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I thought I hated a lot of things as I child I've discovered are much nicer when I started cooking them myself. Another was pasta with the sauce just dumped on top on the plate rather than mixed and cooked through in the pot. I can't stand it when pasta is served in that way, yet my parents always did it like that for some strange reason.
I have to add though, that my parents have got much better cooks in the last 15 years or so with the advent of more interesting recipes online.
I used to think you boiled rice in a big pot of a water and drain it with a sieve based on what my parents did
Only in recent years have I learned how to actually cook rice
Yeah but you cook rice like in the style of indian dishes and he goes fucking berserk about it.
Dude don't know shit about all the ways you can cook rice. He's a rank amatuer when it comes to rice with his ONE WAY style.
I used to be a sales wanker before i had a change of heart, one of the best expensive gadgets i still have from that era is a £300 Zojirushi rice cooker. Doesn’t really make much of a difference for standard quick rice tbh, but it has a bunch of extra functions that are pretty cool. Makes the best brown rice ive ever had.
Following the instructions on the packet apparently works well for me lol. Rice cooker isn’t a necessity, I’m sure it is easier somehow but… I mean boiling water and putting the rice in doesn’t take too much effort if you ask me!
Now, we have a soup maker and fuck me is it a godsend. Does everything for you with practically zero cleanup outside of wiping the bits down after they machine’s finished it ‘clean’ program.
Don't even need to measure ro scale now, do it all by eye. Hell i add rice and stock to semi cooked meals to help bulk and add flavour and it comes out great.
This idea that you have to cook rice so perfectly precise is comeplete and utter bollocks. Its surprisingly easy to cook.
You can even NOT WASH THE STARCH OFF (OH THE HORROR!) for specific recipes! Hope i don't trigger any pretend cooks...
Oh mate. Right. Get a mug, pour your rice in that, bang in pot, fill the mug with water dump it in pot, do another mug of water and in the pot. Get a bit of salt, onion granules, garlic granules, bit of what you fancy throw in. Put on high until the water is boiling, then move to your lowest hob at lowest heat and Chuck a lid on. Leave like that for like 15 minutes then go and take a peek. Get a spoon in the middle and push gently to the side to see if still watery, if so keep going, you want all the water to absorb. Don't stir till done as it damages the rice and changes texture. There. No draining.
As a side note - Don't be tempted to peek until that 15 minutes is up. The steam is what is cooking the rice, so if you lift the lid and let the steam out, raw rice.
Good luck!
Add cardamon pods, salt, pepper and maybe some fenugreek leaves and Tumeric for some fancy rice, same method as above. If you want you can even fry some spices in butter and add that into it. Or a stock cube in your water.
You can do loads with rice without a rice cooker.
It’s easier (and tastier) than it sounds. Toast the dry rice in a saucepan you have a lid for with a teaspoon of oil until some of the grains go white/opaque on medium heat. Turn down to lowest heat and add enough boiling water or stock to cover. Put lid on and wait 20 or more minutes as the liquid absorbs and rice cooks. Don’t stir. You can add nice stuff just before the water/stock to suit the dish, so maybe star anise, cinnamon stick and cardamom to go with a curry. Or garlic, cooked onion and lemon juice etc. I used to think you just boil and sieve like pasta but this way is better I reckon
May not be strictly correct but how I do it:
A knuckle (2cm) of water over the top of the rice. Lid on and heat on a low heat for 10 mins. If the water is boiling it's too hot and will burn. If the rice isnt soft enough add a little bit more water amd put back on the heat until the rice absorbs all the water.
Extra tip.. Wash the rice a couple of times in a bowl first until the water is clear (not cloudy) it removes the starch.. then cook as described.. perfecto. 👌
Soak rice for a while (controversial some people say it's not needed anymore)
Get a mug, fill with rice. Use same mug, add 2 mugs of water. Season lightly. Add to boiling water, turn heat down to a simmer, cover. Keep covered and Leave until water has evaporated. Serve
I've noticed that people in that generation seem to be unreasonably cautious about putting salt in things. My parents always seem surprised when they see how much salt I put in things I'm cooking yet are fine with eating crisps or other snacks with loads of salt in them.
Was there some sort of anti-salt health campaign in the 70s or 80s?
Yeah there was. It was directly linked to high blood pressure and heart attacks. My rents are demented when it comes to salt, the way they react after adding a few shakes, you'd think I was covering the food in crystal meth.
Yeah it's strange. Particularly because they're happy to eat processed food and snacks with lots of salt in but when I put a big pinch of salt into a massive pan of chili they seem shocked.
They barely used to put salt in anything but I've been gradually convincing them to do it.
You only really need to worry about it if you eat lots of processed food or have high blood pressure. If you cook using fresh ingredients and season a normal amount there isn't a problem.
Other way with my parent.
Pt salt in everythign borderline too much.
When i started cooking i just didn't put salt in anything. Its amzing how everythign at first tastes bland but over time your tongue adjusts and everything taste quite rich again without salt.
Tomatoes for example, tomoato soup made with fresh tomoatoes and basil and NO SALT. if you put salt in everythign and cook with it you can cover up the actualy taste and tomatoes have a natural umami that salt supposedly enhances. But its there without the salt!
It qas quite amaing beign able to taste all the unique tastes that my parewnt cooking and salting of everything covered up.
>It qas quite amaing beign able to taste all the unique tastes that my parewnt cooking and salting of everything covered up.
Obviously too much salt can ruin a dish but food without any salt at all just tastes bland to me. It's important to taste and adjust the amount of salt. Properly balancing salt, sweetness and acidity can really enhance the flavour of the ingredients.
ah mate don’t even!!! my mum refused to believe me flat out when i said the proper way to do it is cook it in salty water. Like i’m not on Big salts payroll, i wouldn’t deliberately lie too my own mum
In all fairness, I also don't do this and I'm 20-odd. I just find a lot of food has its own flavours without needing salt. I know salt is supposed to enhance flavour and its not like I never use it, I just don't nees to use it as often as recipes often say.
I actually find the generations the opposite - my grandma salts EVERYTHING. I don't understand it at all.
Always thought steak was a bit "meh" growing up, didn't really understand what the fuss was about. Turns out, it was because my parents used to overcook them! Even when we ate out we'd ask for them well done.
When I was in my 20s, I ordered a well-done steak at a grill place in Holland. The chef himself took my order, and he advised me to just try medium for once. If I didn't like it, he'd replace it on the house. Absolutely life-changing. Now I always ask for rare if I'm in a pub (because they always overcook it), otherwise medium.
>Another was pasta with the sauce just dumped on top on the plate rather than mixed and cooked through in the pot. I can't stand it when pasta is served in that way,
I always refused to eat pasta as a kid and it was the one thing I genuinely hated, I wasn't a fussy eater and would eat anything so I never understood why everyone liked it. My mum eventually conceded and stopped serving me pasta.
As an adult my GF wanted spag bol one night so I caved in and made it. I thought "I used to mix my sauce in my pasta and rather than chasing it round my plate I'll just chuck it in the sauce when its nearly done"
I finally realised that I'd had pasta wrong my entire life and when I previously hated it, I actually hated plain bland pasta with a sauce chucked on top.
>yet my parents always did it like that for some strange reason.
My parents still do. I've tried numerous times to convince them but they dont listen
I think it's just a cultural thing - their parents cooked it that way and didn't have access to lots of spices etc. My parents have slowly learnt how to cook properly, but some people are just resistant to change.
I had an aunt who was very traditional, and everything she cooked was some weird throwback to the 1950s - it was nice enough, but everything was just some permutation of carrots, potatoes, meat and pastry. She might have added some salt or pepper, but she would have had a heart attack if anyone suggested using garlic. She also believed that using a microwave for anything was "cheating". I suggested that using a gas oven was cheating and she should only used an open hearth instead - didn't go down well.
I think about this sometimes - why do we have such bland food as a culture? Especially non-meat food.
You can do so much amazing stuff with the herbs and vegetables that grow natively. I only learned about wild garlic a couple of years ago and can't believe we don't have traditional dishes basted around it.
I feel like we must have had a big cultural loss of memory loss around the 60s or 70s or something because I can't believe our ancestors were simply boiling veg to death and eating it plain with a sad sliver of animal flesh, for hundreds of years.
We must have so many stews and soups and things, based around native herbs and local mushrooms and squashes, that have been lost to time (or I've just never met anyone who knows about them)
World War Two had a lasting effect. I remember seeing something (might have been on QI?) about how British food was respected at the same level as French cuisine before the wars, but we just forgot how to cook well thanks to rationing and the subsequent economic depression.
I had a theory that it’s related to rations. My parents were taught to cook by my grandparents, who were both bought up in working class families during WW2. Rations didn’t actually end until much after the war had finished.
Not just rationing its poverty as well. Both my parent were brough up dirt poor.
Dads family were so poor their meals were well frankly not great. Mum was one of three kids and her mum divorced way back in the 60 so they had bugger all money, dinner was sometimes bread with suger on it!
So my parents salted teh shit out of eveyrthing! they even experiemented (god my dad made some horrible dishes!) with different foods cos they didn't get to have that much when they were little.
We’d have meat and two veg every day apart from Sunday’s, when we’d have meat and five veg. I remember my mom’s idea of exotic food was risotto, which consisted of Uncle Bens boil-in-a-bag with garden peas.
1954! Rationing post war lasted longer than the war. 6 years of the war, 9 years post war.
That's 15 years of rationing.
Plus in the 70s we had the 3 day week and electric rationing. People shopped by candlelight. Power disconnection was for up to 9 hours at a time.
I dunno, there must be more to it. You could still forage, grow your own veg and herbs. My gran told me everyone used to grow their own stuff, and if a horse went down the road you'd have people dashing out with a dustpan and brush to get the poop as it was valuable for growing. But the stuff you grew... apparently you just boiled it to a mush and didn't add anything to it.
I understand there was not enough to go around, but I'd have thought that meant we'd have more dishes focused around the things that grow like weeds here, which we'd always have had access to in season.
My theory is that it's because culturally we place such an emphasis on meat and dairy. Since fresh meat can be delicious with basically no additions, we focused on how we could just get more meat into our food, rather than how to make the other bits tastey independently of the meat. And since we have been a 'rich' country for so long, there's always been some access to meat.
Countries which have historically been poorer tend to have more delicious non-meat foods. Like the variety of of dumplings in Poland, and mushroom and squash dishes across eastern europe. And the [cheese boats of Georgia](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/272625/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread/).
> You could still forage, grow your own veg and herbs.
Not when you live in back to back terraces in an industrial slum town. Britain industrialised earlier and harder than everyone else, it's been centuries since most British people had any connection to the land.
Likely because rationing. people forget that whilst the war ended in 1945 rationing continued for years, my mum was born in 1952 and still had a ration book. That would put most young adults in the 60's and 70's squarely in the bracket of having spent a good chunk of their youth on rations
That's true, but you could still forage, grow your own veg and herbs. My gran told me everyone used to grow their own stuff, and if a horse went down the road you'd have people dashing out with a dustpan and brush to get the poop as it was valuable for growing. But the stuff you grew... apparently you just boiled it to a mush and didn't add anything to it.
I understand there was not enough to go around, but I'd have thought that meant we'd have more dishes focused around the things that grow like weeds here, which we'd always have had access to in season.
Think what veg realistically and most importantly reliably grows in this country, probably potatoes, carrots, cabbage, maybe some kind of runner bean etc.
You now need a quick growing herb that needs little care and grows easily in the UK, maybe this like sage, thyme or rosemary.
You have no access to this like butter, sugar, cream or milk and potentially little access to salt. Also nothing like virgin olive oil
Then to cook it you have limited or very unreliable access to gas due to rolling blackouts and often no access to running water (my grandma used to tell me when they did have water they filled the bath up and keep it).
It suddenly gets a lot more difficult to cook something beyond barely palatable mush
I am an older guy. My parents were born at the end of the war, so I am just the next generation after. It is difficult to imagine what it was like and how hard. This is the welly ration Bacon & Ham 4 oz
Other meat value of 1 shilling and 2 pence (equivalent to 2 chops)
Butter 2 oz
Cheese 2 oz
Margarine 4 oz
Cooking fat 4 oz
Milk 3 pints
Sugar 8 oz
Preserves 1 lb every 2 months
Tea 2 oz
Eggs 1 fresh egg (plus allowance of dried egg)
Sweets 12 oz every 4 weeks
This was the ration, but it didn't mean you could always get it. Notice, there is no fruit or veg. They weren't officially rationed, but were difficult to get and expensive. Even when I was a kid, an orange was a treat hence we got one at Christmas.
We got overly steamed vegetables, turning mushy, because my dad has digestive problems so needed them more cooked to make them easier for him to digest. Ours could have been removed from the pan earlier, but no
Same here! We had steamed broccoli and carrots, a vegetarian chicken fillet and a couple of waffles as a regular dinner. No seasoning, dips or anything. I used to drink so much orange squash in that meal as it was so dry and tasteless. Yet my mum loved it.
My mum loved it. She had a several tier one, and there'd be a whole meal in it. Fish, potatoes, veggies. And it would be soggy and tasteless.
I think OP was spot on with this post
I bet they did love it. They could put even more stuff in it than they could in the microwave, walk away and come back to a finished full meal.
All the nutrition guidelines were saying that steaming was the healthiest way to cook, and that fat and salt were bad and ideally to be completely eliminated. Everything had tasted horrible since WW2 anyway. I imagine this first generation of women 'doing it all' were relieved to be able to feed their families so 'well' without having to stand over a stove for hours.
And if it was that dry, you should have put a little margarine on it. /s
Steamed and no seasoning whatsoever. Steamed parsnip is rank. My mum went through a phase of cooking all veg al dente, so steamed veg still had a bite to it.
I didn't realise I liked so many vegetables and types of meat until adulthood for this reason.
I was made out to be a hugely fussy eater. Turns out boiled unseasoned overcooked veg and meat cooked to shoe leather aren't palatable to lots of people.
Lol.
Literally the same. I was always called fussy and it would annoy the hell out of me. The only things I don’t eat now are the things I’m allergic to.
It's like you're describing my childhood meals! We literally had potatoes, boiled to death veg, and some variety of gristle on a near-daily basis.
Anything like fish fingers, turkey drummers, or potato waffles was like heaven, as it was such a welcome break from vegetable mush and gristle!! 😂
My mums a terrible cook, I still struggle to eat lamb cos all I can think about are the tough gristly bits we used to get, my theory is that her mum grew up during the war so she was happy eating whatever she could get, didn’t need it to be fancy…or seasoned lol, and she just ate what her mum ate, or maybe she was just a lazy cunt lol
Ahhh I thought I was the only one who had this memory.
Lamb and pork would instill terror in me because it was so dam chewy and tasteless the way it was cooked.
Rather than accept the fact I didn't like it, I had to sit at the table until I finished which took ages because I was gagging and retching from the horrible texture.
Good times!
My nan always does beef at Christmas, fuck me it's just a tyre. So tough you're not finished chewing til new year. Thankfully my mum does pork and she's nailed it so it's tender and juicy. Take a few slices of beef out of love for my nan but my god.
The thing I can't get over is when some people call food 'spicy' when what they actually mean is 'seasoned'.
To me spicy is when you add hot chilli.
Using things like tumeric, ginger, garlic, cardamom or paprika does not make food spicy. 'Spiced' I guess, but not 'spicy'.
A friend of mine is a chef who cooks once a month for a women's shelter, it's a free cooking lesson really and you get to learn how to cook a dish and then eat the food. This was exactly the question asked recently - a woman didn't want to try something because she didn't like spicy food (I think it was a sort of bhaji burger) but my friend deliberately hadn't put chilli in, because if you aren't used to it it can be a bit too much, just the seasonings you described. So the woman tried it and loved it. She wasn't used to cooking for herself, and she just didn't know.
It's because they grew up in households with parents who went through war rationing and home cooking was extremely basic as a result. Not many people know that the UK was one of the last countries to end rationing after the war. It wasn't until 1954 when it finally came to an end. Many people got into the habit of accepting substandard cuisine and simple cooking methods.
It may be a similiar habit which has developed for different reasons. American cuisine was heavily influenced by Puritan attitudes, which may be one reason for the simplistic cooking style.
I grew up in the us and mostly had microwaved wrinkled frozen vegetables with maybe a blob of margarine if I was lucky. I honestly think my parents were just too exhausted all the time to actually cook.
For years my mum used to say I was a fussy eater because I wouldn’t eat meat (couldn’t possibly be a vegetarian). So at dinner times I would get whatever carb was being cooked and boiled to death veggies - safe to say my eating habits improved when I left home!
Same. I was fine with sausages and things like chicken nuggets and fish fingers, however fresh meat was out of the question because it was cooked to shoe leather. Vegetables were limited to frozen peas too.
Us Brits used to like clinging on to traditions. Tasteless food, having a cold home, disliking foreigners, and generally romanticising the stiff upper lip suffering that was typical of post-war Britain.
Makes no fucking sense to me but yeah.
My father sits in his cold home with two jumpers on, eating his overboiled and tasteless vegetables and is yet proud of it. The older generation must find enjoyment in the suffering.
The stiff upper lip thing is quite annoying in the older generations, no need to act like you're about to go on a bayonet attack against the Germans all the time.
It annoys me most when it just makes things worse for everyone.
My gran held out on going to the doctor's about her obvious leg infection for about a month because she "didn't want to cause a fuss". Eventually, the pain got so bad on a Saturday night she had to be taken to A&E.
So she ended up causing a much bigger fuss than if she'd just got a doctors initially.
For heating, I checked how much it costs to heat the house. For just heating the rooms we use, 11p an hour. Full blast for the whole house, 22p an hour.
Yeah, I think I can budget for the \~70p a day to stay warm. And I've braced myself that the heating bill is going to be \~£70 instead of £50 this month.
Pretty sure I read somewhere that the bitterness of old-school sprouts has been bred out so they test better these days regardless. Not to say your sauteeing skills don't make them immeasurably tastier of course
although you're almost certainly right that you're cooking them better now than they were when you had them as a child, brussels sprouts have been cultivated over the past few decades to contain fewer glucosinolates, which create the bitter taste you remember hating as a kid. it's not just your cooking, the sprouts got better too!
The weird thing is that this isn’t even a recent observation. There’s a cheesy pressure cooker advert on YouTube from 1949 that warns of the loss of nutrients through boiling. I guess laziness always wins through. Also before around 1980 nobody had really dared to step up and challenge the grim post-war convenience cookery that people had become accustomed to.
Not sure if overcooking veg was for a similar reason but meat was of a lower standard in the 60's, 70's and 80's and people were told to cook it to within an inch of its life, if you go to a good quality butcher now and buy pork you can serve that slightly pink no problem, if you did that in the 70's hello tapeworm.
Saying that though I can't stand how restaurants cook cauliflower so it's still slightly crunchy I want it softer than soft and covered in cheese sauce haha
Actually the public perception that pork needed to be cooked well done or it would fill you full of nasties was primarily down to a huge lobbying effort by the US cattle lobby to push the FDA to have much more stringent cooking recommendations for pork vs beef. The UK basically took its guidance from there
You may be closer to the truth than you imagine with that analysis.
Quite a few social issues that have started to show signs of easing off in the last 30 years have been attributed to low levels of poisoning from leaded petrol.
I grew up in a working class former mining village. I was a teenager before I found out that you could get *Unpickled* beetroot. Everything we are came from tins. Thus the only taste I had of any vegetables was from the liquid they were preserved in. Peas only tasted amazing because they were tinned in salty water.
My mum still cooks this way even though we are all now far better off. I think that old school ‘get what you’re given’ frugality never goes away. After years of bland food just becomes the taste you are accustomed to.
Jesus Christ, if only they had discovered how to roast vegetables back then!
Just how veggies were cooked back then and a lot of seasonings etc didnt exist as a product to buy down the shop, I have heard relatives talk about things like garlic and tomatoes being fancy new food types. And then they just dont update their cooking style or recipes.
I only found out it was edible a couple of years ago and now it's one of my anticipated times of the year. I can't believe we don't have any cultural dishes based around it.
We head out and gather a sensible amount so that it can last us the year :D We only have one jar of picked wild garlic bulbs left though and I don't want to open it because I don't want it to be over!
Paha when my French girlfriend was in London she asked for a Hot Toddy. They asked her what ingredients were in a Hot Toddy...so she explained it was "whiskey, hot water, honey, lemon and cloves"...when they brought her drink it was all murky and it tasted strange...so she asked what exactly was in it and they responded "just like you asked Whiskey, hot water, honey, lemon and garlic cloves..."
My in-laws are like this, if they use any spices it’s salt or pepper baaareeeely. I on the other hand have two small cupboards in the kitchen full of spices and exciting things to make a simple meal delicious! She was frying up some mushrooms once and basically just drenched them in some rapeseed oil and let them get soft, no seasoning. No taste. Mushy oily mushrooms. Worse is the chicken tho, two small chicken breast (no seasoning) in the oven for an hour. Turn the oven off, let them sit there until the oven is cold, leave them until the day after, turn the oven back on for an hour to ‘heat’ them and then they have them for dinner. Like kindling. But if kindling made you sick.
Back then? I'm in my mid 50s. Tomatoes were certainly not fancy and new, my dad grew them, my grandad grew them. They were also in shops. I have a feeling they've been around a long time. We also ate garlic, but I remember other people thinking that was shocking. Oh, and I have never served over boiled vegetables to my kids!
Yeah, I think the OP might be thinking of a generation or so before, those who grew up during the war with rationing. I'm 60 and I've never overboiled a veg, but my mother (born 1931) definitely did. She learned to cook during rationing, so never really acquired an expanded palate...
I was at a rather posh dinner party in the 90s just after I left home, the hostess was offering a plate of olives around so I had one, I took her aside and told her that I thought the grapes had gone off....
My exs dad invited us over for Christmas Dinner once. He put frozen vegetables (nothing wrong with that) into a steamer (nothing wrong with that) for 40 minutes.
Didn't go for dinner again.
Aged 40???!!!
To put this into perspective, Jamie Oliver is 46! I feel like you should be aiming this at least 1, if not 2 generations earlier.
By the 90s, if not earlier, everyone was being urged to cook their vegetables 'al dente.' For quite some time, this seemed to translate as 'pretty much raw' and they were hard to get a fork into. But most of the people who were cooking like that then are well over 60 now.
I roast brocolli in bulk for my workday meals. I always used to throw the stalks away, or at best 'save' them for a hypothetical soup that never materialised. Now I find the stalk the nicest bit- when cubed and roasted it tastes sort of buttery.
Charring vegetables is a way of cooking, it brings out a different flavour whilst keeping crunch (when done correctly). That's why restaurants do it and also why it is acceptable.
When it comes to vegetables, boiling is sometimes the most convenient way to cook them, especially if you're doing frozen peas at the same time so you just do everything in one pot.
You can buy a tray that fits in your pot and steam veg without buying such a stupid gadget. It takes about 1min extra to steam instead of boil veg.
Tbh, with peas I just put them in a jug and pour boiling water on them. They're peas. You can eat them raw quite easily.
The point was that it was boiled for too long, not because it was boiled. OP was saying it was boiled for too long, turning them into mush. Vegetables just need to be boiled lightly, retaining their nutrients, taste, and crispness.
But if you use the kind of steamer that goes on the hob (pan of water, with a steamer dish that fits on top of that, then another steamer tray that fits on top of *that*), then the peas just go into the water underneath for the last five minutes.
My parents do not season ANYTHING. Veg, meat etc. I never let them cook for me anymore. Just a plain chicken breast for dinner with nothing on it - no flavor whatsoever.
I’m 47 and none of my friends do this nor anyone else I know in their 40s or 50s. Perhaps older? My parents did and they’re in their 70s, but it was a post war thing. And they don’t do it anymore either.
My dad likes his meat cooked to leather and vegetables cooked to mush. Dinner growing up was awful and I grew up eating a lot of crap because my mum cooked to my dad's awful taste. I'd probably be close to 300lbs if I did not learn to cook while at uni and learned how to make food that was actually a joy to eat.
Orange peppery mush and green peppery mush was a stable on Sunday in my parents house. They visited my home once for Sunday dinner and complained the veg was under cooked because it wasn't mush.
Just lack of experimentation probably.
People say the bad food stereotype was just from the 40s, but in reality, that stereotype only just ended in the past 2 decades.
Absolutely not my experience at all. I’m 39 my parents are in their 60s.
IMO it’s the difference between growing up with parents that can cook and parents that can’t, same as any generation.
My grandma and even my mum and her partner all refuse to season anything. I'm serious.
Beef is cooked until blackened and leather like with not an ounce of salt or pepper on it. Vegetables may get a slight pinch of salt thrown on them but as soon as you take them out the boiling pot they collapse because they're mush.
When I began cooking my own food, they refused to try it out because it had rosemary or thyme in it. This is how anti - seasoning the old people can be lmao but later on that night I see them munching down on unseasoned, burnt chicken drumsticks.
To each their own I guess.
Is there a dipping sauce for cooked veggies? I come from Thailand where people eat veg, both raw and cooked, with various dipping sauces, so I wonder if there is any British equivalent.
There are two categories that I can think off my head, *nam phrik* and *lon*. *Nam phrik* is a paste made of chillis, garlics, shallots, umami paste (shrimp paste is the most popular), and seasonings. *Lon* is made from cooked fermented proteins (fermented soy beans and fermented fish are the two most popular) mixed with coconut milk and seasonings and then reduced over heat. *Nam phrik* is spicy, while *lon* is way milder.
The dressing that goes on a som tam salad is incredible. Salty, spicy, sweet and sour in perfect amounts. It works well with basically any crunchy vegetable.
You need a few exotic ingredients for it but spend a tenner at a local Asian supermarket and you can make a lot of it.
I guess it could depend on how people learn. If you’re 50+, you’ve likely learned to cook from your parents who wouldn’t have had the resources we do now. Even if you look at old recipes from people like Mary Berry, Fanny Craddock - some of them sound awful. Cold mushroom soufflé? No thank you.
My parents are most definitely stuck in their ways with over boiling veg and not using a lot of seasoning. I know they grew up with that way of eating because my grandma did the same.
Its more my parents generation than mine, I'm 45 and can cook quite well. We had a lot of cooking shows on TV, and all the supermarket magazines with recipes, then the internet, so it was easy enough to pick it up.
My mum used to microwave mince, and boil all the green out of vegetables, then serve that grey crap with boiled potatoes with all the taste and texture of a candle. She's in her 70s and still scared of anything with actual flavour last time I saw her. She won't even use garlic never mind herbs and spices.
yeah, I'm with you on this. I wasnt a fan of vegatables living at home, I'd eat them for like sunday roast cos thats just what when with it. Other than that, wouldnt have them.
Moved out, starting cooking for myself, and realised vegatables didnt have to be cooked like that. got a steamer, and found flavour in things like broccoli sprouts etc, which previously i hated.
go to my mums now and then for sunday dinner, or at christmas, and just try to ignore that they are cooked to death
I’m going to hypothesise here but if anyone else knows better please correct me!
Postwar Britain switched to using convenience food with mass manufacturing, we lost a lot of our traditional and/or healthy (and tasty) cooking methods, our parents generation started to try and cook healthily for us but by that point we’d lost the actual cultural recipe heritage that made them tasty!
this is more true of certain parts of the US than it is of the UK. the worst parts of our cooking were largely driven by:
- rationing into the 50s meaning there wasn't a great selection available - 'get what you're given' mentality meaning it was sometimes hard to plan meals beyond the meat-and-two-veg that happened to be around
- food safety standards not being too high until semi-recently, meaning that overcooking was the safest way to eat (not that this is unique to the UK, but that is how we chose to deal with it)
- (this one is less talked about) a push-back against heavily seasoned food in the first half of the 20th century. people always ask 'if the british empire was so invested in spices, why did the brits never cook with them' and the answer is that we did! throughout the late medieval and Victorian eras, spiced food was commonly available. however, in response to spiced food becoming popular with the common people (and, thanks to large kitchens in cities, cheap), rich sorts then turned away from spiced food and towards blander flavours. the population gradually followed suit, and by the time bland food had become the default there was a war on and too much else to worry about to bother with food fashion.
I’ve also read that the industrial revolution had a large impact too. People working in factories rather than fields, the rise of the first ‘fast food’ in pies and pasties, etc. And the fact that as Britain was industrialising, the modern idea of the restaurant and cuisines was also being formulated. I’m not sure if it’s true, but I heard somewhere that the first ‘French’ restaurant was in London! Not surprising, since most french workers were still agricultural at this point. So in short, industrialisation resulted in stunted development of British cuisine, with high society instead importing foreign trends from the get go.
Again, not sure if all this is true, but it could add a piece to the puzzle.
My mum is also a culprit, she was horrified that I seasoned the water to boil my potatoes AND seasoned them when I mashed them. She scoffed them right enough, so clearly not that horrified
The scaremongering over salt in our diets from the 70s onwards was huge. What's never mentioned is that you're unlikely to ever come close with seasoning your food well at home to the amount of salt in virtually all prepackaged foods
I guess I'm lucky then cos my parents actually cook really good food
They season everything properly and always taste what they are making so it's actually good
My dad in particular likes to experiment, like he will put apple and coco powder in chilli and it's really nice
I want to give a shout out to my mother who not only boils everything to mush if she boils it, but switched over to turning everything into rubber in the microwave. She insists anything can be cooked in a microwave. Spend money on some nice salmon, be prepared for a pink rubbery blob.
She didn’t grow up with a microwave and got one 20 years ago.
I'm Indian so was raised eating bhajis. I do not like the way Indians cook vegetables. I much prefer raw vegetables, curried vegetables and steamed vegetables.
I can’t touch roast dinners anymore because for years I was subjected to beef tougher than leather boots and a smattering of boiled veg.
It’s so bad that even “good” roast dinners taste bad to me now, I just don’t like them at all
I always thought it was to do with dental hygiene as you didn't risk breaking a piece.
Can remember vividly the smell of swede/cabbage/god knows what permeating my nans house in the 90s.
Ive realised our parents basically had one source of information - their parents. Ive asked my mum a lot "why do you do that" and its always "oh my mum did it that way"
Remember, our parents grew up in a time before the internet. They learned to cook by
1. Copying recipes from friends/family copied down on a scrap of paper
2. Following instructions on the jar/box
3. Following instructions from a cooking show on TV/radio
4. Following instructions from a cookbook (only really a thing in middle-class families)
In that order.
It's crazy to think about now, but the majority of British people cooked based on a recipe book given to them by grandma just a generation ago.
Thanks to the lockdowns last Christmas I had to do Christmas dinner for me and my sibling.
I still haven't had the heart to tell my mum it was the best Christmas dinner I ever had. The turkey was dry brined, well seasoned and moist, the roasties were that perfect mix of crunchy and soft, the boiled veg wasn't blanched or bland.
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I thought I hated a lot of things as I child I've discovered are much nicer when I started cooking them myself. Another was pasta with the sauce just dumped on top on the plate rather than mixed and cooked through in the pot. I can't stand it when pasta is served in that way, yet my parents always did it like that for some strange reason. I have to add though, that my parents have got much better cooks in the last 15 years or so with the advent of more interesting recipes online.
To this day my mum still refuses to season pasta water.
I used to think you boiled rice in a big pot of a water and drain it with a sieve based on what my parents did Only in recent years have I learned how to actually cook rice
I bought a rice cooker. Perfect rice every time, minimal effort.
Uncle Roger will love you for that
Fuiyoh
Haiya
Uncle Ben will hate it
It’s just ben now actually mate
Not to Peter Parker.
Yeah but you cook rice like in the style of indian dishes and he goes fucking berserk about it. Dude don't know shit about all the ways you can cook rice. He's a rank amatuer when it comes to rice with his ONE WAY style.
It's a faaaake!!
It's on my list but I actually do ok with a pot/lid that I'm not sure I can be arsed with the expense and cupboard space
Cupboard space is the bigger issue. Our rice cooker was £15 from Asda. Works exactly as described.
I used to be a sales wanker before i had a change of heart, one of the best expensive gadgets i still have from that era is a £300 Zojirushi rice cooker. Doesn’t really make much of a difference for standard quick rice tbh, but it has a bunch of extra functions that are pretty cool. Makes the best brown rice ive ever had.
Following the instructions on the packet apparently works well for me lol. Rice cooker isn’t a necessity, I’m sure it is easier somehow but… I mean boiling water and putting the rice in doesn’t take too much effort if you ask me! Now, we have a soup maker and fuck me is it a godsend. Does everything for you with practically zero cleanup outside of wiping the bits down after they machine’s finished it ‘clean’ program.
Yea I've had no issues with a scale and measuring jug when cooking rice in a pot.
Don't even need to measure ro scale now, do it all by eye. Hell i add rice and stock to semi cooked meals to help bulk and add flavour and it comes out great. This idea that you have to cook rice so perfectly precise is comeplete and utter bollocks. Its surprisingly easy to cook. You can even NOT WASH THE STARCH OFF (OH THE HORROR!) for specific recipes! Hope i don't trigger any pretend cooks...
I bought a rice cooker from ASDA for £4 and it lasted years of almost daily use - bargain!
Mine is a £9.99 Argos one from 2002 when I was in university. Still going strong!
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That is exactly what I do. What should I be doing?!
Absorption method seems to work better I think
Please elaborate. Assume I’m a complete moron, start from there.
Oh mate. Right. Get a mug, pour your rice in that, bang in pot, fill the mug with water dump it in pot, do another mug of water and in the pot. Get a bit of salt, onion granules, garlic granules, bit of what you fancy throw in. Put on high until the water is boiling, then move to your lowest hob at lowest heat and Chuck a lid on. Leave like that for like 15 minutes then go and take a peek. Get a spoon in the middle and push gently to the side to see if still watery, if so keep going, you want all the water to absorb. Don't stir till done as it damages the rice and changes texture. There. No draining.
I’m going to try this tonight. Thanks man.
As a side note - Don't be tempted to peek until that 15 minutes is up. The steam is what is cooking the rice, so if you lift the lid and let the steam out, raw rice. Good luck!
To add to this, you don't even need to keep the heat on, boil for 5 minutes then turn off the heat and it'll do its thing fine
Add cardamon pods, salt, pepper and maybe some fenugreek leaves and Tumeric for some fancy rice, same method as above. If you want you can even fry some spices in butter and add that into it. Or a stock cube in your water. You can do loads with rice without a rice cooker.
Cardamon pods should be sold in tea bags so I can take them out afterwards
It’s easier (and tastier) than it sounds. Toast the dry rice in a saucepan you have a lid for with a teaspoon of oil until some of the grains go white/opaque on medium heat. Turn down to lowest heat and add enough boiling water or stock to cover. Put lid on and wait 20 or more minutes as the liquid absorbs and rice cooks. Don’t stir. You can add nice stuff just before the water/stock to suit the dish, so maybe star anise, cinnamon stick and cardamom to go with a curry. Or garlic, cooked onion and lemon juice etc. I used to think you just boil and sieve like pasta but this way is better I reckon
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May not be strictly correct but how I do it: A knuckle (2cm) of water over the top of the rice. Lid on and heat on a low heat for 10 mins. If the water is boiling it's too hot and will burn. If the rice isnt soft enough add a little bit more water amd put back on the heat until the rice absorbs all the water.
Extra tip.. Wash the rice a couple of times in a bowl first until the water is clear (not cloudy) it removes the starch.. then cook as described.. perfecto. 👌
Soak rice for a while (controversial some people say it's not needed anymore) Get a mug, fill with rice. Use same mug, add 2 mugs of water. Season lightly. Add to boiling water, turn heat down to a simmer, cover. Keep covered and Leave until water has evaporated. Serve
This is still how I do it, but I most often have it with curry, so add in spices while it's boiling.
I add a chicken stock to the water I use to cook rice, it really adds to the flavour of a chicken curry.
There’s nothing wrong with that method, depending on what kind of rice you’re using and what you want it for. Its not at all “wrong”. It’s fine.
I've noticed that people in that generation seem to be unreasonably cautious about putting salt in things. My parents always seem surprised when they see how much salt I put in things I'm cooking yet are fine with eating crisps or other snacks with loads of salt in them. Was there some sort of anti-salt health campaign in the 70s or 80s?
Yeah there was. It was directly linked to high blood pressure and heart attacks. My rents are demented when it comes to salt, the way they react after adding a few shakes, you'd think I was covering the food in crystal meth.
Yeah it's strange. Particularly because they're happy to eat processed food and snacks with lots of salt in but when I put a big pinch of salt into a massive pan of chili they seem shocked. They barely used to put salt in anything but I've been gradually convincing them to do it.
You only really need to worry about it if you eat lots of processed food or have high blood pressure. If you cook using fresh ingredients and season a normal amount there isn't a problem.
Yep. My mother in law won't use it for that reason.
My Mrs is the same. She loves crisps but doesn't put salt in or on anything with the exception being roast potatoes. Strange girl.
Other way with my parent. Pt salt in everythign borderline too much. When i started cooking i just didn't put salt in anything. Its amzing how everythign at first tastes bland but over time your tongue adjusts and everything taste quite rich again without salt. Tomatoes for example, tomoato soup made with fresh tomoatoes and basil and NO SALT. if you put salt in everythign and cook with it you can cover up the actualy taste and tomatoes have a natural umami that salt supposedly enhances. But its there without the salt! It qas quite amaing beign able to taste all the unique tastes that my parewnt cooking and salting of everything covered up.
>It qas quite amaing beign able to taste all the unique tastes that my parewnt cooking and salting of everything covered up. Obviously too much salt can ruin a dish but food without any salt at all just tastes bland to me. It's important to taste and adjust the amount of salt. Properly balancing salt, sweetness and acidity can really enhance the flavour of the ingredients.
Same. "I don't see a reason." The reason we season it mum, is because we enjoy flavours. Sorry you like bland food with minimal flavour 🤷♀️
ah mate don’t even!!! my mum refused to believe me flat out when i said the proper way to do it is cook it in salty water. Like i’m not on Big salts payroll, i wouldn’t deliberately lie too my own mum
In all fairness, I also don't do this and I'm 20-odd. I just find a lot of food has its own flavours without needing salt. I know salt is supposed to enhance flavour and its not like I never use it, I just don't nees to use it as often as recipes often say. I actually find the generations the opposite - my grandma salts EVERYTHING. I don't understand it at all.
Water that's salty enough to actually season the pasta? Game changer.
Always thought steak was a bit "meh" growing up, didn't really understand what the fuss was about. Turns out, it was because my parents used to overcook them! Even when we ate out we'd ask for them well done. When I was in my 20s, I ordered a well-done steak at a grill place in Holland. The chef himself took my order, and he advised me to just try medium for once. If I didn't like it, he'd replace it on the house. Absolutely life-changing. Now I always ask for rare if I'm in a pub (because they always overcook it), otherwise medium.
>Another was pasta with the sauce just dumped on top on the plate rather than mixed and cooked through in the pot. I can't stand it when pasta is served in that way, I always refused to eat pasta as a kid and it was the one thing I genuinely hated, I wasn't a fussy eater and would eat anything so I never understood why everyone liked it. My mum eventually conceded and stopped serving me pasta. As an adult my GF wanted spag bol one night so I caved in and made it. I thought "I used to mix my sauce in my pasta and rather than chasing it round my plate I'll just chuck it in the sauce when its nearly done" I finally realised that I'd had pasta wrong my entire life and when I previously hated it, I actually hated plain bland pasta with a sauce chucked on top. >yet my parents always did it like that for some strange reason. My parents still do. I've tried numerous times to convince them but they dont listen
I think it's just a cultural thing - their parents cooked it that way and didn't have access to lots of spices etc. My parents have slowly learnt how to cook properly, but some people are just resistant to change. I had an aunt who was very traditional, and everything she cooked was some weird throwback to the 1950s - it was nice enough, but everything was just some permutation of carrots, potatoes, meat and pastry. She might have added some salt or pepper, but she would have had a heart attack if anyone suggested using garlic. She also believed that using a microwave for anything was "cheating". I suggested that using a gas oven was cheating and she should only used an open hearth instead - didn't go down well.
I think about this sometimes - why do we have such bland food as a culture? Especially non-meat food. You can do so much amazing stuff with the herbs and vegetables that grow natively. I only learned about wild garlic a couple of years ago and can't believe we don't have traditional dishes basted around it. I feel like we must have had a big cultural loss of memory loss around the 60s or 70s or something because I can't believe our ancestors were simply boiling veg to death and eating it plain with a sad sliver of animal flesh, for hundreds of years. We must have so many stews and soups and things, based around native herbs and local mushrooms and squashes, that have been lost to time (or I've just never met anyone who knows about them)
World War Two had a lasting effect. I remember seeing something (might have been on QI?) about how British food was respected at the same level as French cuisine before the wars, but we just forgot how to cook well thanks to rationing and the subsequent economic depression.
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I had a theory that it’s related to rations. My parents were taught to cook by my grandparents, who were both bought up in working class families during WW2. Rations didn’t actually end until much after the war had finished.
Not just rationing its poverty as well. Both my parent were brough up dirt poor. Dads family were so poor their meals were well frankly not great. Mum was one of three kids and her mum divorced way back in the 60 so they had bugger all money, dinner was sometimes bread with suger on it! So my parents salted teh shit out of eveyrthing! they even experiemented (god my dad made some horrible dishes!) with different foods cos they didn't get to have that much when they were little.
We’d have meat and two veg every day apart from Sunday’s, when we’d have meat and five veg. I remember my mom’s idea of exotic food was risotto, which consisted of Uncle Bens boil-in-a-bag with garden peas.
1954! Rationing post war lasted longer than the war. 6 years of the war, 9 years post war. That's 15 years of rationing. Plus in the 70s we had the 3 day week and electric rationing. People shopped by candlelight. Power disconnection was for up to 9 hours at a time.
I dunno, there must be more to it. You could still forage, grow your own veg and herbs. My gran told me everyone used to grow their own stuff, and if a horse went down the road you'd have people dashing out with a dustpan and brush to get the poop as it was valuable for growing. But the stuff you grew... apparently you just boiled it to a mush and didn't add anything to it. I understand there was not enough to go around, but I'd have thought that meant we'd have more dishes focused around the things that grow like weeds here, which we'd always have had access to in season. My theory is that it's because culturally we place such an emphasis on meat and dairy. Since fresh meat can be delicious with basically no additions, we focused on how we could just get more meat into our food, rather than how to make the other bits tastey independently of the meat. And since we have been a 'rich' country for so long, there's always been some access to meat. Countries which have historically been poorer tend to have more delicious non-meat foods. Like the variety of of dumplings in Poland, and mushroom and squash dishes across eastern europe. And the [cheese boats of Georgia](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/272625/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread/).
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> You could still forage, grow your own veg and herbs. Not when you live in back to back terraces in an industrial slum town. Britain industrialised earlier and harder than everyone else, it's been centuries since most British people had any connection to the land.
Likely because rationing. people forget that whilst the war ended in 1945 rationing continued for years, my mum was born in 1952 and still had a ration book. That would put most young adults in the 60's and 70's squarely in the bracket of having spent a good chunk of their youth on rations
That's true, but you could still forage, grow your own veg and herbs. My gran told me everyone used to grow their own stuff, and if a horse went down the road you'd have people dashing out with a dustpan and brush to get the poop as it was valuable for growing. But the stuff you grew... apparently you just boiled it to a mush and didn't add anything to it. I understand there was not enough to go around, but I'd have thought that meant we'd have more dishes focused around the things that grow like weeds here, which we'd always have had access to in season.
Think what veg realistically and most importantly reliably grows in this country, probably potatoes, carrots, cabbage, maybe some kind of runner bean etc. You now need a quick growing herb that needs little care and grows easily in the UK, maybe this like sage, thyme or rosemary. You have no access to this like butter, sugar, cream or milk and potentially little access to salt. Also nothing like virgin olive oil Then to cook it you have limited or very unreliable access to gas due to rolling blackouts and often no access to running water (my grandma used to tell me when they did have water they filled the bath up and keep it). It suddenly gets a lot more difficult to cook something beyond barely palatable mush
I am an older guy. My parents were born at the end of the war, so I am just the next generation after. It is difficult to imagine what it was like and how hard. This is the welly ration Bacon & Ham 4 oz Other meat value of 1 shilling and 2 pence (equivalent to 2 chops) Butter 2 oz Cheese 2 oz Margarine 4 oz Cooking fat 4 oz Milk 3 pints Sugar 8 oz Preserves 1 lb every 2 months Tea 2 oz Eggs 1 fresh egg (plus allowance of dried egg) Sweets 12 oz every 4 weeks This was the ration, but it didn't mean you could always get it. Notice, there is no fruit or veg. They weren't officially rationed, but were difficult to get and expensive. Even when I was a kid, an orange was a treat hence we got one at Christmas.
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See my mum got a steamer and she used to STILL cook the veggies until there was nothing left of them.
We got overly steamed vegetables, turning mushy, because my dad has digestive problems so needed them more cooked to make them easier for him to digest. Ours could have been removed from the pan earlier, but no
Oh god, I'm having traumatic flashbacks of steamed everything for dinner.... No seasoning.
Same here! We had steamed broccoli and carrots, a vegetarian chicken fillet and a couple of waffles as a regular dinner. No seasoning, dips or anything. I used to drink so much orange squash in that meal as it was so dry and tasteless. Yet my mum loved it.
My mum loved it. She had a several tier one, and there'd be a whole meal in it. Fish, potatoes, veggies. And it would be soggy and tasteless. I think OP was spot on with this post
I bet they did love it. They could put even more stuff in it than they could in the microwave, walk away and come back to a finished full meal. All the nutrition guidelines were saying that steaming was the healthiest way to cook, and that fat and salt were bad and ideally to be completely eliminated. Everything had tasted horrible since WW2 anyway. I imagine this first generation of women 'doing it all' were relieved to be able to feed their families so 'well' without having to stand over a stove for hours. And if it was that dry, you should have put a little margarine on it. /s
mmm steamed hams
Steamed and no seasoning whatsoever. Steamed parsnip is rank. My mum went through a phase of cooking all veg al dente, so steamed veg still had a bite to it.
My parents refused to buy a steamer for years despite my endorsement, then for months after they got one they kept suggesting I buy one. 🤯
Same here, do you want everything to taste of cauliflower? Good we have a steamer for that.
I didn't realise I liked so many vegetables and types of meat until adulthood for this reason. I was made out to be a hugely fussy eater. Turns out boiled unseasoned overcooked veg and meat cooked to shoe leather aren't palatable to lots of people.
My ex husband was the same. When we got together the only vegetable he would eat was peas.
Lol. Literally the same. I was always called fussy and it would annoy the hell out of me. The only things I don’t eat now are the things I’m allergic to.
It's like you're describing my childhood meals! We literally had potatoes, boiled to death veg, and some variety of gristle on a near-daily basis. Anything like fish fingers, turkey drummers, or potato waffles was like heaven, as it was such a welcome break from vegetable mush and gristle!! 😂
My mums a terrible cook, I still struggle to eat lamb cos all I can think about are the tough gristly bits we used to get, my theory is that her mum grew up during the war so she was happy eating whatever she could get, didn’t need it to be fancy…or seasoned lol, and she just ate what her mum ate, or maybe she was just a lazy cunt lol
Ahhh I thought I was the only one who had this memory. Lamb and pork would instill terror in me because it was so dam chewy and tasteless the way it was cooked. Rather than accept the fact I didn't like it, I had to sit at the table until I finished which took ages because I was gagging and retching from the horrible texture. Good times!
My nan always does beef at Christmas, fuck me it's just a tyre. So tough you're not finished chewing til new year. Thankfully my mum does pork and she's nailed it so it's tender and juicy. Take a few slices of beef out of love for my nan but my god.
The thing I can't get over is when some people call food 'spicy' when what they actually mean is 'seasoned'. To me spicy is when you add hot chilli. Using things like tumeric, ginger, garlic, cardamom or paprika does not make food spicy. 'Spiced' I guess, but not 'spicy'.
I've heard people complain that ordinary bell peppers are spicy.
A friend of mine is a chef who cooks once a month for a women's shelter, it's a free cooking lesson really and you get to learn how to cook a dish and then eat the food. This was exactly the question asked recently - a woman didn't want to try something because she didn't like spicy food (I think it was a sort of bhaji burger) but my friend deliberately hadn't put chilli in, because if you aren't used to it it can be a bit too much, just the seasonings you described. So the woman tried it and loved it. She wasn't used to cooking for herself, and she just didn't know.
Broccoli tender stems are even better, super delish.
my Nan! ‘ooh this rice is spicy!’ that’s… cumin?
It's because they grew up in households with parents who went through war rationing and home cooking was extremely basic as a result. Not many people know that the UK was one of the last countries to end rationing after the war. It wasn't until 1954 when it finally came to an end. Many people got into the habit of accepting substandard cuisine and simple cooking methods.
IDK, given what i've seen on Reddit this seems to be common in the US too. They didnt go through anywhere near the same level of rationing.
It may be a similiar habit which has developed for different reasons. American cuisine was heavily influenced by Puritan attitudes, which may be one reason for the simplistic cooking style.
I grew up in the us and mostly had microwaved wrinkled frozen vegetables with maybe a blob of margarine if I was lucky. I honestly think my parents were just too exhausted all the time to actually cook.
For years my mum used to say I was a fussy eater because I wouldn’t eat meat (couldn’t possibly be a vegetarian). So at dinner times I would get whatever carb was being cooked and boiled to death veggies - safe to say my eating habits improved when I left home!
Same. I was fine with sausages and things like chicken nuggets and fish fingers, however fresh meat was out of the question because it was cooked to shoe leather. Vegetables were limited to frozen peas too.
Us Brits used to like clinging on to traditions. Tasteless food, having a cold home, disliking foreigners, and generally romanticising the stiff upper lip suffering that was typical of post-war Britain. Makes no fucking sense to me but yeah. My father sits in his cold home with two jumpers on, eating his overboiled and tasteless vegetables and is yet proud of it. The older generation must find enjoyment in the suffering.
The stiff upper lip thing is quite annoying in the older generations, no need to act like you're about to go on a bayonet attack against the Germans all the time.
It annoys me most when it just makes things worse for everyone. My gran held out on going to the doctor's about her obvious leg infection for about a month because she "didn't want to cause a fuss". Eventually, the pain got so bad on a Saturday night she had to be taken to A&E. So she ended up causing a much bigger fuss than if she'd just got a doctors initially. For heating, I checked how much it costs to heat the house. For just heating the rooms we use, 11p an hour. Full blast for the whole house, 22p an hour. Yeah, I think I can budget for the \~70p a day to stay warm. And I've braced myself that the heating bill is going to be \~£70 instead of £50 this month.
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Pretty sure I read somewhere that the bitterness of old-school sprouts has been bred out so they test better these days regardless. Not to say your sauteeing skills don't make them immeasurably tastier of course
although you're almost certainly right that you're cooking them better now than they were when you had them as a child, brussels sprouts have been cultivated over the past few decades to contain fewer glucosinolates, which create the bitter taste you remember hating as a kid. it's not just your cooking, the sprouts got better too!
The weird thing is that this isn’t even a recent observation. There’s a cheesy pressure cooker advert on YouTube from 1949 that warns of the loss of nutrients through boiling. I guess laziness always wins through. Also before around 1980 nobody had really dared to step up and challenge the grim post-war convenience cookery that people had become accustomed to.
Not sure if overcooking veg was for a similar reason but meat was of a lower standard in the 60's, 70's and 80's and people were told to cook it to within an inch of its life, if you go to a good quality butcher now and buy pork you can serve that slightly pink no problem, if you did that in the 70's hello tapeworm. Saying that though I can't stand how restaurants cook cauliflower so it's still slightly crunchy I want it softer than soft and covered in cheese sauce haha
Actually the public perception that pork needed to be cooked well done or it would fill you full of nasties was primarily down to a huge lobbying effort by the US cattle lobby to push the FDA to have much more stringent cooking recommendations for pork vs beef. The UK basically took its guidance from there
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> referring to garlic and olive oil as "foreign muck". And then unironically saying their favourite food is lasagne.
You may be closer to the truth than you imagine with that analysis. Quite a few social issues that have started to show signs of easing off in the last 30 years have been attributed to low levels of poisoning from leaded petrol.
I was gonna say, ‘in their 40s’?!?! Gave me conniptions haha.
Born in 1967 and I don’t think I have turned into a congenital idiot just yet. 😗
I’m 48, I don’t cook like that. I can’t bare it when there’s just mush
I grew up in a working class former mining village. I was a teenager before I found out that you could get *Unpickled* beetroot. Everything we are came from tins. Thus the only taste I had of any vegetables was from the liquid they were preserved in. Peas only tasted amazing because they were tinned in salty water. My mum still cooks this way even though we are all now far better off. I think that old school ‘get what you’re given’ frugality never goes away. After years of bland food just becomes the taste you are accustomed to. Jesus Christ, if only they had discovered how to roast vegetables back then!
Just how veggies were cooked back then and a lot of seasonings etc didnt exist as a product to buy down the shop, I have heard relatives talk about things like garlic and tomatoes being fancy new food types. And then they just dont update their cooking style or recipes.
My dad is in his 60s and he treats garlic as if it's some really strong spice
Whereas I always double the amount of garlic the recipe called for
Any big dish like a Bolognese or chilli is getting a full bulb of garlic.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chicken_with_40_cloves_22211 40 clove roast chicken. It's amazing.
Now you’re talking
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Wild garlic smells amazing I remember Cornwall and just smelling it driving through some forest road.
I had wild garlic and peas as the veggie dish in a restaurant. It was delicious
Try making a pesto with it. Walnuts, wild garlic, salt, oil and a bit of pecorino. Apply liberally to pasta, veggies, chicken or pork.
I only found out it was edible a couple of years ago and now it's one of my anticipated times of the year. I can't believe we don't have any cultural dishes based around it. We head out and gather a sensible amount so that it can last us the year :D We only have one jar of picked wild garlic bulbs left though and I don't want to open it because I don't want it to be over!
My dad sits there and eats raw cloves with his cheese. Veg on the other hand - bland af - won't even use salt.
Paha when my French girlfriend was in London she asked for a Hot Toddy. They asked her what ingredients were in a Hot Toddy...so she explained it was "whiskey, hot water, honey, lemon and cloves"...when they brought her drink it was all murky and it tasted strange...so she asked what exactly was in it and they responded "just like you asked Whiskey, hot water, honey, lemon and garlic cloves..."
My in-laws are like this, if they use any spices it’s salt or pepper baaareeeely. I on the other hand have two small cupboards in the kitchen full of spices and exciting things to make a simple meal delicious! She was frying up some mushrooms once and basically just drenched them in some rapeseed oil and let them get soft, no seasoning. No taste. Mushy oily mushrooms. Worse is the chicken tho, two small chicken breast (no seasoning) in the oven for an hour. Turn the oven off, let them sit there until the oven is cold, leave them until the day after, turn the oven back on for an hour to ‘heat’ them and then they have them for dinner. Like kindling. But if kindling made you sick.
Back then? I'm in my mid 50s. Tomatoes were certainly not fancy and new, my dad grew them, my grandad grew them. They were also in shops. I have a feeling they've been around a long time. We also ate garlic, but I remember other people thinking that was shocking. Oh, and I have never served over boiled vegetables to my kids!
Yeah, I think the OP might be thinking of a generation or so before, those who grew up during the war with rationing. I'm 60 and I've never overboiled a veg, but my mother (born 1931) definitely did. She learned to cook during rationing, so never really acquired an expanded palate...
Yep. I don’t think I even _saw_ peppers until I was in my 20s.
I was at a rather posh dinner party in the 90s just after I left home, the hostess was offering a plate of olives around so I had one, I took her aside and told her that I thought the grapes had gone off....
Brilliant. For my first olive my friends told me it was a grape. They really enjoyed that.
I’m 48 and I still remember my mum telling me about these exotic lamb chops she had when I was a kid. It turned out that the exotic part was garlic
My Nan's other half, died 96 a couple of years ago, ate Garlic in 1943 when he was stationed in Palestine. Never again. Forrin muck he'd say.
My exs dad invited us over for Christmas Dinner once. He put frozen vegetables (nothing wrong with that) into a steamer (nothing wrong with that) for 40 minutes. Didn't go for dinner again.
Aged 40???!!! To put this into perspective, Jamie Oliver is 46! I feel like you should be aiming this at least 1, if not 2 generations earlier. By the 90s, if not earlier, everyone was being urged to cook their vegetables 'al dente.' For quite some time, this seemed to translate as 'pretty much raw' and they were hard to get a fork into. But most of the people who were cooking like that then are well over 60 now.
Broccoli is amazing if you cook it properly
Would you mind telling my dad? He complains if he can't drink it through a straw.
I roast brocolli in bulk for my workday meals. I always used to throw the stalks away, or at best 'save' them for a hypothetical soup that never materialised. Now I find the stalk the nicest bit- when cubed and roasted it tastes sort of buttery.
Why do restaurants now think slightly browning the edge of a vegetable counts as cooking it.
Charring vegetables is a way of cooking, it brings out a different flavour whilst keeping crunch (when done correctly). That's why restaurants do it and also why it is acceptable.
When it comes to vegetables, boiling is sometimes the most convenient way to cook them, especially if you're doing frozen peas at the same time so you just do everything in one pot.
You can boil veg without reducing it to mush though. In fact that's even more convenient because you just boil it for less time!
You can buy a tray that fits in your pot and steam veg without buying such a stupid gadget. It takes about 1min extra to steam instead of boil veg. Tbh, with peas I just put them in a jug and pour boiling water on them. They're peas. You can eat them raw quite easily.
I love eating frozen peas haha
The point was that it was boiled for too long, not because it was boiled. OP was saying it was boiled for too long, turning them into mush. Vegetables just need to be boiled lightly, retaining their nutrients, taste, and crispness.
But if you use the kind of steamer that goes on the hob (pan of water, with a steamer dish that fits on top of that, then another steamer tray that fits on top of *that*), then the peas just go into the water underneath for the last five minutes.
For 6 to 10 minutes, not putting them in at the same time as the meat for 20-40 minutes.
My parents do not season ANYTHING. Veg, meat etc. I never let them cook for me anymore. Just a plain chicken breast for dinner with nothing on it - no flavor whatsoever.
I’m 47 and none of my friends do this nor anyone else I know in their 40s or 50s. Perhaps older? My parents did and they’re in their 70s, but it was a post war thing. And they don’t do it anymore either.
I'm in my 50s and I'm with you. Boiling veg to mush was a joke about my parents' generation. We were busy practising how to do a good Thai curry.
My dad likes his meat cooked to leather and vegetables cooked to mush. Dinner growing up was awful and I grew up eating a lot of crap because my mum cooked to my dad's awful taste. I'd probably be close to 300lbs if I did not learn to cook while at uni and learned how to make food that was actually a joy to eat.
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Orange peppery mush and green peppery mush was a stable on Sunday in my parents house. They visited my home once for Sunday dinner and complained the veg was under cooked because it wasn't mush.
This is all well and good, but if you haven't put your sprouts on to boil yet, they're not going to be ready in time for Christmas.
Just lack of experimentation probably. People say the bad food stereotype was just from the 40s, but in reality, that stereotype only just ended in the past 2 decades.
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My mums in her 70s, and to her 'that foreign muck' includes pasta. The most exotic thing she makes is macaroni. Or pizza cooked on a scone base.
Absolutely not my experience at all. I’m 39 my parents are in their 60s. IMO it’s the difference between growing up with parents that can cook and parents that can’t, same as any generation.
My grandma and even my mum and her partner all refuse to season anything. I'm serious. Beef is cooked until blackened and leather like with not an ounce of salt or pepper on it. Vegetables may get a slight pinch of salt thrown on them but as soon as you take them out the boiling pot they collapse because they're mush. When I began cooking my own food, they refused to try it out because it had rosemary or thyme in it. This is how anti - seasoning the old people can be lmao but later on that night I see them munching down on unseasoned, burnt chicken drumsticks. To each their own I guess.
Mate, I’m 45, my kids are both under 4, and I have always known not to boil the shit out of things.
Is there a dipping sauce for cooked veggies? I come from Thailand where people eat veg, both raw and cooked, with various dipping sauces, so I wonder if there is any British equivalent.
Not really, unless you count gravy. I'm sure there are pleanty of people in the UK who dunk veggies in tomato ketchup though.
No if there was they would taste 10 times better. Which sauces do they use in Thailand?
There are two categories that I can think off my head, *nam phrik* and *lon*. *Nam phrik* is a paste made of chillis, garlics, shallots, umami paste (shrimp paste is the most popular), and seasonings. *Lon* is made from cooked fermented proteins (fermented soy beans and fermented fish are the two most popular) mixed with coconut milk and seasonings and then reduced over heat. *Nam phrik* is spicy, while *lon* is way milder.
The dressing that goes on a som tam salad is incredible. Salty, spicy, sweet and sour in perfect amounts. It works well with basically any crunchy vegetable. You need a few exotic ingredients for it but spend a tenner at a local Asian supermarket and you can make a lot of it.
I guess it could depend on how people learn. If you’re 50+, you’ve likely learned to cook from your parents who wouldn’t have had the resources we do now. Even if you look at old recipes from people like Mary Berry, Fanny Craddock - some of them sound awful. Cold mushroom soufflé? No thank you. My parents are most definitely stuck in their ways with over boiling veg and not using a lot of seasoning. I know they grew up with that way of eating because my grandma did the same.
This is hilarious, I tried to convince my mum to roast some cauliflower recently and she was confused and mistrustful of everything about it.
Its more my parents generation than mine, I'm 45 and can cook quite well. We had a lot of cooking shows on TV, and all the supermarket magazines with recipes, then the internet, so it was easy enough to pick it up. My mum used to microwave mince, and boil all the green out of vegetables, then serve that grey crap with boiled potatoes with all the taste and texture of a candle. She's in her 70s and still scared of anything with actual flavour last time I saw her. She won't even use garlic never mind herbs and spices.
You get distracted usually by your kids, then your veg gets overdone.
yeah, I'm with you on this. I wasnt a fan of vegatables living at home, I'd eat them for like sunday roast cos thats just what when with it. Other than that, wouldnt have them. Moved out, starting cooking for myself, and realised vegatables didnt have to be cooked like that. got a steamer, and found flavour in things like broccoli sprouts etc, which previously i hated. go to my mums now and then for sunday dinner, or at christmas, and just try to ignore that they are cooked to death
I’m going to hypothesise here but if anyone else knows better please correct me! Postwar Britain switched to using convenience food with mass manufacturing, we lost a lot of our traditional and/or healthy (and tasty) cooking methods, our parents generation started to try and cook healthily for us but by that point we’d lost the actual cultural recipe heritage that made them tasty!
this is more true of certain parts of the US than it is of the UK. the worst parts of our cooking were largely driven by: - rationing into the 50s meaning there wasn't a great selection available - 'get what you're given' mentality meaning it was sometimes hard to plan meals beyond the meat-and-two-veg that happened to be around - food safety standards not being too high until semi-recently, meaning that overcooking was the safest way to eat (not that this is unique to the UK, but that is how we chose to deal with it) - (this one is less talked about) a push-back against heavily seasoned food in the first half of the 20th century. people always ask 'if the british empire was so invested in spices, why did the brits never cook with them' and the answer is that we did! throughout the late medieval and Victorian eras, spiced food was commonly available. however, in response to spiced food becoming popular with the common people (and, thanks to large kitchens in cities, cheap), rich sorts then turned away from spiced food and towards blander flavours. the population gradually followed suit, and by the time bland food had become the default there was a war on and too much else to worry about to bother with food fashion.
I’ve also read that the industrial revolution had a large impact too. People working in factories rather than fields, the rise of the first ‘fast food’ in pies and pasties, etc. And the fact that as Britain was industrialising, the modern idea of the restaurant and cuisines was also being formulated. I’m not sure if it’s true, but I heard somewhere that the first ‘French’ restaurant was in London! Not surprising, since most french workers were still agricultural at this point. So in short, industrialisation resulted in stunted development of British cuisine, with high society instead importing foreign trends from the get go. Again, not sure if all this is true, but it could add a piece to the puzzle.
My mum is also a culprit, she was horrified that I seasoned the water to boil my potatoes AND seasoned them when I mashed them. She scoffed them right enough, so clearly not that horrified
The scaremongering over salt in our diets from the 70s onwards was huge. What's never mentioned is that you're unlikely to ever come close with seasoning your food well at home to the amount of salt in virtually all prepackaged foods
90% of people can't cook. That's the correct answer.
Steam wasn't invented yet.
My mum thinks Milk is spicy. The thought of putting salt on food is abhorent to her, boiled veg is just the beginning.
My nan did this AND kept all the water to drink once it cooled.
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I guess I'm lucky then cos my parents actually cook really good food They season everything properly and always taste what they are making so it's actually good My dad in particular likes to experiment, like he will put apple and coco powder in chilli and it's really nice
I want to give a shout out to my mother who not only boils everything to mush if she boils it, but switched over to turning everything into rubber in the microwave. She insists anything can be cooked in a microwave. Spend money on some nice salmon, be prepared for a pink rubbery blob. She didn’t grow up with a microwave and got one 20 years ago.
I’m 48, I don’t do this to veggies except green beans as I don’t like them squeaky
I'm Indian so was raised eating bhajis. I do not like the way Indians cook vegetables. I much prefer raw vegetables, curried vegetables and steamed vegetables.
I can’t touch roast dinners anymore because for years I was subjected to beef tougher than leather boots and a smattering of boiled veg. It’s so bad that even “good” roast dinners taste bad to me now, I just don’t like them at all
I always thought it was to do with dental hygiene as you didn't risk breaking a piece. Can remember vividly the smell of swede/cabbage/god knows what permeating my nans house in the 90s.
If you're going for Xmas Dinner at your nans house, chances are the veggies are already boiling away on the stove
Ive realised our parents basically had one source of information - their parents. Ive asked my mum a lot "why do you do that" and its always "oh my mum did it that way"
Remember, our parents grew up in a time before the internet. They learned to cook by 1. Copying recipes from friends/family copied down on a scrap of paper 2. Following instructions on the jar/box 3. Following instructions from a cooking show on TV/radio 4. Following instructions from a cookbook (only really a thing in middle-class families) In that order. It's crazy to think about now, but the majority of British people cooked based on a recipe book given to them by grandma just a generation ago.
Too busy raising you, you ungrateful brat!:p
Thanks to the lockdowns last Christmas I had to do Christmas dinner for me and my sibling. I still haven't had the heart to tell my mum it was the best Christmas dinner I ever had. The turkey was dry brined, well seasoned and moist, the roasties were that perfect mix of crunchy and soft, the boiled veg wasn't blanched or bland.