Guess I’m about as familiar with American peanut butter as you are with British peanut butter, then. Doesn’t strike me as odd at all. YMMV and all that.
Wow I didn’t realize buttering sandwiches was considered an oddity in the U.S.
If you haven’t had a grilled cheese sandwich with butter on the outside of the sandwich, I recomend you try it.
Do you mean making a grilled cheese sandwich by frying it in butter? That’s the only way I know his to make one.
Or are you talking about spreading cold butter on the outside of an already made sandwich? Because that sounds messy.
wheat.
no, I’m not (primarily) trying to be a jerk. just as an example, I took a look at Burger King’s page about “nutrition” where they let you “build” a menu item to see the calorie contribution to every component. For a hamburger, the bun has 140 calories, the meat 110. start adding cheese slices and it adds up fast.
Yeah, buttering the outside. It isn’t that messy. But you’re right, less of the mess the other way ,and the result would be the same. You know I never thought of cooking it that way.:o
Some things I watched mom do I never thought to question.
I still haven’t met a Spaniard who has tried peanut butter and whose opinion of it is anything more flattering that “revolting!” Actually, un-natural is one of the words that get used. And least anybody is mistaken, we all have tried it in the US; several were taken by surprise by PBJs which, not having heard of PB beforehand, they’d thought were regular butter-and-jam sandwiches with the butter dark “for some reason”. Their reactions were so bad they were still apologizing several days later.`
British PB might work, sounds like it will at least taste the way we expect peanuts to taste.
Is any particular flavour of jam used most commonly? I’d be willing to give one a go, but not sure if any of the jams currently in my cupboard (apricot, plum and rhubarb) would work.
I didn’t think I’d like peanut butter and chocolate together till I tried a Reese’s peanut butter cup, after all, and I love them.
Strawberry, IME.
I’m not a fan of PB&J, to be perfectly honest, though, so…
That’s a new one to me- never heard them called that in Australia, NZ, the UK, or the parts of the US I’ve visited. Might be a regional thing?
For some reason, strawberry is the “default” American jam.
Eh, I’d say that grape is the default American jelly, with strawberry a close second. Pre-made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches always use grape jelly.
If you order french fries in Brazil, you will be offered (usually) mayonnaise to dip them in.
If you request ketchup, you will be given some age-old little packets of thin, sour tomato sauce-probably the worst “ketchup” you will ever taste.
But things are changine-there has been so much immigration of Brazilians to the USA, that their kids are now sing American-style ketchup.
I sense a business opportunity-how do I market ketchup in Brazil?
And we never have grape jam over here (or grape jelly or any similar preserve made with grapes).
I’m English and I find PB&J sandwiches quite normal, even with British peanut butter.
In Curacao, mayo also was the norm, but peanut sauce was an option in at least one spot. (Some sort of Indonesia-by-way-of-Netherlands thing, I guess, Curacao being within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.)
Apple jelly is also good with peanut butter (is that available?), as is the aforementioned strawberry.
There is plenty of unsweetened peanut butter in the U.S. It is used in exactly the same way as sweetened peanut butter.
The idea that peanut butter is either suitable or unsuitable only for savory dishes (please pardon the American spelling) comes from what one is used to. If you’ve grown up with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the idea doesn’t seem odd at all. As has already been pointed out, peanut candy is common in the U.K. Maybe what’s throwing people off is that peanut butter usually has salt in it - is it uncommon to combine salty and sweet flavors in the U.K.? Isn’t lamb with mint sauce a British dish, and isn’t the mint sauce sweet?
I think you’re absolutely right, and that it mostly comes down to what we are used to.
But, maybe the “butter in sandwiches” thing comes into it – in the UK, a peanut butter sandwich is made from bread, then butter (or some kind of butter-like spread), and then the peanut butter as a filling. Adding jam/jelly to that already heady mix is what seems a bit weird. Whereas, in the states, I guess there would be no butter/spread layer, and we would proceed directly from the bread to the peanut butter. That sounds like it would be a bit dry, so I can see that maybe adding a bit of jam/jelly would help.
Butter and peanut butter sounds like a terrible combination. Wait, butter has to go on any British sandwich? I can’t see how butter would enhance, say, corned beef and mustard on rye. It would tend to dull the flavors with its greasiness.
It may sound like a terrible combination, but it is in fact a beautiful combination, especially on a thick slice of Hovis. Fatty, greasy goodness.
Yes, any proper British sandwich must have butter, or something like it. I was always slightly puzzled by the usage of the word “butter” in “peanut butter”, but threads like this explain it - Americans use peanut butter in ways similar to how we use actual butter, or its alternatives. If peanut butter had been invented here, it would have simply been called “peanut spread”.
I wouldn’t use butter on a peanut butter sandwich, or on one that had mayonnaise as a major ingredient (tuna mayo, egg mayo, etc) but I would on just about every other kind of sandwich. A common slang term for a sandwich in Britain is a “butty” for this reason - bacon butty, egg butty, etc.
I don’t personally like mint sauce with lamb, but I don’t think it’s normally sweet. Think my grandma used to make it with fresh mint and vinegar.