Can I be alone in finding german supermarkets and food generally dull and uninspiring?

[diyxyz999]

Having to cook everyday, nevermind think what we will eat and hence what I need to shop for - bores me rigid, but goodness do find german supermarkets boring and uninspiring. I have been here nearly 3 yrs and can I find a potato big enough to bake? I cannot find fish stock cubes - just some liquid in a jar for 3 euros!

Fastfood - always a variation on a sausage and fries with a spicy salt mixture on them. No chance of a baked potato.

I do like the germans and I like living here but goodness their cuisine leaves a lot to be desired.

Having just returned from a frustrating trip to the supermarket, rant over!

[PetiteRaleuse]

bertie am at the french/german/luxembourg border. If that helps.

[PetiteRaleuse]

We often pop over to Germany for kaffee & kuchen. On Sunday afternoons.

[BlingBubbles]

What I would do for a lamb roast, I can not find decent lamb anywhere! One of my colleagues said to go to the Turkish shops, I think I may need to very soon.

[PetiteRaleuse]

Butcher or frozen section of supermarket. Lamb seems to be a luxury here.

[butterfliesinmytummy]

The German supermarket in Baku Azerbaijan in the 1990s was the height of luxury. Fond memories of frankfurters in jars and sliced cheese. The local supermarkets had Red Cross tins of tuna and corned beef that had been stolen appropriated from crisis areas.... Not good

[drinkingtea]

AndMiffy bicarbonate of soda is Natron in German - you can get it in little sachets in the baking section at almost any supermarket here.

Gremlingirl we don't have Schenke - I've never even heard of it - supermarkets do vary an awful lot by region don't they! We have Aldi, Lidl, Neto, Norma, Real, Edeka and Kaufland within a 40 minute drive. Will look on Amazon though. Curry pastes would be good too - Aldi did have some once in their special one week only section...

[drinkingtea]

Lamb is seasonal here Bling - ask your local butcher, they can sometimes get it for you, but usually people eat lamb at easter (so get your order in with the butcher now) supermarkets rarely have it, though Aldi occasionally has it frozen as a special.

Most fresh fruit and veg (with the exception of bananas) is available seasonally in the smaller supermarkets and markets, and that is true of some other fresh products too - once I got used to that I decided I liked it - less food miles etc and leads you naturally to cook different things at different times of year.

[hellokittymania]

I lived on butterbrezelm and those disgusting meals you heat in the microwave for the 3 months I was in Stuttgart.

:(

[drinkingtea]

4 bottles of golden syrup ordered for €11 plus €4.90 shipping, thanks Gremlingirl :o We order teabags on ebay, but for some reason my searches for golden syrup had only brought up "British stores" where they charge you 37 times the price, and it was just silly - no idea why I didn't try Amazon! Can go back to my quick and easy chocolate fudge cake recipe for DS2's birthday now, instead of the much more fiddle golden syrup free American/ German recipe! :o

Hellokitty aside from a few things (cheddar, "British style" tea bags, golden syrup :o, decent curry,...) you can get most things in Germany, if you shop around.

You can get walkers crisps including salt and vinegar in individual size packets in Subway here for some reason :o Obviously an expensive way to go if you want loads, but for the odd craving it is an option.

[Artandco]

I always found rewe to be the best supermarket for choice. I lived off raum spinat

[Verycold]

That made me giggle... Room spinach?

Rahmspinat!

[Allalonenow]

Oohh I love endive, I'm Belgian though, so that explains it

[Artandco]

Haha my stupid iPhone hates spell checking German!

[Gremlingirl]

Drinkingtea - hooray for golden syrup! We have an Asian shop near us which sells all the curry stuff (individual spices plus all the pastes and pickles and an interesting selection of whole fish with heads, chicken feet and the like) Plus, another vote for the international food section of Real if you have a big one near you. They have most things, even proper tea bags and real condensed milk in one country or another.

[YouForgotToCallMePeppa]

I do feel your pain - I find a lot of supermarkets are quite small, so their stuff does have to be seasonal, they just can't fit in the range of fruit and veg especially. I was excited to see this week that green beans have appeared in ours!
We have a big weekly food market in town and they have a potato stall with loads of different varieties. I think in the winter they tend to have bigger "baking potatoes" - but I have seen them on menus often. Though they tend to bake them in foil, so the skin isn't crispy.
The market is very good, it has fresh fish too, which I can't get in the supermarket.
I stock up on things like mature cheddar and Marmite and golden syrup and HP sauce when I go into the city (Galeria Kaufhof sells lots of international things). And I stuff my suitcase with teabags when I go back to Britain.
But my local supermarkets are not bad (or maybe I am just used to them now). I usually go to Rewe, we have a big Hit and Tegut nearby, but I actually find them a bit overwhelmingly big now

I remember when we first moved here, we went to find a supermarket the first day, and ended up in a Penny Markt. I just thought "Oh god, what have we done? This move was a huge mistake!"
Still don't like Penny Markt

[Gremlingirl]

Pennymarkt is how I always imagine the supermarkets were like in the old East Germany

[MmeLindor]

We must have been quite spoiled where we lived in Germany, cause I find the supermarkets pretty good.

Do you have a TeGut nearby? They are around Fulda/Wuerzburg area and v good.

For British style big supermarket, you have to leave Aldi and Lidl behind and head for a Toom Markt or Walmart. Or Real. The small local shops are limited in their selection, I admit.

And I don't know what you mean about the German cooking - I really miss it and have been doing a lot of German food since we moved back to UK.

Schnitzel, Spaetzle, Gulash (Ok, not German but eaten a lot there), Geschnetzltes...

[MrsJohnDeere]

This thread has brought back so many memories.

When we lived in Frankfurt we got so frustrated with the supermarkets that once a month we would to drive to Strasbourg to visit the big Auchan and do a big shop.

[AphraBane]

The joke is that Germans in the UK whinge just as much about the awful British food.

It's true that many supermarkets are uninspiring, but a lot of that is because the high-end ready-meal market is just a lot less developed. I notice when I'm in Germany I buy far more in the way of 'whole' single ingredients and combine them myself, whereas in the UK I would buy more ready food because it seems less processed and more appetising. Does that even make sense?

If you go shopping in the discounters like Aldi or Lidl, of course you're going to get depressed about the experience. The one reasonably good supermarket (but usually much smaller than in the UK and still issues on freshness) is Kaisers/Tengelmann (name changes depending on where you live). The one we go to in Berlin has been voted 'Berlin Supermarket of the Year', admittedly there is very little competition for the title. But it means you can ask for cannelloni without an assistant going 'Eh, wat soll dit Zeug?', which in Berlin is a rare thing indeed.

I would agree that individual Rewe or Edeka branches can be good, but our local Edeka has no Earl Grey, for instance. The savages!

I can recommend the online service of English Shop Cologne for any packed British goods. Quick delivery, and the 5 euro delivery charge isn't much more than the petrol and parking costs if you drive to the nearest town.

[Artandco]

Ah the days of going to the English shop in koeln and spending 14 euros on marmite!

[AphraBane]

Is marmite 14 euros there artandco? I put in an order a few days back (admittedly no Marmite, yuck) and didn't think the prices were too bad. But perhaps that's because I'm so badly out of touch with British prices anyway. It would be unrealistic to expect them to import the stuff and then sell it for the same as British prices - none of the expat shops can do that. I'd say on average the prices are double what you'd pay in the UK, but it's much less hassle than the alternatives.

[horsetowater]

www.oetker-shop.de/dr-oetker-buecher.html?cat=29&p=3

German food is all about fresh ingredients, very subtle herbs and spices. Things like celeriac fritters or cauliflower with coriander sauce. Game stew with juniper and lovage. I don't get the whole abendbrot thing though, and the obsession with processed meat.

[FrauEnglischLehrerin]

I agree with MmeLindor that Tegut is the best German supermarket chain, but you have to live in the right place to have access to one.

I've been here nearly 14 years and have got used to most things/know what to put on my UK shopping list. Baking potatoes are however the one thing that still irritates me. All you can buy is a 15kg sack of Back- und Grill-Kartoffeln which are waxy . All floury potatoes are tiny. I can only conclude that no German ever has eaten a proper big, fluffy, crispy baked potato otherwise they would stop serving foil-wrapped bricks in their place...

[Artandco]

Aphra - not sure anymore, that was 4/5 years ago I'm afraid

[AndMiffyWentToSleep]

Ah, thanks drinkingtea, the security guys at Heathrow were quite puzzled when they found my bicarb of soda (along with cling film and paneer!) in my handluggage!
Why do they sell them in those 15g pouches - do ALL german recipes require that amount?
I think I need to dig out that German recipe thread from a few months ago...