On the other hand Americans eat like they have free healthcare…
Touché!
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In my defense, everything I worked for in the first 18 years of my life fell apart in the next two, so I’ve just kind of given up on anything that isn’t now or in the very near future.
"Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life
The most interesting people I know Didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives
Some of The Most Interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t"
-Sunscreen
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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.
i just learned (on Lemmy) that Americans basically don’t get raises annually. 1 or 2% raise apparently is the burn. so 40% work in a work day sounds way too much for me. good job, American workers. those fuckers don’t deserve your labor even at 40%. keep slacking, i say.
American workers. those fuckers don’t deserve your labor even at 40%. keep slacking, i say.
I wish. That person has never seen what blue collar workers go through. In food service for example, and I literally cannot stress this enough, YOU WILL NOT GET A BREAK. Their favorite phrase is, “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” This is because there will be exactly one chair in the manager’s office, so that no one is allowed to sit for their entire shift, except the manager.
They get pissy if you ask for your federally required 15 minute break or your 30 minute lunch. This is doubly true for wait staff or delivery drivers. In fact I have been told by multiple bosses at delivery jobs that if I try to take a break at the store, I will be fired.
The rule of thumb over here seems to be, “the less you are paid, the more you WILL work.”
every time i hear anything about the US it becomes even more unbelievable that there are no guillotines in the streets “just in case”.
It’s because the ruling class created the biggest, most successful gang of slave hunters in human history, armed them to the teeth, and gave them immunity from prosecution. Anyone that does try to wrest some power back from the ruling class, historically, gets shot.
Yeah but they still spend most of their lives in a place they don’t want to be in, while being prideful about how hard they work compared to all other nations
Try getting a blue collar job, and tell me again how the majority of American workers are slacking. Must be nice over there in your “office job,” that clearly can be done working at home.
Also I don’t know about other office jobs, but in IT, it was feast or famine. When there was work to be done, we worked 100 hour weeks, but when we finally managed to put out all the fires, yeah we would spend weeks at a time working on side projects, not slacking off.
Blue collar? I was obviously not talking about you losers, so shut your gd mouth and go back to pounding rocks.
Buuuuuuurn.
Lmao
Imagine taking a joke without having to jab back 😂. Oh world you are so petty.
You couldn’t
Imagine not being able to take a jab back without complaining. 😂
Imagine giving it out but not being able to take it.
If it was just a bit of fun then, its still just a bit of fun now.
Just to be clear, we want you to have free healthcare. Its not meant as gloating and you should be angry. Just not at us. You deserve free health care and you won’t find many British people who wouldn’t want you to have it too.
Jab backs are the best part!
I just continued the “food generalisation” joke because I’m neither British nor American. I can laugh at both of you.
You seem to be the one that can’t take a joke.
🤠🤠🤠
I don’t care. I’ll die on that hill.
Oh you will
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)).
It might not take a hill, a set of stairs could do it.
This reminds me of that post
“Is British food really that bad?”
“If made correctly, Yes”
British food when it’s not presented like shit
I still don’t find this appealing tbh
Oh it’s smiling! Hello! 👋
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.
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.
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.
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.
Buttered white bread dipped in stew is the best way to eat bread. You should try it before you diss it
Pretzels
Middle one looks like a big, ropy turd I dropped last night
Lol I figured that one would get the love
How did you make and apply the brine? I tried it once and the results where despicable.
I use a 3% lye bath for 20 seconds. Also baked using a convection oven. I’ve done it using a baking soda boil and/or a standard oven and it just gets light brown. Lye plus convection is the key to get that dark brown.
The german flying overhead:
We’re white knighting mild food takes now 😂 the internet is so silly
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.
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.
Deconstructed Sheppards pie
And now it is suddenly fancy enough for the insta crowd.
Exactly.
What is that? Potatoes with a side of stew on a plate?
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.
Rationing lasted until the mid-50s and left a lasting impression on people’s diets. It’s taken decades to recover socially, mainly with the aid of foreign cuisine.
Indian immigrants are the MVPs 👍
At first, I thought that you declared Indian immigrants as a minimum viable product. After some googling I guess it’s meant to be most valuable players. Small but significant difference. 😂
While we’re on this tangent, I’ve always felt the need to point out the following.
Minimum Viable Product = Poorly planned, or not planned at all, crappy product that is created in haste by overworked, stressed out developers to make some middle manager in a suit and sneakers type feel like they’re doing something to please corporate, because they don’t have the guts or good sense to push back. This abomination is usually sold as “we’ll flesh it out in phase two.” Phase two never happens, because they’re off chasing whatever other shiny thing they think is important. Also, the last MVP that they farted out “didn’t gain traction.” /rant
Some places have switched to MLP, “Minimum Lovable Product” for this reason, but that just really means My Little Pony.
Oh shit that would have been so bad hahah
Why does the same acronym have meanings on two extremes :(
In short, consultancies.
There are many good ones, and many rip off artists who spend as much time disguising their horseshit as they would just doing real work. At a certain point, consultancies started hiring less and less experienced people who had to sell more and more bullshit.
Acronyms and abbreviations are psychologically powerful; they imply something is commonplace or important to the point of it not needing to be spelled out. When you suddenly coin a random one you can pretend you know something the listener doesn’t-- you’re right back to the emperor’s new clothes–most people are too scared to ask. Any industry, same shit.
I like all the acronyms and shit. It helps me know who to ignore, or avoid working for / with.
I mean, we had rationing in Italy too, but you don’t see people struggling to make a passing meal here. I’m pretty sure we were also much poorer than the British both going into and coming out of WW2
Britain was extremely import-based, which is why it lasted so long even after the war.
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.
If you’re going to boil them at least throw some cream and chives on?
Looks like a lovely bit of scran that does. Yall too obsessed with overdone memes to appreciate a nice bit of comfort food.
Nah I’m just too obcessed with spices and would like to see some used in this meal, especially on those naked potatoes.
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.
Truthfully, I’ve been to the UK and had some great food, I just like to rag on the brits!
But yes, the lack of color is probably the real issue with this meal. You really want some fiber to go with a meal like this, to say nothing of the missing nutrients. As an American though, mocking an all brown-and-white plate of food seems a little hypocritical, haha.
You’re supposed to spice those naked potatoes with the meat and gravy. This is basically Haggis if I recall correctly, without fancy serving. And it is really good.
Haggis would have cabbage and lung meat wouldn’t it?
Haggis is traditionally sheep organ meat, oats, and spices. Black pepper and nutmeg are usually the dominant ones, although I assume that’s a development from within the last couple hundred years since neither is native to anywhere near Scotland. You’d serve it alongside potatoes and turnips, traditionally both mashed with a bit of butter.
Yeah now that I am thinking about it haggis is probably better than what OP posted. It’s been years since I ate it while visiting Edinburgh :D
Spices on boiled potatoes? I only put salt on mine. What are you recommending?
As an American, this comment almost made me drop my gun and steer my F-350 off the road (I was scrolling and driving ofc). I feel so sorry for you guys, I hadn’t realized you’d been living like this since we broke up.
You can do so much with potatoes and a little bit of spices. Maybe start out with some black pepper, or some chili powder or paprika. Old Bay would also go great. If you’re really feeling adventurous, instead of conquering India, you could pan fry the potatoes instead of boiling them, and use a little hot sauce or ketchup. For boiled or baked potatoes in particular, dressing them with some sour cream or sauerkraut can be very good.
I’m american, homie. I’m just not a fan of complicated potatoes is all. But i appreciate the recommendations.
I happen to love the other comment about us eating like we have universal healthcare because my favorite potato is the loaded one lol
Baked potato, sour cream, bacon, chives, melted cheese… (Insert Homer drooling image)
Try tumeric with a bit of paprika, maybe a bit of cayenne if you like spice. Add some ghee or butter if you want something more indulgent.
But like…
Why aren’t the potatoes in the sauce?
That just seems obvious to me 🤷♀️
Even then, those look like boiled potatoes served plain. Toss some herbs on there and roast them for a bit. It’s not hard.
It’s not hard and it’s not necessary. There are different ways to enjoy a potato.
Naked potatoes mixed in with a hearty sauce are fine.
Though imo they should be brushed with oil and salt, then roasted (or airfried!) because boiled potatoes are boring lol
Yeah, I’m of the opinion that you should only boil a potato if you intend to mash it. Otherwise, what are you even doing? There are faster and tastier ways to prepare it.
You should boil them a bit in an alkaline water before roasting as well. It breaks down the surface into a starchy mess that crisps up wonderfully while they roast.
Oh, that sounds great, thanks for the tip!
Alkaline water? Do you mean salt water or water with vinegar? I don’t know enough about Ph to know which one makes alkaline water… I think vinegar is an acid, but is salt a base?
Neither, I’m referring to adding a small amount of baking soda to the water. You’re correct about vinegar being acidic. Table salt is neutral. Sodium bicarbonate is basic and increases the alkalinity of the water.
Not everything has to be soaked in fat. Plain potatoes in a sauce, like in Japanese curry for instance, are pretty good.
A light brush of fats makes the outer layer crispy when cooked under high heat!
I understand, but I don’t want crisp in my curry potatoes 😋
I wonder which version is correct in japanese/Indian curry recipes? Not that it makes any preferrence wrong, tastes are personal.
But I could’ve sworn one way is the traditional way and one isn’t… Oh well 🤣
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.
Can anyone tell me why there’s HP sauce there?
What do you do with it?
Squirt some into your mouth before you take a bite. What else would you do with it?
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.
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.
What do you mean unseasoned, they have salt on them. smh
Perfectly good boiled potatoes and stew.
Even cheap British bread usually tastes good.
And it would still be better toasted
I can’t argue with that!
Better than USA bread but worse than e.g. French or German.
It does not. Unless you never had actual bread.
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?
Stay mad bob
Very drole.
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.
A thick beef stew with boiled potatoes and buttered bread was a common meal in my 90s Midwestern USA childhood. It is delicious
The fact that it looks like you think that the “brown stuff” is the issue there is really funny
Add butter and some green herbs, like rosemary or cilantro, on the potatoes and is an instant update on that plate
Like, make something completely different and flush this down the “loo”? Yeah that works.
I didn’t even said that the bread should be garlic bread.
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.
Apart from the bread, it looks to be processed food free. Cooked from scratch. Very few preservatives.
How do you IRL see and eat the Instagram filter though?
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.
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.
You know the kids who make and enjoy memes are usually back of the class types.
We did what we could, we built like 2,700 Liberty ships.
“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!!
Is that you Paul?
Ive been watching comedy vehicle recently. He is an absolute genius.
Comedy vehicle 1-3 are yearly rewatches for me, never laughed at comedy more
You get back in the sea.
You finned cunt!
I liked it when there was nothing!
There was no crime…
The yanks seem to be attracted to this meme like somebody desperate to paint a target and distract attention away from themself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OK, I come from southern Europe and this will blow some people’s minds, but sometimes we have bland food on purpose. Especially after a week of eating grease/spicy foods.
MRE > Bri’ish food
I know that MREs are known for being disgusting, but I actually like them.
They aren’t bad. They do fuck up my digestive tract something awful. I prefer the officer’s mess.
Our drill sergeants taught us that you have to use the Kool-Aid mix, as that has something in it to counteract the digestive issues. Idk if that’s true or not, but I never had digestive issues because of an MRE, and I always used the Kool-Aid packet.
We didn’t really go over MREs in Navy boot. I doubt the RDCs would have bothered telling us that tidbit of information, since there’s really no reason a sailor should be eating those things. I just got curious and bought a few from the Army/Navy surplus stores. I never drank more than a taste or two of the Kool aid packet. Those things aren’t exactly tasty, kinda medicinal aftertaste in my opinion.
Maybe it’s true then.
Which one do you think is the best?
Not who you asked but I’m pretty partial to the chili Mac, especially if you got some hot sauce to drizzle on it! It’s the one I look for first whenever we’re given some to choose from!
They used to come with little Tabasco bottles in them. I had little bottles of Tabasco all over the kitchen for a while after leaving the Army. Do they not come with that anymore?
I can picture that tiny Tabasco bottle clearly 😂. It was a godsend in basic training (for any MRE that came with them) I’m not sure if I had a new iteration of the chili mac or what, but when I was quarantined in 2020, mine came with crushed red pepper instead. I know for a fact I’ve had it with the Tabasco too though.
Those little bottles were awesome!
Whoever eats potatoes like that is a full on nut job lol
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.
I’ve never had plain boiled taters tbh! But I can see them working to mop up the slop 👀
You don’t even need to add butter to boiled potatoes, with the right variety.
The French know nothing of cuisine! They can’t even make a proper omelette, quiche, brioche, or flambé!
/This cannot possibly be needed here, but, s
A little S&P they’d be fine
Yeah that’s true!
The Aussies would just grab all that and wack it into a shortcut / puff pastry meat and potato pie. Not half bad actually.
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.
The issue people have is with how naked the potatoes are. If they were mashed and had the stew poured over them, I bet people would be salivating.
The plain boiled potatoes do feel very UK “my parents grew up in the tail end of rationing” style. Idk if it’s because I grew up with it that I don’t mind, or if I know just putting a bit of the gravy on it means they don’t need to be cooked any other way.
Saying all that that though, I don’t tend to boil potatoes like this personally and would totally mash them or something.
I’m 48, my parents absolutely grew up through rationing which lasted into the 1950s. Plain boiled potatoes was a really common way of serving them all through my childhood. Even now they will commonly eat plain potatoes, with a bit of butter on them. In fact as they have got older, now in their 80s, their meal might just be plain potatoes and peas.
This dish, mince and tatties, was an absolute staple at my Scottish grannie’s house, with an overboiled cabbage as well for good measure.
My mum often served just boiled potatoes like this, due to growing up during rationing. They’re actually fine as long as they’re not over-boiled, and then when you get the Jersey Royals in season it’s an absolute crime to peel, chip, over-season or mash them.
I would probably add a little bit of butter and salt, but you’re right, the flavour potential of simple potatoes can be criminally undervalued sometimes. Particularly home grown or fresh new potatoes.
