McVitie’s Hobnobs biscuits! I got hooked on these things while over in the UK and haven’t been able to find them here.
Thank goodness Branston Pickle is available at both Kroger’s and Spec’s Liquor here in Houston. I’m a native Texan, but I’m addicted to the stuff!
Mmmm… Branston Pickle on Wheat Thins…
Lard is any rendered pig fat while suet is the hard white fat from around the kidneys and loins of cattle and sheep.
rolandgunslinger spotted dick is a type of pudding. Here’s a recipe.
Not in Buffalo, or other cities where there are large Polish-American populations. Duck’s Blood soup is very popular among some of the more ethnically aware Poles.
Most larger US cities have UK specialty food stores, so many food products found across the pond can be found in the US. British candy, although not common in the US, can be found if you go out of your way. Try to find a community with a lot of UK expats (south sububan Orlando, Florida, or Leawood, Kansas as a couple of examples), and you should be able to find a British specialty store.
Most US cities, including smaller and more isolated municipalities in rural areas, have ethnic supermarkets specializing in Indian food. Although certain curries and spices might be easier to find in UK supermarkets than American supermarkets, they should be available in the Indian supermarkets.
What about upscale grovery store chains in the US, like Wegmans in the Buffalo/Rochester area, or gourmet/organic supermarket chains like Whole Foods?
They were just a gimmick, not a “real” flavour. They used to do human flavour crisps too.
What I haven’t yet found in any supermarket here (and they have French, American, Indian and Arab ones) or in Australia are the high end cook chill and gourmet ranges, made popular by Marks & Spencer. Even the sort of Waitrose-level products just can’t be found.
In Spinneys here very occasionally you can find a jar of Tesco’s Finest something or other, but there is a real lack of that pretended-to-have-cooked-it-myself deluxe stuff.
Can you get these products in the US? You can get luxury stuff here, but only from a very few delis. Ditto in Sydney, the only place that had similar was the Five Star Gourmet Supermarket in Crows Nest, on the North Shore.
God, the pay packets I wasted there buying white chocolate or liquorice ice cream, or fresh stuffed pasta…
Also, beef suet usually comes pre-shredded like this .
Julie
Brit living in the US for ten years:
HP sauce
Salad Cream
Picallili (sp?)
Digestive Biscuits, HobNobs, Rich Tea…etc etc etc
Various cheeses - you can get some decent cheese, but nothing like the range available in blighty
Orange Fish Fingers - (They have fish sticks - similar)
Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce - you can get baked beans, which are usually very sweet, or Pork n Beans, which have a cube of fat in them, but no, honest to goodness Brit style baked beans.
Back bacon, or decent streaky bacon. What passes for bacon round these parts is like what you cut off UK bacon - it’s almost pure fat. Canadian bacon is nice, but closer to gammon.
Spotted dick. Not that I’ve asked around too much. In fact a lot of tradnl british desserts - christmas pudding, traecle pudding…etc
Pork Pies.
Sausage Rolls
Pot Noodles - althought there is something similar. Not really something I hanker for but they helped me out in my student days
Stuffing over here is usually just a mixture of breadcrumbs and herbs, Stovetop brand being the default. You don’t see sausagemeat and chestnut, sage and onion, sweetcorn and bacon stuffings anywhere.
Grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and (once again) baked beans with breakfast.
Weetabix
Ribena - or anything with blackcurrants…Vimto, Mr Kipling…etc
Ginger Beer
Real Bitter with a creamy head on it. They serve Bass but it fizzes like lager. Actually the lager here doesn’t really have any head on it usually.
Mint Sauce. You can get Mint Jelly (eew).
Sherbert Fountains and various other sweets of my youth.
The indian selection is usually pretty poor.
Pickled Onions
Marmite
Trifle
Normal pancakes on pancake tuesday. Thay don’t even have pancake tuesday!
The upshot of these culinary deficiencies is that whenever I go home to the UK I eat large quantities of the foodstuffs listed above, which is unfortunate for those around me.
Let me add that there are plent of things I now miss when I go to the UK - the one’s that spring to mind are:
Tex Mex food - it’s very wierd in the UK
Ranch Dressing
Chewy cookies
Cocktail Sauce made with horseradish - in the UK it’s something similar to thousand island dressing.
Bread and butter pickle slices
Baby back ribs
Let me also add that getting a chinese meal in one country is very different from another, in that the “standard” chinese menu in the US will usually contain a lot of items that you won’t find on the UK menu, and vice versa.
Brit living in the US for ten years:
HP sauce
Salad Cream
Picallili (sp?)
Digestive Biscuits, HobNobs, Rich Tea…etc etc etc
Various cheeses - you can get some decent cheese, but nothing like the range available in blighty
Orange Fish Fingers - (They have fish sticks - similar)
Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce - you can get baked beans, which are usually very sweet, or Pork n Beans, which have a cube of fat in them, but no, honest to goodness Brit style baked beans.
Back bacon, or decent streaky bacon. What passes for bacon round these parts is like what you cut off UK bacon - it’s almost pure fat. Canadian bacon is nice, but closer to gammon.
Spotted dick. Not that I’ve asked around too much. In fact a lot of tradnl british desserts - christmas pudding, traecle pudding…etc
Pork Pies.
Sausage Rolls
Pot Noodles - althought there is something similar. Not really something I hanker for but they helped me out in my student days
Stuffing over here is usually just a mixture of breadcrumbs and herbs, Stovetop brand being the default. You don’t see sausagemeat and chestnut, sage and onion, sweetcorn and bacon stuffings anywhere.
Grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and (once again) baked beans with breakfast.
Weetabix
Ribena - or anything with blackcurrants…Vimto, Mr Kipling…etc
Ginger Beer
Real Bitter with a creamy head on it. They serve Bass but it fizzes like lager. Actually the lager here doesn’t really have any head on it usually.
Mint Sauce. You can get Mint Jelly (eew).
Sherbert Fountains and various other sweets of my youth.
The indian selection is usually pretty poor.
Pickled Onions
Marmite
Trifle
Normal pancakes on pancake tuesday. Thay don’t even have pancake tuesday!
The upshot of these culinary deficiencies is that whenever I go home to the UK I eat large quantities of the foodstuffs listed above, which is unfortunate for those around me.
Let me add that there are plent of things I now miss when I go to the UK - the one’s that spring to mind are:
Tex Mex food - it’s very wierd in the UK
Ranch Dressing
Chewy cookies
Cocktail Sauce made with horseradish - in the UK it’s something similar to thousand island dressing.
Bread and butter pickle slices
Baby back ribs
Let me also add that getting a chinese meal in one country is very different from another, in that the “standard” chinese menu in the US will usually contain a lot of items that you won’t find on the UK menu, and vice versa.
sorry. my list was so important I had to repead it.
The weird thing about those selections is that, in the UK, the best-known brand of salad cream and baked beans is Heinz, and the best-known brand of fish fingers is Birdseye – both American companies.
Before I posted I could’ve sworn that Weetabix was made by Nabisco too. According to the Weetabix website they export to over 80 countries and have manufacturing plants at four locations in North America, so you should be able to track it down if you want.
Beef Suet is the hardened fat reserves that are carved off the animal. It’s most commonly used for feeding birds in the winter, but you should be able to get some from just about any meat dept in the USA. Most commonly, if not at the counter, it’s used for adding fat to hamburger, increasing weight by using a “waste” product.
-Butler
Suet isn’t just any fat though, butler1850, it has to come from a specific part of the carcass. It’s been discussed on these boards before and you can certainly get it from your butcher, but you have to ask specially.
Is “salad cream” anything like the mayonnaise substitutes such as Miracle Whip?
Ginger Beer I’ve seen occasionally – I think Stewarts (the root beer company) bottles it, but it is hard to find.
Wheetabix (shudder) I know I have seen in supermarkets. Had it once when on vacation in UK, hope to never taste it again.
Trifle: I had this once in the US, homemade by someone who knew what she was doing. Yummers.
Yes, of course the whole beer preference thing. Most Americans can’t get past the temperature thing. (“What? The beer’s not cold??”) The more intelligent and cultured among us may try to seek out other types in specialty liquor stores. IMHO there is a lot of absolutely horrible U.S. beer, as well as some that’s quite good.
Why is <insert your least favorite “light” beer brand here> like making love in a canoe? They’re both f—ing close to water.
mmm… Yorkshire Pudding. You can make it without the bacon drippings (ugh), too. Just use a little bit of pan juices from whatever meat you’re roasting, or nothing at all.
As a couple of posters have mentioned, it depends on what you are comparing.
If you are trying to find food available in great big London in lil’ ol’ Possum Gulch, then no, you will not be able to find certain UK foods in the US. In the UK, if you are in the country, you will not be able to find much.
In general it’s easier to find UK foods in the US than vice versa. We just have more consumer goods. Crass capitalism and all, you know.
With the spread of Sainsbury’s (spelling?), the UK is becoming more and more a place with supermarkets selling everything and staying open late. One notices that the very same people who complain about the “Americanization” of their little village are the same people who relish having a vast selection of groceries handy…
If you can’t find Weetabix in the U.S., you need to have your eyes checked. It’s everywhere, and with the same name and packaging.
Salad Cream is an item unto itself - it’s a little like homemade mayo with some flavorings added:
http://www.nestle.ca/en/Products/Browse_by_Category/Specialty_Imports/crosse_salad_cream.htm?view=CatView
As for the warm beer - that’s more of a legend than anything else. Ideally, bitter & ale is served at “cellar temperature” - which I think is something like 7 deg C, and lager should be a bit colder - 5 deg C - but if the beer is warm, something’s wrong.
I have no problem with drinking a lite beer on a hot day - playing volleyball…etc, and I have sampled many fine American brews. However, the concept of a head on a glass of beer in the US seems to exist only in commercials. In the UK bitters (think Bass) are served with a head similar to the one a draft Guiness comes with. I’ve never seen it in the US - the carbonation being similar to a soda than a beer.
As for the weetabix, to each his own I suppose. Now can I interest you in some MUESLI. Good stuff. Especially the Alpen with dried tropical fruit. Beats a bowl of colon clogging cream of wheat anyday!
And now some code:
Jammy Dodgers, Bourbon Creams, Licorice Allsorts, Dolly Mixture.
I’ve never had Miracle Whip, but salad cream has a sharper flavour and a slightly wetter texture than mayo often has. If you wanted to simulate it I suppose you could add a tiny bit of mustard to mayonnaise.
The standard US stereotype of British beer is that it’s warm. I don’t know what you’ve drunk on vacation, but beer is never supposed to be warm anywhere – ale/bitter is served at cellar temperature (and it’s pretty cold down there), but is not generally refrigerated. Lager/pilsner is supposed to slightly refrigerated but how good a job they do depends on the pub.