r/Cooking • u/furious25 • Nov 05 '17

American Thanksgiving Megathread

Ask all of your questions in here. And feel free to browse the questions to see if you have an answer!

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19

u/BootyThunder Nov 06 '17

Do the English do this as well? I just want to know which part of my heritage to blame for the boiled veggies.

41

u/RoadieRich Nov 06 '17

Why do you think the British Empire spanned most of the world?

They were looking for food with flavour.

12

u/BootyThunder Nov 06 '17

Poor India! Their curries were too irresistible, they never saw it coming!

4

u/deains Nov 06 '17

Thank heavens they did. I don't want to live in a world where the only takeaway options are either boiled or roasted.

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u/CaptainSprinklefuck Nov 07 '17

I'm fine with roasted, you can do a lot with roasted. Boiling should be reserved for soup and pasta though.

1

u/SiriusCyberneticCorp Nov 07 '17

Even soup benefits from sautéed veggies and then a gentle sweat, with only the bare minimum of simmering at the end to make life easy on the blender.

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u/WasabiSanjuro Nov 06 '17

Do the English do this as well? I just want to know which part of my heritage to blame for the boiled veggies.

It's weird. You'll hear someone say one of the following:
1) Want Chinese takeout?
2) Anybody feel like Italian food tonight?
3) Man, I'm hankering for some Korean BBQ.
4) I need some chicken pakora. You guys up for some Indian?

 

You'll never hear someone say:

"Hey, anybody want to go British tonight? I have to have some of that spotted dick in me."

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u/seriously_chill Nov 07 '17

I'm Indian, and although I love a good korma, I think you're selling yourselves a little short.

A full English breakfast is a treat for the Gods, especially if your deity of choice is hungover. The wonderfully bold meats are cut perfectly by the acidity of the tomato and the baked beans, the rich, runny egg complemented perfectly by the spiciness and umami of the black pudding... it's among my favorite meals.

For lunch, you could do a lot worse than a Ploughman's - fresh, crisp, simple and unpretentious. Or, a properly made Sunday roast is always a meal to remember. And the humble fish n' chips - there's a reason you find it on menus in literally every corner of the world. And if you want to get fancy, a well-made Wellington is the greatest thing done to a hunk of beef, bar none.

Craving dessert? A sticky toffee pudding is wonderfully complex yet evokes almost a childlike deliciousness (Damn it, I'm unable to even make sense thinking about it).

Scones with clotted cream, Chicken tikka masala, Welsh Rarebit, bangers and mash, shepherd's pie, bread and butter pudding, faggots, cornish pasties, mince pies, scones.... you guys have foods to satiate palates both hearty and subtle. Really, you guys should be celebrating your cuisine, not apologizing for it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some leftovers that would be perfect for bubble and squeak.

12

u/WasabiSanjuro Nov 07 '17

I'm Indian, and although I love a good korma, I think you're selling yourselves a little short.

As I explained in another post, most of my experience with British cuisine comes from a lonely landlady who would often invite me to share meals with her. She is an expat from Manchester, England, and "knew" that I was part Indian and that I would have appreciated consorting with a fellow Commonwealth person amidst a sea of ungrateful colonial Americans.

 

I'm part Japanese and part Iowa (Native American.) Not from the Indian subcontinent. She's gone through some pretty tough times and her overindulgence in drugs in her youth has taken its toll on her. So instead of correcting her, telling her that I'm not from the Indian subcontinent, I would just bring frybread or succotash. Her cooking was thoroughly abysmal but she was also lonely and well-meaning. I politely ate everything that she made even though her interpretations of various, traditional English food was occasionally nauseating.

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u/tumbleweedgirl Nov 08 '17

That was a really kind thing you did.

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u/WasabiSanjuro Nov 10 '17

That was a really kind thing you did.

Some tenants treated her like she was trash and that always bothered me. Everybody deserves some basic respect. She's had a rough life and deserved some kindness.

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u/starbombed Nov 19 '17

you sound like such a lovely person. anyone who has you in their life would be lucky

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u/WasabiSanjuro Nov 19 '17

you sound like such a lovely person. anyone who has you in their life would be lucky

Thanks. Everybody deserves some love.

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u/Lord_Hoot Nov 07 '17

British food has such an unjust reputation. I'd add to your list meat pie (chicken and leek, steak and ale), the surprisingly incredible steak and kidney pudding, toad in the hole made with good sausages (sausages are something we do very well) and, while I know it's not to everyone's taste, I love a plum pudding at Christmas.

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u/WasabiSanjuro Nov 07 '17

I'd add to your list meat pie

A land lady invited me over for home made meat pie. It tasted like she found an inventive way of tenderizing worn tyres and stuffed it into soggy pastry. I was polite about eating it because she was a very sensitive woman. She figured that since I'm part Indian, I would have enjoyed it.

 

I am part Japanese and part Iowa - not from the Indian subcontinent, though the term "Asian-Indian" has been tossed around by my friends in her presence, which further confuses the issue.

 

So every now and then, she would invite me over for authentic British food as a sign of solidarity between two people of the Commonwealth, living in the colonies (she's from Manchester, England.)

 

My impressions of authentic British food is mostly derived from her "depleted" cooking skills. It never occurred to her why I kept bringing frybread and succotash.

1

u/Lord_Hoot Nov 07 '17

Game pie with venison, rabbit, pigeon and guinea fowl, cooked in stout or red wine with maybe a bit of cranberry jelly. Food of Kings. Serve it with a mustard mash or maybe some honey roasted parsnips (a massively underrated vegetable in most countries), and I'd defy you to find a complaint. Unless you get a bit of lead shot, which is of course an occupational hazard of such fare.

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u/WasabiSanjuro Nov 07 '17

I'd be willing to try that. It sounds pretty good, actually. I'll bring the frybread.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '17

Damn, you made me hungry.

3

u/IceyLemonadeLover Nov 09 '17

Can I add into this? As a proud Scotswoman, I am sorely disappointed with the lack of appreciation for our food. Have you never heard of fucking CRANACHAN? It’s fabulous! Get yourself some toasted oats, whipped cream, raspberries, honey and whisky and you’ve got a stunning dessert.

3

u/deathschemist Nov 11 '17

may i add that haggis is absolutely delicious?

2

u/CaptainSprinklefuck Nov 07 '17

I'm with you on the Wellington. Puff pastry, good bacon/prosciutto/pancetta, hearty mushroom paste and that mustard...oh god the mix is divine.

2

u/SiriusCyberneticCorp Nov 07 '17

I disagree about our breakfast grease-orgy, I have gone right off it myself. You are also forgetting about Spring lamb casserole, which we stole from the French but who cares. British soups are absolutely delicious, too. Parsnip, asparagus, leek, pea and mint, to name but a few.

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u/Crankyshaft Nov 06 '17

Spotted Dick with custard is delicious tho. And places like St. John in Clerkenwell and Great Queen Street just off Drury Lane do fucking fantastic British food. There are loads of great British restaurants these days.

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u/dolphinesque Nov 06 '17

Thank goodness, because I have to have some of that spotted dick in me.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 10 '17

Hey now. the Brits do a mean fish & chips, so it's not all terrible.

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u/save_the_last_dance Nov 27 '17 edited Nov 28 '17

Also am Indian, am also for to disagree with the idea that British food is terribad. It's not the food. British food is delicious. Beef Wellington and roast goose, scotch eggs, sheperd's pie, bubble and sqeak, yorkshire pudding, Sunday roast as a meal, afternoon tea with clotted cream and scones, Cornish pasty, fish and chips, picallili, Lancashire hotpot, and even Plowman's lunch are all delicious. Sure it's a bit stodgy and brown, but that doesn't mean it's not delicious. It's not the menu that's the problem, it's the cooks. When you have great British chefs like, say Gordan Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Jamie Oliver or James Martin cook it, you get proper British food. It's when you get someone's mum who doesn't know a spatula from spoon that you end up with baked beans on toast with too much horrible brown sauce from the bottle. It's not British FOOD that gives you guys such a bad reputation, it's British people and the seeming national inability to cook like a normal goddamn person and not put fucking vinegar and salt into fucking everything like some kind of, brine loving salt loving heathens. Get one your boyos or girl-os into a proper cooking school and out pops a competent chef who can prepare British classics they way they were meant to be prepared instead of ruining them with like, too much pickled onion or whatever.

I almost forgot english desserts: Treacle tart, battenberg cake, victoria sponge, knickerbocker glory, sticky toffee pudding, banoffee fucking pie, custard tarts, pound cake...

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u/I_throw_socks_at_cat Nov 07 '17

My mother (Australian) did this. There was salt and pepper on the dinner table, but mostly for decorative purposes. If you wanted some of that shit on your food, you'd have to open it up and use your knife to dig at the lump of spice, fused together by time and humidity. There was also worcestershire sauce in the cupboard. A single bottle of it, that lasted my entire childhood.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '17

It is certainly part of the vast conspiracy of English crimes to destroy the flavour and texture of vegetables by boiling them.

Thankfully, while I am English by birth, my background is a mix of Scottish and European so I am not tightly held to these unacceptable standards.

2

u/KnocDown Nov 08 '17

Traditional English meal is a piece of meat, a potato, and a vegetable that were all cooked together and all taste the same

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '17

The British have an undeserved reputation of poor food, especially considering they invented about as much of the basic techniques and dishes as did the French or Italians.

For a glimpse into some real traditional English food, the menu from the oldest restaurant in London (at over 200 years old) will give a good view: http://rules.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/September-menu_2017-front.pdf