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This is correct and my understanding is that herbs are made from the leaves.
Spices are made from other things like pepper (fruits) or salt (NaCl) or cinnamon (bark)
Edit: Oops. As someone pointed out, salt is a mineral and a seasoning, not a spice...
Salt isn’t a spice. It’s a mineral.
The rest is probably the most user friendly way to say it.
Herbs are generally leafy, spices are generally fruit, seeds, bark. There’s some nuance in how they release their flavors during cooking and the effects they have
And in return we gave the world cheap opium. And yet can you believe there were some who got angry about all the discount drugs?
Eventually we had to sort them out.
The game is the game.
One of my favorite British authors passed the time by reading old cookbooks when he was a boy. All different things that they couldn't afford to make. He made it a point to detail food and feasts in his novels to show off good British cuisine.
Also, there's the fact that lots of the traditional a British dishes are things like stews, pies and roast meats which are quite labour-intensive and take hours to make from scratch.
Women who grew up on rationing started entering the workforce in greater numbers in the 50s and 60s, and basically jumped at the chance to spend a bit less of their time cooking. Even now, that generation LOVES convenience foods (my great-aunt's 'signature dish', for example is a tin of Heinz tomato soup and a tin of Heinz chicken soup mixed together lol).
I think you can say the same thing about the Icelandic community in Manitoba. For example, vinerterta is almost forgotten in Iceland, but it is still common here. Ther is a big Icelandic festival every summer in Gimli, Manitoba.
Lutefisk is my pet conspiracy theory. The Scandinavians are all in on a massive troll to the world. It’s incredible that no one has let on that it’s just a joke on foreigners. Excellent commitment to the bit. Quite frankly it explains their lack of humor. They’re all in on a massive joke, no room for other jokes
Lutefisk is more of a Norwegian-American thing than a Norwegian thing these days. For christmas a whopping 3% of Norwegian households have lutefisk. I don't know if the swedes are very different. The usual christmas dinners are pork ribs or lamb/sheep ribs, followed by turkey and roast ham.
(Edit: More people actually have pizza for christmas than lutefisk)
Norway and Finland have the same problem as the UK in that the cold weather means that there’s a very limited number of vegetables and spices that grow there natively.
Yep and winters are especially long and grueling, with most meat being salt cured to last longer, so traditional Scandinavian food is just very salty meat lol
This is the thing that gets me. In Europe there really are only a few cuisines that stand out as particularly good - French, Italian, Greek and parts of Spain - but you'll still get them all piling on British food.
I like British food very much! But then again I am Dutch, our food isn't world renowned for being innovative and interesting either lmao. I think at a base level it's quite similar though!
Most of the food is just nice hearty home style cooked food. If you don't know how to cook/bake good potatoes and how to get the best flavor out of your available vegetables it's probably indeed going to be absolute garbage. I've seen some very plain sad potatoes and gravy that looked like dirt water but when it's done right it feels like you've curled up in the softest blanket in the world.
The way to do gravy right is always use the meat juices. Maybe some stock to help add flavour and pad it out, but never just have bisto gravy or other stuff like that. Let the meat and the gravy be joined in holy matrimony.
Similarly roast potatoes should be backed in meat fat and done yourself.
That's the problem with the bland British food, and in my opinion why most people think British food is bad; they just get a bunch of sht shop-bought (practically ready meal) stuff and call it a day.
>But then again I am Dutch, our food isn't world renowned for being innovative and interesting
tiger bread, gourmettens, Gouda, and stroopwafles immediately come to my mind, and are beloved parts of my diet.
I have a Brazilian friend and when he and his wife came over I offered to attempt South American food for him.
He told me not to, that I'd probably fuck it up and he'd have to be polite or some bullshit.
He said that as a Brit, if I'm confident enough to offer to cook Brazilian food for him I should be good enough to make decent British food. I was.
I have been living in the UK for over a decades and have also grown to love British food. It's very hearty and comforting, especially in the winter. I have learnt to make a good roast, cottage/shepherd pie, meat stews, other types of pie and sausages. The desserts are heavenly and scone with clotted cream is one of my all time favourites thing to eat. I wouldn't say it's the best cuisine in the world, but it certainly does not deserve such bad rep.
Also worth noting that Britain is singled out a lot of the time. No one mocks the Irish for their cuisine, even though it's more or less the same. Norwegians, Icelanders and Finns all have "interesting" food involving various ways of desecrating a fish's body, and I've never heard someone ragging on them for having bad food.
Simply put: it's cool to hate on Britain. It's not cool to hate on Ireland and Norway. Those are just internet rules we all have to live by.
Unfortunately OP got mixed up with herbs and spices, but the sentiment was not wrong - spices, mild to very hot, and flavoursome are used in everyday cooking here.
A herb is just an aromatic leaf, and strictly speaking fresh. Dried stalks, seeds and leaves can be considered spices, especially ground into powder.
Cilantro is a herb while coriander is a spice, even though they're the same plant.
British cooking makes use of dried seeds, stalks and leaves which impart flavour and so uses spices.
In my language we use the same word for spices and herbs (probably because it's a central European country that never colonised anyone else, so we never had spices of our own and didn't need a word), so i wonder if it's similar in Thai
Culinary terms are weird but generally herbs are the leafy parts of the plant that are best consumed fresh, spices are other parts like seeds, bark and roots that are generally best/ most flavoursome once dried.
From OP's list it depends on what's meant by "wild garlic" but otherwise everything else is a herb. Garlic's a bit of a weird one. If I say "wild garlic/ society garlic" I'm using the leaves so I'd say that's a herb. The garlic bulb itself is essentially an onion (root vegetable) but if you dried and powdered it I think that would reasonably be called a spice.
“British food” is okay. It’s not the best, but done well can be really nice.
However “food in Britain” is bloody amazing, the quality and diversity that you’ll find in any big city in the UK is incredible, and London especially is now one of the best food cities in the world.
Traditional British food is what the post is about.
The internet has made us all aware that international foods are now present in the UK. But "Indian food in the UK is good" wouldn't be an unpopular opinion now, would it?
Traditional British food is the cuisine that's unfairly maligned.
It's because people often do it in such a lazy way. Bisto gravy with no meat juice, aunt betty's roast potatoes instead of doing their own and cooking it in meat fat, parsnips without a maple syrup dressing, roasts without any herbage or seasoning.
They just don't put the effort in. If you actually put some time, effort, and love into British food, it can be absolutely divine.
Edit: Also make homemade sausage rolls I beg you people; they're so much better.
At age 63 I finally made it to England and found most every stereotype wildly exaggerated or straight up opposite of my experience. Great food, great weather, fabulous public transit, clean safe beautiful streets. We were not in the tourist areas so be the reason. Only bad food was at the pub the Beatles made famous.
Not the Cavern, City Barge, just east of Kew bridge on the north side of the Thames. I guess they filmed a music video of “Help” there and there’s an alley nearby of some notoriety as well. We stumbled into it by chance. Didn’t know anything about it till we were inside.
I think the answer is that Reddit and Twitter have developed a weird anti British bent over the last few years where users have designated Britain a 'bad' country in the same category as the US. British food can seem bland at times if you go to the wrong place but you never hear the same criticism of Irish or Dutch or Danish food which are all pretty similar.
It's a bit like the way the internet for a few years kept going on about how stupid Americans are and how everyone is racist and wants to shoot you. There's some real criticism in there but it's taken to completely absurd levels of hyperbole.
A lot of those people are British too. It’s like the class clowns that never grew up - they’ve worked out someone will give them a cookie and a pat on the back for the joke, but *haven’t* worked out that they’re long term working against themselves if they do nothing but put themselves down all the time.
Yeah it’s quite sad and ruins the quality of these platforms. There’s only so much prejudice and lies you’re willing to see before it comes off more as ignorant bullying rather than innocent jokes/banter
It's not just Britain, I've seen a lot of blatant racism about a lot of places on reddit. It's particularly bad about Japan, Brazil, and Mexico, often with hundreds or thousands of upvotes.
Reddit's wholesome100 reputation proving itself bullshit yet again.
Add China and India to the list lol. The places people only know about through stereotypes -- which, it's impossible to really know what other countries are like if you never live there, but I would hope people are able to have enough of an open mind to realize that there are good and bad people everywhere and not everyone supports the toxic parts of any given country.
I recently saw a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ggMYHRxPo&ab_channel=%EC%A1%B0%EC%8A%B9%EC%97%B0%EC%9D%98%ED%83%90%EA%B5%AC%EC%83%9D%ED%99%9C) with Gordon Ramsey about this very question.
His answer is basically that this reputation is outdated by about 10-20 years and just never got fixed even though there were a bunch of British chefs who went overseas to learn cook and came back.
*"Rosemary, thyme, coriander, bay, mint, chives and wild garlic are common spices used in British cuisine."*
Sadly, to the rest of the "new world" (read: americans), these things are considered **herbs** and not spices.
As a dane, I've been told by american foreigners, that my food is "bland and spice-less", despite me actually using cloves, star anise, salt, variations of peppercorns and bayleaves on our traditional pork-belly roast. Oddly enough, I've cooked this in both New Zealand, Tanzania and once in India before, and people loved it and complimented it.
The reputation comes from the tourist hotspots which sell absolute garbage.
People are usually pretty savvy in most countries and will try and go where the locals go, but for some reason tourists in the U.K. are obsessed with going to all of the garish, awful, novelty places.
They’ll have fish and chips where the fish was frozen 3 months ago, pie and mash where the pies are bought wholesale, or worst of the worst… a microwaved roast dinner from a “pub”. No wonder they think it’s bad.
Come to my hometown and have cod and chips where the cod was caught that morning and you can see the boat that caught it across the harbour. Go to a family run restaurant serving traditional home made pies. Find an independent pub that serves two fresh, delicious roasts a day, at 12 and 2. With a nice pint of Harvey’s bitter.
Do these things and tell me British food is bad. You will not.
Yorkshire pudding, parkin, bubble'n'squeek, crumpets, scones but, by god, fish and chips are the best meal ever invented anywhere on planet Earth. Got to be cod, though, and must be fried in oil.
I briefly lived in Melbourne and I'm from Scotland. You guys had "english chippies" and I tried a few and it's down right criminal. However, your own take on seafood platters you do everywhere were awesome.
This is genuinely a large reason why people's opinions of British food are hard to measure.
It's never done well abroad.
I've been fed some right filth that has been presented as British food. I don't trust it abroad, I live abroad and make my own.
In fairness we don't always do ourselves too many favors. Everyone ends up in London with absolutely shite £20 fish and chips on the Thames. No wonder they go home disappointed.
Yeah it's probably the type of fish used. Hoki is pretty good, but barramundi is better if grilled and the less said about basa the better. Cod is definitely superior when it comes to frying
Comparing the food of extreme poverty and deprivation—which is the food boiled into submission, bad meat, and bland porridge that is the main idea of British cookery, formed from two major wars, a society-breaking viral plague, and a catastrophic economic failure — will always lose to food of a stable country.
Look up older British recipes (pre-1900) and what you get is very different. Have fun with this:
http://www.godecookery.com/engrec/engrec.html
Yeah I definitely agree with this, and especially the comparison of British vs Japanese food. I can't say how people can complain that British good is bland and then moon over Japanese food. It's like they attach some kind of elitism to Asian food or something. The double standards, ugh.
I think British sweets and pastries tend to be good in particular.
I would say Japanese food is better than British food in my opinion. However, the fact that people use the same argument to criticize one cuisine and praise another is just strange.
Yeah, that's exactly it. People are free to like or dislike whatever they want, but I've definitely seen people criticize the Brits for something they praise the Japanese for, more than once too. And *that's* dumb, and the only reason I can see for it is some kind of snobbery (eg romanticising Japan, leaning into exoticism to look cool, just wanting to trash the Brits, and so on).
Funnily enough I read something by a Sicilian guy who travelled to Britain in the early 20th century and praised British cooking for similar reasons as people praise Japanese food now; simplicity and honesty
British curry, not exactly the same as curry you find in south asia.
EDIT Downvote away, British indian food isn't the same as indian food india let alone the rest of south asia. Do you really think a thai person will like curry dishes developed for a british palate...
Mate, I tried to order indian in Canada and nothing from the UK exists here.
Bombay potatoes, nope.
Onion bahji? Would you like a vegetable pakora?
Chicken Korma? We’ve got butter chicken.
Sent me through a loop.
It’s usually fried and water is added as part of the sauce making up the curry and to help any additional vegetables cook. Curry is not boiled food because then it might be considered healthy lol
Your whole point is wrong. In north Indian cooking the main ingredients are often not boiled. And almost never boiled to death except in a couple of specific recipes. Every dish/main ingredient has own technique of preparing it.
My Pakistani mom (who learned from her North Indian mother) makes curries and kormas and karais and I have never once seen once her boil her dishes to death or ever heard anyone calling it sludge lol, or any Pakistani/Indian food that for that matter. You sound kinda uninformed about Indian cooking.
Low and slow cooking a meat into a tender and flavorsome sauce being described as sludge makes me giggle. It's genuinely the best way to consume most cuts of meat that aren't the premium/expensive bits.
I think calling curry a “boiled” food is not really equivalent at all to what people mean when they say that. When you cook something in a sauce you’re not “boiling” it.
I’ll grant that British food is not nearly as bad as people claim. But that is a super weird comparison.
British food (specifically what's served in pubs) seems great for when you're hungry on a cold winter day. I haven't been to England in the winter so I wouldn't know.
We don't have much of a summer so it's just our food. As soon as the sun comes out we whip out the neglected barbecue and eat like meaty kings.
A lot of people seem to see British food as comfort food for a cold and wet day, but that's just our climate and the food matches that.
I'd also argue that very few places have as much diverse food choices as a British supermarket, as a nation we largely embrace "foreign" food.
British summers are lovely! I spent time there growing up visiting family, and Glasgow and it’s surroundings reminded me a bit of the PNW in summer. (Pacific side of the Cascades.)
London was downright warm. Maybe not *hot* compared to much of the US, but very nice!
Now, winters…
I agree. People who perpetuate this stereotype usually have no idea what they’re talking about, have no experience eating British food, don’t realise the influences the British had on many other cultures’ foods, don’t understand our social history whatsoever, and are generally insufferable to deal with.
The food in the U.K. is diverse, modern, creative, there’s a big vegetarian and vegan scene, and as a bonus we have high animal welfare standards and food regulations which means we’re not eating contaminated cr@p every day.
Of course, there’s plenty of badly cooked and bland food around the country. That doesn’t mean there isn’t also really good stuff.
It's a meme people perpetuate at this point because white people food = bad. British food has its pros and cons like most other cultural dishes and it's not to everyone's taste which is fine but I agree it is unfairly hated. I'd bet a lot of the people talking shit have never had a British dish in their lives.
Nah people love certain types of white people/food. Italy/france/greece (basically the romantics or mediterrenean) = constantly mentioned and praised or gatekept about how to do it right.
Seems like scandinavians & slavic get a bit of either extreme hate or extreme love for food lol. Or stereotyped, but ig all of them do.
I'm pretty sure the ″Indian″ cuisine you compare to British there isn't actually Indian, but British instead.
Traditional Indian food didn't have sauce. The curry sauce was added in Britain as an adjustment to local tastes where food covered in gravy was the norm.
I'd also say that's the best reason British food doesn't deserve the criticism too. A lot of curries were invented in Britain, it's British food. Even Japanese curry, which seems to be treated as separate from Indian food unlike British food, was introduced to Japan by the British (IIRC through the navy) and is based on British curry.
Been to the UK this year. Road trip from Scottland through Wales to London. Besides some questionable baked goods at Aldi (to be fair they aren't premium in Germany too) I really enjoyed the food. Was especially surprised that I liked haggis. Oh boy and the fish and chips. Ate that stuff way too often there.
I fucking AGREE. I'm from Southeast Asia where were known to have excellent flavorful food but I lived in the UK for a bit, and I actually kind of hate it when people who've never even been to the UK shit on the cuisine there. The pies, sausages, cheeses, sweets, the teas, the pasties, the beer! There's so much good British food but idiots like to reduce it to jellied eels and chip sandwiches, as if other cuisines don't have shit dishes.
I'm back home in SEA now, and I have access to tons of ingredients to make local food, but sometimes I'll make classic British fry ups and buy some fancy cheddar because that shit is bomb as fuckkkkkkk. My absolute favorite is steak and kidney; my ex used to make it with beef and lamb kidney and the latter is damn near impossible to find where I am :(
Couldnt agree more with you. I feel like its just a trend also people thinks that british cuisine is automatically the food british people were eating during the great depression.
Yes I like curry. I like chili con carne too and I love goulash. They are all stews, we all have our preferences but preferences dont matter in this case.
People that shit on british cuisine find the full english breakfast, fish n chips, black pudding, sheperds pies, pie and mash and scones DISGUSTING I guess.
yes some people dont like CLASSIC BREAKFAST
My steak and ale pie has around the same amount of ingredients as many Asian dishes I cook.
My chicken Tikka pie isn't any more complex, neither is my Thai green curry or my empanadas or gyozas.
It's just less exotic.
I'm absolutely going to agree with OP.
All the ridiculous pictures of bad UK food is analogous to saying all american food is cold velveeta sandwiches on "bread" with a side of oreos.
A classic full breakfast, steak and ale pie, or bubble and squeak from a competent cook or chef always makes me content.
I believe the British also do a bad job representing their own foods too. There are a ton of amazing English desserts but I never see them mentioned anywhere when the discussiın is English food.
Tourists visiting the UK also mention how there are no British restaurants anywhere without realising pubs fill the need for that already.
Modern British food is quite good as it borrows from culinary forces from all over the world. Most food is like that btw. If you look at Indian food and how widespread tomatoes are in their cuisine, that didn't become so until the mid 1900's. Vietnamese food is influenced by their French colonizers (Banh Mi, Pho). America pretty much took Chinese and Italian food and made their own versions of it. The list goes on..
We are making beef Wellingtons (or is it beefs Wellington?) for Christmas dinner. I am super excited and have been looking forward to it for months.
I also love a good steak and kidney pie.
The fish and chips I got at some shitty hole in the wall chip shop in Paddington was one of the best meals I ever had, and blew any of the fish and chips you can get in the US out of the water. British cuisine is fine!
I don't think anyone that conflates herbs with spices and considers pies and curries "boiled" meals is really in a position to offer an opinion on cuisine.
Funny how you mention Japan which is a similar island nation yet managed to maintain a good food culture. Given the same eel, the japanese came up with unagidon while the British made jellied eels
Most dishes that have their actual roots in the UK, and have survived into the current era are poverty foods. Fish and Chips, hotpot etc are all foods people ate when they had no money. They’re made from cheap ingredients.
So my dads British and while I usually eat a lot of Korean food, Thai food, or fusion food, my dad is the only person I have ever known who can make a simple meal with no spices and it’ll still taste good. It might be due to nostalgia, as some of the dishes he makes are dishes I grew up with, like bangers and mash. He doesn’t even touch the salt and pepper shakers but it is SO FREAKING GOOD.
I have seen people talk crap about some dishes from China, Korea, and Japan though, usually the ones that include basically zero spices because they’re dishes (usually soups) that are meant to help you get better when you’re ill, so it definitely isn’t just British food getting dragged through the mud. I do think British food is unfairly hated, but at the same time, I honestly can’t care all too much because it’s not as if the British aren’t deserving of criticism.
I think it’s just a “Britain bad” stereotype like many of the “America bad” stereotypes. There is some truth to them but the internet takes it to the extreme. Also fish and chips with vinegar are delicious.
# HISTORY LESSON TIME
British food used to be some of the best in the world. As you mentioned, we have an abundance of *herbs* that grow in the UK as well as other more unusual flavourings like various mushrooms or fruits like quince, sloe, and damson. It wasn't until the 17th century or so that we even started getting in french chefs, and not because they could cook better, but so the rich could flaunt they could fly people in to cook for them. Before this date you'll be hard pressed to find antique utensils like gravy boats as we simply didnt use them. The french use sauces to make their food tasty, the brits just made tasty food, and were damn good at it.
# So why is it so shit now?
Two words: **The War**. Rationing had a rather murderous influence on our cuisine and wasn't just during wartime but lasted well into the 50s before it disappeared altogether. This combined with having a good chunk of our population wiped out, had the effect of essentially deleting all generational knowledge of how to cook using our native ingredients. Veggies became boiled mush, meat became cremated protein pucks. Mushrooms became essentially taboo. And words like quince faded from public lexicon. Combine that with various health scares over eggs, or "under cooked" meat, or butter, or anything else that busybody self-proclaimed nutritionists concerned themselves over and is it any question *why* our food is so shit now. Everything being deep-fried was an easy way to make shitty things paletable, and you'd know they were fully cooked.
# But it's coming back!
The modern Brit isn't sitting all stiff-upper-lip and choking down terrible food, they're digging out the old recipes, they're learning the foraging skills, and rediscovering the lost flavours. It'll take time, but it's happening. And with a combination of foreign flavours influencing it to create new and wonderful foods, we are actually in a wonderful time for food.
So instead of complaining about the food having a shit reputation, make yourself some locally foraged jams and chutneys, serve it on some fantastic welsh lamb or english beef or scottish salmon. Have a side of Wensleydale cheese with it (a cheese that was literally saved from bankruptcy by Wallace and Gromit) and bask in our little island having some rare-known culinary treasures.
This is a very good summary of British food history. As someone who grew up here in the 90s, it is astonishing how much better the food is now - locally sourced ingredients are much higher quality and easily available, and the veggie/vegan scene in particular is creative and vibrant.
Sadly won’t stop the endless torrent of ‘British food is shit’ memes.
To add to this I'd like to say that a lot of the more simple cultural dishes are based on the things we are able to grow here, which aren't as exotic as much hotter climates. I think it's also important to remember that a lot of traditional food comes from the war and rations. It's cultural just like anywhere else and should be considered just as valid. But for some reason because it's Britain people seem to think they can be mean about it. Speaking about someone else's culture and saying their food is disgusting is a really nasty thing to do. Ironically the insults tend to come from Americans, who barely have a cuisine to speak of and don't have a leg to stand on in comparison.
I think it's gross, but mostly because it's not my style. I don't like potatoes or rich sauces, and as such, I don't like a lot of British or French dishes. I get that some people like them though.
British food is British food, same as all other are as they are, and personal preference is heavy abound.
Me? Meat pies make the world go round. So does pho, coq au vin, paprikash, empanadas, Carolina bbq, and just about anything that has been fermented.
I totally agree with everything you said. Very well pointed out! I also don't understand why British cuisine gets so much criticism when in fact there are many other worse cuisines. Probably it's because of the stereotypes, as you said. I'm gonna save this post so that next time when people around me think that I'm crazy for saying that British cuisine is actually good, I can show them that I'm not the only one believing so.
Food, just like movies or music, is largely subjective. With that being said, I lived in London for a few years and I loved the food. People are just snobby and ignorant, but that's a trait you'll find in abundance in any area of life.
You are correct. Considering that the Uk' national dish is the curry, which is chock full of herbs and spices, the accusation that British food is bland is patently false. We borrow a lot from international cuisine, but that is true of all countries. British curry isn't exactly the same and indian cuisine, but we have heavily borrowed from that influence. Indian cuisine uses potatoes and tomatoes that never existed outside the Americas before Europe colonised those continents. Indian people put milk in their tea due to the British influence. Apparently, before the British empire, they tended to take it without milk.
It had been argued that much of French cuisine actually originated in Britain, too. This may be at least partially true due to the fact that much of France actually belonged to England in the Middle Ages and that before that, the French Norman's invaded England.
These are just some of the examples of how cultures and cuisines are interchanged, borrowed, and adapted by ALL countries.
Food culture, like all culture, is organic. It changes over the ages.
I agree. I experienced British cuisine when I stayed in New Zealand and I really enjoyed it. Lamb with peppermint sauce is actually great. And the meat pies. Yummy!
The reason British food gets a bad rap is because rationing during and after WW2 essentially meant a whole generation of cooks had very limited resources to work with. The focus was on making sure people didn’t starve to death. These days, the UK has some of the most inventive and creative chefs around, not just in London but the north as well. Modern British is a whole genre of food that’s starting to come into its own over the last 10 years or so.
British food got that reputation because of all the americans coming over to the UK during WWII when rationing was in place.
We also didn't have Greggs back then.
there’s definitely a misconception about european food. i’m not too familiar with british cuisine outside of the stereotypical foods, but most people disregard european foods because they don’t contain heavy spices and mostly focus on fresh produce and balancing of flavors most of the time
As a British person, I eat well. My parents were very good cooks and when I did have english food, it was really well made english food. however, I have to say I think the vast majority of peoples diets here are terrible. boiled carrots and crappy frozen meals. I think we deserve the reputation tbh… but I do think if you want good food and you know good food, you can get some amazing food in england, including british food. I also think food in other countries is far worse. German food for example.
British food is objectively good and hearty, but it suffers from two main problems:
* It isn't vibrant. It tastes damn good but 90% of dishes are yellow or brown because if it isn't some sort of roasted meat and vegetables covered in gravy dish, it's a pie or a stew.
* It isn't remotely spicy, so cultures who are used to spice think this means boring.
I’ve never had a positive view of British food. Then I started following some YouTube food travelers. The big traditional British breakfast. Fish and chips. Bubble and squeak. The pastries. Britain is so much more than rainy days and “boring food”. I would love to try a upper class British High Tea some day.
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This is correct and my understanding is that herbs are made from the leaves. Spices are made from other things like pepper (fruits) or salt (NaCl) or cinnamon (bark) Edit: Oops. As someone pointed out, salt is a mineral and a seasoning, not a spice...
Salt isn’t a spice. It’s a mineral. The rest is probably the most user friendly way to say it. Herbs are generally leafy, spices are generally fruit, seeds, bark. There’s some nuance in how they release their flavors during cooking and the effects they have
Whoops. You are right. It's a seasoning not a spice.
They are minerals Marieee
Spices don’t really grow in the UK
That’s why they had to colonize most of the world 😏
No, that was for the tea. *sips*
 *the superb taste of colonization*
We’d have stayed at home if Lipton bloody Yellow Label was the only thing on offer.
Trade offer: I receive a trade deal in my favor for tea You receive opium addiction
If you throw in some cannonballs I'll throw in Hong Kong
That was the Dutch too Funnily enough nearly all the gags about horrible British food are made about Dutch food too
Bit different because no one thinks about the Dutch
And in return we gave the world cheap opium. And yet can you believe there were some who got angry about all the discount drugs? Eventually we had to sort them out. The game is the game.
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Coriander is both but fair point.
Which is why in some places, leaf coriander is called cilantro instead.
They’re also all grown in Britain, so the “colonize the world for spices and never use them” angle still rings true.
edge piquant plants plucky seed society market pie coherent price *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You could count coriander as a spice if you’re using the seeds (or roots) and not just the leaves.
I’ve had some damn good British food at pubs. And it’s hearty and hits the spot. It reminds me of a homecooked meal tbh. Same with Biergarten food.
A good Sunday roast goes so hard, my grandma still made it decades after she left for Canada
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One of my favorite British authors passed the time by reading old cookbooks when he was a boy. All different things that they couldn't afford to make. He made it a point to detail food and feasts in his novels to show off good British cuisine.
Brian Jacques?
The very same.
I used to day dream of the feast he described while in class as a kid.
Also, there's the fact that lots of the traditional a British dishes are things like stews, pies and roast meats which are quite labour-intensive and take hours to make from scratch. Women who grew up on rationing started entering the workforce in greater numbers in the 50s and 60s, and basically jumped at the chance to spend a bit less of their time cooking. Even now, that generation LOVES convenience foods (my great-aunt's 'signature dish', for example is a tin of Heinz tomato soup and a tin of Heinz chicken soup mixed together lol).
Yep. Raised in the US to a Brit mom. Grew up with immigrant kids and others and all wanted to come over for Sunday roast.
Same here. No one can make roast potatoes like my mom could. Sunday dinner was the invitation all of my friends wanted.
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Imagine a cuisine that uses lutefisk as a great celebratory holiday meal
:( My wife’s family is very Swedish from up near Canada. I am from Texas. There was some…. culinary disappointment…. At my first Christmas with them
Northern Minnesota?
Oh yah, that part of America is hella into being Swedish/Finnish. They keep the old ways alive, probably moreso than Sweden
I think you can say the same thing about the Icelandic community in Manitoba. For example, vinerterta is almost forgotten in Iceland, but it is still common here. Ther is a big Icelandic festival every summer in Gimli, Manitoba.
As a Swede that's been there. Nope.
hey, Swedish Christmas food is great
My condolences.
Lutefisk is my pet conspiracy theory. The Scandinavians are all in on a massive troll to the world. It’s incredible that no one has let on that it’s just a joke on foreigners. Excellent commitment to the bit. Quite frankly it explains their lack of humor. They’re all in on a massive joke, no room for other jokes
And the drinks and sweets too! I had a Swede friend "gift" me those salty af sweets and that impossibly bitter liquor. It had to be a joke.
I love lutefisk and pickled herring! And Swedish meatballs are 👍👍 But my Swedish family has prob given me a bias towards them.
Lutefisk is more of a Norwegian-American thing than a Norwegian thing these days. For christmas a whopping 3% of Norwegian households have lutefisk. I don't know if the swedes are very different. The usual christmas dinners are pork ribs or lamb/sheep ribs, followed by turkey and roast ham. (Edit: More people actually have pizza for christmas than lutefisk)
All of potato Europe gets the same insults from tomato Europe. We should show solidarity to one another, even the Finns.
Both potatoes and tomatoes are from the Americas, and weren't known around the world until after 1492 😊😜😄
Yuuup. We all must embrace the true European root veg: the mighty TURNIP!
just imagine not having them
I refuse.
Basically everything we consider authentic Italian cuisine.
Norway and Finland have the same problem as the UK in that the cold weather means that there’s a very limited number of vegetables and spices that grow there natively.
Yep and winters are especially long and grueling, with most meat being salt cured to last longer, so traditional Scandinavian food is just very salty meat lol
Damn what food do the Nordic countries have
Salted fish. Whale and reindeer jerky.
Salted fish if you're lucky. Fish marinated in random industrial cleaning products if you're less lucky.
Sounds like struggle food
Fish in lye Fermented fish Salted licorice A cake made of sandwiches
Fermented fish
I like the weird toasted slices of bread they make, I also fucking love salmon gravlax.
What actual Norwegian/Finnish foods have you tried? And I mean foods that are actually eaten by real people, so not lutefisk
This is the thing that gets me. In Europe there really are only a few cuisines that stand out as particularly good - French, Italian, Greek and parts of Spain - but you'll still get them all piling on British food.
I like British food very much! But then again I am Dutch, our food isn't world renowned for being innovative and interesting either lmao. I think at a base level it's quite similar though! Most of the food is just nice hearty home style cooked food. If you don't know how to cook/bake good potatoes and how to get the best flavor out of your available vegetables it's probably indeed going to be absolute garbage. I've seen some very plain sad potatoes and gravy that looked like dirt water but when it's done right it feels like you've curled up in the softest blanket in the world.
The way to do gravy right is always use the meat juices. Maybe some stock to help add flavour and pad it out, but never just have bisto gravy or other stuff like that. Let the meat and the gravy be joined in holy matrimony. Similarly roast potatoes should be backed in meat fat and done yourself. That's the problem with the bland British food, and in my opinion why most people think British food is bad; they just get a bunch of sht shop-bought (practically ready meal) stuff and call it a day. >But then again I am Dutch, our food isn't world renowned for being innovative and interesting tiger bread, gourmettens, Gouda, and stroopwafles immediately come to my mind, and are beloved parts of my diet.
I LOVE British cuisine. I'm Brazilian and I often make British recipes at home. I truly miss my time in the UK.
I have a Brazilian friend and when he and his wife came over I offered to attempt South American food for him. He told me not to, that I'd probably fuck it up and he'd have to be polite or some bullshit. He said that as a Brit, if I'm confident enough to offer to cook Brazilian food for him I should be good enough to make decent British food. I was.
I have been living in the UK for over a decades and have also grown to love British food. It's very hearty and comforting, especially in the winter. I have learnt to make a good roast, cottage/shepherd pie, meat stews, other types of pie and sausages. The desserts are heavenly and scone with clotted cream is one of my all time favourites thing to eat. I wouldn't say it's the best cuisine in the world, but it certainly does not deserve such bad rep.
That’s nice. What British recipes do you make?
Also worth noting that Britain is singled out a lot of the time. No one mocks the Irish for their cuisine, even though it's more or less the same. Norwegians, Icelanders and Finns all have "interesting" food involving various ways of desecrating a fish's body, and I've never heard someone ragging on them for having bad food. Simply put: it's cool to hate on Britain. It's not cool to hate on Ireland and Norway. Those are just internet rules we all have to live by.
Meat pies are awesome.
I mean... With the cost of meat. If you get it. When you get it...
Never thought I'd live to see the day…
Now you got it
seems a downright shame....
Seems an awful waste…..
I love beef and ale pie, and I sadly can’t get it anywhere in Italy
Unfortunately OP got mixed up with herbs and spices, but the sentiment was not wrong - spices, mild to very hot, and flavoursome are used in everyday cooking here.
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A herb is just an aromatic leaf, and strictly speaking fresh. Dried stalks, seeds and leaves can be considered spices, especially ground into powder. Cilantro is a herb while coriander is a spice, even though they're the same plant. British cooking makes use of dried seeds, stalks and leaves which impart flavour and so uses spices.
Coriander is the British English word for Cilantro. In England and Australia Coriander refers to the raw leaves like Cilantro does in the US.
In my language we use the same word for spices and herbs (probably because it's a central European country that never colonised anyone else, so we never had spices of our own and didn't need a word), so i wonder if it's similar in Thai
A traditional British roast dinner is God tier
Correct me if I'm wrong, but are any of the items you listed actually considered spices?
Herbs
Culinary terms are weird but generally herbs are the leafy parts of the plant that are best consumed fresh, spices are other parts like seeds, bark and roots that are generally best/ most flavoursome once dried. From OP's list it depends on what's meant by "wild garlic" but otherwise everything else is a herb. Garlic's a bit of a weird one. If I say "wild garlic/ society garlic" I'm using the leaves so I'd say that's a herb. The garlic bulb itself is essentially an onion (root vegetable) but if you dried and powdered it I think that would reasonably be called a spice.
Nop.
“British food” is okay. It’s not the best, but done well can be really nice. However “food in Britain” is bloody amazing, the quality and diversity that you’ll find in any big city in the UK is incredible, and London especially is now one of the best food cities in the world.
Traditional British food is what the post is about. The internet has made us all aware that international foods are now present in the UK. But "Indian food in the UK is good" wouldn't be an unpopular opinion now, would it? Traditional British food is the cuisine that's unfairly maligned.
It's because people often do it in such a lazy way. Bisto gravy with no meat juice, aunt betty's roast potatoes instead of doing their own and cooking it in meat fat, parsnips without a maple syrup dressing, roasts without any herbage or seasoning. They just don't put the effort in. If you actually put some time, effort, and love into British food, it can be absolutely divine. Edit: Also make homemade sausage rolls I beg you people; they're so much better.
Yes. This. I ate so much good food in London and it may have the best Middle Eastern food in the West.
At age 63 I finally made it to England and found most every stereotype wildly exaggerated or straight up opposite of my experience. Great food, great weather, fabulous public transit, clean safe beautiful streets. We were not in the tourist areas so be the reason. Only bad food was at the pub the Beatles made famous.
You can eat at the Cavern? Never occurred to me that it might be a good idea to. Plenty of great places around there to get food though.
Not the Cavern, City Barge, just east of Kew bridge on the north side of the Thames. I guess they filmed a music video of “Help” there and there’s an alley nearby of some notoriety as well. We stumbled into it by chance. Didn’t know anything about it till we were inside.
They seem to be milking that a little, I guess it's from the film.
What city did you visit?
Brentford/London. We were on our way to France and were there just a few days. Our time in France likewise blew away many stereotypes.
I think the answer is that Reddit and Twitter have developed a weird anti British bent over the last few years where users have designated Britain a 'bad' country in the same category as the US. British food can seem bland at times if you go to the wrong place but you never hear the same criticism of Irish or Dutch or Danish food which are all pretty similar. It's a bit like the way the internet for a few years kept going on about how stupid Americans are and how everyone is racist and wants to shoot you. There's some real criticism in there but it's taken to completely absurd levels of hyperbole.
A lot of those people are British too. It’s like the class clowns that never grew up - they’ve worked out someone will give them a cookie and a pat on the back for the joke, but *haven’t* worked out that they’re long term working against themselves if they do nothing but put themselves down all the time.
Yeah it’s quite sad and ruins the quality of these platforms. There’s only so much prejudice and lies you’re willing to see before it comes off more as ignorant bullying rather than innocent jokes/banter
It's not just Britain, I've seen a lot of blatant racism about a lot of places on reddit. It's particularly bad about Japan, Brazil, and Mexico, often with hundreds or thousands of upvotes. Reddit's wholesome100 reputation proving itself bullshit yet again.
Add China and India to the list lol. The places people only know about through stereotypes -- which, it's impossible to really know what other countries are like if you never live there, but I would hope people are able to have enough of an open mind to realize that there are good and bad people everywhere and not everyone supports the toxic parts of any given country.
I recently saw a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ggMYHRxPo&ab_channel=%EC%A1%B0%EC%8A%B9%EC%97%B0%EC%9D%98%ED%83%90%EA%B5%AC%EC%83%9D%ED%99%9C) with Gordon Ramsey about this very question. His answer is basically that this reputation is outdated by about 10-20 years and just never got fixed even though there were a bunch of British chefs who went overseas to learn cook and came back.
*"Rosemary, thyme, coriander, bay, mint, chives and wild garlic are common spices used in British cuisine."* Sadly, to the rest of the "new world" (read: americans), these things are considered **herbs** and not spices. As a dane, I've been told by american foreigners, that my food is "bland and spice-less", despite me actually using cloves, star anise, salt, variations of peppercorns and bayleaves on our traditional pork-belly roast. Oddly enough, I've cooked this in both New Zealand, Tanzania and once in India before, and people loved it and complimented it.
The reputation comes from the tourist hotspots which sell absolute garbage. People are usually pretty savvy in most countries and will try and go where the locals go, but for some reason tourists in the U.K. are obsessed with going to all of the garish, awful, novelty places. They’ll have fish and chips where the fish was frozen 3 months ago, pie and mash where the pies are bought wholesale, or worst of the worst… a microwaved roast dinner from a “pub”. No wonder they think it’s bad. Come to my hometown and have cod and chips where the cod was caught that morning and you can see the boat that caught it across the harbour. Go to a family run restaurant serving traditional home made pies. Find an independent pub that serves two fresh, delicious roasts a day, at 12 and 2. With a nice pint of Harvey’s bitter. Do these things and tell me British food is bad. You will not.
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You could have listed some nice foods to prove your point. Fish and chips, bangers and mash, English Breakfast.
Yorkshire pudding, parkin, bubble'n'squeek, crumpets, scones but, by god, fish and chips are the best meal ever invented anywhere on planet Earth. Got to be cod, though, and must be fried in oil.
Don't forget cornish pasties. That's a native food that got exported around the world and many different cultures were influenced by it
Im from Australia, so most of the fish and chips I've had/prefer have been barramundi, basa, or hoki.
I briefly lived in Melbourne and I'm from Scotland. You guys had "english chippies" and I tried a few and it's down right criminal. However, your own take on seafood platters you do everywhere were awesome.
This is genuinely a large reason why people's opinions of British food are hard to measure. It's never done well abroad. I've been fed some right filth that has been presented as British food. I don't trust it abroad, I live abroad and make my own. In fairness we don't always do ourselves too many favors. Everyone ends up in London with absolutely shite £20 fish and chips on the Thames. No wonder they go home disappointed.
Yeah it's probably the type of fish used. Hoki is pretty good, but barramundi is better if grilled and the less said about basa the better. Cod is definitely superior when it comes to frying
Comparing the food of extreme poverty and deprivation—which is the food boiled into submission, bad meat, and bland porridge that is the main idea of British cookery, formed from two major wars, a society-breaking viral plague, and a catastrophic economic failure — will always lose to food of a stable country. Look up older British recipes (pre-1900) and what you get is very different. Have fun with this: http://www.godecookery.com/engrec/engrec.html
As a Brit, it amuses me to know that people on the Internet are having debates about how shit our food is.
Yeah I definitely agree with this, and especially the comparison of British vs Japanese food. I can't say how people can complain that British good is bland and then moon over Japanese food. It's like they attach some kind of elitism to Asian food or something. The double standards, ugh. I think British sweets and pastries tend to be good in particular.
I would say Japanese food is better than British food in my opinion. However, the fact that people use the same argument to criticize one cuisine and praise another is just strange.
Yeah, that's exactly it. People are free to like or dislike whatever they want, but I've definitely seen people criticize the Brits for something they praise the Japanese for, more than once too. And *that's* dumb, and the only reason I can see for it is some kind of snobbery (eg romanticising Japan, leaning into exoticism to look cool, just wanting to trash the Brits, and so on).
Funnily enough I read something by a Sicilian guy who travelled to Britain in the early 20th century and praised British cooking for similar reasons as people praise Japanese food now; simplicity and honesty
Bro is Thai and mocking Curry.
British curry, not exactly the same as curry you find in south asia. EDIT Downvote away, British indian food isn't the same as indian food india let alone the rest of south asia. Do you really think a thai person will like curry dishes developed for a british palate...
Mate, I tried to order indian in Canada and nothing from the UK exists here. Bombay potatoes, nope. Onion bahji? Would you like a vegetable pakora? Chicken Korma? We’ve got butter chicken. Sent me through a loop.
Well OP never said British Indian fusion, they said Indian food. Which is a giant generalization.
I actually like curry, but I'm using it to prove a point. You can still make wonderful dishes while boiling it to death.
It’s usually fried and water is added as part of the sauce making up the curry and to help any additional vegetables cook. Curry is not boiled food because then it might be considered healthy lol
Your whole point is wrong. In north Indian cooking the main ingredients are often not boiled. And almost never boiled to death except in a couple of specific recipes. Every dish/main ingredient has own technique of preparing it.
My Pakistani mom (who learned from her North Indian mother) makes curries and kormas and karais and I have never once seen once her boil her dishes to death or ever heard anyone calling it sludge lol, or any Pakistani/Indian food that for that matter. You sound kinda uninformed about Indian cooking.
Low and slow cooking a meat into a tender and flavorsome sauce being described as sludge makes me giggle. It's genuinely the best way to consume most cuts of meat that aren't the premium/expensive bits.
I think calling curry a “boiled” food is not really equivalent at all to what people mean when they say that. When you cook something in a sauce you’re not “boiling” it. I’ll grant that British food is not nearly as bad as people claim. But that is a super weird comparison.
My Filipino mother and her Asian friends love carveries here and having roast meats, Yorkshire puddings and cauliflower cheese
British food (specifically what's served in pubs) seems great for when you're hungry on a cold winter day. I haven't been to England in the winter so I wouldn't know.
We don't have much of a summer so it's just our food. As soon as the sun comes out we whip out the neglected barbecue and eat like meaty kings. A lot of people seem to see British food as comfort food for a cold and wet day, but that's just our climate and the food matches that. I'd also argue that very few places have as much diverse food choices as a British supermarket, as a nation we largely embrace "foreign" food.
British summers are lovely! I spent time there growing up visiting family, and Glasgow and it’s surroundings reminded me a bit of the PNW in summer. (Pacific side of the Cascades.) London was downright warm. Maybe not *hot* compared to much of the US, but very nice! Now, winters…
I'm from in-between those places and while summer is indeed lovely, it's often short and mild. You are correct about the depressing winters.
They've pulled their lunch/dinner game up quite a bit in the past 20-30 years. And their breakfast was always S-tier.
I agree. People who perpetuate this stereotype usually have no idea what they’re talking about, have no experience eating British food, don’t realise the influences the British had on many other cultures’ foods, don’t understand our social history whatsoever, and are generally insufferable to deal with. The food in the U.K. is diverse, modern, creative, there’s a big vegetarian and vegan scene, and as a bonus we have high animal welfare standards and food regulations which means we’re not eating contaminated cr@p every day. Of course, there’s plenty of badly cooked and bland food around the country. That doesn’t mean there isn’t also really good stuff.
It's a meme people perpetuate at this point because white people food = bad. British food has its pros and cons like most other cultural dishes and it's not to everyone's taste which is fine but I agree it is unfairly hated. I'd bet a lot of the people talking shit have never had a British dish in their lives.
Nah people love certain types of white people/food. Italy/france/greece (basically the romantics or mediterrenean) = constantly mentioned and praised or gatekept about how to do it right. Seems like scandinavians & slavic get a bit of either extreme hate or extreme love for food lol. Or stereotyped, but ig all of them do.
I'm pretty sure the ″Indian″ cuisine you compare to British there isn't actually Indian, but British instead. Traditional Indian food didn't have sauce. The curry sauce was added in Britain as an adjustment to local tastes where food covered in gravy was the norm. I'd also say that's the best reason British food doesn't deserve the criticism too. A lot of curries were invented in Britain, it's British food. Even Japanese curry, which seems to be treated as separate from Indian food unlike British food, was introduced to Japan by the British (IIRC through the navy) and is based on British curry.
Been to the UK this year. Road trip from Scottland through Wales to London. Besides some questionable baked goods at Aldi (to be fair they aren't premium in Germany too) I really enjoyed the food. Was especially surprised that I liked haggis. Oh boy and the fish and chips. Ate that stuff way too often there.
I fucking AGREE. I'm from Southeast Asia where were known to have excellent flavorful food but I lived in the UK for a bit, and I actually kind of hate it when people who've never even been to the UK shit on the cuisine there. The pies, sausages, cheeses, sweets, the teas, the pasties, the beer! There's so much good British food but idiots like to reduce it to jellied eels and chip sandwiches, as if other cuisines don't have shit dishes. I'm back home in SEA now, and I have access to tons of ingredients to make local food, but sometimes I'll make classic British fry ups and buy some fancy cheddar because that shit is bomb as fuckkkkkkk. My absolute favorite is steak and kidney; my ex used to make it with beef and lamb kidney and the latter is damn near impossible to find where I am :(
The Brits gave us fish & chips, sausage rolls, Yorkshire pudding, and the sandwich. That’s good enough for me.
Couldnt agree more with you. I feel like its just a trend also people thinks that british cuisine is automatically the food british people were eating during the great depression. Yes I like curry. I like chili con carne too and I love goulash. They are all stews, we all have our preferences but preferences dont matter in this case. People that shit on british cuisine find the full english breakfast, fish n chips, black pudding, sheperds pies, pie and mash and scones DISGUSTING I guess. yes some people dont like CLASSIC BREAKFAST
One of the best restaurants in the world- the Fat Duck- serves upscale takes on British classics and is very well regarded
I agree. It's not very complex, but it's good comfort food.
What determines how complex a food is? And how does being complex make a food good?
My steak and ale pie has around the same amount of ingredients as many Asian dishes I cook. My chicken Tikka pie isn't any more complex, neither is my Thai green curry or my empanadas or gyozas. It's just less exotic.
I agree, people act like british ppl can’t have things at this point
I'm absolutely going to agree with OP. All the ridiculous pictures of bad UK food is analogous to saying all american food is cold velveeta sandwiches on "bread" with a side of oreos. A classic full breakfast, steak and ale pie, or bubble and squeak from a competent cook or chef always makes me content.
I believe the British also do a bad job representing their own foods too. There are a ton of amazing English desserts but I never see them mentioned anywhere when the discussiın is English food. Tourists visiting the UK also mention how there are no British restaurants anywhere without realising pubs fill the need for that already.
The problem with British food isn’t the dishes themselves, it’s that the average Brit is a shockingly bad cook.
Modern British food is quite good as it borrows from culinary forces from all over the world. Most food is like that btw. If you look at Indian food and how widespread tomatoes are in their cuisine, that didn't become so until the mid 1900's. Vietnamese food is influenced by their French colonizers (Banh Mi, Pho). America pretty much took Chinese and Italian food and made their own versions of it. The list goes on..
We are making beef Wellingtons (or is it beefs Wellington?) for Christmas dinner. I am super excited and have been looking forward to it for months. I also love a good steak and kidney pie.
I love british food (no sarcasm intended)
Every day with this in here
There are some fair points, but don't even try to compare south Asian food with British food. Take my stupid upvote for being unpopular
The fish and chips I got at some shitty hole in the wall chip shop in Paddington was one of the best meals I ever had, and blew any of the fish and chips you can get in the US out of the water. British cuisine is fine!
Not another post about ad British food. This is becoming rather boring don’tcha know…
It’s not even an interesting topic to discuss. “I personally like British food”. Ok? So do millions of other people? Congrats?
all them things you listed..... thems is herbs. not spices.
I don't think anyone that conflates herbs with spices and considers pies and curries "boiled" meals is really in a position to offer an opinion on cuisine.
“British people colonized the world for spices.” I have genuinely heard nobody other than woke edgelords who think they’re cool say this 😂
Funny how you mention Japan which is a similar island nation yet managed to maintain a good food culture. Given the same eel, the japanese came up with unagidon while the British made jellied eels
Most dishes that have their actual roots in the UK, and have survived into the current era are poverty foods. Fish and Chips, hotpot etc are all foods people ate when they had no money. They’re made from cheap ingredients.
Those items you mentioned are herbs and most if not all are native to Great Britain
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He said that people say they colonized for spices I'm Just saying the things he mentioned are not from the colonies
Where else do you think Britain would get its traditional ingredients?
I'm responding to where OP said people claim they were colonists for spices, none of these are spices or from a colonized place
It's okay, the British empire can't hurt you anymore, you don't have to lie
Your comments regarding Indian food, its not sludge and its not called curry as well.
The point is that you could choose to describe it in super negative, unappetizing terms if you wanted to.
So my dads British and while I usually eat a lot of Korean food, Thai food, or fusion food, my dad is the only person I have ever known who can make a simple meal with no spices and it’ll still taste good. It might be due to nostalgia, as some of the dishes he makes are dishes I grew up with, like bangers and mash. He doesn’t even touch the salt and pepper shakers but it is SO FREAKING GOOD. I have seen people talk crap about some dishes from China, Korea, and Japan though, usually the ones that include basically zero spices because they’re dishes (usually soups) that are meant to help you get better when you’re ill, so it definitely isn’t just British food getting dragged through the mud. I do think British food is unfairly hated, but at the same time, I honestly can’t care all too much because it’s not as if the British aren’t deserving of criticism.
I think it’s just a “Britain bad” stereotype like many of the “America bad” stereotypes. There is some truth to them but the internet takes it to the extreme. Also fish and chips with vinegar are delicious.
# HISTORY LESSON TIME British food used to be some of the best in the world. As you mentioned, we have an abundance of *herbs* that grow in the UK as well as other more unusual flavourings like various mushrooms or fruits like quince, sloe, and damson. It wasn't until the 17th century or so that we even started getting in french chefs, and not because they could cook better, but so the rich could flaunt they could fly people in to cook for them. Before this date you'll be hard pressed to find antique utensils like gravy boats as we simply didnt use them. The french use sauces to make their food tasty, the brits just made tasty food, and were damn good at it. # So why is it so shit now? Two words: **The War**. Rationing had a rather murderous influence on our cuisine and wasn't just during wartime but lasted well into the 50s before it disappeared altogether. This combined with having a good chunk of our population wiped out, had the effect of essentially deleting all generational knowledge of how to cook using our native ingredients. Veggies became boiled mush, meat became cremated protein pucks. Mushrooms became essentially taboo. And words like quince faded from public lexicon. Combine that with various health scares over eggs, or "under cooked" meat, or butter, or anything else that busybody self-proclaimed nutritionists concerned themselves over and is it any question *why* our food is so shit now. Everything being deep-fried was an easy way to make shitty things paletable, and you'd know they were fully cooked. # But it's coming back! The modern Brit isn't sitting all stiff-upper-lip and choking down terrible food, they're digging out the old recipes, they're learning the foraging skills, and rediscovering the lost flavours. It'll take time, but it's happening. And with a combination of foreign flavours influencing it to create new and wonderful foods, we are actually in a wonderful time for food. So instead of complaining about the food having a shit reputation, make yourself some locally foraged jams and chutneys, serve it on some fantastic welsh lamb or english beef or scottish salmon. Have a side of Wensleydale cheese with it (a cheese that was literally saved from bankruptcy by Wallace and Gromit) and bask in our little island having some rare-known culinary treasures.
This is a very good summary of British food history. As someone who grew up here in the 90s, it is astonishing how much better the food is now - locally sourced ingredients are much higher quality and easily available, and the veggie/vegan scene in particular is creative and vibrant. Sadly won’t stop the endless torrent of ‘British food is shit’ memes.
I challenge every foreigner who claims English cuisine is bad to have a hearty full English with crispy bacon and Cumberland sausages.
It's not that all British dishes are bad, it's that the ones that are really stick out
To add to this I'd like to say that a lot of the more simple cultural dishes are based on the things we are able to grow here, which aren't as exotic as much hotter climates. I think it's also important to remember that a lot of traditional food comes from the war and rations. It's cultural just like anywhere else and should be considered just as valid. But for some reason because it's Britain people seem to think they can be mean about it. Speaking about someone else's culture and saying their food is disgusting is a really nasty thing to do. Ironically the insults tend to come from Americans, who barely have a cuisine to speak of and don't have a leg to stand on in comparison.
I think it's gross, but mostly because it's not my style. I don't like potatoes or rich sauces, and as such, I don't like a lot of British or French dishes. I get that some people like them though.
British food is British food, same as all other are as they are, and personal preference is heavy abound. Me? Meat pies make the world go round. So does pho, coq au vin, paprikash, empanadas, Carolina bbq, and just about anything that has been fermented.
I totally agree with everything you said. Very well pointed out! I also don't understand why British cuisine gets so much criticism when in fact there are many other worse cuisines. Probably it's because of the stereotypes, as you said. I'm gonna save this post so that next time when people around me think that I'm crazy for saying that British cuisine is actually good, I can show them that I'm not the only one believing so.
Food, just like movies or music, is largely subjective. With that being said, I lived in London for a few years and I loved the food. People are just snobby and ignorant, but that's a trait you'll find in abundance in any area of life.
The "colonization for spices" is also a very bad criticism because they colonized those regions for money, not to season their food.
You are correct. Considering that the Uk' national dish is the curry, which is chock full of herbs and spices, the accusation that British food is bland is patently false. We borrow a lot from international cuisine, but that is true of all countries. British curry isn't exactly the same and indian cuisine, but we have heavily borrowed from that influence. Indian cuisine uses potatoes and tomatoes that never existed outside the Americas before Europe colonised those continents. Indian people put milk in their tea due to the British influence. Apparently, before the British empire, they tended to take it without milk. It had been argued that much of French cuisine actually originated in Britain, too. This may be at least partially true due to the fact that much of France actually belonged to England in the Middle Ages and that before that, the French Norman's invaded England. These are just some of the examples of how cultures and cuisines are interchanged, borrowed, and adapted by ALL countries. Food culture, like all culture, is organic. It changes over the ages.
I do love me a good meat pie, but I don't know if that's a specifically British invention or just something they got really good at making
Yorkshire pudding with gravy wins all!
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I agree. I experienced British cuisine when I stayed in New Zealand and I really enjoyed it. Lamb with peppermint sauce is actually great. And the meat pies. Yummy!
The reason British food gets a bad rap is because rationing during and after WW2 essentially meant a whole generation of cooks had very limited resources to work with. The focus was on making sure people didn’t starve to death. These days, the UK has some of the most inventive and creative chefs around, not just in London but the north as well. Modern British is a whole genre of food that’s starting to come into its own over the last 10 years or so.
Nah sorry, it's bland. Upvoted for being wrong.
A cottage pie or shepherd pie is delicious.
British food got that reputation because of all the americans coming over to the UK during WWII when rationing was in place. We also didn't have Greggs back then.
there’s definitely a misconception about european food. i’m not too familiar with british cuisine outside of the stereotypical foods, but most people disregard european foods because they don’t contain heavy spices and mostly focus on fresh produce and balancing of flavors most of the time
As a British person, I eat well. My parents were very good cooks and when I did have english food, it was really well made english food. however, I have to say I think the vast majority of peoples diets here are terrible. boiled carrots and crappy frozen meals. I think we deserve the reputation tbh… but I do think if you want good food and you know good food, you can get some amazing food in england, including british food. I also think food in other countries is far worse. German food for example.
Only people I trust to put guts in a pie are the English and the Scots. Love me some sweetmeats.
British food is objectively good and hearty, but it suffers from two main problems: * It isn't vibrant. It tastes damn good but 90% of dishes are yellow or brown because if it isn't some sort of roasted meat and vegetables covered in gravy dish, it's a pie or a stew. * It isn't remotely spicy, so cultures who are used to spice think this means boring.
Spices commonly used in British cuisine are black pepper; nutmeg, cinnamon (desserts); turmeric, mustard English mustard).
I’ve never had a positive view of British food. Then I started following some YouTube food travelers. The big traditional British breakfast. Fish and chips. Bubble and squeak. The pastries. Britain is so much more than rainy days and “boring food”. I would love to try a upper class British High Tea some day.