Weird foods of the United Kingdom 🍗

Welcome back to engVid. So, getting to know a country is not just about speaking the language.

We... We want to understand the food, because people are always going to be passionate about

food, so it's good to be able to talk about it. I know we're not in France, I know we're

not Italy, but there is some fine food to be found around the United Kingdom. So I'm

going to be showing you, via my slightly distorted map here, some of the highlights that you

can expect to find.

Okay, I think we'll start right up here in the top. Scotland, known for such things as

the deep-fat-fried Mars bars. Okay? They also have "haggis". Haggis is sheep's stomach.

Mmm, tasty. They also have black pudding, which in... Sort of another strange bodily

part of an animal which is used in a sort of cooked breakfast. "Kedgeree" is perhaps

slightly healthier and tastier, this is... It's kind of like a... It's not a fish pie,

but it's... It's kind of like fishy, ricey type thing. It's really quite yummy. You have

it in a bowl. Yum-yum. "Dundee cake", so this is like a fruitcake, raisins, it kind of looks

brown. It's okay. "Pease pudding", this is in Northumberland. This is made with sort

of mushed up peas with meaty flavours, mushy peas with a decent flavour up there in Northumberland

where you have Hadrian's Wall and some stunning coastline. I've marked out Bradford here on

my map in Yorkshire. It's not typical British food, but as a melting pot of Asian cultures,

that's probably where you'll find the best curry in Britain.

Here in Derbyshire... Derbyshire, of course, on the map from my eccentric Britain video

in which we learnt that toe wrestling originated here, also is the birthplace of the "Bakewell

tart". I personally find it quite inedible, that means I can't eat it, not able to eat,

Bakewell tart, but it's a pudding with strong almond flavours. The "pork pie", obviously

made from a pig, so Muslim friends probably not going to be the best for you, but it's,

you know, pork with a sort of hard, crusty pastry. Quite satisfying snack. You can get

it... Often order it in pubs.

We're here in Norfolk. This part of England is called East Anglia, "Anglia" after the

Angles and Saxons who came from Denmark, Norway, those people over there. They came here and

they landed in this part of country because it was nearest, so this is now East Anglia.

This is where most of the Turkeys in the UK come from.

I've also pinpointed this little town, here, seaside town called Aldeburgh, that was also

in my video: "Difficult Places to Pronounce in the UK", "Aldeburgh" because it's spelt

funny. Let me just write it down one more time because it's a lovely place to visit.

Aldeburgh, great fish n' chips, have them on a beach, and a seagull comes and steals

them all, but very tasty. This is Suffolk here. I won't tell you a joke about Suffolk

and Norfolk, but you might be able to work it out, looking carefully at the sounds of

the words and the spellings. This is where sausages and bacon are, you know, there's

a lot of pig farms there. Very tasty.

Down here on the south coast... The south coast generally you're going to find pretty

good seafood. I haven't quite finished this one off. "Jellied eels", mm-mm-mm. Personally,

I've never eaten this in my life, but if you want to, you know, really get the authentic

British experience, then jellied eels is for you. Dover, the stunning, iconic... That's

a good word for you to have. "Iconic" means something that... An icon is like an image

that you remember, so the iconic Dover cliffs are maybe a very famous site of the UK. Here

in Dover, the "Dover sole", "sole" is a type of fish, it's a very flat fish, very good

with a little bit of lemon. I've put London here. Yes, I know there are some other fabulous

cities in the United Kingdom; Britain... Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds,

to name just a few, but I've put London here because I know it better than the other cities,

other than next, down here. London has some fabulous restaurants where you'll find world-class

cuisine, as you will in lots of other places in the United Kingdom. Now, the thing about

British food, if you just go to your local supermarket, if you just go in someplace and

go: "All right, so that's British food", you're not going to get a true understanding of the

food. You need to go somewhere where they take a little bit of pride in their cooking,

and then you're more likely to get a positive experience from it. I've heard of people staying

with host families in language schools, and often they don't experience very good food.

You've got to be quite adventurous. You've got to go out and go: "Ah, that looks a nice

caf�, I bet they do some good food." Okay? Get out there, go explore. Okay, south coast,

as I was saying, we have lots of fish, so "kippur" is lovely fish to have. Traditionally

you'd have it at breakfast. Okay.

Cheddar, this is actually a town, a small town in Somerset where they make excellent

cider as well. Lots of homegrown beer around the country is made. Here, because there's

lots of apples, they make cider. Cheddar, this is the home of cheddar cheese. The cheddar

is matured in these caves to give it a very mature taste. That's traditional cheddar cheese.

This is where I'm from, Devon. Actually Cornwall tries to steal a lot of our good ideas, so

Cornwall goes: "Yeah, yeah, we invented the pasties." They didn't. First made here. So

a pasty is like a meat pie in a kind of strange sort of oval shape, and someone's gone like

that around the edges. You find it in sort of railway stations around the UK. Actually

originates here in Devon where we also came up with "clotted cream", which is this really

thick cream and it's lovely to have with a cream tea with a scone, so a warmed up sort

of... It looks like kind of a funny bread-type shape, really quite sweet and tasty. You put

it in half, put a bit of clotted cream on, a bit of jam on top, and you have a cup of

tea. Mmm. Wonderful thing to have. So we often have, like, a cream tea if there was, like,

a game of cricket going on. Very traditional.

Cornwall, I have to give them some credit, they're quite good at ice creams and Rick

Stein has put "seafood" firmly on the map in the town of Padstow down here, very good

restaurants there.

Okay, Wales, doesn't look great here, Wales, probably have to give them a bit... A bit

more sort of geographical space, but there we are. You'll see that my area of the country

has become bigger because I focus more on it. Wales, famous for "cockles", as in the

song about Molly Malone in Dublin in Dublin's fair city where the girls are so pretty. I

hear it's about a fishmonger who sells cockles and muscles, types of shellfish.

Okay, in the middle here we have some "oat cakes". Oat cakes are sort of brown biscuits

which are good for having cheese on. We also have... Yup, there we are, "Red Leicester",

that's a red type of cheese, probably more orangey than red, but we'll call it red anyway.

"Steak" and "kidney pie", so yeah, it's beef steak and a pot of kidney. If you think about

it too much it doesn't sound very nice, but don't think about it and plow in, and it's

quite a satisfying, hearty meal. A "Lancashire hot pot", so this is a traditional working-class

dish, bung it all in, warm it up. I don't know specifically how the Lancashire hot pot

is made, but I'm sure it's very delicious. "Scouse", scouse like... Sorry, apologies

if you're from Liverpool, couldn't help it. So, a scouse is like a nickname for someone

from Liverpool. A "scouse lamb stew" is a traditional Liverpudlian lamb stew.

Over here in Northern Ireland, famous for making "soda bread" which is a healthy brown

variety of bread. I don't know much about the other types of foods from the Republic

of Ireland. If you know, why not...? Let's have a really interesting thread of ideas

of other foods from the United Kingdom. Tell us: What comes from the Republic of Ireland?

Other than my friend, Kevin.

Up here, some other things in Scotland, "porridge", what an excellent way to start the day than

a bit of oatmeal and water warmed up. Okay? You're going to be hardcore and healthy, you

don't put milk in it, you don't put sugar in it, you just have your pure porridge. It's

what my son eats, he's doing pretty well. He's a healthy chap. "Short bread" as well,

this is a... Traditionally comes round and you slice it up, it's a biscuit, it's a delicious,

creamy biscuit.

There we are, the UK's food as taught by Benjamin. Hope you enjoyed that. Do let me know of other

good food experiences you have had in the United Kingdom, and I'll see you in the next video.