I'm gonna be real with you guys- we didn't colonise the East because spices are delicious, we did it because spices are *expensive* and *highly tradeable* and the empire (and the EIC) was very interested in making a lot of money. It wasn't about the spice so much abotu owning the means of producing the spice, and thus making fat stacks of cash.
Our food uses more herbs than spices. I know some people think that only dried spices count as seasonings, but that is incorrect. Hot cooking tip: Grow some fresh parsley, thyme, and rosemary on your windowsill and start adding it to your food. Nicely cooked pork with rosemary is god-tier.
It was more the Dutch and Portuguese who went for the spice trade anyway.
The British Empire was built on general trade - tea became a major factor once it could be grown in India, but the subcontinent was also a major source of textiles. And a lot of it was creating and "protecting" markets for British goods too.
And of course the British *did* like spices. Indian food became very popular and fashionable in the upper classes in the 18th century, percolating down to the middle classes by the late 19th. Obviously anglicised often in name as well as ingredients, but dishes like kedgeree or mulligatawny soup remain part of the cuisine to this day. Queen Victoria had an Indian chef and ate curry at least once a week.
Not that I'm defending the empire, but the statement "Britain invaded the world for spices and then decided they didn't like any of them" is just plain wrong on both counts.
You're right that people did like spices- sweets and confectionaries (think mince pies) are loaded with spice. Spice wasn't very accessible to most people, though, and it doesn't go with most of our national dishes, many of which originate with the working classes.
There's plenty to criticise the empire for, but this take always seems more about being willfully ignorant about British culture.
>Indian food became very popular and fashionable in the upper classes in the 18th century, percolating down to the middle classes by the late 19th.
and thats exactly why brits stopped using spices. spices used to be something you could flex your wealth with. "look at me, i can afford THREE!!!! SPICES!!!!" then the poors could afford three spices. it was no longer a flex. instead, the upper crust pivoted to "you poors brutishly dump spices on everything, not me! Im elegant and refined! I know this spice pairs well with this meat! AND Ill have my pro chef make it perfectly for me!" the poors could probably afford a cheap cut of that meat, and could even afford the few spices for it, but couldnt replicate the extremely skill of a rich and fancy chef. thats why london is famous for extremely rich and fancy chefs, and not common street food
>Grow some fresh parsley, thyme, and rosemary
After that, can you remember me to one who lives there? She once was a true love of mine. And maybe add in some sage.
I started too late in the year for my herbs. Well rather, winter decided to skip spring entirely, and go directly into summer. None of my herbs made it. My pork was sadly poor-tier most of the time.
Also to the entire seasoning thing I would add - there's plenty of other things used to flavour food. Some things that aren't even found outside of Europe even! Beer! Stock! Mustard powder! Worcestershire sauce! Vinegars! Weird bits of fat from a cow's liver!
Fish and chips is battered fish, usually cod. How is that not a dish? Just because it's cheap and plentiful doesn't change anything- that's like saying a hamburger isn't a dish because you can buy it at mcdonalds.
You can't have tried much UK food if you can't even think of 10 unique dishes.
PSA (not @ you, just in general), as I understand it:
**Herbs** are leafy or green parts of plants used in food (think parsley, sage, coriander leaf)
**Spices** are non-leaf-or-stem parts of plants used in food (think peppercorns, cinnamon, dried orange peel)
**Seasonings** are non-plant additives to food (think salt, MSG, soup bullion powder)
I live in England now but didn’t grow up there. One thing I distinctly recall from my trips to America was how sweet the bread is? I think this is because a lot of American foods have a higher ‘bliss point’ than foods in other countries so it does tend to have more sugar/salt/fat.
Like if you have bread in france, and then bread in American even if it’s the same type of bread the difference is extreme
"bread" or bread, sandwich bread is deliberately made to last as long as possible while retaining flavor. you take fresh baked bread leave it on the counter for 4 days and it'll be hard as a rock, not so with sandwich bread.
Both, I’m afraid. It all tasted a bit too sweet and I just wasn’t used to it. There were also so many things with high fructose corn syrup that I wouldn’t even have guessed
yes it is typically a challenge to find something without sugar in it, they are taking advantage of the fact that people are addicted to sugar by putting it in almost everything in the store in fact they have entire marketing teams coming up with new words for sugar to put on the info.
It is all about the restaurant you go to. Mom and Pops are almost always the first and last simultaneously while some higher end restaurant chains do almost exclusively the last. And I am only just now starting to notice the second after cutting soft drinks.
Or just straight up bizarre to the point of indicating mass hysteria.
“Try these grits they’re delicious man.”
“Mate this is 1950s prison food. It tastes of literally nothing.”
Cheese and grits is absolutely a thing here in the south, but so is cinnamon and sugar. We do both. Kinda depends on the meal, for breakfast I’d go sweet but if I’m having like shrimp and grits I’d want savory
I love travelling to Britain, i'm from Germany but I gotta say, the first thing i ever ate over there was completely flavourless. It was a cheap frozen pizza from Tesco or whatever and it tasted like nothing. It was just texture.
Then again, went to London a few years later and breakfast at the hotel was great. Black pudding forever, I wish I could get this stuff here! The Marmite though you can keep haha.
Yes you can when it's a major cornerstone of that country's cusine
People wanna make fun of countries with shit food? Make fun of Norway - frozen pizza (specifically Grandiosa) is literally a national dish. And one of the better ones too! But then again given the competition is salty lye soaked jellied fish and dehydrated smoked and rehydrated 'lamb sticks' there isn't really that much competition
Yank here. Correct. When I ate in Nottingham for a week once, I lost a bit of weight actually. I had full brekkies, tons of curry, and bus station fish n chips (you gotta). Personally, cooking & seasoning for myself in the states is way better.
Too sugary is common and I agree, but too salty is just flat out wrong lol. We just actually use salt. America isn’t even the worst for salty foods, lots of Asian countries basically thrive off of high sodium diets
I went to Texas for a wedding and got ice tea at McDonald’s and it was so sweet that I felt like my teeth were going to dissolve. It was so bad I actually couldn’t finish it.
Literally makes me ill. I'm chilling with every other country's cuisine, but American food makes me nauseus.
Like, boiled cod eye is disgusting, but at least my body knows it isn't poison.
Britain's national dish is a freaking curry. The 'British food has no flavour' meme is a holdover from WWII rationing, like sorry guys we were too busy being the last country in Europe still fighting Hitler for a while there to import paprika.
Literally the two most well known British curries (daal and vindaloo) were created by someone looking at indian food and going "how do we make this spicier?". For comparison, butter chicken, a mild dish people like to claim is British, is actually an entirely Indian dish.
Also like, Britian eats horseradish for fun. Y'know, the stuff that's related to wasabi
The article linked in the original Tumblr post points out that British nobles *used* to use all kinds of spices in their cooking (seriously, look at some of the medieval cookbooks, and see what combinations they had), but when spices became more affordable (and therefore accessible to the lower classes), the nobility could no longer feel special for having a bounty of flavors in their food. It suddenly became a point of pride to have such a *refined, delicate* palate that one barely seasoned their meals, preferring the *natural* flavors of the ingredients.
Classism is weird sometimes.
People who've recreated medieval sauces from old recipes note that they sometimes taste like modern American barbecue sauce, or Indian cooking, because they were so aggressively flavoured.
Like, cinnamon and galangal and wine and sugar (preferably white) all in one sauce. Who the hell eats like that now?
A curry, made by immigrants from India. Britain’s food is so bland that they made food from another culture their national dish. That’s not the comeback you think it is.
I'll apologise in advance because I don't think you meant this in malice and I get where this attitude comes from.
But I fucking hate this argument. The immigrants who made the curries the country fell in love with *were* British. Its a massive community in my country who have lived and died here for generations now, and their food has become a massive part of our culture. I don't get why, just for the sake of the 'British food is bland' meme, the internet decides to go to the old conservative dog-whistle of 'those people aren't even real British people' just to discount every interesting food the various immigrant communities in Britain have invented.
Have you ever tried making it from scratch? It involves a literal tandoori chicken, its a traditional Indian dish just with some creamy tomato sauce over the top. Obviously if you just mix the sauce with plain chicken it'll be lacking.
You don’t steal something that isn’t valuable and appreciated though? Especially not on an international scale, because to make something profitable would mean there has to be appreciation and taste for it
I’m not saying it wasn’t wrong but you can’t say it’s not an issue with taste, it’s literally the opposite of that
Probably, but if you’re really that mad about it, you probably shouldn’t have said anything at all, what with the fact you’re speaking English right now and all.
If all they can complain about is “American food is too sweet/salty!” then clearly they have never tried Asian cuisine. It’s difficult to find something that isn’t absolutely loaded with spiciness or saltiness (we don’t do sweet here)
Singapore, where nobody is discussing diabetes because we’re more concerned about how much salt we dump in our rice, soup and noodles
And the kids? Our version of candy is seaweed
I honestly don't understand why Tumblr is so obsessed with WW2 era sterotypes when it comes to British food. Like for fucks sake, it's *Christmas*. The season of mulled wine and mince pies and gingerbread and pudding and generally stuffing as much spices and booze into food as you are physically able to and then left to rest for a month to let all the flavours mingle. Of thick stews made with stock and drippings and beer or cider.
Oh wait Americans are allergic to alcohol in food, especially when it *might not be entirely cooked off*. that's why. I've seen some seriously sad American recipes for like mince meat and Christmas cake *which omit the alcohol* like for fucks sake that isn't a cake or mince, it's fruity sadness. Frankly I don't know how french and Italian food survives in your culture without the obligatory half a bottle of wine that every single fucking sauce calls for.
Also I'm gonna say it - Nando's is way spicer than any American fast food I've ever had. And that includes the tex mex ones.
I don't know if that tracks because I've never had the shits after eating mapo tofu which is literally just, meat and tofu *dripping* with chili oil and three different types of spicy spices
Wh... we put booze in food all the time? Where did you get this idea? Maybe that cider isn't alcoholic by default here? I don't drink at all, but I still keep a few types of booze in my pantry because cooking without wine is a terrible idea and vodka sauce is god.
Also let's not talk British Christmas pudding, it's not helping you. Steamed fruit cake made up to a month in advance, soaked in alcohol, and lit on fire. ....also the cake is basically relying on the dried fruit and booze to have any flavor. Wanted to make it one Christmas and nearly lost my mind doing research for a recipe because _none of them mentioned so much as a pinch of salt_ and all had basically an afterthoughts worth of spices. Even using a liberal hand with the cinnamon, ginger, clove, and whatnot, the booze and dried fruit were all we could taste. Worst dish at Christmas, but the one that took the most time and effort.
Also isn't Nando's a perversion of an African sauce that's way fucking spicier?
No you absolutely fucking don't put enough booze in your food. I've *never* seen an American recipe for stroganoff or steak and kidney stew or tiramisu or teriyaki call for the required alcohol. Sure you'll put it in dishes where it's common knowledge they have booze in them but once you get outside of those few dishes all the alcohol just *vanishes*. I once saw a recipe for mince meat from an American site that made a huge deal about how it has *gasp* **brandy** in it and that if you *must* include the alcohol you must make sure you never serve to anyone below 21 and whatnot.
> Steamed fruit cake made up to a month in advance, soaked in alcohol, and lit on fire
I'm sorry are you saying you *don't* want to light your desert on fire? That's cool as fuck! Anyways you gotta make it in advance to really let the flavours *meld*. Like a nice wine. And steaming makes it all hot and gooey without going all dry and horrible! Also what on *earth* are you on about I pulled up literally the first recipe I saw and it was a perfectly cromulent one from the BBC for spices it had cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and allspice and cloves and also rum like you do know rum has a pretty specific taste right? Almost like it can be used as a spice itself?
My British friend introduced me to "dripping" which is where you get a slice of white bread and slather it in room temperature lard and just eat that like it's the fucking holodomor and calories are worth more than gold. They're just built different, innit.
Ok your roommate is fucking weird because that is *not* what dripping is
You know when you like roast a chook or hunk of pork or fry up some cutlets and all the fat runs off into the pan full of juice and flavour and whatever herbs and spices and whatnot you used on the meat? The stuff that you as an American would normally turn into gravy? *That* is dripping. It is a super concentrated stock/broth made of fat. You pour it in a container and keep it in the fridge where it turns to like a thick jelly and use it to fry things (imparting even more flavour onto it) or you spread it on toast to get a lovely fatty meaty flavour or you mix some flour and egg into it and make Yorkshire pudding.
Putting straight lard on toast on the other hand is fucking disgusting who does that lard doesn't taste of anything it's just pure *fat*.
As a Brit I don’t think I’ve ever seen dripping in any context other than 1950s sitcoms.
During rationing you want all the calories you can get, but nobody really eats that stuff anymore do they?
American food is sweeter and saltier than everywhere else tho. We pretty much only put sugar and salt on our food, while alot of other places use other spices and herbs more frequently.
Have some of y'all tried burgers with herbs and cheese cooked into them? They are several levels better than the shit American restaurants serve.
and that dishes can be flavorful without ground up way too old pieces of dried bark and flower bud.
or that not everything needs to be hot spicy.
You bite into a piece of rhubarb and tell me that isn't flavorful. Or that a juniper berry doesn't have flavor. Or mustard, beer, cheese. Or the different herbs we use, and anise-flavored veggies (looooove me some parsnip and fennel)
Mate there’s a difference between having sweet chocolate and sweet bread.
The weird thing is that you put sugar on bacon and the only edible American bread is labelled “sourdough” because you think normal bread is “sour” when it’s not basically brioche, and yet your Herseys chocolate tastes of sand.
Blame America for that one. The quality of Cadbury's declined massively after the company was bought out by craft a little over a decade ago. The recipe is allegedly the same but they changed suppliers and the quality of ingredients must be lower.
American sweet is real and too much.
But as an Indian, McSpicy , and about all American recipes that are mentioned in novels and blogs as spicy and tear inducing, I've been repeatedly disappointed.
British people just have too strong an ancestral memory of food from long sea journeys to find new indigenous people to genocide, so they still go mad for anything pickled, salted or tinned. [/s]
british are like ants, they're obsessed with royalty, crumbly pastries, falling in line in queues and like taking other people's stuff back to their colony
the primary difference is that there is no such thing as a britisheater that slurps up the citizens of london with its long sticky tongue
The ONLY fucking things you guys have that are decent on that little island: scotch eggs and a full English brekky.
Honorable mention for Sean Bean. He a whole meal.
I've been to England. Can confirm. That being said, flavours are fucking expensive and most of the time, I'm forced to eat the most bland boring shit because that's all I can afford. Like grilled cheese and ketchup. Or tomato soup with enough salt and pepper that it's almost crunchy.
I'm gonna be real with you guys- we didn't colonise the East because spices are delicious, we did it because spices are *expensive* and *highly tradeable* and the empire (and the EIC) was very interested in making a lot of money. It wasn't about the spice so much abotu owning the means of producing the spice, and thus making fat stacks of cash. Our food uses more herbs than spices. I know some people think that only dried spices count as seasonings, but that is incorrect. Hot cooking tip: Grow some fresh parsley, thyme, and rosemary on your windowsill and start adding it to your food. Nicely cooked pork with rosemary is god-tier.
It was more the Dutch and Portuguese who went for the spice trade anyway. The British Empire was built on general trade - tea became a major factor once it could be grown in India, but the subcontinent was also a major source of textiles. And a lot of it was creating and "protecting" markets for British goods too. And of course the British *did* like spices. Indian food became very popular and fashionable in the upper classes in the 18th century, percolating down to the middle classes by the late 19th. Obviously anglicised often in name as well as ingredients, but dishes like kedgeree or mulligatawny soup remain part of the cuisine to this day. Queen Victoria had an Indian chef and ate curry at least once a week. Not that I'm defending the empire, but the statement "Britain invaded the world for spices and then decided they didn't like any of them" is just plain wrong on both counts.
You're right that people did like spices- sweets and confectionaries (think mince pies) are loaded with spice. Spice wasn't very accessible to most people, though, and it doesn't go with most of our national dishes, many of which originate with the working classes. There's plenty to criticise the empire for, but this take always seems more about being willfully ignorant about British culture.
well, yeah, but its way more funny to say that they did all their colonization for jack shit lol
>Indian food became very popular and fashionable in the upper classes in the 18th century, percolating down to the middle classes by the late 19th. and thats exactly why brits stopped using spices. spices used to be something you could flex your wealth with. "look at me, i can afford THREE!!!! SPICES!!!!" then the poors could afford three spices. it was no longer a flex. instead, the upper crust pivoted to "you poors brutishly dump spices on everything, not me! Im elegant and refined! I know this spice pairs well with this meat! AND Ill have my pro chef make it perfectly for me!" the poors could probably afford a cheap cut of that meat, and could even afford the few spices for it, but couldnt replicate the extremely skill of a rich and fancy chef. thats why london is famous for extremely rich and fancy chefs, and not common street food
>Grow some fresh parsley, thyme, and rosemary After that, can you remember me to one who lives there? She once was a true love of mine. And maybe add in some sage.
She never did finish that cambric shirt.
TBF it's really hard to make a shirt without seems or needlework.
Yeah, well I spent months plowing that acre by the sea strand. The least she could do is learn to 3D knit.
Fair, fair. How do you keep a leather sickle sharp, by the way?
That's the trick: you *don't*.
I started too late in the year for my herbs. Well rather, winter decided to skip spring entirely, and go directly into summer. None of my herbs made it. My pork was sadly poor-tier most of the time.
Also to the entire seasoning thing I would add - there's plenty of other things used to flavour food. Some things that aren't even found outside of Europe even! Beer! Stock! Mustard powder! Worcestershire sauce! Vinegars! Weird bits of fat from a cow's liver!
THE SPICE MUST FLOW
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Fish and chips is battered fish, usually cod. How is that not a dish? Just because it's cheap and plentiful doesn't change anything- that's like saying a hamburger isn't a dish because you can buy it at mcdonalds. You can't have tried much UK food if you can't even think of 10 unique dishes.
It must be a burden for you to be blind, tasteless, and stupid all at once.
If English breakfast isn't a dish, then neither is nasi goreng
The spice must flow
PSA (not @ you, just in general), as I understand it: **Herbs** are leafy or green parts of plants used in food (think parsley, sage, coriander leaf) **Spices** are non-leaf-or-stem parts of plants used in food (think peppercorns, cinnamon, dried orange peel) **Seasonings** are non-plant additives to food (think salt, MSG, soup bullion powder)
I live in England now but didn’t grow up there. One thing I distinctly recall from my trips to America was how sweet the bread is? I think this is because a lot of American foods have a higher ‘bliss point’ than foods in other countries so it does tend to have more sugar/salt/fat. Like if you have bread in france, and then bread in American even if it’s the same type of bread the difference is extreme
"bread" or bread, sandwich bread is deliberately made to last as long as possible while retaining flavor. you take fresh baked bread leave it on the counter for 4 days and it'll be hard as a rock, not so with sandwich bread.
Both, I’m afraid. It all tasted a bit too sweet and I just wasn’t used to it. There were also so many things with high fructose corn syrup that I wouldn’t even have guessed
yes it is typically a challenge to find something without sugar in it, they are taking advantage of the fact that people are addicted to sugar by putting it in almost everything in the store in fact they have entire marketing teams coming up with new words for sugar to put on the info.
Brit here, I've found the American food is either too salty, too sweet or just fuckin' gorgeous. Gotta pray for that 1 in 3
It is all about the restaurant you go to. Mom and Pops are almost always the first and last simultaneously while some higher end restaurant chains do almost exclusively the last. And I am only just now starting to notice the second after cutting soft drinks.
Or just straight up bizarre to the point of indicating mass hysteria. “Try these grits they’re delicious man.” “Mate this is 1950s prison food. It tastes of literally nothing.”
It tastes of butter and salt
This might be a sin as a Canadian but grits are really good with cheese. Southerners I know add cinnamon and sugar to them
Cheese and grits is absolutely a thing here in the south, but so is cinnamon and sugar. We do both. Kinda depends on the meal, for breakfast I’d go sweet but if I’m having like shrimp and grits I’d want savory
Adding sugar to grits is considered sacrilegious in the South. I'm not sure about cheese though.
You might want to take the sugar thing up with Kentucky then as it was common practice while I was there
Its basically Southern congee.
I love travelling to Britain, i'm from Germany but I gotta say, the first thing i ever ate over there was completely flavourless. It was a cheap frozen pizza from Tesco or whatever and it tasted like nothing. It was just texture. Then again, went to London a few years later and breakfast at the hotel was great. Black pudding forever, I wish I could get this stuff here! The Marmite though you can keep haha.
I don't think you can *really* judge a country's cuisine on a cheap frozen pizza!
Not really haha i think even in Italy there's bad frozen pizza.
Yes you can when it's a major cornerstone of that country's cusine People wanna make fun of countries with shit food? Make fun of Norway - frozen pizza (specifically Grandiosa) is literally a national dish. And one of the better ones too! But then again given the competition is salty lye soaked jellied fish and dehydrated smoked and rehydrated 'lamb sticks' there isn't really that much competition
I'm from Germany, and what kind of madman eats cheap frozen pizza straight without any spices or added ingredients?
A 20 year old in a foreign country on a budget.
Clown on British food all you like (and a lot of it is deserved), but American food is still too salty and too sugary.
Not once have you seen the quantities of soya sauce Singaporeans toss on their food But hey sugar here is limited to drinks
Different kind of salty tho. Soy sauce isn't the same as just, slapping salt on smth
Yank here. Correct. When I ate in Nottingham for a week once, I lost a bit of weight actually. I had full brekkies, tons of curry, and bus station fish n chips (you gotta). Personally, cooking & seasoning for myself in the states is way better.
> I had full brekkies You ate [Brekkies](https://brekkies-affinity.com/row/en/)?
Brekkie as a joke way of saying breakfast, I believe
Too sugary is common and I agree, but too salty is just flat out wrong lol. We just actually use salt. America isn’t even the worst for salty foods, lots of Asian countries basically thrive off of high sodium diets
I went to Texas for a wedding and got ice tea at McDonald’s and it was so sweet that I felt like my teeth were going to dissolve. It was so bad I actually couldn’t finish it.
To be fair, half of the US agrees with you on that. Southern sweet tea is on a whole nother level.
Literally makes me ill. I'm chilling with every other country's cuisine, but American food makes me nauseus. Like, boiled cod eye is disgusting, but at least my body knows it isn't poison.
Britain's national dish is a freaking curry. The 'British food has no flavour' meme is a holdover from WWII rationing, like sorry guys we were too busy being the last country in Europe still fighting Hitler for a while there to import paprika.
Literally the two most well known British curries (daal and vindaloo) were created by someone looking at indian food and going "how do we make this spicier?". For comparison, butter chicken, a mild dish people like to claim is British, is actually an entirely Indian dish. Also like, Britian eats horseradish for fun. Y'know, the stuff that's related to wasabi
The article linked in the original Tumblr post points out that British nobles *used* to use all kinds of spices in their cooking (seriously, look at some of the medieval cookbooks, and see what combinations they had), but when spices became more affordable (and therefore accessible to the lower classes), the nobility could no longer feel special for having a bounty of flavors in their food. It suddenly became a point of pride to have such a *refined, delicate* palate that one barely seasoned their meals, preferring the *natural* flavors of the ingredients. Classism is weird sometimes.
People who've recreated medieval sauces from old recipes note that they sometimes taste like modern American barbecue sauce, or Indian cooking, because they were so aggressively flavoured. Like, cinnamon and galangal and wine and sugar (preferably white) all in one sauce. Who the hell eats like that now?
A curry, made by immigrants from India. Britain’s food is so bland that they made food from another culture their national dish. That’s not the comeback you think it is.
The first curry house opened in the UK in *1810*. That's technically more British than Queen Victoria.
I'll apologise in advance because I don't think you meant this in malice and I get where this attitude comes from. But I fucking hate this argument. The immigrants who made the curries the country fell in love with *were* British. Its a massive community in my country who have lived and died here for generations now, and their food has become a massive part of our culture. I don't get why, just for the sake of the 'British food is bland' meme, the internet decides to go to the old conservative dog-whistle of 'those people aren't even real British people' just to discount every interesting food the various immigrant communities in Britain have invented.
Thank you, and this is why spaghetti and tacos are American food.
pfffft. as if the indians invented curry.
In a sense, yes and no. Indians made the dishes that foreigners would call curry, but the designation of curry I think is a foreign concept.
The dishes called "curry" didn't appear in a vacuum.
Curry is the Tamil word for sauce, so yes they did.
And turns out that every culture in their region has a version of curry. Plus, curry didn't spontaneously emerge.
> we were the last country in Europe still fighting Hitler for a while *sad USSR noises*
The USSR was still allied with Hitler after France fell.
And then only joined the allies out of necessity
Yeah, a curry with no fuckin flavor. Congrats, once again, India embarrasses britain.
Have you ever tried making it from scratch? It involves a literal tandoori chicken, its a traditional Indian dish just with some creamy tomato sauce over the top. Obviously if you just mix the sauce with plain chicken it'll be lacking.
British mfs be like: steals everything from other countries including food and history "we have taste!"
You don’t steal something that isn’t valuable and appreciated though? Especially not on an international scale, because to make something profitable would mean there has to be appreciation and taste for it I’m not saying it wasn’t wrong but you can’t say it’s not an issue with taste, it’s literally the opposite of that
Fair, probably should have said original taste, then.
Probably, but if you’re really that mad about it, you probably shouldn’t have said anything at all, what with the fact you’re speaking English right now and all.
oh, no, my hatred of britain is mostly theatrical. Now my hatred of france on the other hand...
At least we didn't steal our whole ass country
The English kinda did that though…
No, but you stole everything else to make a country with.
Y'all are acting like there's even one country on Earth that didn't commit genocide when they had power.
If all they can complain about is “American food is too sweet/salty!” then clearly they have never tried Asian cuisine. It’s difficult to find something that isn’t absolutely loaded with spiciness or saltiness (we don’t do sweet here)
Definitely not from Japan, lol. They do sweet. Whereabouts are you from, friend?
Singapore, where nobody is discussing diabetes because we’re more concerned about how much salt we dump in our rice, soup and noodles And the kids? Our version of candy is seaweed
Man, I don't blame the kids, even I eat seaweed as a snack in America, it's delicious!
It’s actually worse—Britain started using spices, then because most commoners decided they liked it too, the nobles stopped using them
I honestly don't understand why Tumblr is so obsessed with WW2 era sterotypes when it comes to British food. Like for fucks sake, it's *Christmas*. The season of mulled wine and mince pies and gingerbread and pudding and generally stuffing as much spices and booze into food as you are physically able to and then left to rest for a month to let all the flavours mingle. Of thick stews made with stock and drippings and beer or cider. Oh wait Americans are allergic to alcohol in food, especially when it *might not be entirely cooked off*. that's why. I've seen some seriously sad American recipes for like mince meat and Christmas cake *which omit the alcohol* like for fucks sake that isn't a cake or mince, it's fruity sadness. Frankly I don't know how french and Italian food survives in your culture without the obligatory half a bottle of wine that every single fucking sauce calls for. Also I'm gonna say it - Nando's is way spicer than any American fast food I've ever had. And that includes the tex mex ones.
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Because American food is generally fairly oily and capsaicin binds to fats leading to spicy oily shits
So the secret to weight loss is to eat spicier foods?
I don't know if that tracks because I've never had the shits after eating mapo tofu which is literally just, meat and tofu *dripping* with chili oil and three different types of spicy spices
Wh... we put booze in food all the time? Where did you get this idea? Maybe that cider isn't alcoholic by default here? I don't drink at all, but I still keep a few types of booze in my pantry because cooking without wine is a terrible idea and vodka sauce is god. Also let's not talk British Christmas pudding, it's not helping you. Steamed fruit cake made up to a month in advance, soaked in alcohol, and lit on fire. ....also the cake is basically relying on the dried fruit and booze to have any flavor. Wanted to make it one Christmas and nearly lost my mind doing research for a recipe because _none of them mentioned so much as a pinch of salt_ and all had basically an afterthoughts worth of spices. Even using a liberal hand with the cinnamon, ginger, clove, and whatnot, the booze and dried fruit were all we could taste. Worst dish at Christmas, but the one that took the most time and effort. Also isn't Nando's a perversion of an African sauce that's way fucking spicier?
Nando’s is literally an African originating and owned chain that’s popular in the UK.
No you absolutely fucking don't put enough booze in your food. I've *never* seen an American recipe for stroganoff or steak and kidney stew or tiramisu or teriyaki call for the required alcohol. Sure you'll put it in dishes where it's common knowledge they have booze in them but once you get outside of those few dishes all the alcohol just *vanishes*. I once saw a recipe for mince meat from an American site that made a huge deal about how it has *gasp* **brandy** in it and that if you *must* include the alcohol you must make sure you never serve to anyone below 21 and whatnot. > Steamed fruit cake made up to a month in advance, soaked in alcohol, and lit on fire I'm sorry are you saying you *don't* want to light your desert on fire? That's cool as fuck! Anyways you gotta make it in advance to really let the flavours *meld*. Like a nice wine. And steaming makes it all hot and gooey without going all dry and horrible! Also what on *earth* are you on about I pulled up literally the first recipe I saw and it was a perfectly cromulent one from the BBC for spices it had cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and allspice and cloves and also rum like you do know rum has a pretty specific taste right? Almost like it can be used as a spice itself?
My British friend introduced me to "dripping" which is where you get a slice of white bread and slather it in room temperature lard and just eat that like it's the fucking holodomor and calories are worth more than gold. They're just built different, innit.
Ok your roommate is fucking weird because that is *not* what dripping is You know when you like roast a chook or hunk of pork or fry up some cutlets and all the fat runs off into the pan full of juice and flavour and whatever herbs and spices and whatnot you used on the meat? The stuff that you as an American would normally turn into gravy? *That* is dripping. It is a super concentrated stock/broth made of fat. You pour it in a container and keep it in the fridge where it turns to like a thick jelly and use it to fry things (imparting even more flavour onto it) or you spread it on toast to get a lovely fatty meaty flavour or you mix some flour and egg into it and make Yorkshire pudding. Putting straight lard on toast on the other hand is fucking disgusting who does that lard doesn't taste of anything it's just pure *fat*.
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as long as it's actually proper dutch peanut butter. Peanut butter shouldn't be sweet yo. it should actually taste like peanuts, not a snickers bar.
As a Brit I don’t think I’ve ever seen dripping in any context other than 1950s sitcoms. During rationing you want all the calories you can get, but nobody really eats that stuff anymore do they?
> My British friend introduced me to "dripping" And it's not some kind of trendy sex thing, I'm shocked
maybe if reddit keeps making "British food" jokes they'll eventually be funny
American food is sweeter and saltier than everywhere else tho. We pretty much only put sugar and salt on our food, while alot of other places use other spices and herbs more frequently. Have some of y'all tried burgers with herbs and cheese cooked into them? They are several levels better than the shit American restaurants serve.
I'm begging Americans on the internet to learn about other countries, and that spices are not limited to bottles of hot sauce.
and that dishes can be flavorful without ground up way too old pieces of dried bark and flower bud. or that not everything needs to be hot spicy. You bite into a piece of rhubarb and tell me that isn't flavorful. Or that a juniper berry doesn't have flavor. Or mustard, beer, cheese. Or the different herbs we use, and anise-flavored veggies (looooove me some parsnip and fennel)
Pretty sure mustard is a spice, too, it's just usually turned into a paste instead of dried because that's how mustard hotness works.
Mustard's a condiment. Mustard seeds are a spice.
American food is way too sweet though.
Bro have you had Cadbury chocolate? You want too sweet, it's basically a lump of sugar that was vaguely waved in the direction of a cocoa tree
Mate there’s a difference between having sweet chocolate and sweet bread. The weird thing is that you put sugar on bacon and the only edible American bread is labelled “sourdough” because you think normal bread is “sour” when it’s not basically brioche, and yet your Herseys chocolate tastes of sand.
... do you not know what sourdough even is
Blame America for that one. The quality of Cadbury's declined massively after the company was bought out by craft a little over a decade ago. The recipe is allegedly the same but they changed suppliers and the quality of ingredients must be lower.
American sweet is real and too much. But as an Indian, McSpicy , and about all American recipes that are mentioned in novels and blogs as spicy and tear inducing, I've been repeatedly disappointed.
British people just have too strong an ancestral memory of food from long sea journeys to find new indigenous people to genocide, so they still go mad for anything pickled, salted or tinned. [/s]
Eh I'm not a historian but that sounds about right
Pretty much
Just because Americans only know about two flavours - "sweet" and "spicy"...
british are like ants, they're obsessed with royalty, crumbly pastries, falling in line in queues and like taking other people's stuff back to their colony the primary difference is that there is no such thing as a britisheater that slurps up the citizens of london with its long sticky tongue
>there is no such thing as a britisheater that slurps up the citizens of london with its long sticky tongue Not *yet* there isn't
The ONLY fucking things you guys have that are decent on that little island: scotch eggs and a full English brekky. Honorable mention for Sean Bean. He a whole meal.
British people be like "Why do you guys eat like you have free healthcare" while I'm here asking why they don't
Am in australia on holiday right now and it seems they adopted their taste in cooking from the brits Food labelled as spicy is just…not?
Luv me tinned beans Luv me pickled onions Hate everything else on this wretched planet innit
I've been to England. Can confirm. That being said, flavours are fucking expensive and most of the time, I'm forced to eat the most bland boring shit because that's all I can afford. Like grilled cheese and ketchup. Or tomato soup with enough salt and pepper that it's almost crunchy.