the food rant thread

[ian]

While they might have some dubious merits warm, a pizza with haggis or doner kebab left to cool overnight looks the following morning like something a donkey has ejaculated over.

[Efrogwr]

While they might have some dubious merits warm, a pizza with haggis or doner kebab left to cool overnight looks the following morning like something a donkey has ejaculated over.

How do you know?

[ian]

I'm pretty sure it's a standard topping offered by Dominos.

[Efrogwr]

I'm pretty sure it's a standard topping offered by Dominos.

OK... Dominos does include a suspicious looking dip with a pizza.

[Jaded]

These last few posts are my favourite just now. 

[Oaky]

There's nothing wrong with pot noodles really, though I confess I've not had one for an age. I did have to be dragged from the selection in the Coop through (£1.25 for a Bombay Bad Boy). I'm sure we survived on them as students, I have fond memories of slurping down 'chicken' curry pot noodles.

You want posh though. I've hit the motherlode. Red Leicester Cheddars. Fucking awesome.

Every now and then our local Tesco has (standard size, not the "King Pot") Pot Noodles down to 50p each.  That's when I stock up.

[Torslanda]

^^^ Weirdo!!! ^^^

[trekker12]

Why is Steak so expensive?*

I mean it's imported from Brazil or wherever at a thousand tonnes at a time, the Supermarket will sell you a half decent one for under a fiver and yet the accepted price in pubs and restaurants is +£20. All the chef has to do is throw it on the grill for a couple of minutes a side whilst he/she does something else, so that's about 20 seconds of labour to turn it once and throw it on a plate with a bit of rocket and a few triple cooked chips (1. par boiled, 2. deep fried 3. reheated).

It must be the highest margin product in any gastric pub in the country.

*Yes I know I can go to Flaming grill for a cheap one but the atmosphere is on a level with Wetherspoons

[T42]

Supermarket steak is very disappointing these days: most of it is from clapped-out dairy cows put under the hammer just before they croak of old age. Once dead, though, it's inadequately aged, which you can fix to some extent by cooking it about a week past its sell-by date, but usually it's still tasteless.

Oh, for a good prime rib. And a set of Teflon-coated coronary arteries.

[Jakob W]

I don't think the markup on steak is significantly higher than on any other restaurant staple, is it? A pizza costs £12-15 and has ingredients worth about £2-3. And steaks do take some finesse - ideally you want them up to temperature before you cook them, they want cooking to the customer's preferred doneness, they'll want resting, so I'm not convinced they're any easier than - say - a coq au vin, which can be prepped well before service and kept warm, or just nuked as necessary.

[rafletcher]

Why is Steak so expensive?*

I mean it's imported from Brazil or wherever at a thousand tonnes at a time, the Supermarket will sell you a half decent one for under a fiver and yet the accepted price in pubs and restaurants is +£20. All the chef has to do is throw it on the grill for a couple of minutes a side whilst he/she does something else, so that's about 20 seconds of labour to turn it once and throw it on a plate with a bit of rocket and a few triple cooked chips (1. par boiled, 2. deep fried 3. reheated).

It must be the highest margin product in any gastric pub in the country.

*Yes I know I can go to Flaming grill for a cheap one but the atmosphere is on a level with Wetherspoons

I reckon chicken breast has a higher margin. But in all that, remember the price is paying for a lot of overheads, and the cost of the ingredients is a small part of that, so all meals will end up costing around the same regardless of whether it's fish, meat or fowl.

ETA: That said I don't buy steak out. Why would I when the local farm shop sells it's own Aberdeen Angus steaks - fillet with both texture and flavour, lovely ribeye and sirloin - that I can cook to our (different) likings at home.

[ian]

I think steak meets the competitive eating paradigm of blokeyness – biggest, bloodiest, spendiest. It's also the safe option on the menu, and people will pay for comfort. It's the menu's safe word.

That said, decent cow is expensive, but it's not often that decent. I don't begrudge the markup in Hawksmoor, but I'm not sure Beefeater meets the same standard. You ask the waiter in Hawksmoor about the cow, you get its name, favourite hobbies, and star sign. Frankly, more than I wanted to know and I felt bad that they killed something with such an evidently full life. I don't, tbh, think we need to import steak. Cows, and I've checked this, are available locally.

I don't think preparing and cooking a steak is especially difficult, it ought to be chef 101. That said, it always makes me laugh (then cringe, because I'm British) when Americans visiting the UK inevitably send their steaks back (they also inevitably always order steaks, never learning from their disappointment) because it's not cooked to their specification.

[SteveC]

Gordon Ramsey once said on Kitchen Nightmares that if a restaurant’s food bill was more than 10% of turnover it would go bust.

[spesh]

Why is Steak so expensive?*

I mean it's imported from Brazil or wherever at a thousand tonnes at a time, the Supermarket will sell you a half decent one for under a fiver and yet the accepted price in pubs and restaurants is +£20. All the chef has to do is throw it on the grill for a couple of minutes a side whilst he/she does something else, so that's about 20 seconds of labour to turn it once and throw it on a plate with a bit of rocket and a few triple cooked chips (1. par boiled, 2. deep fried 3. reheated).

It must be the highest margin product in any gastric pub in the country.

*Yes I know I can go to Flaming grill for a cheap one but the atmosphere is on a level with Wetherspoons

You might want to try frequenting a decent gastro pub instead, then you wouldn't have so much bile to spew about this.

<grabs coat, hails taxi>

[Pingu]

I don't think I've got the stomach for this.

[trekker12]

 

My father calls them gastric pubs. He's an old bloke with old views about pubs - most of which I agree with but the world changes and not selling over priced meat does not keep pubs open. I'll never call them anything else but gastric pubs though.

[Kim]

In Birmingham, such pubs can be found near the Gastric Basin.

[Ham]

Vaguely food related, I'm looking around in case I need to get a new hob.  DO ANY OF THE PEOPLE THAT DESIGN THESE THINGS EVER COOK ON THEM ?? ?? ?

Some things I've noticed, looking primarily at 5 burner hobs but holds true across the piece. WHY would you place the most powerful burners at the back? BECOZ ELF AN' SAFETY? those big burners are what you inevitably cook on, almost whatever you are doing, the small burners are what you use with stuff you aren't working on. so with big burners at the back, you will always be reaching over the pans at the front. And controls? At the front, what a GOOD idea, so now your front burners have half width supports on the side facing you, so when you shake your pan on that big back light you knock the simmering carrots all over the place. And while I'm on the subject, who the holy fuck thought that having a perfectly flat hob was a good idea, so hot stuff spills allover the place? Someone who never spills anything cooking? OK, right, that's someone who never cooks. Oh, and while we're on the subject of cooking, what's with these half arsed burners? Here's a hint, designers, just calling a burner "Fast" or "Superfast" does fuck all for a pot of water that can't read. My current hob has 3.3, 2.9, 2.5, 1.75 and 1Kw, how hard can it be to find something remotely similar? (answer, in case you hadn't guessed, much harder than you would have thought. "Wok Burner" is convenient marketing speak for anything from 2.5Kw plate warmer to a 5Kw flame thrower, I just hope those who came up with the nomenclature BURN IN HELL.  On Superfast.

I've seem pretty much just two exceptions to this, both in excess of £1,500, for a gas hob.

Hurumph. If it comes to it, I'm going to try to keep my hob going I think.

[hellymedic]

My gas hob has two big burners at the back and a big one in front on the left. The front right is small. I've no idea what this cost as it came with the house, which I bought in 1999.

[Kim]

Shirley it can't be beyond the wit of man to design these things so the end user can swap the burners around to achieve their desired conflagration configuration...

[Ham]

Consider for a moment that the fundamental difference is the circumference of the burner and you will quickly see the answer to that is, no. Rotating the hob 180 might be possible even if any writing would rotate and the gas feed would be at the front - oh, hang on, the controls are on the front.

Ah, hang on, "design things" is what you said. Yeah, well, see my first post.

And Helly, the dynamics of a 4 burner is slightly different, a five burner gives you more options to work, at least as you note you have one big burner (likely the biggest) at the front.

[T42]

MrsT made herself a quiche yesterday, putting in marinated salmon instead of lardons. The bloody thing stinks like an unwashed urinal.

[citoyen]

My father calls them gastric pubs.

So does Count Arthur Strong.

And George Orwell probably would too if he had lived to see the phenomenon.

[Jaded]

We’ve got a wok burner. It’s great for burning things in the wok.

[Cudzoziemiec]

We've got a 4-burner hob with a large and small burner at the front and two mediums at the back. The mediums get used most and sometimes it does get a bit hot if you have to lean over the large burner, so I can see the sense in putting the biggest at the back. But it's also quite convenient having it at the front. Perhaps in a long line would give the best of both worlds?