What is the traditional food in Britain?

British food, like English, is a hodgepodge, which has absorbed the influence of different cultures all over the world. If you want to give an example of authentic English food, the British will immediately think of soft fish and chips, roast beef, York pudding and other dishes, but if you really want to count backwards, it seems a bit stuttering. In fact, due to Britain's long colonial history, traditional English dishes have merged with many local cuisines from all over the world.

It is a habit to drink some soup before meals. The soup here is very strong. The raw materials are usually vegetables, and sometimes some meat is used. The most common soups are mushroom soup, tomato soup, garlic soup, potato soup, chicken soup, Scottish soup (soup made of vegetables and barley) and thick curry soup. Thick curry soup is a typical example of the transformation of foreign flavor into British food, made of vegetables and curry.

To cook vegetables, it often takes a long time to cook soup (about 60 minutes). Moreover, in order to strengthen the concentration of soup, it is fashionable to pour the cooked soup into the juicer and stir it. Potato is the most ideal material for thickening and thick soup, so it is also the most commonly used.

Traditional English home cooking is usually divided into three courses: the first course (usually soup), the main course and the dessert. According to the weight, the staple food is the biggest, so when people's pace of life is accelerated and their work is busy, they often only serve the staple food, leaving out the first dish or dessert. Barbecue is the most common staple food.

The two dishes mentioned above, fish and chips and roast beef, are the most common staple foods. In addition, barbecue pies or baked fruit pies are also common. The method is to wrap the stewed meat, vegetables and fruits in thin dough and then put them in the oven to dry. English cooking often uses an oven.

There are all kinds of bakeries in the oven. Meat and vegetables are baked in the bakery with low fire to bring out the flavor of meat and vegetables. In my personal experience, English food can hardly be cooked without an oven. On some solemn occasions, the staple food is often barbecue, roast beef, roast pork, roast mutton or chicken.

When I was young in the 1960s, the most expensive meat on the market was chicken. Beef and mutton were cheap, so there were naturally many opportunities to eat. But now, on the contrary, eating a large piece of good beef often costs a sum of money, but chicken is much cheaper, so people generally eat chicken instead. This is not only the price factor, but also related to the practice of chickens.

There are few fish or seafood on the dining table of modern British families. It seems a bit strange to say, because most of Britain's territory is less than 60 kilometers away from the ocean, and seafood should be rich. In fact, the reason is very simple. In the past, overfishing in British coastal waters greatly reduced the output of seafood, resulting in high prices. Many people wait until they go to the restaurant to eat seafood. Relatively speaking, most ordinary people in Britain don't eat out as often as people in China, so they have less chance to eat seafood.

A preference for sweets and cheese

A common problem of English people is that they love sweets too much. Maybe it's because there are too many fat people here. English people like ice cream and other frozen sweets, as well as traditional desserts and sweet pies. They usually eat them with a lot of cream or custard.

According to the procedure, eating a complete three-course meal in Britain usually means eating salty or spicy food first, and then eating a dessert. Of course, there are exceptions, and that is cheese. British people generally like to eat cheese, boiled and raw, and everyone comes. Many times, after eating some desserts, we will put all kinds of cheeses and biscuits on a table, and then serve them with coffee, brandy or Bordeaux wine as the last course.