British food is a lot better than people give it credit for, yeah there are some "wierd divisive" dishes like herring pie, but literally every single country is going to have horrificly wierd and gross food somewhere. Go to a state fair in the US, you will see all the divisive foods you could ever imagine now also deep fried and on a stick.
Meat pies kick ass. Fish and chips soothes my midwestern fish-fry loving heart
EXACTLY, people will point out the insane bullshit they see online and tout it as the countrywide norm. I used it purely as an example the british food haters have recently started latching onto and exploding in the youtube algorithm
I occasionally see jellied eels in very old school east London chippies, but that's it. It's probably less common than something like rocky mountain oysters in America and I'd honestly rather eat the eels lmao.
They're just a historical novelty. I've seen one takeaway advertise jellies eels in my old hometown (Sutton), which I'm pretty sure is there just to signal they're an old school spoons/takeaway rather than be a top-selling item
I was going to ask about jellied eels. As an American who has visited GB in the past, I did enjoy pretty much everything that I ate there, with the exception of your bacon.
We have good bacon and bad bacon, it depends where you ate it and where it was sourced from, how much you want to spend, and who is cooking it, etc.
Like many western countries, we also eat a variety of food from all round the world. Our supermarkets have aisles dedicated to officially Italian food, indian, thai, mexican, etc, and we have restaurants with cuisine from round the world.
The quality differs according to what budget you have.
Jellied eels used to be very very cheap in London, because the Thames was full of eels ready to fish out, and the "jellied" part is just what naturally happens when you boil them with a few seasonings and some vinegar.
They were never a delicacy, but they were one of very few foods that actually came from London, so there was a certain degree of London pride to them amongst the common folk.
Then some stuff happened and eels are now very rare in the Thames, so now they only really exist as a novelty food for tourists.
They're not rare, they're just not excessively common as they once were.
Once watched a seagull on the bank at Vauxhall manage to swallow a whole eel. Its neck was huge, genuinely thought it was about to keel over. Then the whole eel came back out again. Good times...
I think they are talking about Stargazy pie, which is specifically a Cornish dish. It is one of the weirder dishes in British cuisine, but I imagine quite tasty. The fish heads poking out of the crust can be off putting for some.
Stargazy pie is a regional novelty, jellied eels are the same, yet people judge the country based on that. It'd be like judging Italian cuisine based on casu martzu.
Idk about herring pie, but Fish Pie is downright delicious!
Take a mild flaky white fish fillet (like sole, or plaice), and simmer it in milk. Meanwhile, sauté onions, mushrooms, and then add diced fresh tomato. Take the flaked fish and add it and the vegetables to a pie plate. Use the milk you poached the fish in to make a white sauce, mix it into the ingredients in the pie plate. Top with creamy mashed potatoes and dot with butter. Bake until bubbly and slightly browned.
It’s absolutely delicious. Even people that don’t like fish like it.
The only reason I don’t make it more often is that it uses every pan in the kitchen: sauté pan for veggies, pan for poaching fish, pan for making roux and white sauce, pot for boiling potatoes, bowl for mashing potatoes, pie plate, and cutting board. Seems like a lot for a single dish!
The one i was talking about seems to be known to yall as stargazer pie, goes to show the total american understanding of uk food- we cant even talk shit about the correct dish.
Loved my 2 visits to the UK. The food was a pleasant surprise having grown up on the “British food bad” stereotype. They do what I call “brown food” really well. So meat pies, Sunday roasts, sausages, British Bacon sandwiches are much better than US BLTs! Loved the pastries, Yorkshire pudding and crumpets! I loved crumpets so much that make my own in the winter regularly and have them with butter and jam for office breakfast with tea. So satisfying.
So yeah British food is actually good!
Edit: forgot to mention the world famous Fish n Chips! In the US the fish is usually a thin strip of greasy and soggy disappointment whereas the proper UK Fish is this large crispy exterior with a melt in your mouth buttery fish that is Divine!
The stereotype of Britain having awful food dates back to WWII, when American troops stationed in the UK saw how awful our food was, completely glossing over the fact it was bad because there was a war and strict rationing.
But "British Food Bad" is what was told to people back in the States and the stereotype stuck 🫠
Sorry, but that's a fake story. The stereotype goes back to the 19th century at least, an unfortunate outcome of england being the first to have his industrial revolution.
According to a specialist of the era, a teacher in Caen university (France), there was two main culprits: the first one is the worker class not having the money to buy fresh ingredients from the countryside, having to eat cheaper food for decades. Not that it was rare. Ever since the middle age and before, people in town didn't really had a true kitchen and mroe often that not, would eat outside. The main difference is the major increase of people living in town following the industrial revolution, where generations of people were too poor to afford the ingredients of their family recipes and would of course forgot about it. Not helping that english towns used to be dirty and polluted, with foreign travellers complaining about the fruits and the vegetable having a bad taste in town.
The second one is a trend in the elite to prefer eating french Haute cuisine to be seen as different. The restrictions of WW2 were merely the final nail in the coffin of nearly a century of slow decline.
I can show you an article summarizing it but it's in french, sorry.
The article is one of hope, though. It concluded by saying the reputation is probably soon to be a thing of the past, with new generations of chief reviving forgottent recipes from the period when english food was in fact the best of Europe.
British people think that because you can go out and spend £300 on a meal that their food is no longer shit. Every brit gets home ant the end of the day and throws something pre-made into the oven. They might do a roast on a Sunday, maybe... british food culture is ass and it rightly has the reputation it deserves
I wonder if you have some bias against the UK lol I can go to a pub and spend <£20 for a good meal and a pint. If you don't know anything about the country you shouldnt have an opinion.
The issue is no one is baking a meat pie from scratch. We are a nation of oven ready meals and pre prepared ingredients. The average brit cant cook for shit and we treat making a spag bol from scratch as being good at cooking.
I'll be real I don't really like fish and chips. I find the taste and texture of white fish just doesn't appeal to me. Smoked sausage and chips is good though.
I get that, while there can be a million fish in the sea, of you dont like the taste or texture they are kind of dead on arrival. personnally, catfish or walleye fried in a light batter with a parm dusting is heaven on a plate to me.
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u/FR3Y4_S3L1N4 22d ago
British food is a lot better than people give it credit for, yeah there are some "wierd divisive" dishes like herring pie, but literally every single country is going to have horrificly wierd and gross food somewhere. Go to a state fair in the US, you will see all the divisive foods you could ever imagine now also deep fried and on a stick.
Meat pies kick ass. Fish and chips soothes my midwestern fish-fry loving heart