlery drawer for the right spoon.

Equally, there are standardised cup measures, and you can buy a set containing cup, half cup, third of a cup, and quarter cup measuring cups.

Recipes are expressed in volume, not weight, but many recipes you find online can 'translate', or you can Google the weight equivalent of an ingredient.

Have I blown your mind?

my Impression (having lived here for over a decade) of British standard diet is a lot of stodgy meat + potato mainstays (roast dinners, shepards pie, pies), chips with everything (chip sandwiches ?!), curries from a jar, pasta with sauce from a jar, deep fried takeaways once a week or more, canned beans on toast/ potatoes, etc. you talk about ‘5 a day’ when in the US the recommendation is 7-9 portions of fruit and veg; canned beans somehow count as one of the five.

when I go home to visit my family in the US I can count on fresh salad served with every dinner plus at least 2 veg options. Meals are far less standard and far more openness to new cuisines in the home (not uncommon to eat 4-5 different cultures in a week, prepared largely from scratch at home). I eat a far more varied, vegetable forward diet when visiting the US than visiting family in the Uk.

In the US the only time my mom used a boxed cake mix was when the school bake sale required cupcakes at short notice. The use of canned soup is very 1950s when fresh ingredients less available- when people use it today, it is for nostalgia reasons. Obviously America has its own junk food and convenience food, but I question whether fish and chip shops are any better than burger joints, and the UK crisp isle would give American versions a run for their money.

Who on earth uses a tablespoon to measure butter?

I do. But happily the butter producers have provided the measurements for me.

Would any of these be suitable?

https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/books/best-baking-cookbooks

You do realize you're lumping over 300 million people together, based on your one opinion. What qualifies you to make such an overreaching statement? Where's your blog? And do you realize Americans use this site as well? It's just rude and childish.

YES! I get this. my sister used to work abroad and send me recipes. mostly from U.S. They involved condensed canned soups we may or may not get here . Lazy cooking for sure ( if the cans were available I would not be buying or using them) I am talking over 20 years ago here and it has only got worse at the hidden horrible ingredients we don't read or notice
Ultra processed foods (UPF) is a very concerning thing IMO

To be fair, we can only buy what they sell to us .... and what we can afford to buy and actually heat/cook that is healthy gets more limited daily
please correct me if I am wrong

Don’t get me started. I saw a ‘salad’ video the other day. Recipe?

-tinned pineapple chunks
-mini marshmellows
-cool whip tub
and mix.

SORRY WHAT? Where is the salad?

I hate this too. Nearly every American recipe I’ve found contains at least one random processed ingredient that really puts me off.

Plonk all the ingredients (egg, flour, sugar, oil, whatever) into the pan you are going to use to cook it. Stir it all together (not significantly more difficult than using a bowl). Cook.

Less washing up. That is definitely something I can support.

For some reason, it is also called ‘wacky cake’ in other parts of the world.

Ah, American cooks ahoy. Wtf is a stick of butter, please? I can do ounces and grams and I can even do cups, but how big is the ruddy stick?

And cups... Do you pack them and compress them or fill them loosely? There can be a major difference. How do US cooks ever expect consistency?

I have a US friend living long-term in the UK who most years does an American feast like her Mom used to make, including green bean casserole (green beans cooked till grey and floppy in condensed mushroom soup) and tuna casserole with noodles, served with grated carrot and beetroot salad in raspberry jelly and sweet potatoes baked with marshmallows on top. One time there was fried chicken served with a white 'gravy' that was suspiciously like Campbells chicken soup. There is always a Betty Crocker cake, with the box proudly displayed next to it. Perhaps somewhere in the US there's a Brit who serves an annual dinner of overcooked roast beef, vegetables cooked until they're mush and gravy made with gravy granules, followed by tinned fruit with evaporated milk poured over it.

Do you pack them and compress them or fill them loosely?

It depends on the recipe and the ingredient.

And therein lies one of the issues. If a recipe says 100g of brown sugar, you weigh it. Job done. 100g of butter. Weigh it. You want three cakes, 300g. Easy.

If it wants 3 tablespoons of butter, ummmm 9 for three cakes. What's that in sticks? 1 cup of brown sugar. You have to know you pack that but you don't pack flour or white sugar. Don't shake it to level, slide a knife over. Recipe won't say it. It is less precise and needs more explanation.

Added to which volumes aren't as stable as weights. A cup of milk is always the same volume but a cup of flour will vary more. Good bakers in North America weigh things. It's fine for cooking but not baking.

I think there is a lot of shit eaten in the UK and US. Everyday foods are less sugary though. When I was in the States the bread, salad dressing, lots of savoury things, everything tasted sweet.

Well I'm not American but if you had read the thread a previous poster has published a pictures of a stick of butter and how they measures table/ tea spoons
How is it hard to understand different countries use different measures?

Hey - don't forget Stanley Stucci- oh wait he's part Italian!

A different approach to food,but my kids still talk about the restaurants in Florida and how they loved the food, which they don't do here!

Found a better grocer?!?? Literally HAVE never used a can of anything in my meals and yes, I’m a foodie who loves to cook.

But that’s not true is it? A cup of flour doesn’t weigh the same as a cup of cream, so it is confusing.

I don’t think the OP is saying Americans can’t cook but it’s the reels/recipes that usually gross and very processed (and very hard to follow when it’s two packets combined with Aunt Fanny’s Good Time, half-fat, low sugar, healthy corn syrup!). You must see them too, have a sense of humour about it! One I saw involved McDonalds fried and tater-tots (croquettes?) with a tonne of plastic cheese on the top. It was the most beige thing I’ve ever seen.

😂😂😂. I'm british but with lots of US family (Irish heritage). I don't recognise this sort of "cooking"at all although it is true many people eat out a lot and one of my cousins eats a lot of freezer food (so no attempt to make it look homemade) but then a lot of people here do that too.

I used to wonder why Americans referred to ‘scratch’ cake (even looking it up to see what it meant) when baking a cake as it seems making cake from a mix is so popular. I did used to think ugh when recipes had soup in them, I’ve definitely not been tempted to try it. Boxed Mac n Cheese seems very popular too, another thing I’ve never come across here. There does seem to be a lot of unhealthy shortcuts in their ‘home’ cooking, not that I don’t use shortcuts myself sometimes but I try to still keep them as healthy as possible.

Yes millions of people are all the same. Also Americans are even more time poor than Brits, ole judgey pants.
The invented convenience foods so its more normalised. I don’t think the UK can claim a healthy population though. Instead of using packet cake mixes brits just raid gregs.