British cuisine is like...
British cuisine is like...
338 comments
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On the other hand Americans eat like they have free healthcare...
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Touché!
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Buuuuuuurn.
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Lmao
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Americans have been sold and eat up the idea that instant gratification beats the effort needed to realize something greater.
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No no you see, Americans work* so much, they don’t have time to first learn and then practise to cook healthy meals at home. Hence fast food chains!!
*work American style, as in staying at work long hours but also spend about 60% of their work day chatting with co workers, or on the phone, going on personal, non-work related errands, browsing the internet, selecting, getting, eating, and ridding their bowels of food.
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I don't care. I'll die on that hill.
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Oh you will
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Depending upon the type and quantity of food, climbing it might be a more difficult task than expected (says me who had McDonald's today (though for the first time in a couple months)).
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It might not take a hill, a set of stairs could do it.
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We eat that way because we don't. Heart disease is the only way we're going to end up going out quickly enough to avoid end of life hospital bills. I mean it's not like any of us have the means to afford to retire.
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Imagine taking a joke without having to jab back 😂. Oh world you are so petty.
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This reminds me of that post
"Is British food really that bad?"
"If made correctly, Yes"
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I’m going to be visiting in a few months. Speaking as a foreigner of course, is it British culture to minimize both color and hope in your cuisine?
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Don't eat at a JD Wetherspoon, it's basically McPub.
As I said in another comment, British cuisine basically had to be neutered during the wars due to extended rationing. People lived, but long-term damage was made. The best food here isn't British, but British takes on foreign food.
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Pretty much all the big brand pub meals are like that now. If it involves anything more than 15 minutes in an air fryer or a quick blast in the microwave, it isn't on the menu.
I went to a cafe the other month, and asked for the toasted sandwich without the mustard. They couldn't do it because they were all pre-packed. A bloody sandwich! It's a crying shame as well, because the cafe used to be owned by somebody else, who did the best triple-cooked chips I've ever had, and went bust when the nearby carpark owner started slapping parking fines on all their customer's cars. I liked the two mile walk to get there, but I get that a lot of people don't.
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I recently had a colleague from Mexico visiting me and he absolutely could not get enough of Wetherspoons food. He actually went back another 3 times during his stay.
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Honestly you'll find pretty much the same food here as anywhere else.
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You just need to stick to real British food, such as pizza, curry and Chinese.
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British food when it's not presented like shit
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Is it always leftovers day or is there a plate shortage?
Why are there always 15 items on the plate with British food?
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depicted: 6, and gravy.
to make a typical American meal:
swap cauliflower for macaroni, double the amount of cheese sauce
roast potatoes for fries
roast meat for BBQ
gravy for bbq sauce
peas for collard greens
carrots for Brussels sprouts
yorkshire puddings for a slice on plain, untoasted, unbuttered wonderbread
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I still don’t find this appealing tbh
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Oh it's smiling! Hello! 👋
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What is that? Potatoes with a side of stew on a plate?
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Nearly - minced beef in gravy with some chopped vegetables thrown in (usually peas and carrots), next to boiled potatoes (that are usually mashed up).
Some parts of the UK have bread and butter as a side with everything.
It is a hearty dinner mind - it's not flashy or instagram-ready, but it is tasty and fills you up.
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Savory mince is simultaneously one of the best and worst meals I've ever had in my life. When its done right its amazing, when its bad its proper fucking garbage.
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If you're going to boil them at least throw some cream and chives on?
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Deconstructed Sheppards pie
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And now it is suddenly fancy enough for the insta crowd.
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Exactly.
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FWIW it wasn't the Germans flying overhead that led to the shitty food and not much of it - it was the Germans in their submersible tin cans that were the big problem.
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You know the kids who make and enjoy memes are usually back of the class types.
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We did what we could, we built like 2,700 Liberty ships.
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I know British food tend to be memed as "brown stuff", but this doesn't even look half bad, the lighting makes it look worse than it actually is.
Slap an Instagram filter on it and it will look way better.
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The unseasoned boiled potatoes and the untoasted bread are just bland.
The ground beef and carrots in the undefinable brown liquid would be a textural nightmare. I cannot fathom how it tastes because the closest thing in the US would be a sloppy joe.
The real problem with this is lack of technique and seasoning.
Here’s how I would “fix” this: Toast the bread, roast and season the potatoes, make the ground beef and sauce into a something resembling Salisbury steak, and cook the carrots as their own side dish.
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What do you mean unseasoned, they have salt on them. smh
Perfectly good boiled potatoes and stew.
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The bread is a sop. You can't sop with toast; that's insane. The "undefinable brown liquid" is stock and is common across the world's cuisines. If you season the potatoes further, assuming they're lightly salted, you run the risk of overseasoning the dish (they're sitting next to a very rich stew). You're just making these up now.
I cannot fathom how it tastes
Then don't say anything! Easy peasy!
Edit to add: The only problem as it were with this food is that it lacks colour, so of course you wouldn't serve this at a restaurant. But when's the last time anyone gave a fuck about colour when bashing out tea on a thursday eve?
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The closest thing in America would be a meat gravy meant to go on mashed potatoes. My family always cheaped out on seasoning and used a French onion soup seasoning packet, so thats the majority of what it tastes like to me.
One of my favorite dishes from being a kid, would put corn on top of gravy on top of mashed potatoes.
The stack of buttered bread is disgusting. My parents used to do that when I was a kid though and I didnt question it.
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The fact that it looks like you think that the "brown stuff" is the issue there is really funny
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A thick beef stew with boiled potatoes and buttered bread was a common meal in my 90s Midwestern USA childhood. It is delicious
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It's reasonable food! Most people are pretty bad at making photos look good, myself included.
I'd want a bit more seasoning on the potatoes but man, potatoes are delicious in almost all forms, even when they look plain.
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Apart from the bread, it looks to be processed food free. Cooked from scratch. Very few preservatives.
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How do you IRL see and eat the Instagram filter though?
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I don't even know what I'm looking at. Sliced white bread with butter, HP sauce, salt or pepper shaker, and a plate with what seems to be boiled potatoes and some unknown viscous fluid with what might be sliced (presumably cooked) carrots.
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It's lentils slow cooked with various cuts of meat, sausage and veggies
It's absolutely flavorful, filling and delicious. One of my favorite meals to eat in winter time.
https://blindinglygoodfood.co.uk/recipe/slow-cooked-sausage-lentil-stew/
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Looks like a lovely bit of scran that does. Yall too obsessed with overdone memes to appreciate a nice bit of comfort food.
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Nah I'm just too obcessed with spices and would like to see some used in this meal, especially on those naked potatoes.
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You can't actually be sure that stew doesn't have a ton of ground spices in it, because they wouldn't show. The flavor could be so intense you might need the plain potato bites to rest your mouth. (Highly unlikely but possible.) The real crime is the complete lack of anything green on the table. It's like they looked around at the lush greenery all around them and decided to leave it all outside.
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But like...
Why aren't the potatoes in the sauce?
That just seems obvious to me 🤷♀️
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Tbh, as a British person, I think the same thing every time is see this meme. Although, I might make it worse
I'd have it with mash potatoes. Then, its like pie and mash, just without the pastry.
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Can anyone tell me why there's HP sauce there?
What do you do with it?
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Squirt some into your mouth before you take a bite. What else would you do with it?
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To all of you saying "this literally looks like poop", "why are they eating boiled vomit", etc, post the last thing you made and I'm sure I could come up with some shitty things to say about it.
It's fucking very obviously a normal ass plate of potatoes and meat stew with carrots. Do the potatoes look a little bland? Maybe, but there's stew to dip it in. Regardless, a well seasoned potato has a good flavor all by itself. The stew looks like every other homemade stew I've ever seen. It's hard to make that shit look "pretty", but I know y'all scarf shit like that down. Get off your high fucking horses. There's plenty of other valid things to complain about with British culture, but making fun of their food is asinine.
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As a german, it's really the bread that makes me sad ;) I think the UK gets too much shit for their food though and people should shift the mockery a bit more towards Norway, haha.
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Buttered white bread dipped in stew is the best way to eat bread. You should try it before you diss it
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post the last thing you made and I’m sure I could come up with some shitty things to say about it.
Exactly, we don't post photos of what we cook saying it is the best dinner on the planet. Though even that was probably a joke from the OP, and people are joking back. Calm down a little lol.
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I mean it's pretty tasty, comfort food for a lot of Brits. It's my dad's fav too, I wouldn't put it in my top 5, but it's comfort food for sure.
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If it's seasoned right that stew is probably absolutely banging. It looks great; good colour, good consistency, and you can tell from the softened edges on the carrots that it's been cooked low and slow long enough really develop the flavours.
The easiest upgrade to this meal would have been to simply mash the potatoes after boiling them; a little butter and milk, some salt and pepper, and your bland boiled potatoes have magically transformed into something absolutely delicious.
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I mean, do they have black pepper? Or heat for their stoves to brown stuff a bit? Because those potatoes look like they were peeled, and put right on the plate.
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We're white knighting mild food takes now 😂 the internet is so silly
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No their food is fucking trash. And as for that stew, yeah it probably came in a can, but I've eaten better stew out of a can than that. This is the kind of food that my dad would make sometimes when I was growing up. 35 fucking years ago. Because it's what he had growing up, and he has like six older siblings. It's poor people food. And that's fine, but that doesn't make it good. I will say at least it is not jelly eels or some other traditional nonsense British food.
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The national dish is Chicken Tikka Masala, a delicious tomato based curry invented in Birmingham in the 1970s. The country has nine Michelin starred restaurants, ranking 7th in the world. Fish and chips, pie and mash, cider. Full fucking English.
Their food is not trash.
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The yanks seem to be attracted to this meme like somebody desperate to paint a target and distract attention away from themself.
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Things are pretty fucked here and what I thought were saner parts of the world seem like they're starting to fall for the same shit. We need distractions.
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I saw this video recently where this guy tried every iconic local cuisine from every American state, and I swear to God half of them made me want to throw up.
Americans will act like British cooking its an abomination despite most of them never having even heard of steak and ale pie, or Lancashire hot pot, or Welsh rarebit. Meanwhile they'll throw fucking marshmallows on a tray of mashed squash and declare it an ancient family recipe.
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Funny, but sadly, I've seen my best friend sharing these memes (neither from the U.K nor the U.S.).
Since the first time I saw them, I thought they were kind of rude and probably inaccurate as no national cuisine is dull. I googled and read... What seems to have happened is that we've normalized British cuisine because it is part of many countries now. We think British dishes are regular dishes. Anyway, I don't like these memes.
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Watched Once Were Warriors last night and the dinner Temuera Morrison has in that is even more bland and basic than any of these memes. So it’s more of classist meme than anything.
Also, I think you’re right about loads of core British dishes just being ubiquitous now. My American colleague told me about the Shepherd’s Pie he made, which apparently came out a bit too rich.
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“Bloody Indians, Pakistanis and Indians, coming over here, inventing us a national cuisine.”
If you get the reference, you have exquisite taste in comedy. Basic Lee is on tonight!!
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The Aussies would just grab all that and wack it into a shortcut / puff pastry meat and potato pie. Not half bad actually.
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It is basically a meat pie filling just with potatoes instead of pastry. People will look down their noses at this because of the plating and then happily eat hundreds of extremely similar foods.
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Whoever eats potatoes like that is a full on nut job lol
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Plain boiled potatoes are meant as an accompagnement, you're not supposed to just eat them on their own. They're great at that, even the French do it and I think everyone can agree the French know a thing or two about cuisine.
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A little S&P they'd be fine
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Yeah that's true!
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Something something "The cuisine and company of the finer sex helped contribute to making the Brits the finest sailors in the world"
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Englishman here. I've never eaten anything like this? Just me?
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Same. I dont even know what it is. It's like they wanted to make shepherds pie but they were too lazy to mash the potatoes
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Québécois here. My mother in law served us something very similar for lunch today. It was very good!
Looks like we kept the french language but not the french cuisine...
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I was just thinking what the hell is it supposed to be? I've never in my life eaten that. Spray "cheese" anyone?
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Over in the province we'd call that mince and onions, obviously being part of the island of Ireland the potatoes are inferred from kt being a meal.
The yanks might be taking the piss, but as far as I'm aware they put it in a bap and call it a sloppy Joe (which frankly sounds like a sex act).
Tangentially, other fine Northern Irish cuisine includes the vegetable roll, which is primarily a sliced beef sausage with a wee bit of onion and celery. Tasty.
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The dinners aren't the problem. It's the baked beans for breakfast... Also, my Dad, who was born in London, insisted on eating Marmite, which I know many of you will defend, but also piccalilli and Daddies sauce and if you like those things, I will give you major side-eye.
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Just a coincidence that none of those things contain high fructose corn syrup then? 😒
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Neither saag paneer nor gyros have such things in them either and they're delicious. Probably because Indian and Greek food are better.
For that matter, a plain old carrot doesn't have any high fructose corn syrup in it. Ever tried one? They're quite nice. You don't even have to cook them.
Of course, that's just what THEY want you to think.
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To be fair, the Brown Sauce is actually pretty neat. But not in everyones taste tho.
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The stew might be super tasty, but those white potatoes look bland as fuck. Throw them in an oven or skillet with some of that butter, get the edges a little crispy, sprig of whatever herbs were used in the stew, and they will be much better.
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I would neither cook nor eat that, but perhaps the stereotype is still valid.
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The way they censored the name is a new low point. Usually, you at least need to look for a few seconds, but this is just plain readable.
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Had to scroll way too down in comments to find anyone mentioning this...
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Food shouldn't look like its already been digested.
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British food and women made for the best sailors in the world.
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Thank god for Asian women 🫡
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It can be argued that best women are in Belarus.
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Cooking is partial digestion
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Looks like the meals I was recently had at the veterans hospital in the USA.
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British Empire conquered the world at one point, and had access to unimaginable variety of spices, herbs, flavors and tastes.
and they still eat nothing but boiled vomit.
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- It builds character.
- You were supposed to use more expensive ingredients to make your food "tastier".
EDIT: I meant all of these sarcastically!😭
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Yeah, and what a character the UK has now. Really worth all that boiled dog vomit.
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What is that bread? Buttered, untoasted, sliced white bread? Wtf?
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Yeah. It's there to mop up the gravy.
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is probably even margarine in this case
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wait till you hear about fairy bread
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Dude, its buttered bread. Whats your problem?
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When I was a kid, buttered plain white bread was great, but as an adult, not so great anymore.
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This is hilarious, but if you go to restaurants it's not true. I could totally see some people eating like this at home though.
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Which culinary pleb made that? At least bang the taters in the stew while it cooks.
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Unpopular Opinion, Sardines on Pizza are better than Mushrooms on Pizza
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I like anchovies. Sometimes they're too salty, but that's perfect after a night of drinking
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My issue is that not one pizzaria that I've found does anchovies the proper way. They just stick an entire fillet on each slice of pizza. Anchovies are a garnish, not a main event. They need to chop the fillets into smaller pieces and distribute evenly the same as they do with olives.
Chop a couple up until they are paste and put a teaspoon of that into 8 cups of whatever sauce you are making and watch people rave about needing to know your secret ingredient, and then totally disbelieve you when you tell them.
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the best homemade dinner on the planet x
Planet X must have terrible food if this is the best thing it has to offer. Glad I live on planet Earth.
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Oh please. That was from about the 1950s. Now it’s just known as Irish cuisine.
Stop moaning yanks. Not everything needs artificial cheese sprayed on it.
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How about a minimal amount of seasoning? Like a couple twists of the pepper mill?
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No it doesn’t, but there’s a reason that Gordon Ramsay can’t make a fucking grilled cheese and loses his mind every time a black woman from the states fries him a piece of chicken.
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You don't need to be british to appreciate a good meal of lentils and carots. Of course, it you feel the need of adding extra starch, you put the potatoes in it.
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Or some rice. Or rice noodles.
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I disagree. I would have rice on the side, the same way they did with the potatoes but the potatoes, I would have them in the lentil stew.
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Are you sure it's lentils? I have no idea, but other people are mentioning beef stew and it kinda looks like ground meat to me more than lentils.
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Oh... I don't know anymore... You might be right.
Still if it is bref stew, I think my comment can apply. But lentils have the most chance to be the best dinner.
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It looks like literal poop
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If your poop looks like that I worry about your diet
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Too much English food.
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The funniest thing about these threads are the yanks trying to convince themselves that dumping an entire spice rack on everything makes it better.
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That's the entire rest of the world my dude.
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I mean, you could try a little of even one thing rather than nothing at all.
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Entire wars were fought for access to spices. If we have cheap access to every spice we could ever want, why not throw a bunch of spices on to make it pop with flavor?
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Just because we have a blend called Allspice, doesn't mean we dump the whole rack in there. Also portion control is absolutely essential with most spices. Don't be jealous of us just because we never used spices as currency.
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Enjoy your beans on toast, I guess.
Wanker.
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With actual baked beans and real bread. Delicious.
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338 comments