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.

It’s because British food is horrible and bland. I like a roast dinner but it can’t be eaten every day and even gets boring if it’s a weekly thing. It’s literally just potatoes, vegetables and meat with gravy. Our food is very beige.

I don't think there's 'American food' so much (except the junky things you mention!) but there are definitely regional American cuisines that are quite distinctive, and have different foreign influences. Southern food for example, or Tex Mex (proper Tex Mex not Old El Paso : ) or all the New England seafood dishes, the Midwestern cuisine that's very Scandinavian/German.

I'm from the East Coast and there's loads of 'traditional American foods' I've never eaten, a lot of Southern dishes mostly

My husband worked in Holland for a year, every time he came home he had a list of foodstuff the owner of the B&B asked him to take back. I can’t remember it all but Heinz salad cream and Pickled gherkins in a mustard type sauce was on the list. In return she gave him bottles of Blackcurrant gin for me.

British people are discouraged from being positive about anything British, because it's racist apparently. MN is full of anti-British feeling. Britain is a shit-hole with shit food, horrible people, awful weather, crap everything. If you dare to fly the flag (literally or metaphorically) you get called a nasty brexity racist!

No, Brits are not the only ones. Just because two people you met make the food they grew up with does not mean the rest of the world acts the same.

I used to love all sorts of different cuisines but I find as I get older I'm going back to the food of my childhood - home made scotch broth, stovies, mince and potatoes with oatcakes, casseroles, fish and chips, roast lamb or chicken and local fruit and veg in season. I find these foods now agree with me better than spicy or pasta type meals.

When I was in france french people cooked couscous, merguez, tagine, a lot of north african food influenced by their colonies/ex-colonies just like we are for ours. It was on the uni lunch menus etc.

It’s Fridays in Sweden. But tbh I don’t know many who does this anymore, marketing tried to make it a ’thing’ but it’s not really. It is a thing with so called Fredags-mys though, Friday Cosiness. It’s basically snacks and a blanket.

@MumblesParty

I’m first gen immigrant family. Born here. Different culture. And I wouldn’t live anywhere else (have travelled extensively).

Yes there are still racist issues but in the main I prefer here as my home. it’s welcoming and open. I have only lived in big cities though.

As an immigrant I'd just like to say I find this self-flagellation odd. And sad.
I love the U.K, yes it's not perfect but if you compared to other countries it's far more welcoming and less racist. I don't think there's any country in the world with no racism.

Also hubs is british and i like him, he's delicious. yum yum yum

Have the posters that say British food isn't nice tried spanish food? I'm not saying mexican food, but food from spain? It's sooo bland! Spanish tortilla, patatas bravas, jamon 🤮
If you think british food is bland, you know nothing!

I am a pretty decent cook. I love cooking and have very rarely not managed to cook something delicious when I have tried to-It's quite a natural skill for me, I do follow recipes but I can also throw things together quite easily. It's just about the only 'creative' thing I can genuinely say I am good at!

People saying 'You're a shit cook if you don't like British food' are really not thinking that perhaps someone who doesn't like the food, has tried it made by folks other than them?

I mean, I don't like British food at all. Of allll the things mentioned on here, the only 'thing' I really do like is oatcakes (and I make them myself as well as buy them), but I don't have them very often because I'm not really a 'snacker'. Oh and turnip soups- I manage to make those delicious!

I am a bit of a history geek and I LOVE British culture. I almost wish I DID like British food, but I just don't!

I like it in the sense I like the tradition of it, the suet and pies and puddings-I can see why it appeals to other people. But none of it is to my personal palette.

I think some of it stems from childhood. Bowls of slop (stew) which I just hated the texture of, all 'bitty' and sloppy and every mouthful the same is just one that springs to mind!

But also my personal taste-I take the point that British cooking does involve a lot of spices and variation, but I love hot (as in spicy) food, but also I don't eat meat or dairy, obviously heavy on the British traditional menu, and I don't have a sweet tooth at all, so the puddings aren't something I am interested in.

I make one exception, sort of. I used to go to an independent restaurant in my old home town that did a vegan version of a roast dinner. I liked the mash, and they had a vegan mushroom version of a savoury pudding. It came with gravy, cabbage, usual 'roast' style veg.

I did like that-mainly because I liked that I could just order a roast along with friends/family and not have to experience that 'othering' that occurs if you don't eat meat-but in all honesty I'd much rather a pizza, some stuffed vine leaves, or a fajita or burger with lashings of chilli sauce!

I don't like the soggy cabbage that comes on a lot of pub or restaurant roast dinners. Gravy-meh. I don't like roast potatoes-I do like mash with a lot of pepper and (substitute for) butter-but not enough to enjoy it over my other favourites.

It doesn't mean I am a shit cook.

I have always thought that the reason there was less obesity in earlier generations was because the food was horrible so people ate a lot less.

Boiled potatoes? Does anyone eat those?

Of course people eat them. Boiled potatoes with butter, plenty of salt and pepper, cooked all the way through but not overcooked - wonderful. My mum tosses them in oatmeal and they are marvellous.

Casseroles need a small amount of preparation several hours before you want to eat. Once they are cooking at a good low temperature, they need no attention until they are done. They can be made in advance, they stand up well to re-heating and freezing, so they are ideal for batch cooking. As long as they are well seasoned and don't have too much liquid to make them watery, they are likely to be delicious, and they are very easy and not particularly expensive, compared to cooking lean cuts of meat, especially if they contain lots of vegetables, pulses, barley etc. Peasant cuisine all over the world makes use of slow cooking for these reasons.

Some places are more insular than others. But they also don't like any incomers, white, black or brown.
Or maybe they're polite enough not to say it to my face. IDK.
I have been in proper countryside places thanks to my husband's family and everyone has been very nice, maybe because I'm with white people though.

I have just re-asked him what his own mother cooked and the reply I got.. 'pasta and leeks. I don't like leeks pulls a face '

I am an improvement apparently because I make honey chicken and them things.

Lived in Toronto, and Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Italian and Mexican food was everywhere.

We actually really missed modern British gastropub style food - couldn’t find it anywhere. Canadian restaurants do a brunch menu or steak/burgers instead. Their Indian curries were shit as well - they have plenty of Indian immigrants, but most of them are in professional jobs, not running restaurants.

Depends where you are.
I am not British and cook all sorts (I dont actually cook home food much as a lot of it is a lot of faff and I like a quick pasta mid week), but my friends from up North say their families still very much eat traditional food.

@AscensionToCheese my ex husband was from a rural village and I did feel like I was looked at. But there wasn’t any in your face racism of the 70s.
His family were very welcoming though, Miss them.

It was thanks to his mum that I first ate a parsnip in my 20s! Love these still 😂

This is the menu of one of my local restaurants, known locally as an 'english' one. I like it as they usually make me something especially as there's nothing on the menu I can eat! https://grandcrurestaurant.co.uk/menu/

Interesting topic, OP!

So what's your explanation of why most European countries still have far lower levels of obesity than we have? Is their food horrible?

The UK was the first country to embrace the Industrial Revolution. As a nation we accelerated from being a mainly agrarian state to being a predominantly urbanised one in just a few generations. The workers needed access to cheap carb and meat based food to keep feeding the mills and factories and there was no space in the back to back housing for rearing animals or produce. Plus often no ovens hence the popularity of bread, puddings, pies, roasts etc that could be bought cheaply from bakeries etc.

Then the empire provided a vast market for British commercial food. Tins. Dried stuff. Biscuits etc. so many people just didn't have access to much fresh. We just borrowed stuff from the empire that we liked to spice up the bland stuff. Chutneys and sauces and pepper and ginger.

I think we also probably love to holiday abroad more than most of our neighbouring nations and like magpies we come home with our own versions of pasta and tapas and Thai curry.

We actually have some of the best cheeses and orchard fruit, baked goods and fresh veg in the world just as examples.

Yes, costs have gone up quite a lot in both Spain and Italy in the past two years.

This, absolutely. Beautiful cheeses, meats, vegetables, fruits and baking are all available.

that was kind of my point🙂 Almost all American food is a derivative of another country, so very little traditional American.

Southern Soul- Mostly French
Tex Mex- Mexican
Go up north and it’s German, Polish, Scandinavian
Etc.

I did forget bagels in my original list. I think that’s all us.

I’m honestly not even sure why I’m posting in this thread. It’s a weird pat on the back by the OP to say “ooooo look how cosmopolitan we are with our dinner choices”.

American too and I always saw American food as mainly a mix of cuisines brought over and changed (due to what was available at the time) by immigrants and enslaved people, and of Americans later making new things either intentional or by accident.