Is it patronising to say that British people don't/ can't cook?

[MrsMerryHenry]

I think it is. I'd say about 99% of my friends cook well, maybe half of them extremely well. I'd place myself somewhere between those two groups (based on others' comments about my food!). Pretty much all of my friends are adventurous about food and take pride in the food that they produce. Surely I can't be part of an abnormal set of 'Brits that can actually cook'?

Oh, and one thing that really gets up my nose is the otherwise brilliant comedy Frasier - all the jokes about Daphne's food being crap because it's British. Because American food's so amazing, clearly. I spent 2 weeks in the USA, ate out every night (otherwise it was a host's home cooking), and all of us Brits were seriously underwhelmed by the food. Most of it was nice (apart from the diner - what in the world are 'grits'??? They're actually gritty! ), but nothing special. Okay, rant over .

I think the % of the UK population who can't cook, and who live off convenience food is much higher than you think. I bet that this thread and MN, is not representative of us as a population.

Plus I cook, but unlike others, we eat convenience regularly too.
Costco burgers are very high meet content.
sausages eaten most weeks. pizza. costco chicken nuggets are fab with home made chips and peas. that is convenience food and we eat it here all the time in this household. yes i do a roast, make lasagne, shepherds pie, make curry, make chicken fried rice, risotto, meat and 2 veg.

but we eat pasties.
minced beef roll and baked beans.
we eat fish fingers. prob once or twice a week, i do a meal like thta.
or home made jacket pots with baked beans and cheese.

obviously you guys don't. do you all prepare everything from scratch then.. every time.

no shame admitting that you have a pizza and fish fingers in your freezer.

oblomov, for cooking skills dwindling over the generations, I only know a handful of dishes from my mother. But I have learnt lots more from recipe books and added British, Italian, Spanish Japanese, Thai etc to my mother's oriental repertoire. Dh is fantastic at Indian cooking and roasts, which he has picked up largely on his own as well.

I am now in a baking phase. Actually, British cooking is pretty good for hearty puddings.

It is so easy to learn to cook. I found that once I had my own kitchen (and the necessity to cook as I was living on my own), my cooking really took off.

I never have fish fingers in my freezer - ever.

But that's because I need about 20+ of the damn things to feed my DH and DS's, and DS2,3 and DH don' really like them anyhow .

Nor pizzas - they have to be bought fresh and put in the freezer or cooked on the day of purchase if frozen as my flipping freezer drawers aren't big enough for the enormous pizzas I have to order LOL.

although I had Scampi in theere the other day as it was buy 1 get 2 free in Morrisons

sorry fresh pizzas have to be put inthe fridge not the freezer

I have fishfingers as they're pretty good as that kind of food goes.

There's a difference between being able to cook but sometimes choosing ready meals, and not being able to cook and having to choose ready meals.

Plus agree that people have different threasholds - for some ready made pasta is, well, pre-prepared, and they always make their own. But I think most normal people would accept that things like pasta and sausages have been around in pre-prepared form for generations and where's the harm in that.

Plus taken to an extreme - a butcher prepares meat when they cut it up - flour is made for us and packaged etc so really we should all be buying whole live animals and only fully whole foods to say we are really doing it from scratch.

oblomov, I agree that mn in not representative of the population in terms of the incidence of cooking from scratch.

I only know a handful of couples who if a meal was suggested would actually attempt a homecooked meal. It is a bit of a lost art, I feel.

o.k. always.
I am uninspired when I go to the supermarket. we end up eating the smae meals. in the end you get fed up of sheps pie, risotto, gammon and pineapple. I buy the same foods week on week.
terrible it is.

all of my friends cook mostly from scratch including my BF who regularly cooks for 7 (5 adults 2 children) every night .

always, i bought that from morrisons and the diet coke and the pringles offer. you just can't beat a 3 for 1 offer. ha ha.
I have to use 2 packs of fish fingers ora whole pack of scampi for my family.

I cook a lasagne. I cook 2 dishes. now with ds2 eating hearty portions, aged 1, it takes 1.5 to feed us.
i can't even put one in the freezer for the following week, you know !!!!

i must confess to buying "butchers" style quarter-pounder burgers from the supermarket as well as don't have the patience to make them myself and the amount of mince I need to make them from scratch works out more expensive than the burgers.

Oblo - do you know how long the offer is on for? I only bought 3 packs as I did't know if the DS's like it, turns out they love Scampi as much as a I do so want to get some more while it's still on special

don't know. my sil works there. she said only till today. they only run fro a few days at this time of year.

oh bummer .

Mind - had loads of the Ben and Jerry's when it was reduced recently

edam: "Nothing wrong with jars of pesto, you'd hardly make your own, would you?" Ahem. Actually, yes! And now that I've tried home-made, I can't go back to shop bought so would rather do without if I don't have the ingredients to make it myself!

Interesting thread. I can cook reasonably well though I'm not sure how my cooking would stand up in a culture where most people can and do cook from scratch regularly - eg I would make pastry for a tart from scratch so compared with a soggy-several-days-old tart from a supermarket, of course it tastes good, but doubtless a 1950s housewife would not think much of it.

OP, you would probably find the book Bad Food Britain by Joanna Blythman (which Riven recommended) interesting. She argues that the food revival in Britain is over-rated and good cooking here is a marginal interest. I'm really not sure if the figures stack up or not - obviously there are a worrying number of people here who just eat readymeals but also lots of people who can cook well and a flourishing food culture in some places - eg where I live in rural Yorkshire our local small town has butcher's and greengrocer's shops which are unpretentious but top quality, but equally there are many people whose only option is the supermarket. I thought the post below about Belgium & the issue of availabilty of quality ingredients or prepared things which make it easy to eat well, was interesting - our butcher, for example, does koftas and burgers which are so darn good there's no way I could produce anything better no matter how many spices I ground and fresh herbs I grew, so I can easily do a meal that is way above supermarket readymeal standards without having to do very much.