Drinks and Condiments - Mini Reviews
To welcome my new sponsors, and also to fill in some gaps in my reviews here, I've decided to embark on a series of mini-reviews. This series of mini-reviews will be on the topic of drinks and condiments, to fill in a few of the quitessential British foods that I never got to before. Why drinks and condiments together in one list? Well, they're both kinda liquidy?
Drinks
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I think that when they named Horlicks, they were looking at trying to find a more ridiculous food name than Spotted Dick. They may have succeeded. Horlicks is pronounced exactly how it looks. Whore Licks. Name aside, it's actually pretty good stuff. It's kind of a hot malted milk beverage. It's advertised primarily as a drink for bedtime, and it does fit that purpose, since it is centered around hot milk, but doesn't have caffeine like hot chocolate does. It's hard to explain to an American because the only malt beverage most will have had is ice cream malts. And it's not going to be appetizing if I tell you to imagine a steaming hot vanilla malt. But it is tasty. And how could you resist the name?
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The British are absolutely obsessive about tea. If you go into a British home, you will be offered tea. When I'm depressed or upset, the only thing my husband knows to do is offer me a cup of tea. Any place where Americans would offer kindness, affection, or a hug, the British will offer tea.
PG Tips is one of the most common and favored brands of tea in the UK. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that it is advertised with an adorable and hilarious knitted monkey (see picture). The other reason is that it's pretty good tea, with a uniquely designed teabag. The bags are pyramid shaped so that the tea can move around within the bag for better brewing. I did a blind testing of British teas with some of my cousins a while ago, and I think PG Tips finished in second place. But I think the adorable monkey should push it into first.
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Purple drinks in America are all grape flavored. Purple drinks in Britain are blackcurrent flavored. Ribena is one of the most common blackcurrent flvored drinks. It is available in regular or light (with less sugar) and you can buy it ready to drink, in bottles or juice boxes, or you can buy bottles of concentrate to mix with water to make a drink. It's sweet and fruity and tart. Blackcurrent is a more complex flavor than grape. Where grape is just straight ahead sweet, blackcurrent has a bit of a sour bite. That's not to say that it isn't really tasty. Just don't expect grape.
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Condiments
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HP Sauce is also known as "brown sauce". It's used on burgers or fries and is unlike anything sold in the US. The base is vinegary, almost like a ketchup, but with a much different flavor. It is usually described as "fruity", and that is apparently due to dates and tamarind, along with tomatoes in the recipe. I'd say that to me it tastes a bit like a sweet and sour spiced ketchup. It's bordering on BBQ sauce, but more sour than sweet.
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I'm going to be revealing powerful family secrets here, but my mom usually has a container of powdered gravy mix in the cupboard. That gravy that everyone loved at Thanksgiving? It was pan drippings with gravy powder. The British version of gravy powder is Bisto. The main difference is that Bisto isn't a powder. It's little granular nubs of gravy flavoring and thickeners that you mix with boiling water to make instant gravy. At first I was skeptical about the little pellets of gravy in Bisto, but now I think they are a brilliant change from powder. The gravy nubs dissolve into the water without clumping and forming lumps as much as a powder does. It's quite easy to make lump-free tasty gravy with Bisto.
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There is no corn syrup in the UK. Corn is not heavily subsidized and forced into every food imaginable as it is in the US. But for candy-making and a lot of other applications it is necessary to have another form of sugar besides regular granulated sugar. So if you're an American in Britain with a recipe calling for corn syrup, Golden Syrup is what you'll buy and use instead.
For vegans, Golden Syrup can be used as a honey substitute, as it has a similar appearance and sweetness. It is basically a by-product of the sugar making process, containing mostly glucose and fructose, both of which do not crystallize as well as sucrose does. It is used in baking and candy-making. It is also used as a condiment syrup, in many of the places that Americans would use maple syrup. You can even someimes find a maple flavored variety of golden syrup, which is just about the only imitation maple syrup you can get in the UK. (Real maple syrup costs a fortune here, and golden syrup is usually about half the price.)
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