To ask what British people have for dinner usually

[AnxietyLevelMax]

Not british, married to one but he grew up abroad and dont know a lot about own culture besides common things such as roast dinner etc 😊

what do you guys eat and at what time usually? Its so different where i am from - our lunch is hot and usually between 2-3pm (think like soups, pasta, chicken, fish etc etc). In the evening our dinners are cold - sandwiches, salad or whatever.

i am looking for some british meal ideas 😀 kids born in uk and growing up here so we would love to mix all 3 cultures.

Cheese omelette and salad for lunch today and got a beef rendang slow cooking for dinner later.

We use gousto! So eat stuff from all over the world.

But favourite "British" classics would be shepherd's pie.

Mince and potatoes
Spaghetti bolognese
Chilli con carne
Stir fries
Various curries both meat and vegetarian
Roast dinners
Haggis, turnip and potatoes
Chicken breast and salad
Steak pie
Mince pie
Fajitas
Steak and veg

Recipes - BBC Food is not a bad place to start if you want to get ideas. If you see that a particular recipe has a very large number of reviews, that's a good indicator that lots of people have cooked it.

Sorry to add our main meal is dinner / tea at 6pm.

Lunch is just soup or a sandwich or a salad

What you have for hot lunch would make an evening meal in the uk

And vice versa

We have moved from the main meal being midday to evening except for Sundays perhaps probably because work won't let you out for a big dinner in the middle of ten working day

Dinner used to be 6pm. Has veered closer 7pm now youngest is 13. DF joins in often. It’s a family meal. Usually 5 or 6 of us. This is what I have cooked over last 14 days:

Chicken stew and dumplings
Lentil cottage pie and carrots
courgette lasagne (BBC good good recipe)
chicken noodle soup (BBC good food).
prawn pad Thai
beef lasagne and tomato and feta salad
fish pie and peas
mushroom wild rice soup (forks over knives)
sausage casserole mash and greens
roast chicken with cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes, carrots, mashed Swede, parsnips and cabbage
mushroom risotto with green salad
macaroni cheese with green salad
mushroom stroganoff with wild rice
steak and chips and salad

looking at it it’s a bit more meat than usual. But fairly representative of what we eat.

We pretty much always cook from scratch taking it in turns and eat at 7:30 pm.

This is what we had last week:

Mon: Pasta with mince and tomato+onion+garlic sauce
Tue: Chicken curry made from leftovers with spinach and rice
Wed: Baked potato sausages and beans
Thu: Baked salmon with rice and veggies
Fri: Chicken casserole with chorizo, bacon lardons and new potatoes
Sat: Pad Thai
Sun: Roast chicken with roast potatoes, stuffing balls and veg

Bbc good food is a great site for recipes.

Typical evening meals in our house are sausage casserole, Thai curry, hunters chicken with mash & veg, spaghetti & meatballs, chilli & rice, griddled chicken & veg wraps, pie with roasted veg. We eat at around 630pm

We have lunch (or dinner) around 12-2 and then tea about 6.
Tea tends to be the bigger meal if we eat it at home while dinner is soup or a sandwich or similar. If I go out for lunch/dinner I tend to make that my main meal and have a snack later.
Posh Southern friends of ours don't have tea they have supper, which to us is a snack before bed such as cereal or toast. Both us Northeners and the Southerners go out for Dinner as you only eat supper at home it seems.
God, its complicated

For breakfasts, we have a selection of cereals, bagels, fruit and boiled eggs.

At weekends we tend to do a Full Turkish Style breakfast.

Lunches are sandwiches, fruit, vegetable sticks and crisps etc (lunch box) or Pasta in a thermos or soup.

Dinner tends to be chicken, pasta and salad or JP with bean and cheese etc.

We usually have our "tea" between 5 and 6pm and have things like this:
Fish, chips and beans
Cottage pie, with kale and Yorkshire puddings
Spaghetti bolognese
Chilli con carne
Pie, chips and peas
Sausage, mash, peas and Yorkshire puddings
Jacket potatoes
Bacon-wrapped Chicken breast with new potatoes and Tenderstem broccoli
Salmon with new potatoes and Tenderstem broccoli
Curry and chips
Sausage, chips and beans

I hope this helps 😁

i will to through all of your replies tonight 😊

DH gets breakfast - usually boiled egg with Parma ham, cheese, a combination of 3 - 4 fruits like berries, melon, figs, grapes; and toast. Once a week, he does me a full cooked breakfast. We normally have sandwiches or soup for lunch between 1 - 2 pm. I mainly cook dinner for between 7 - 8 pm:

1. mince + 25% lentils - shepherds pie, spaghetti bolognaise or chilli con carne, keema curry
2. lamb chops with potatoes and 2 veg, or lamb shish kebab
3. chicken - fajitas, chicken curry, chicken shish kebab, chicken tikka, chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, chicken ramen, chicken with cashew nuts
4. prawns - korma or Thai red/green curry, paella (with chicken too), in egg fried rice
5. steak with chips/jacket potatoes with 2 veg or salad, beef in green peppers and black bean sauce, Chinese broccoli, steak ramen
6. pork - Italian with fennel and peppers, Korean pork kebabs, or in a mushroom sauce
7. sausages in cassoulet, pasta bake or with onion gravy and mashed potatoes
8. roast beef/lamb/chicken
9. salmon - with broccoli and pasta, or a salad bowl with brown rice and raw veg, fish cakes, kedgeree
10. tuna steak - salad Nicoise

Apart from using curry pastes for the base of curries, I cook from scratch. We don’t eat UPF or deep fried food as much as possible - except fish and chips from the chip shop about once a fortnight. We try not to eat processed meat, except sausages and naked bacon occasionally. Left to myself, I’d eat Chinese/Thai/Malaysian food all the time; but DH objects! He likes English/French/Italian/Greek food better!

I think in 2024, British people eat, and cook, a fairly wide variety of food. I do agree that the main meal is usually (not always) the evening meal, served any time between about 5:30-8pm depending on families, logistics, work, children etc.

Most people I know cook at least versions of foods from other cultures and countries on a fairly regular basis - curries (thai and Indian style) in particular, mexican (tacos, fajitas etc), Asian style noodle/rice dishes plus lots of dishes with European flavours/ingredients that might not be "traditionally" british - pasta, pizza being good examples but the rise of pesto as a staple, the variety of vinegars in many people's cupboards etc are all a sign of this.

Growing up, we ate pasta and pizza but otherwise a lot of our food was a lot more "traditional" british - things topped with mashed potato and/or served in creamy/cheesy sauces. Grilled/fried meat with veg and potatoes on the side. Simple casseroles and stews.

Jamie Oliver's website will give you a good insight. We eat a very varied diet these days.

What @midgetastic says.

I've worked in countries where it was opposite.

Also before I was about age 7 and sometimes with other under 7 year olds I know, including my DD, the main meal is at lunch time with a sandwich or something light main early in the evening before we bedtime.

Sausage and mash with gravy
Pork chop with veg and gravy
Curry - usually chicken, sometimes lamb
Pasta - every sort imaginable
Meat Pies with veg
Shepherds Pie/Cottage Pie/Lasagna/Moussaka
Fajitas
Chilli and rice
Beef stew
Chicken casserole
Chicken or fish traybakes
Salmon and veg
Fish and chips
Stir Fry
Risotto

I would say traditional British meals are things like...

Toad in the hole (aka sausages in Yorkshire pudding)
Sausage and mash
Pie and chips
Hotpot
Shepherd's pie

I would guess most people eat from a range of world cuisines now, rather than just "British" meals... curry, stir fry, enchiladas, burritos, risotto, paella, pizza, pasta, noodles, burgers...

We generally eat around 5pm (kids are 4 and 7 and I work locally. Pre-kids, I commuted home from London so I would say 7pm was more usual)

All sorts! We use a mixture of recipes taken from Gousto, BBC good food, Tesco and a lot from TikTok these days. We have our hot dinner (from the South) after we get home from work around 6-7pm and cook together normally, though hubby tends to take the lead.

This week we had:

• Fish cakes with sweet potato wedges
• Cottage pie but with Moroccan seasonings to change it up
• Crispy prawn tacos
• Meatballs
• Basa fillets cooked in a tamarind sauce with egg fried rice & veggies

Tonight I'm cooking 'pizza' style loaded fries with a garlic sauce that I saw on Instagram :)

One thing to understand in case this thread is confusing is that we have different names for our evening meal dependent on where you live. In general people in south of England call their evening meal 'dinner' but midlands and north are more likely to call it 'tea' (although I think posh people in the midlands/north may also say dinner! )

I don't usually eat till about 8pm and it's things like
Burgers chips and peas
Sausage and mash
Chicken thighs with mash and broccoli
Spaghetti bolognese
Chilli
Homemade soup
Ramen
Cottage pie
Fish and salad
The odd ready meal with veg

We usually have pasta, chilli and rice, or curry, so not exactly British! And a roast at the weekend. I like vegetarian cottage pie, but my child doesn't like mashed potato so I usually don't bother.

We usually eat between 7.30 and 8.30.

A typical British dinner would be Indian curry, Mexican chilli con carne, Italian spaghetti bolognese, Asian stir fry, occasional Turkish kebab and British bangers and mash. Simple!