The Vent and Rant Thread

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sadly, as far as I know, in the UK, a jacket potato is a baked potato. They do do them rather differently from what I see around here. A longer cooking time with a high temperature start to crisp the skin and then a longer lower temperature to finish the cooking process.

See Classic jacket potatoes, Mary Berry’s Posh Jacket Potatoes or The Best Baked Potato? Try Our English Jacket Potatoes! for examples.

The last example takes about 2 hours 15 minutes in the oven but my kids loved it for the texture and very crispy skin.

The best way to bake a potato is in the air fryer. No way would it ever take 2+ hours and you save a lot of electricity as well. 40 minutes max and much less electricity.

Here's how to make air fryer baked potatoes with a crispy skin. https://www.apinchofhealthy.com/air-...baked-potatoes

One thing that's seriously lacking in the UK is proper baked beans. They have these tiny beans in a tomato based sauce. That's not baked beans. Baked beans need to be a brown color with molasses and other stuff and the beans are larger.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Maybe its because they use one of these rather than one of these

That first grinder makes ground beef.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Central Pennsylvania recognizes the word spud for potato too. Perhaps the usage is declining, but it’s certainly here.

We know that spud means potato. It's just mot used as such.

[ownedbycats]

Are we talking about weird regional variances in dishes? If so, here in Atlantic Canada, a lot of restaurants make chow mein out of... bean sprouts. And Newfoundland uses sliced cabbage.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Yes. That's ground beef. Any kind of meat that's ground is called ground <add name of the meat>.

Hmmm... what kind of animal does hamburger come from then?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing that's seriously lacking in the UK is proper baked beans. They have these tiny beans in a tomato based sauce. That's not baked beans. Baked beans need to be a brown color with molasses and other stuff and the beans are larger.

Are you perchance referring to Boston Baked Beans? An abomination committed upon innocent beans

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you say tomato sauce, do you mean ketchup or tomato sauce (it's pasta sauce in the UK)?

Neither. Australian style tomato sauce is closer to ketchup than tomato sauce. Compared to ketchup based on the one time I ran into it in the wild, it is runnier and more sour compared to Heinz Ketchup.

Last time I was swapping recipes with a UK resident, they seemed to use passata (an uncooked variant) rather than a pasta gravy made with cooked tomatoes when making pasta.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Are we talking about weird regional variances in dishes? If so, here in Atlantic Canada, a lot of restaurants make chow mein out of... bean sprouts. And Newfoundland uses sliced cabbage.

Are the bean sprouts used in place of noodles? I've seen that variant here in the Vancouver area as a low carb chow mein. Otherwise, quite a few chow meins use about as many bean sprouts as noodles. Carrots, sugar peas, cabbage (many variants of Chinese or western brassica), fungi and others vegetables are common. I've also see stir fried sliced cabbage (often using Napa cabbage) but never under a chow mein name.

Why do I feel a sudden desire to re-read Making Money?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Are the bean sprouts used in place of noodles? I've seen that variant here in the Vancouver area as a low carb chow mein. Otherwise, quite a few chow meins use about as many bean sprouts as noodles. Carrots, sugar peas, cabbage (many variants of Chinese or western brassica), fungi and others vegetables are common. I've also see stir fried sliced cabbage (often using Napa cabbage) but never under a chow mein name.

Why do I feel a sudden desire to re-read Making Money?

Yup, in place of the noodles.

There's also the infamous Halifax Meat Paste eggrolls.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

In the UK, for some unknown reason they call ground beef mince. They also call potatoes tattys.

In the US it's ground beef and potatoes.

That is because we do not "grind" meat we "mince" it using a food mincer. Do you grind meat on a grindstone?

Potatoes are indeed sometimes called "Tattys" bur the names taters, and spuds are commonly used.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The best way to bake a potato is in the air fryer. No way would it ever take 2+ hours and you save a lot of electricity as well. 40 minutes max and much less electricity.

Here's how to make air fryer baked potatoes with a crispy skin. https://www.apinchofhealthy.com/air-...baked-potatoes

One thing that's seriously lacking in the UK is proper baked beans. They have these tiny beans in a tomato based sauce. That's not baked beans. Baked beans need to be a brown color with molasses and other stuff and the beans are larger.

The best baked potatoes are those cooked in a cast iron coal fired kitchen range which was also used to heat the kitchen, cook food, and boil water for baths and washing clothes.. You could put some spuds in the oven and leave them as long as you wanted. It cost nothing because the range was kept burning every day, all day during the winter.

I was brought up in such a house and they were still common in the 1950s.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

The best baked potatoes are those cooked in a cast iron coal fired kitchen range which was also used to heat the kitchen, cook food, and boil water for baths and washing clothes.. You could put some spuds in the oven and leave them as long as you wanted. It cost nothing because the range was kept burning every day, all day during the winter.

I was brought up in such a house and they were still common in the 1950s.

One of the few people I've chatted with who had an AGA.

[neil_swann80]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

That is because we do not "grind" meat we "mince" it using a food mincer.

Yep. Mince is 100% meat from a single cut and more coarsely chopped than ground meat. Ground meat normally has extra fat and bulking agents added... a more "processed" offering.

Minced lamb covered in some mashed spuds makes for a superior Shepperd's pie (not really a pie IMHO). Any Shepperd's pie made from ground lamb and simple potatoes would pale in comparison.

Jacket spuds from an AGA have the most deliciously crispy skins! Fantastic.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

The best baked potatoes are those cooked in a cast iron coal fired kitchen range which was also used to heat the kitchen, cook food, and boil water for baths and washing clothes.. You could put some spuds in the oven and leave them as long as you wanted. It cost nothing because the range was kept burning every day, all day during the winter.

I was brought up in such a house and they were still common in the 1950s.

Both my grandparents had polished steel coal burning ranges in there 'sitting/dining' rooms. An uncle inherited one of the houses and he was still using it when I last saw him in the mid 1990s.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One of the few people I've chatted with who had an AGA.

If you mean me, you have jumped to conclusion we had a range similar to the one in the picture attached. It was not in such good condition though.