3 foods to change someone's opinion about British food

[Flakeisanakedtwirl]

I've heard it for years, and whenever I start to believe that actually it's a myth and we've got some really decent food in the UK, I find out about some comedian or other minor celebrity who's just visited and cried their hungry stomachs around our country.

Surely we have something that people would love? As title says, if you could choose 3 foods / meals that'd hope to change someones opinion about our food, what would it be?

Obviously I have to do my own list so I think....

1. Extra mature Cheddar
2. Beef and guiness stew in giant Yorkshire puds
3. Crumpets

I'm married to someone who comes from a very strong culinary culture, but every now and then I like to remind him that the British invented the sandwich 😀

There are also Yorkshire puddings and afternoon tea and cake.

If not, chicken tikka masala.

Fish and Chips
Mr Whippy Ice Cream
Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps .
Edit : apologies soft serve ice cream was invented by an American.....ooops.
My new third choice is Greggs sausage roll.

Cream tea
Roast dinner
Bubble and squeak
Anything with English mustard
Steamed puddings with custard
Shepherds pie
Cottage pie
Ham and chips and two fried eggs

The list goes on!

There's nothing universal. It just depends on what those people like to eat.

Some things listed above might be changing my opinion of British food if I had to take them as representative - for the worse.

I have a great cookbook that is exclusively British cooking. I really think British food is very unfairly maligned.

Things like;

• beef wellington
• cullen skink
• cabinet pudding
• sticky toffee pudding
• steak and kidney pie
• yorkshire puddings

We have a terrific food culture and food traditions. I think it's time people stopped ridiculing it tbh

Puddings and cake!

Apple crumble
Rhubard crumble
Custard
Sticky toffee pudding
Eton Mess
Lemon drizzle cake
Shortbread
Bubble and squeak, my favourite part of Christmas!
Shepherd's Pie
Cottage Pie
Cheese and Potato Pie
Glamorgan sausages
Bangers and mash with onion gravy...

Bara brith
Lemon meringue pie
Gooseberry fool

Fundamentally I'd take them to my family home in approx 1980 for a spring Sunday lunch. Tbh there would be quite likely to be French classic elements to the food as well, as my mother was a trained Cordon Bleu cook, but that's a thing about British food, that it has incorporated elements from other cuisines (see the meringue above). I'd hope my mum would make what she called cream of mixed vegetable soup (usually heavy on the parsnips and made with good meat stock) followed by roast lamb with both mint sauce and redcurrant jelly, roast potatoes, steamed carrots, leeks in white sauce, frozen peas and her spectacularly good gravy. Then rhubarb crumble with top of the milk (she hated custard so we never had it).

Proper Cornish pasties, treacle tart, rich fruit cake with a lump of mature farmhouse cheddar on the side.

Ragstone Goats Cheese
Kent cherries in July
Sticky toffee pudding
Greengage plums (originally French, but have been here for a long time)

Scones with jam & cream, Apple crumble and a Victoria sandwich cake.

British cheeses and British cakes/puddings are up there with any in the world so I would definitely include these- maybe Stilton and apple crumble, or a Victoria sponge, or maybe an Eccles cake with some Lancashire cheese? Or steamed syrup sponge.

Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding
Poached Scottish salmon (wild no farmed rubbish)
Staffin bay prawns
English native oysters
Summer pudding (in summer)

Homemade marmalade
Apple crumble
Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding

Haha, I've said about sandwiches to peeps before. Also I like to remind people that Apple pie is not American 🤣.

@Nellieinthebarn I absolutely love a proper peppery Cornish pasty - but they've got a bad rep in other cultures. I was shocked 😭

Scottish smoked salmon.

Fish pie
Rich fruit cake
Stuffed baked apple with cream
Kedgeree
Roast lamb

I totally agree with crumpets....proper salted butter on the top and they're amazing.

Sticky toffee pudding..... the king of all puddings!

British cheese is excellent.

Strawberries
Cherries
Apples

Now I'm hungry, and it's all your fault!

Beef Wellington
Any of our excellent cheddars
Really good soup and cheese scones

Poached salmon with asparagus and new potatoes
Potted Morecambe Bay shrimps
Roast beef and Yorkshire pud
Cheddar cheese
Kippers
Pork pie
Raised game pie
Fruit crumble

Summer Pudding with pouring cream.
Rhubarb Crumble.
Homemade Lemon Curd.

As a non-Brit who used to live in the UK I would agree that there are some good cheeses there and I do like sticky toffee pudding. Also those lovely triple cooked chips you get in pubs. Personally, I love the scampi you get in fish shops. That I haven't be able to find since I left.

I don't know why so many are suggesting fruit cake, for most of us foreigners that is one of the weirdest and driest things to ever be called cake. I think you have to be British to like that and mince pies and the likes.

I don' t think that people ridicule the traditional foods as such, more like the chicken nuggets, fish fingers, and other poor, beige sorts of foods. There are lots of wonderful British dishes, such as hotpot, and the ones mentioned in your post.

You won't. If a person comes from a strong culinary culture, you stand no chance. There's a reason everyone from Japan to USA and in between laughs at British food, it doesn't happen just because 'they're meanies and they hate us'.

The only decent thing you have is Scottish salmon and definitely whisky. Beef Wellington and fish&chips at a push.

Can't believe someone said Greggs sausage roll. That's an example of what NOT to eat, it's revolting.

And you can see it's scraping the barrel when people mention cherries, plums, mustard, other ingredients, as if no one else grow cherries, plums or have their own mustard.

(posted on wrong thread)