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.

and as people have said what even is a traditional cuisine. Italy did not have pasta and tomatoes until various colonial explorations brought them back to Europe.

The Romans used to use lots and lots of black pepper as they adored hot and spicy food but chillis were not known in Europe at that time.

Similarly until the Portuguese introduced chilli to India, black pepper was used to add heat to curry.

Traditional British food is wintery- perfect to sustain a farmer in the cold.

Rice is Spanish.
Carrots are Iranian
India is where 90% of the world’s spices and perfumes came from.
Roses as we know them today have their origins in China

Same.
Which relates to my earlier comment that there are several posters who won"t can't cook and are severely lacking in imagination.

That is nonsense - British food is what ever British people could access at the time and was seasonal.

People weren't sitting there in the July heat eating massive pies, stews and mashed root vegtables.

I come from a farming family and traditional summer food after harvesting would be salads, cheese and bread, cold pies or flans, seafood (if you lived near the coast as we did), smoked cold fish, lots and lots of soft fruit.

Not sure I agree with any of your premise.

Pretty odd to think everyone else in the world cooks only their cuisine.

Also quite odd to think using a taco kit or a jar of stir fry sauce is evidence you’re cooking ‘international’ cuisine.

Actually it isn’t. Traditional British food was cold meats, cheese or dried food as it lasted longest. The modern hot British meal didn’t arrive until the 1800s. Cultures in hot countries, where food was plentiful throughout the year, have always eaten hot food as food could be made fresh everyday.

Indeed - also the idea that famrrs are always working in the cold in the UK is a bit mad.

We do have summer in the UK and farmers still have to work in it!

It is true that the diet would be more carb heavy when the population mainly carried out hard physical work and lack of refridgeration mean veg and meat did not last long and as expensive - but that is true of many cultures - most of Asia susbsists on a very rice heavy diet, African countries had a lot of carbs, Italian peasants ate a LOT of pasta and polenta, the French an absolute ton of bread!

Also if people think trad British food is very meat and carb heavy - have you been to Lyon recently? - All the meat and potatoes all of the time!!

Of course people from other countries cook other cuisines! Some people do some dont just like us Brits. My British parents only cook British my European in laws try all cuisines. Everyone is different.

"it’s spag bol as in bolegnese"

Pmsl. Is that from Bolegna? 😅

I know what you mean OP. My fathers side were Italian and would mostly stick to their cuisine. My husband is dual national and family abroad all tend to eat their cuisine too unless they go out to a themed restaurant.
I do make a few traditional English meals at home but I agree a lot of them tend to be quite heavy especially in the summer months and that’s when we stick to a lot of Mediterranean style foods. During the week I will often do Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican meals as like to have variety and get bored of the same foods.
I think you are right that a lot of us are more adventurous with our palettes in the UK. Although it always makes me laugh how whilst on holiday oversees you come across Brits who have to order fish n chips or full English breakfast on the menu!

As a Celiac vegetarian, there is not one meal on this list I can eat!
I cook stews, cottage pie, fish and chips etc for my family, though not all year round, and not all of them will eat it.

Generally they prefer international foods like Italian, Greek, Indian, French.

I am from an ethnicity whose food is very popular internationally but I enjoy British food. Like Scandinavian cuisine British food does not have a lot spices but it is comforting and flavourful. Especially now there are a lot of nice gastropub dishes.

I also do not eat dishes from my culture every day as I get bored. So I try to mix my home menu.

To be honest, I don't understand why British food has such bad reputation. Maybe because people like to feel superior about their cultures and overly criticise British for everything because of its colonial past.

What kind of food do you eat at home?

Ooh and Indian meals too - we love curries in our house.

Through no fault of their own so many people are ignorant of British food.

All those people that think British food is bland need to understand that when you have some of the absolute best fresh local produce available, it never needed to have tons of spices and chili thrown at it to make it taste nice.

Just to take two seasonal examples, asparagus and strawberries. You can do asparagus a number of ways, but you simply can't beat it freshly picked (in season) boiled and served with melted butter and salt. You can sex it up by wrapping it in parma ham and barbequing it, but in my humble opinion the asparagus isn't better and it's a travesty for the parma ham! And you can't do anything better with fresh local seasonal strawberries than a little single cream and sprinkle of caster sugar.

I've eaten some very fancy British food at some very fancy British restaurants. I wouldn't exactly say I didn't like it, but I'd never choose British cuisine if I was paying for it myself (said fancy meals were mostly through work). It's almost like different people like different things (shocker!).

Probably because British food isn't very nice?

Lots of people exposing that they're not good cooks!

I can't really speak for other nationalities, but my grandparents were Greek Cypriot and that was basically all they ever cooked and ate. On the odd occasion, yiayia would make an 'English' meal and it was almost always horrible. Like a lot of people, unfamiliar meals were not her forte! The Greek stuff she made was always lovely though.

Sorry, but given the choice between a lovely Mexican, Italian, Indian, Greek dish and some sad sausages with a lump of mash, or a stodgy casserole with no colour in sight, I know what I'd choose

I mean, compare anything 'lovely' with anything 'sad' and it'll always come up trumps? Do you really think there are no bad cooks in Mexico/Italy/India/Greece?!

I am British Asian and I love a shepherd's pie, Lancashire hotpot and more recently neeps and tatties. Traditional British food gets a lot of flak as being unappealing but I think so much of it is yummy, many dishes are more geared towards wholesome food which is great in the colder months. It for me at least makes a change to all the spices involved in pakistani or indian cooking. I use a whole lot of herbs to add flavour and season generously.

Modern British cuisine is done so well by so many restaurants and is amongst my favourite food to eat. I don't often go out for a curry because I can quite frankly make a better one at home. I do cook asian food mostly but my kids love things like fajitas and wraps, risotto and when I do cook food from other countries I just season to our taste.

As an aside - I was watching the BBQ bake off thing on Netflix the other day, and one person did lamb. The judge commented something like and I can even taste the lamb through the spices and I was like, lamb might be so overspiced you can't taste the meat?! I think Americans in particular over use herbs and spices because a lot of their meat and veg just isn't very tasty. Or at least that's the impression I get from the aforementioned 'chronically online'!

I'm in France and tbh most French people i know will eat French food at home. They might eat more varied food when out, but at home they will generally eat much the same dishes as their grandparents did.

I had a Malaysian friend visit when I was receiving a shopping order. She watched me put it away and was amazed / horrified at all the different cuisines I was trying to cook from - Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Indian, American, Italian, etc etc. - and the sheer number of ingredients / bottles / tins / spices etc that I had. She basically cooks Malaysian or French (she has a French husband). She'd never attempt to make pizza or fish-n-chips or burgers.

It did make me think that it was a bit mad tbh, trying to 'master' all these different cuisines rather than keeping it simple;

Agree with PP about people damning their own cookery when they talk about British food.

I've lived in South East Asia and in a couple of European countries. SE Asia- the food was all either local or generic "international". In France and Germany it's fairly easy to get a range of cuisines although not exactly the same as you get in Britain- eg Vietnamese and Moroccan food much more popular in France than here reflecting their colonial history, just as the popularity of Indian food in the UK reflects ours.

@Chocchops72 See thats also my experience. When I lived in France at home people mainly ate French, same in the other places I've lived in. They might have enjoyed having International food out but not so much at home. The only exception for me was the UK and US. Having lived in lots of different countries tries, I appreciate how hard it is to truly master so many cuisines. In our household, I tend to make a few dishes from some of the places I've lived in though honestly most are stodgy. People who say Asian food is light. Really with all the noodles and rice. I like it but anyone for example trying to make Northern Chinese cuisine will be making a lot of stodge

I would much rather go out to get some Georgian, Ethiopian, Peruvian food than trying to make it at home. I don't have all the spices etc nor do I really have the techniques.

See I love trying out new things like this, and will regularly spend extra to get a bag of a spice I might never use again! I am lucky though, I have a couple of international food shops very close to me so I can pick stuff up like this pretty easily. And the internet is awash with recipes to try, so I do. It has to be said, some with less success than other

See I have to say that I don't. I love eating food out thats adventurous but I recognize just how hard it is to get the right techniques so don't do it at home.