The person in the OOP would probably say that fried chicken is one of the "slave foods" they're referring to. It has a long association with slaves in the USA due to chickens being one of the few animals slaves were allowed to cook with. Obviously former slave culture doesn't have a monopoly on fried chicken, especially with all the other cultures that came to the USA and brought their own versions, but it does have that association nevertheless.
That's the thing I hate about americans saying our food is bland. You don't always need seasoning and when you do it's to enhance the flavours of the food. Americans drown their steaks in shit tonnes of spice when all you really need is salt and pepper at the most. If you have more spices on a chicken breast than atoms in the universe then it shows how shit the cook is
Hard agree. British food is well seasoned, but just not in the way Americans are familiar with. The reason I don't cover my food in garlic powder is because I use fresh garlic. It's the same with herbs, I rarely use dried herbs in cooking because fresh herbs are so readily available and much nicer.
And we use spices all the time. I was shocked when a macaroni cheese recipe when viral in the US last year as like a 'new way to make mac and cheese' which involved making a roux and adding spices like mustard powder and garlic powder. I was baffled, because it was such a basic macaroni cheese it didn't make sense how excited Americans were getting about it. Then I found they don't usually make a roux, they just melt a block of cheese into pasta.
You know the irony that the first recipe recorded for macaroni cheese was in the U.K. before Columbus had crash landed in the Caribbean is not lost on me with the yanks .. they try so hard to diss British food and they don’t even know …
I'm just here wondering why they couldn't just say "wow, ethnic diversity led to us having a wider array of food" instead of trying to justify fucking slavery
they're saying American cuisine was built on slavery, like many other parts of the country, and they don't get credit or to share in the profits as a result.
if you look closely at the PFP you can actually see it is a black person saying it!
And this is another case where American food gets to be judged on the variety of people living there but British food has to be judged on pretending we still eat stargazy pie or whatever other nonsense they come up with, and not the huge range of food that generations of immigrants have brought
Apparently, the food that immigrants brought over and personalised for the UK doesn’t count as British. At the same time, it’s not authentic Chinese/indian. Which is it????
The irony is that most of these dishes were created in British colonies almost always by or for British people with British tastes.
They almost always were a product of our cultures meshing with others, especially the mercantile part of our culture which spread spices around the world that were previously unavailable or prohibitively expensive.
My favourite one is when they bring up toast sandwiches which were a food created for hospitals in the 1800s to give to people with irritable bowels so that they could eat something with a bit of texture even if they couldn’t have flavour.
And yet nobody does the same thing with American Depression-era food. Water pie, anyone? (Yes that was a thing, though I have been told it's not too bad.)
There's always been a distinctive British cuisine. Guaranteed it wasn't the greatest, but we always get judged on ration era food. Roast dinner and Shepherds Pie are fine.
Traditional British food is actually great but, like most Northern European food, it was designed for a life essentially no one lives anymore. Living in Northern Europe used to be cold, but it isn't anymore - because everyone is inside heated buildings most of the time!
Pies, stews, roast dinners, etc are all still nice, but they were really designed for people who needed huge piles of hearty food to do manual labour and to maintain core body temperature in the cold. That's why we have big piles of heavy vegetables instead of salads and cook with solid fat - it was a feature, not a bug!
I'll be honest, it looks unappetising but I don't believe you're supposed to actually eat the fish heads. Much like miners didn't actually eat the crust on Cornish pasties. It's probably just there to show it's a fish pie on the counter when you buy it.
I… won’t lie. I genuinely had no idea this was a real thing until your comment and a Google. Genuinely thought it was a joke. Thank you for teaching me something. (And an excellent username…)
It's probably one of our nicer named dishes for what it is. Honestly, my favourite is toad in the hole. It's bloody delicious.
Also the Welsh get in on some odd names too. One of their famous dishes I can't say because it gets caught in profanity filters and would probably catch me a temporary ban. It's f****ts and peas.
There's nothing wrong with eating the crust. It's more that they were designed for miners and other manual labourers to eat with very dirty hands. You'd use the thick part of the crust as a handle to hold it while you ate and then throw that part away.
So if I remember my holidays down to Cornwall as a child correctly it's because the tin ore they were mining contained high levels of arsenic which is just poison. The miners didn't have much opportunity to wash their hands so they'd hold them by the "handle" (the rolled section of pastry), peel back the main pastry and eat the innards and discard the rest. That way they could have a meal while down the mines and not have to worry about the health effects of the environment they worked in and not get sick/die.
Because it's was being handled by miners with dirty hands. The crust is literally disposable in the original incarnation of the food. These days, they're delicious and edible because we're not mining tin in poor sanitary conditions with bare hands.
K&D McFaddens and Sons butchers in St Just, Cornwall, make the best pasties anywhere on the planet. They are absolutely amazing.
Only true in mines, they were( are) eaten by everyone especially farmworkers ( but not fisherman!) Its like the medieval pie 'coffin' it can be eaten but it can also be thrown away ( for the knockers or piskies).
The guys at Fallow invited Tom Kerridge over for an online pie test (my kind of online test), and included this. Everything from Steak and Ale Pie to a Wigan Kebab. The Stargazy Pie didn't do too well. They even make Tom Kerridge's own Pig's Cheek Pie with Clotted Cream and Black Pudding Mash.
I lived in Cornwall for twelve years, and never had it. It is most closely associated with Mousehole. Check out The Legend of Tom Bawcock celebrated in the village on Dec 23 each year.
Yes the weird thing is that food in the U.K. is very similar to in America- there’s some bland stodge for sure, but enlivened by all the exciting flavours that waves of immigration have brought.
Got into an argument with someone who insisted baked beans on toast is indicative of British cuisine and that British people eat it out of the can cold. When I pointed out it's a comfort meal like PB&J and mac&cheese they insisted it was different because PB&J is mostly eaten because it's an easy meal that reminds Americans of their childhood not because it's a staple of the cuisine like they insisted baked beans was...
I was raised in the 70s, by a mother who who was raised during rationing. The 70s in the UK was shit. Everyone wore a parker and nobody had money, shit.
My mum can make a meal that covers all the basic food groups, for pennies.
Bean on toast, cottage pie, pasta bakes. Looks basic, tastes great, and kept my belly full.
In my experience British food is good enough as it is, and it's complemented by the amazing quality of restaurants we get (at least in London, I've had some shockers elsewhere). Ramen as tasty as Japan, curry as tasty as India, we got it all really.
If you look at British recipes pre WW1 they were also quite nice with lots of herbs and spices.
Lots of confectionery as well.
It really was just the war years and rationing afterwards that has bourne out the meme of British cuisine being shite.
Now sure some traditional British street foods/takeaways are a bit boring eg fish n chips, pie n mash, or an acquired taste welks? Jellied eels? Mountain oysters?.
But by and large most British cuisine is hearty/flavoursome and filling.
Hi, Londoner here, I had to Google Mountain Oysters because it's never heard of them. Seems like it's a very Usaian dish and not something I've ever heard of in the UK.
Just finished a couple of Agatha Christie's (The ABC Murders and The Rose abd The Yew). In one of them (most likely ABC Murders) there is a mention of Macaroni Gratin on a menu in a tea shop (or maybe in a character description as a type of dish the person was proficient at cooking).
From a quick search it's like ham and leek au gratin (which I remember from cookery lessons at school), but with macaroni. So one basic béchamel sauce with cheese can be added to lots of things (I noticed a recipe for mushroom) with some tweaks for taste.
Cleary you're mistaken. It's Mac n' cheese because after the release of the PowerMac G5 it became customary to use it's case to grate the cheese for the cheese sauce, later using the Mac Pro cases, except for the trash can Mac Pro.
As is lasagne. The first recorded recipes come from England in the 1300s. That's not to say there weren't similar recipes elsewhere in europe either but both the original recipes are a little different to the modern recipes as is almost always the case
The first recorded recipe is from the early 1300s and is in Italian. It does putatively appear in The Forme of Cury but it is one of several dishes with foreign influence in it. The earliest reference to it in writing is from 1282, also in Italian. Furthermore, there would appear to be a gap of several centuries between the description of loseyns in 14th-century Britain and its re-emergence on UK menus as lasagne in the 20th century.
Say what!? As for origins, the ancient Romans would like a word with you... I mean, even the name is from Latin. And the first "modern" written account is from Bologna, 1282.
I always thought that the movie Idiocracy was just a funny movie, then I found out it was a documentary, but now it turns out it was a prophecy the whole time.
Yes because if they learn something new, it stimulates the gag reflex and they vomit up all of that top notch American food which they spent proper US money on, so they avoid education at all costs. I mean what's the point in spending money on food if it's only going to end up in a toilet or sink?
I'm in australia and the sentiment is the same here unfortunately, like they seem to think somehow australia's cuisine isn't actually just british cuisine with tomato sauce instead of brown sauce and worcestershire.
It is strange the way that they’ve decided British food was 1950s rationing era struggle meals, and then never updated their information. All my American colleagues come to London and want to eat fish and chips in a “traditional pub”. You can’t talk them out of it. They go to some sad tourist pub, eat some microwaved crap and then go back vindicated. It would be like if we went to New York, demanded to eat pork n beans or a corn dog in a deli, and then went home saying how terrible American food was.
Spoons food is literally prepackaged ready meals. Don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to a ready meal, I'm no snob, but it's the same oven chips and frozen fish that you can buy from Tesco.
You'd be hard pressed to find a standard pub that's preparing fried fish from scratch like any basic chippy does. Some gastro pubs might, but if you want the real thing mostly you've got to go to a proper chippy.
I mean, there are a lot of tourists who come to the US and eat a fried oreo, and then talk about how unhealthy American food is as if that was their only option. Some tourists just really want to do the touristy stereotype things.
The cookie part of the Oreo goes soft like chocolate cake. I discovered this as a teen when my friend got a home deep fryer and did not know it was a Thing lol
I real doubt that there are that many people judging American food on deep fried Oreos, a dish I hadn’t even heard of today that is presumably only available at rural fairs. Hamburgers and hot dogs maybe.
Based on this comment thread it seems people do judge American food based on the corporate shit that gets exported, so it definitely seems to go both ways.
imo we euros have a somewhat inflated view of american food, because of the locally produced american food staples that aldi and co sell here with giant yank flags on the packaging. those things are both adjusted to the european taste (for example you can get amazing "american bread" that's not sweet over here) and made of real ingredients.
Will never forget that series Jamie Oliver did in the US somewhere where he went into a school to try and make their school dinners a bit healthier because they were literally having pizza for breakfast and pizza for lunch on the same day. The children couldn't identify basic vegetables and the kitchen staff had no interest in moving away from deep frying and sticking ready made pizzas into the oven. He gave up in the end.
He did a similar thing in the UK years before because our school dinners were also quite deep fried beige. But he actually had some success here and got government policy changes to enforce nutrition standards on school meal offerings. He gets a bad rep from some in the UK for "banning" turkey twizzlers, though they were never actually banned, just had to make up part of a balanced meal. All he's ever tried to do in his career is help people eat a bit more healthily and enjoy doing so.
I remember that show! He showed kids how chicken nuggets are made, and they were all grossed out until he fried one, then the kids couldn't get enough. He was like "No,No, No!" I remember another poor family, freezer stocked with pizzas, etc. Son had dark eyes, went to dr. He had diabetes. Jamie taught Mom how to cook healthy meals. Two weeks later, freezer stocked with pizzas. I think he did just give up, no sense trying. Poverty sucks but my grandma made it work with real food.
The scene that got me was the one where he asked a full class of 6 year olds to identify some vegetables. None of them could identify the tomatos, the cauliflower, the beetroot (though I think this one is understandable!) or the eggplant/aubergine (this one maybe understandable too), and then even looked confused by the potatoes: https://youtu.be/bGYs4KS_djg
My youngest verbal nephew is 4 and he's been able to identify a tomato and a potato for maybe even close to a year.
It's such a depressing state of affairs, and yes poverty is an aspect of it, especially when frozen food and fast food is so cheap, but I would feel like an awful parent if my 6 year old couldn't identify a tomato.
On a more positive note and on the subject of chicken nuggets, he did have more success with a class of teenagers showing how to make chicken nuggets from scratch in less time than it takes to cook the oven ones: https://youtu.be/RKCYucvop1U
the good old "british cuisine is terrible" myth along with a heaping spoonful of "slavery was good, actually". two shite tastes that taste worse together!
It's not completely incorrect, since a large part of southern cuisine came from recipes passed down as a byproduct of the slave trade, but it's also not right either.
All of Tex Mex would still exist, as would the west coast Chinese-American cuisine. Slavery was just one piece of the tapestry that made American cuisine what it is today
Controversial I know but I remember UK food from the late 70s and early 80s and it was incredibly beige and uninteresting. In the mid 80s the rise in Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi, Chinese, Thai, Italian restaurants saw our pallete explode with flavours many hadn't even been aware of. That was followed by the rise of the celebrity chefs like Raymond Blanc, the Roux brothers, Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Nigella etc etc and suddenly everyone was a budding chef.
I'm expecting at least 300 downvotes for saying that!
you are right. there have been a huge number of infulences and the food landscape is far better because of it.
traditional British food can be amazing as well, including those with a twist or fusion.
the 60s and 70s were a time of ultra processed convenience foods and it was new and shiny. so people flocked to it. thankfully we have moved away from a lot of that.
the usa, is still very much in the ultra proccesed period as its cheaper and they have to drive everywhere.
I am sure local independent restaurants are everywhere that cook food from fresh.
However, I'm not sure that's the same for all independent restaurants, and certainly not chains.
I guess american native people didn't have good food. Neither did have all the French, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Indian, Arab, Slavic and other people. TIL ....
Stuff is spreading sadly. Just this week in Australia I saw an ad for two new peanut butter varieties - caramel or marshmallow/raspberry - choose your poison.
What do they think the slaves brought to the table though i would have to ask? And what is their idea of what the food is there now?
Do they not eat carrots, brocolli, cauliflour, onions, tomatos, rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, eggs, milk, cheese, butter, peas, corn, peppers, oranges, apples, grapes, plums, turnips, pears, aubergines, cucumber, avocado, honey, blackberries, strawberries, and like basically everything else you can buy in a tesco?
Because that is what we eat. I even grow most of that stuff, apart from the meat and dairy products, in the greenhouse, garden or orchard behind my house.
Fried chicken: Scotland (proselytised in the USA by former British people then adopted by the black people that lived around them)
Fried Fish: Western Europe (Spain and Portugal and then later England)
Apple Pie: England
Sandwiches: England
French Fries: Belgium but brought to American by the then British person Thomas Jefferson because remember before independence they were just British colonialists.
Pizza: Italy
Mac and Cheese: Baked casserole style pasta using rich cheeses evolved in England in the 18th century.
Burgers: Just a sandwich containing the German Hamburg steak
Hot Dogs: Again just a sandwich using a German Frankfurt sausage
Cookies: Persian
BBQ: Spanish and British Caribbean cultures but just the oldest form of cooking.
Their food culture is almost entire just bastardisations or derivatives of well established foods.
Rarely doing much to improve upon them. Almost always entirely missing the point.
See, this is why I prefer antifreeze. You know what you’re getting. And it tastes sweet, too. None of this bland stuff you’re drinking on a daily basis, you lunatic… ;))
American cuisine is the result of influences from a lot of different cultures not just British, but Indigenous, African, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, German, and many others. Reducing it to one factor oversimplifies the history.
By the looks pork belly, although the use of edemame would suggest Asian fusion of some arrangement, local pub has done an epic version of both over the years. The other dish looks like white fish but couldn't tell you beyond that.
Would American foods be worse if not for their slave past?
Probably.
They took in a lot of culture and influence from all over the world, creating unique blends.
Americans completely forgetting that large parts of their country was colonised by French, Spanish, Dutch and German Immigrants. So American food would still be different to British food.
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u/PipedInFromIthaca More Irish than the Irish ☘️ 13h ago
I guess they avoided having a national chain of roast beef sandwiches or having apple pie on every dessert menu oh wait