Today we’re going to continue the series about comfort food. We’ve done French and Italian comfort foods, and today we’re going to talk about British comfort foods; all the yummy things that they eat that are easy to make. If you order a meal at a pub on the street, you’ll probably order one of these things. They’re easy to cook at home, and they’re hearty. They help in the winter – in Britain there are a lot of rainy days, So, here we go with some British comfort foods that you can try at home.
There’s the classic shepherd’s pie or cottage pie. Shepherd’s pie is made with lamb, and cottage pie with beef. Basically, you cook the lamb or the beef mince, add some gravy, and then top that with mashed potatoes. You can add vegetables like carrots or peas, and you can add a tomatoey flavor to the mince if you want. It’s up to you to do what you enjoy.
Look up a recipe for one of those – they’re really amazing. They’re cozy, filling, and they’re very easy to make. You basically need to make the meat taste good, and then you add the vegetables, and the mash as a topping. This is also great for leftovers.
Then there’s bangers and mash – sausages with mashed potato and onion gravy. This uses very simple ingredients. It works very well with any good quality sausages. You can buy pork bangers, or if you like, you get chicken sausages these days, and there’s also beef. So, cook up your sausages. Aim to get a good golden color on them, so you need a hot pan. Maybe baste them with a bit of barbecue sauce, or whatever kind of sauce you enjoy.
When you have your sausages, make your mashed potatoes. You can even just use whole baked potatoes if it’s easier for you. Just do them in the oven with some olive oil or butter and salt, and then bake them. You can smash them a little bit with a potato mash, and then put your sausages and onion gravy on top. You can look up a recipe for the onion gravy. You basically cook up your onions, and then add some stock, a bit of thickener, and some salt.
Then there’s the well-known fish and chips. You can buy this in many places in England – fried fish, usually with greasy chips. In South Africa, they call them slap chips, and in Europe they call them frites, though those are a much thinner version. Everybody has their own special kind of chips, and in Britain it would be oily chips that are quite thick. You can do whatever you like at home.
The easiest way to make fish and chips is to buy chips from a grocery store. You can get french fries, crinkle cut chips, or any kind of oven chips, add some good seasonings like paprika, onion powder, oregano, and salt, and bake them in the oven until they’re nice and crispy.
For the fish, you can batter it if you’d like to, but that’s quite a big effort. I prefer to just do the fish in the oven without batter. Usually I put the fish in a baking dish or a glass dish, and then I add quite a bit of salt, a little bit of onion powder, maybe some paprika, and some thyme, and then I squeeze lots of lemon juice over the top. I add a little bit of butter or a little bit of olive oil, some cracked pepper, and maybe a little bit of almond flour sprinkled on top. All those things add to the flavor of the fish. Make sure you flavor it really well, and then just bake it for fifteen minutes in the oven.
You can get creative and make a tartar sauce for it – look up a recipe for that. It’s quite easy, and it gives a nice sour addition to the fish. Also squeeze some lemon over the fish just before you eat it, or you could make lemon butter to go with that. That’s delicious!
Toad in the hole is a very unusual sounding British food that isn’t eaten in many other countries. Here again, you use sausages – you can use leftover sausages. You make it in the batter from a Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire puddings are usually baked to go with a roast beef, and they use an egg and flour batter that you put in very hot pans to make your little Yorkshire puddings. In this case, you’re going to make the same batter, pour it over your sausages, and then you bake it. You also add a gravy, like beef or chicken gravy, over the top of that.
Here are some potato based ideas. They do love potatoes in the UK. Bubble and squeak is made of fried leftovers like potatoes and cabbage, and sometimes vegetables are added. You fry any leftovers that you have until they’re crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. You would chop up your potatoes or half mash them, and then stir fry them with your vegetables. You can put a fried egg on top. That’s a nice breakfast made from your leftovers.
Jacket potatoes, or twice baked potatoes is an American name for something they also do in the UK. Baked potatoes can have fillings like butter, cheese, beans, or tuna or chicken mayonnaise on top. Alternatively, you could add some mince – cooked ground beef, and some cheese on top. Or you can take sweet corn and mash it with the inside of the potatoes. Add some cheese, and put that back into the skins to make twice baked potatoes. This is a very comforting kind of meal – quick and easy.
Colcannon is a British/Irish crossover. For this, you use mashed potatoes with leftover or fresh cabbage, or leeks with butter. This is a great side dish to have alongside sausages, or you can get a big ham and slice it. It’s a quick and easy comfort food.
Here are some ideal one-pot meals or stews for cold days. You can make a simple beef stew or lamb stew using slow cooked beef or lamb, as well as carrots, onions, and potatoes with some broth. You cook it slowly to get that deep flavor with minimal effort. First, you need to brown and season your meat. Then you would add your vegetables and a little bit of broth at the bottom. Leave it for four hours on high, or six to eight hours on low, and it’ll be great and tender. You can also do a stew in a cast iron pot in the oven – that also does it really well. Put it on at a low temperature like 320 Fahrenheit.
You should definitely look up a recipe for Lancaster hotpot. This is lamb and onions topped with sliced potatoes, and then baked low and slow until they’re golden and tender. This also works well in the oven in a cast iron pot, or in your crockpot.
Then there’s a chicken and leek pie or casserole. This is chicken with a creamy type of gravy that uses broth and cream or milk, and that’s thickened. Then you add some vegetables like leeks. It’s very comforting. You can make it with or without pastry – it would be a pie if you put the pastry on top and bake it.
Here are some very British quick comfort foods that you can do for breakfast or lunch. A cheese toasty is cheddar cheese on buttered bread. It’s grilled or fried in a pan, and it’s often served with tomato soup. Beans on toast is very British. You use baked beans in a tin, and toast your bread. Put butter on, and add the baked beans on top, maybe with a bit of salt. It’s surprisingly satisfying and not gross at all. It actually tastes really good – it has a tomatoey flavor. Then there are sausage rolls. These use sausage meat that’s flavored, wrapped up in puff pastry, and baked. Store-bought pastry makes it easy. You can even buy ready-made sausage rolls and bake them in the oven. It’s a nice easy snack.
Here are some British desserts. Apple crumble is apples tossed with buttery crumbs, and then served warm with some custard or cream. It’s very easy to make at home – easier than an apple pie because you don’t have to make the pastry. The crumble’s made from a combination of butter, sugar, and flour. You would season your apples with some cinnamon, a little bit of salt and some sugar. Leave them to soak, cook them, and then add the crumble on top and bake it in the oven.
Sticky toffee pudding is a date sponge cake with a hot toffee sauce. It’s a very beloved British dessert. Bread and butter pudding uses any stale leftover bread with a bit of milk, eggs, and spices. Then it’s baked in the oven to make a delicious, custardy, bready dessert. It’s very, very distinctive.
Of course, afternoon tea and cake is very British. For a light Victoria sponge. You don’t need to make frosting – you just bake the cake and then have it with jam and cream. It’s very simple and comforting.
The British love to use gravy everywhere on everything, whether it’s meat or pie, or any of those things. They add a rich, nutritious gravy. They also use custard on their desserts instead of ice cream. Homemade custard is fabulous – you should also look up a recipe for that.
These are just some ideas for British comfort foods that you can try at home. It’s easy to find recipes online, but sometimes we need ideas. So, see which one sounds appealing to you, whether it’s for breakfast, lunch, or dinner for your family, and try it. I hope it’s a success!
