Define comfort food? Well, Wikipedia states that: Comfort food is food which provides a nostalgic or sentimental value to the consumer,[1] and is often characterized by its high caloric nature, high carbohydrate level, and simple preparation.[2] The nostalgia may be specific to either the individual or a specific culture.
British comfort food checks all the right boxes.
High Calories? Check.
Simple preparation? Check.
British comfort food is probably one of the best in the world. Yes, my view may be biased but you know it’s true! Go eat beans on toast (preparation instructions provided!), and then tell me you don’t feel good and comforted! I will leave it at that. Go try for yourself.
YOU. ARE. WELCOME!
1. Beans on Toast
Here is the secret recipe. Now listen carefully…
DIRECTIONS
Toast bread.
In a saucepan, heat up the beans.
Spoon onto toast
ENJOY!
Difficult huh? There’s only ONE rule. DO NOT USE AMERICAN Pork & Beans, Boston Baked Beans or “Bush’s Beans” etc…
ONLY Heinz please.
2. Crumpets
Unless you live in the United Kingdom or have visited, you likely haven’t encountered a crumpet. A crumpet is a type of bread most closely related to the English muffin. Crumpets taste very similar to English muffins and even look like them. The difference is that crumpets are a bit lighter than English muffins. While they have a crust on the outside, their interiors are airy, spongy, and yeasty – and you don’t cut them open.
How to Serve Crumpets
To serve crumpets, toast them and then top with butter. Marmite is a fave of mine also!!
3. Dippy Eggs and Soldiers aka; Boiled eggs and toast
Dippy eggs and soldiers are a ritual for both children and adults alike – tapping a spoon all the way around the egg, removing the top, and dipping the first soldier into the middle and watching the yolk spill out over the sides. It is a fairly quick breakfast to make and consume, but this isn’t something you just shovel in your mouth and run out the door. For my twin baby girls, this was a real treat. Picking out their favourite egg cup, and placing the soldiers all around the base of the egg cups to catch any yummy goodness that inevitable overflows with the perfectly cooked ‘dippy’ egg. Comfort food at it’s greatest!
4. Fish Finger Butty
As it says on the tin. Fish Fingers in a Butty, or for those not fluent in British, 2 slices of bread for a sandwich. (Yes, you are probably figuring out that bread is a staple in our Comfort foods!!!) Sandwich, Sarnie, Buttie, Roll . . . whatever you call it, this has to be one of the easiest and tastiest, all round pleasing sandwiches to make. Add ketchup, cheese, tartar sauce, anything really to make it your own.
5. Ploughmans
We all know that a ploughman’s lunch is made up of fresh bread, hard cheese, onion and pickles, and harks back to simpler times when ploughmen pulled up their horses in shady furrows, unpacked their humble lunches and tucked in with gusto.
And we’d all be wrong. Because while it all sounds so wonderfully rural and wholesome, the ploughman’s has nothing to do with the traditional rural way of life at all.
The ‘Ploughman’s lunch’ is actually a modern term, coined during the late 1960s by the English Country Cheese Council as part of a marketing campaign to encourage people to eat more cheese. It goes without saying, it was a resounding success. (Tip; add a bit of Ploughman’s Pickle and a large pickled onion! YUM!)
6. Bangers and Mash
A British comfort staple, the ‘mash’ part of the name is easy to work out, but what the heck are ‘bangers’, I hear you ask?
The sausage, one of the oldest types of processed food in history, can be traced back to ancient times. British pork sausages have been mass produced since the 19th century.
The Victorians, skeptical of what was actually in a sausage and suspecting the presence of rather a lot of horsemeat, nicknamed them ‘Little Bags of Mystery’.
After the outbreak of World War I, food shortages led to a dramatic reduction of meat, of any sort, in sausages.
Instead, producers packed them out with scraps, cereal and water, which caused them to pop and hiss when cooked on shovels over open fires in the trenches of northern Europe — hence ‘bangers’.
7. Full English Breakfast
The full English breakfast is a mighty meal! Traditionally, you need to find a dish that incorporates: bacon, sausages, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, baked beans, blood pudding (also known as black pudding) and toast. Perfect for a hangover (not that we’d know!)
Haven’t had enough comfort foods? Here are some more ideas to keep you going… Enjoy and be sure to leave your favourites in the comments!!
