Dinners - are Brits only ones that make international food for dinner

[o9yhke89]

Was chatting with an Italian and Spanish friend about kids dinners - and mostly they just make whatever they grew up with i.e. Italian and Spanish food and really treasure their family recipes. Most of my English friends always try to have food from different cultures and this is seen as much more sophisticated and worldly. I've lived all over but was wondering whether the Brits just don't value their own cuisine especially when it comes to family meals.

I think one factor is that many foreign cuisines are much better for vegetarians as British cuisine is mainly meat ot fish.

I am from an Asian background and my favourite foods are Indian, Thai and Malaysian.

But I forgive British food everything because of its puddings.

Or maybe you are a boring cook. In these isles we have the best seafood, lamb, beef, cheese and soft fruits, if you don't have an imagination then you will produce food that isn't very nice no matter which cuisine you are trying to cook.

Apart from the occasional roast dinner I don't cook British food. Nothing appealing about boiled root veg and meat.

*I think people often just eat what fits in with their lives. If you have a relatively sedentary life, you don’t need all those carbs. I think British dinnertime is getting later too - instead of 5pm, many people are eating dinner at 7-8pm+ now, and don’t want stodge before bed.

Wanging a stir-fry together or chucking some pasta on is quick, easy, very customisable to tastes, and you get your veg in. Similar with curries, you can even make a day/s in advance.*

Isn't pasta one of the worst stodgy carbs?

You need an online game butcher who will deliver.

I have noticed this trend in the UK too. In some places or families I worked for more than in others.

Actually the blandest dish in the world is the tagine. Whether it is in a restaurant here or actually in Morocco or Tunisia. Big lumps of carrot and meat lying in sloppy tasteless couscous. Give me a Lancashire hotpot any day.

Yes, pasta can be stodgy, but if you serve it with tomato-based sauces instead of cream or what-have-you, it lightens it. As a whole, the dish feels lighter than something like bangers & mash, for example. Different strokes for different folks (I’m not a big pasta fan, but the rest of my family are). My main point was that it might fit into your life better.

Really? You’ve never eaten at a decent modern British restaurant or gastropub? Or you have and didn’t like it?

If you’ve had “good” British cooking in a decent restaurant (not a Harvester or chain pub) and didn’t like it, I don’t know what to say. Plenty of non-Brits like it.

The UK used loads of spices it its cooking - nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, ginger, allspice - all popular in traditional dishes going back centuries.

Some of it is because we have a really wide range of foods in supermarkets here. I noticed in Italy that they do tend to mostly sell things that are components of Italian cooking - whereas we have huge ranges of world food as standard.

Nope. Israeli family love making Asian food. I also used to live with a German girl who made sushi and pasta.

@TripleDaisySummer chicken tikka masala is based on murgh makhani which originated in Delhi

You obviously never had a good tagine. I've had many in Morocco and make them at home. Lamb and prune with tons of fresh cumin and herbs, or chicken with preserved lemon and lots of garlic....unreal.

Seems the issue for many responders here is that they just haven't had good food from most cuisines. British food isn't bland, pasta isn't stodgy, Indian isn't just curry......you just need to taste better food all round!!

Now do the same for the average French or Italian recipe. I'd be surprised to find that traditional British cuisine used fewer spices than those.

Also, look at what the average takeaway/restaurant from the cuisines you mention use in the UK compared to what comparable places use back home. It's bound to be less complex. Not all ingredients travel well.

(Nobody has mentioned food miles yet, so I will. All the rice and pasta based meals involve importing foods we can't grow in this country. There's an environmental cost to that, and that matters to some of us.)

We regularly have traditional British food mostly in the winter because it's cold here. Toad in the hole, faggots, Lancashire hotpot, Oxtail stew, Irish stew, with lots of root veg and cabbage, kale etc!
In the summer we have fresh home grown salad most nights, Broad beans, runner beans, new potatoes!
We also have fresh fish regularly.
We also eat curries, tagines. Pizzas, pasta and Mexican dishes.
Probably more all round than any other culture 🤣

Rabbit and duck - I can get wild game locally in season but from the local fishmonger who's also a game dealer rather than the local butcher.

Brits generally aren't adventurous when it comes to food. Oh they'll try a curry as long as it's veggie or a 'normal' meat (chicken, beef, lamb, pork), and they'll eat fish - bit generally the same six species. But give them something different and most wouldn't know what do do with it, even if they could bring themselves to try it.

Just look at the regular "disgusting food"/"foods you couldn't eat" threads, and they're packed with normal, traditional British foods and ingredients.

Nine out of ten Mumsnetters thing it's traditional to serve a Yorkshire pudding made in a muffin tin alongside the meat. Starting from that point of ignorance it's no wonder that traditional British cooking has been declining in breadth and scope.

Macaroni cheese, cauliflower cheese, pease pudding, lentil soup, broth (unless made with meat stock), Ploughman's lunch, curried eggs, Glamorgan sausages, cheese and potato pie, jacket potatoes with cheese/beans. Omelettes (borrowed from the French, but hey! we do appropriation really well here.) Egg and chips. Beans and chips.

The salads of my youth which were just lettuce, cucumber, tomato and often hard-boiled egg, salad cream, (latterly replaced by Hellman's mayonnaise), pickles, beetroot and could easily be made vegetarian by just not having cold meat and perhaps having a heap of grated cheese at the side of the plate. Not haute cuisine, but not beige either.

@rufusthered3 most of what you listed is beige to be fair!

We eat all sorts, but we have loads of multicultural supermarkets near us. We can buy spices in bulk and basmati rice by the ten kilos if we want. Yes we eat International, but we also eat British favourites, and love it when game season comes round.

Seems the issue for many responders here is that they just haven't had good food from most cuisines. British food isn't bland, pasta isn't stodgy, Indian isn't just curry......you just need to taste better food all round!!

Pasta is definitely stodgy. I've visited Italy over 30 times and have eaten everywhere from the very best restaurants all over the country to the homes of friends and colleagues. Italy is one of my favourite countries. I love the people but my opinion of Italian food has never changed.

Maybe the food you cook isn’t very nice, maybe your mother couldn’t cook and that’s why your experience of home cooked English food has been a bad example.

Because you’re not cooking it right. Boiling a bag of that rubbish ‘mixed veg’ and throwing in an unseasoned chicken is bound to taste crap.
learn to cook properly or visit a decent pub (not weatherspoons or the harvester) and give us your opinion then.

We cook a mix in our house, but we’re a mix of different backgrounds (I was born and raised in France, dh is English born with a Spanish mum and Maltese Dad, and we spent 4 years living in NZ) so it’s a total blend of Mediterranean, English & kiwi recipes. Dh also cooks a lot of Asian food. Anyone knocking English food either has an outdated version of what that actually is, or is surrounded by shit cooks, because English food, cooked well, is lovely.