What’s counts as ‘British’ food?

[Walker1178]

DP has been away for the last two weeks visiting family abroad, it’s a very Persian style diet. Think meat, rice, buckwheat, breads. I drove to pick him up from the airport which is a 3 hour round trip so I prepped a home made lasagne beforehand ready to finish in the oven when we got back. Served it up with some shop bought garlic ciabatta and a dressed salad, it was proper tasty.

My ask comes from him saying he was so happy to be eating proper British food again. I’m not Italian but I do follow a fairly traditional recipe so found it quite amusing that he considers it British!

To me British is fish and chips Sunday Roast, steak etc. I have been told that some dishes that are originally from other places have become so British they are unrecognisable like tikka masala. It was voted one of Britain's most popular dishes but apparently it's nothing like how they make it in India.

Roast dinner, pie. I make risotto, pasta, curry regularly & although I wouldn’t class them as ‘British’ they are familiar so I can see why your OH says that.

It’s funny how certain foods have become synonymous with places. Pasta is associated with Italy but actually in Italy they eat modest portions of pasta. fresh fish, other lean meats and vegetables are at least as popular. No one thinks of Scotland for its seafood but it’s a huge industry here and staple of many diets. And as a pp said, the tikka masala is a British creation. Fish and chips was created in England true but apparently it was Spanish and Portuguese Jewish immigrants who introduced fried fish originally and chips likely came from France or Belgium!
The only thing I really think of as truly British is the roast dinner. I’m Scottish though, and I’m pretty sure mince and potatoes came from Scotland! And haggis of course.

I think tikka masala was invented here but I might be wrong.. like for British palates

british food: roasts, fish and chips, pies, casseroles, gammon egg and chips, meat and two veg, gravy! I think of spaghetti bolognese as British though because we’ve turned it into a British style mince dish not like the Italian way so maybe he was thinking similar lines? Ooh mince and dumplings. Fry ups

You could say a British pasta is because we eat it as a main and not before a bigger course of fish/meat vegetables.

like spag bol. I think of that as British not Italian haha

Liquorice Pontefract Cakes

Cornish pasty
Yorkshire pudding
Lancashire hot pot
Scotch egg
Welsh rabbit
Eton mess

It’s a very British thing, to have taken all these recipes from across the world and incorporated them into the ‘British’ family diet.

I remember having a Malaysian / French friend with me as I was unpacking a big shop, and she was just agog at the cooking ingredients I had to hand in the kitchen. everything from Chinese cooking wine (for stir fry) to fish sauce (Thai curries), from risotto rice to noodles, from soy sauce to pizza flour, from chilli sauce to tahini. She basically cooked Malaysian food and French food - she never ever tried to cook Indian / Chinese / Italian / Thai / Mexican / Middle Eastern / British recipes. I’d never really thought about it until I moved away from the UK.

Chicken tikka masalla, that well known Indian dish, created by Bangladeshis living in the Uk, for Brits who need gravy for it to be meal.

What I want when I come back to blighty:

• Roast beef with all the trimmings
• Fish and chips
• Indian
• Pizza Express

Tikka masala was invented in glasgow. Scottish here too 👋. I hate haggis 🤢

I’ve always understood that classic British cookery was based on foods cooked separately and served together. Hence roast dinner.

I’m not sure if fruit- based relishes and sauces are also particularly British? Redcurrant jelly with lamb, apple sauce with pork?

British food is traditional pub grub, roasts and international cuisine made in the British style. Doesn't matter where it originally came from. It's British now and it's a thing.

pasties, puddings, pies
all the cheeses: cheddar, cheshire, cottage, blue
soups, stews, casseroles and roasts
all the cakes & biscuits: sponge, parkin, dundee, eccles, gingerbread, flapjacks

oops - my dinners ready gotta dash - sausage and mustard mash with fresh greens and gravy!

Mince & tatties
Steak pie
Roast dinner
Stovies
Lentil soup
Fish & chips

I had mince and tatties for dinner 😋

Funnily when i went to India i asked for lasagne to be my coming home meal 😂

MMM, I love an eccles.

It’s charming, really, how Spaghetti Bolognese has been adopted as though it were a proud British native, but by all means, keep “borrowing” it! Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.

Well roast beef might count as British, but few traditional working class people would have been able to afford it, other than for special occasions, fried fish was introduced by Sephardic Jews from Spain, the first fish and chip shops were opened by Ahskenazi Jews, refugees from eastern Europe, so that hardly count as British, Indian - the name gives it away, though most "Indian" restaurants are run by people of Bangladeshi or Pakistani origin. Pizza is an Italian thing, Pizza Express serves something that is similar to an Italian pizza in name only. You really need to try harder, maybe tripe and onions or scouse, though that could be scandinavian in origin.

And not forgetting all the horrible British food:
Liver and bacon
devilled eggs
kedgeree
gammon with parsley sauce
steak and kidney pudding
boiled bacon
pea and ham soup
brown windsor soup
mushy peas
jellied eels
cockles and winkles

You mean food that tastes of it's ingredients, rather than processed shite with an extra portion of profit.

Steamed puddings
Victoria sandwich
Full [insert home nation] breakfast

Roast dinner
Pie and mash
Beef Wellington
Fish and chips
Cottage/Shepherds pies
Prawn cocktail
English breakfast
Ploughman’s lunch
Sausage and mash

Roasts with roast potatoes & veg
Various meat pies - chicken & mushroom, steak & ale etc topped with pastry
Hot pot - lamb (or strictly mutton) and veg, topped with potatoes
Gammon, pork chops , mixed grill with tomatoes & mushrooms
Fish & chips - cod, haddock, plaice
sausage & mash - decent sausages, hand made from a butcher, with buttery mashed potato and greens
More summery- poached salmon & salad, cheese & egg salad, steamed asparagus with hollandaise, rollmop herrings,