To think traditional English food is overrated?

[ThatJoyousCyanReader]

I’ve always heard people say English food is bland or uncreative, and to be honest, I kind of see their point. Apart from a good roast dinner or fish and chips, what actually stands out? AIBU to think that other cuisines just do it better?

English food isn’t bland if it’s cooked properly. Delicate flavours which complement each other are a thing to behold. I detest food that is so full of spice that you can’t taste the beautiful vegetables or the meat. You may as well have added a tonne of chilli to a pile of mouldy old socks if chilli is the only flavour. It’s a desecration of good food.

Sounds like you can’t cook

I'm going to say;

Absolutely effing stop your nonsense talking about heat.

I like food with heat, I made Jerk Chicken last weekend and the marinade had two Scotch bonnets in. It was really fruity with an excellent buildable heat.

Nothing crazy.

I think we have a lot to learn from other cultures. I look to Greece a lot when I cook - like last night I did a pretty traditionally English braised lamb stew but I added in dried mint and butter beans to take it in a bit of greek direction and it was brilliant.

Or I'll do a roast meat but with loads of salads and fresher flavours.

Don't get me wrong, I love certain aspects of English food and flavours but I would be bored shitless if I was limited to only that.

There are some lovely ingredients in Britain - but I do prefer the way food is presented in some other countries - Turkey is lots of vegetables and great bread, Japanese food has pickles, soups, fresh veg - I love Scandinavian food with fruit and herbs...

British food can be incredible - but it mostly isn't really.

I would be bored with eating nothing but British food as well. I would also be bored if I ate nothing but Italian food or nothing but Indian food.

I just like food from everywhere.

I don't know... a nice stew in the slow cooker is fantastic to come home to on cold winter evenings!

As always, homemade food is better than shop-bought (e.g. my leek and potato soup is excellent, but unbearable from a tin). There are some bland meals, like in any cuisine, but you can jazz them up with a bit of Worcestershire sauce or something, or have your English favourites on days off from Indian or Thai cuisine.

English puddings are generally fairly good, and were the best thing offered on school dinners (school jam roly-poly and custard, anyone?). Yorkshire puddings are brilliant and versatile, and if you're from the north, your blood is probably made up of 50% gravy. I was horrified when I moved down south and couldn't find gravy granules, except in a tiny Co-Op; I felt like I was buying an illicit product! There are also some regional cuisines that are incredibly tasty, too, like parkin, rag puddings, Lancashire hot pot, butter pie and Eccles cakes.

Same here. I like the variety of food in the UK. When I'm on holiday elsewhere where there isn't a variety of cuisines, even if the food is great, I get bored after about 3 days of eating the same kind of food.

It's not overrated because nobody likes it. There's a reason we have more international restaurants and takeaways than anywhere else in the world

I agree. If cooked properly! Plus who doesn't love a jam roly poly?

Don't forget that the cuisine of the UK was dictated by the weather in the same way Greece has salads etc. We needed stodgy food.

My mother has an 18th century cook book. You might be surprised by how varied the recipes are. Lots of herbs, spices, unusual fruit and veg, year-round cuts of meat. There is a lemon chutney recipe I want to try making. A lot of people seem to think English food equates with recipes developed during the 40s/50s when we had rationing and overcooked school dinners, when it really doesn’t.

If you look at commentary about food by early visitors to England the ubiquitous comment is of the abundance of meat, especially beef. This is because England had a lot of green pastureland and our cattle were well fed, resulting in high quality meat that was often spit roasted and didn’t need to be adorned with additional flavours.

The 13th century cook book the Forme of Cury has the oldest recipes for lasagna and macaroni, shoeing we having been eating pasta for at least 700 years.

I’m not English but I’m a fan of lots of English food. I think lots of English people value cheapness and convenience over good food and traditional English food often needs time, skill and effort. If you can’t cook very well then your shitty roast with powdered gravy is going to taste worse than fajita with a packet mix that a blind hamster could make. Almost all great English food is effortful or time consuming or both - mature cheese, hung meat, smoked fish, steamed puddings etc. things are slow cooked, steamed, risen, rubbed in - people cba. Some people are still tied into Norman snobbery about English meat needing no seasoning, unlike its poor french counterpart. It’s been about 1000 years now so maybe they’ll get over it soon.

Last night I had a homemade summer pudding with double cream at a friend's house. It was YUM.

Yes but we don’t eat 13 century food now 😂
people aren’t commenting on what English ate 800 years ago. They are contrasting current English food compared to current Chinese/Italian/Spanish/Turkish food. Foods currently commonly eaten that involve far more flavour and actual combining of flavours. Not just whacked on a pan or heated in an oven

Where are you going that you can’t find variety in local meals after 3 days?

You think the vast majority of English households are enjoying the best quality meats? And organic vegetables?
haaahaaaaaaaaaaaa

Pies and treacle tart spring to mind immediately. And curry!

Shepherds Pie 😘

I have tried mock jerk chicken it was nice.

Me too eton mess is shi**.

OP…..a lazy uneducated comment. English and British, Welsh and Scottish (and Irish) food is wonderful. There are so many wonderful ingredients. How many apple varieties do we have? Cheeses? Breads? Beers? The quality of the meat? Wild game? Fish and shellfish? Stunning wines, ciders, whiskies, liqueurs and dairy produce.
An amazing array of vegetables and the most sublime berries. Jams, jellies, curds, butterscotches and Victoria plums.
I can cook. And cook very well. I cook from scratch most days.
Also foraging. Blackberries, rowan berries, wild garlic, sloes, sour cherries. Sea buckthorn. Amazing sea salts.
A beautiful shepherds or cottage pie. A light chicken broth with barley and fresh herbs from the garden.
A sausage roll made from scratch with salads from the garden and pickles.
Crab salads, sandwiches or crab cakes. Our desserts and puddings are things of beauty. Bannocks, bara briths, oatcakes, crusty cobs, cottage loaves. Trifles, syllabubs, meringues, scones and clotted cream…..We are not in medieval times.
Look carefully……and you will find 😍

I dont like greek food and i have been to greece three times.

We do eat pasta, including macaroni and lasagna. This whole idea of ‘English food’ vs ‘Italian food’ etc is so inaccurate. Tomatoes and potatoes arrived in Europe long after we started eating pasta, but somehow everyone will say pasta is necessarily Italian and not British, even though it’s eaten here ubiquitously.

I think 3 days is a bit short to get bored, but if you go to France, Italy or Spain, (all of which cuisine I really like and could eat a lot of) outside of the cities it can be difficult to find Chinese food, or Indian or Thai. Whereas most UK towns and even villages have something that's got a bit of variety.

I'm not keen on German savoury food (love a pastry) and found the Turkish and Vietnamese restaurants great while there.