Friday, February 13, 2009

The Truth about Pub Food Recipes

By KC Kudra

You can get different types of meals from different restaurants - pub food, fine dining food, caf food, and fast food are different types of restaurant environments. Obviously, you will expect a different price and quality from each of these establishments but we are going to be looking at pub food. What is the truth about pub food recipes? Can you get freshly made, healthy pub food menus or is all pub food made from cheap ingredients months beforehand and deep frozen?

Pub food in Britain is fondly known as "pub grub." In the early days of the twentieth century, you could expect a cold snack such as a salad or shellfish vendor stalls outside the pub-selling mussels, whelks, cockles and more.

In the 1950s it was common to get "a pie and a pint," with the steak and ale pies being made by the landlord's wife. In the 1960s and 1970s, you could get chicken or scampi in a basket or, in Ireland, soda bread with Irish stew.

Modern Types of Pub Food

These days in Britain, you can expect meals like bangers and mash, fish and chips, Sunday roast dinner, hot pot and pasties. International recipes such a lasagna and curry feature on many pub menus. In Australia, popular pub dishes include pub-style hamburger, steak, or chicken schnitzel served with mashed potatoes, wedges or chips and a salad.

Since the 1990s pub food has become a more important part of the pub experience and most public houses, serve lunch and dinner at the table instead of bar snacks at the bar. Some pubs serve top quality food, which can rival that of a good restaurant and the pubs at the far end of this scale call themselves "gastro pubs." This word is a combination of the words pub and gastronomy and it was coined in 1991 when The Eagle, a pub in London, opened and started serving fine food.

What are We Really Being Served?

Not many pubs offer the type of food found in The Eagle and most modern pubs use cheap ingredients, easy cooking methods such as microwaving and they have a cook who might or might not have any culinary skills. Rather than fresh pub food, you can expect something that has been made in a factory, packaged in plastic wrap, boxed and deep frozen for a year.

You might love chicken Marsala recipes but those ordered in a modern pub might be far from freshly made. Most of the flavor in the pub's chicken Marsala will probably come from artificial flavorings rather than the ingredients. There is one British pub chain we know of which only has two cooked to order dishes on its menu and everything else is deep frozen until required.

Eating pub food might be fine occasionally but there is no getting away from the fact that homemade food is better for you. Not only does it work out much cheaper but also you know exactly what ingredients are going into your homemade recipes and you will not add all the colorings, preservatives and other chemical additives found in a lot of pub food.

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