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  • After some trips to GB and eating there, I am happy to live in Spain

  • If this is what a country's cuisine looks like to you, I think it says more about your choice in food than what is available from that country's cuisine.

    • What British meals do you recommend?

      • Disclaimer: All of the below comes with the obvious caveat that it has to be made by someone who knows what they're doing. Any country's cuisine is shit if you're eating at a shit restaurant. That's not about your choice of meal, that's your choice of venue.

        1. Pies. Britain has basically perfected the savory pie. Steak and kidney, steak and onion, scotch pie, shepherd's pie, cottage pie, fisherman's pie... British savory pies are an explosion of flavour. Pair with a good stout or porter; the kind of beer that still looks black even when you hold it up to a light.
        2. Good fish & chips is one of the most perfect meals ever created. Keep in mind that the condiments matter; you need the acidity and richness of a good malt vinegar to cut through that fattiness. Never get fish & chips in a pub or restaurant. Go to a proper chippy, preferably in a coastal town.
        3. Stews are a British classic. Try a real Lancashire hotpot sometime, with pickled red cabbage and mashed potatoes. Absolutely stunning.
        4. Get your ass down to a high quality carvery and try a roast dinner. Lamb or beef are the best bet, but chicken and pork are good too. The true test of a roast dinner is the quality of the gravy. It should be not too thick, and full of savory meaty flavour, not doughy or floury in taste. Also look for vegetables that have some colour on them, not just boiled. Roast lamb leg with a good mint sauce is a thing of beauty. Pair with red wine for lamb or beef, white for pork or chicken.
        5. Haggis is a flavour explosion. The real thing, no plastic wrapped forgeries, served with the traditional sides of tatties and neeps, and a glass of really good single malt whisky.
        6. Straight up, one of the best meals I've ever had was bangers and mash. I was at a high end London restaurant - I forget the name, but John Lennon used to eat there pretty regularly - and it was incredible. The potatoes were the perfect texture with just the right amount of salt and butter. The sausages were made in house, beautifully seasoned and cooked to perfection, and the gravy was stunning. It's a very simple meal, but simple done right isn't easy. In a simple meal there's nothing to hide behind. Every part has to be perfect.
        7. Desserts. British desserts are phenomenal. Eton mess, spotted dick, and the absolute king of desserts, sticky toffee pudding served with thick cream. Unbelievably decadent.

      • It depends if you are looking for traditional or contemporary cuisine.

        Traditional:

        Can't get much more traditional than a Sunday roast. Perhaps not the most spiced dish, but relies on a complexity of ingredients cooked just right, and served with a combo of rich gravy and various sauces (mint, cranberry, redcurrant, horseradish, mustard etc are all common). Certainly a flavourful dish when done right.

        Pies and pasties are historically very popular. These days sometimes mistakenly viewed as plain food due to the availability of simpler fast food offerings, but there are a huge variety of styles, flavours and complexities around. Pies as a category cover those made with different types of pastries, as well as those topped with potato (cottage pie, shepherds pie, fish pie etc).

        There are a huge variety of other traditional dishes from across the UK to explore which Google can list out a load of, but truth is historically much of British cuisine was based on what was locally or seasonally available; seasonal veg, seafood, cheeses, breads and cakes.

        Local knowledge and variety is also huge. I'm Welsh and could name dozens of Welsh dishes others in the UK won't have even heard of, and you won't find much mention of even online and know what you're looking for.

        Contemporary:

        ..per the meme, Britain's imperial past does mean a multicultural present, and the reality is that that has influenced common cuisine in a big way - what many British people are eating on a regular basis are based in fusion.

        Curries are incredibly popular, and it is worth noting that written British curry recipes predate the founding of the USA, and imported recipes predate that by hundreds more years - it isn't a particularly recent or novel thing. British curries are as unique to Indian curries as eg Chinese or Japanese curry is. Not only that, each country within the UK has unique variations of curry attributed to them.

        Anglo-Chinese and Italian food are also particularly popular - most towns across the UK that are big enough to have a couple of restaurants will have a minimum of a fish and chip shop, a Chinese, an Indian/curry house, kebab shop, and an Italian restaurant. Most cities have places serving foods from dozens of countries available. In big cities, London in particular, it is probably easier to name countries that there isn't food from than there is.

        Growing up, a typical week of 7 home cooked dinners looked like Pasta bake or lasagne, curry, stir fry, jacket potato and/or soup, fish & chips, fajitas, Sunday roast.

        .. That turned into a bigger answer than intended 😂

      • Spotted dick

      • !remind me to see any answer to this lol

307 comments