Could You Survive on British World War Two Rations?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 เม.ย. 2024
- In January 1940, the British government introduced food rationing. The scheme was designed to ensure fair shares for all at a time of national shortage. The Ministry of Food was responsible for overseeing rationing. Every man, woman and child was given a ration book with coupons. These were required before rationed goods could be purchased.
Basic foodstuffs such as sugar, meat, fats, bacon and cheese were directly rationed by an allowance of coupons. Housewives had to register with particular retailers. A number of other items, such as tinned goods, dried fruit, cereals and biscuits, were rationed using a points system. The number of points allocated changed according to availability and consumer demand. Priority allowances of milk and eggs were given to those most in need, including children and expectant mothers.
The British government promoted vegetable patches as a way of reducing reliance on food imports while also improving the nation’s overall health. Since ‘war demands better physique and health than peace’, officials were convinced of the need to effect fundamental changes in the nation’s eating habits.
In this video, Dan Snow experiences some of the food options for those on the home front in Britain during the Second World War.
First on the menu is some good ol' spam - essentially a brand of salty processed canned pork. He then tries some bread and powdered eggs, a less than impressive substitute for normal eggs, which were considered a luxury if you didn't have hens at home.
Next, Dan tastes another, quite frankly, grim substitute - dripping. This was a flavourful fat that is rendered from cooked beef and was used as a spread on bread.
After trying some disgusting pig's trotters, Dan finishes off his ration tasting with a "fake" apricot flan (actually made with carrots sweetened with jam).
Do you think you could have got by eating these rations? Let us know in the comments.
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The way he ate the spam without frying it first brought me pain to watch.
What a mad lad!!!!
I was going to say the same thing
Even a cold sausage is disgusting.
My mom was a depression baby and so went thru wwii rationing also. I grew up eating a lot of cold spam pasta salads in the summers. Spam fresh outta the can. 😂 These salads are still a favorite of mine.
Yep, always cook it first... if you can
This video is what it looks like when all your servants have a day off and you have to fend for yourself and not knowing what a kitchen is and how it works.
😂😅
no, this is just how british people eat food
@@railroading5726I’ve never eaten a pig trotter in my life, so I can’t vouch for that.
@@pugsterjosh7925 im talking about how they eat.
@@railroading5726 and how is that?
I remember my grandmother told me how she struggled to make the meager rations during ww2 in Denmark more palatable. She told me that fortunately she had the two most important spices available. When I asked what those spices were she said "Salt and hunger.. makes everything taste great."
Salt is still the 'Danish spice'.
My Dutch grandma always used an excessive amount of salt on her foods. I wonder if it was a habit she picked up during the war years
Both your Omas are awesome!
Salt is literally the best taste when u are hungry. Thats why i like to snack on a few garlic stuffed olives while i drink my beer. After that, im pretty sure i could win any eating contest.
Exactly! I was a picky eater when I was a kid, but when I was at Boy Scout camp and doing hard physical stuff every day, hiking 20 miles, that sort of thing, I ate anything put in front of me.
Don't think Dan has ever been properly hungry/starving. Something we found on expeditions & eating mainly dehydrated food for extended periods is that you really start to crave fat & oily foods. believe me, that dripping would look like heaven after a while. Perhaps a more palatable way for him to try it would have been to melt it in a pan & make a good old British "fried slice". Just a slice of bread shallow fried in the fat. While its hot its good stuff.
I'm bloody certain he hasnt considering he's basically aristocracy. If WW3 happened tomorrow he'd be packing up and retreating to one of his wife's brother's country estates. Im certain his brother in law, Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster could slip them into Abbeystead House.
The rest of us would be begging the Chinese to give us a good recipe for the same trotters hes making fun of here.
We went tramping and lived off dehydrated food for three days, on the last day
I took out a can of corned beef I smuggled in my rucksack
We ate that like it was a lamb roast 😂
He says you’d have to be desperate…yes! These were desperate times! However, there were people (often mothers) who spent a good deal of time making these foods palatable, tolerable, and sometimes…even good!
They say that Britain was never healthier than during the war. Also, I have the suspicion that Dan might have enjoyed the food more had he heated it up.
Lord Woolton is rightly recognised by historians as a genius who not only kept Britain fed during the war, but somehow managed to IMPROVE our diets.
Total over-achiever. What a lad. 😂
I suspect we would all be healthier and weigh less if this was all we had to eat
Agreed
And yes, the disgust Dan was showing seemed performative.
I believe the Woolton diet was so important to the war effort and heavily pressed on the population because in WWI the people were underfed and were weak.
They didn't want that to happen again. Especially when the threat of the war coming to them was possible/probable.
This feels more like a hit piece on ration food rather than an actual taste of how people ate back then.
The people eating this also survived the depression. I'm sure the cooks got around to improving the taste. If nothing else, they had all those spices lying around unused.
It's the british, what can you expect?
Yep. This is a "let's find the most uninspiring, unseasoned, unappetising way of eating these raw ingredients just for performative disgust and views."
Pigs trotters were eaten by the average person of the generation. It wasn't just because of the war, that generation and those before did not eat as much meat as we do now, nor the better cuts that we do.
Now in first world countries we have so much fresh foods year around that the ugly looking ones are thrown out. It's hard to even find things like liver or other organ meats which were still commonly sold in the 70's.
It's really show more how relatively well we live now in comparison.
Ask anyone who grew up in the 70's/80's up North whose gran cooked with the rationing mentality. They could make banquets out of nothing.
You know there's a process called "cooking" that tends to improve food's flavour that's been around for thousands of years, Mr. Dan the Historian?
These are soldiers' rations. They can't always cook.
Could You Survive on food from 2000?
**Squirts mustard directly into mouth, eats a raw chip, takes a spoonful of cold chopped tomatoes** - Dan - ''Disgusting!''
Isn't that just regular british cuisine?
Of course it is disgusting when you're using the ingredients in this fashion! A lot of these foods are fantastic. You just need to prepare them better!
Yes I thought that, the way he crudely cut the bread and slapped the dried egg on it and then eat it. Then eating the span straight out of the can with a look of distain already on his face. He looked like he was already prepared to dislike it, but I believe the average family at the time would have made something delightful out of the same ingredients. They had too !
On the note of that, instead of boiled pig's trotters, which is truly disgusting when you eat like that, why not try some offal? (Gun Jesus Ian on Forgotten Weapon tried the rationing menu, and his dish looks way better.)
Pig’s trotters require long, slow cooking, typically as the meat in a casserole. If done correctly they are genuinely very nice and I’ve enjoyed them on several occasions. Pig’s Trotter Stew is a staple of French Canadian cuisine.
Preparation is key! Of course a lot of this stuff tasted nasty the way he tried it. 🙄 My Mom, a really good cook for most things, tried to feed me boiled Brussels Sprouts 🤢 Much later in life, I tried them again oven roasted and caramelized with onions with a vinaigrette or with bacon makes them delicious.😋
@@stevecagle2317 They still taste like Brussels Spouts, though.
American here but raised by Brits and loved Spam as a kid, but never saw my Gran(and she was a young woman in the war) just open the Spam and serve it, always fried it and it was delicious, I still have fond memories of Spam, Dan is just eating it wrong!
My brother and father were both super big fans of spam and any other canned meat they could find. They both liked it fried too. Personally I am not a fan but, have eaten it without complaint. There are a lot of worse things that people have eaten and still eat. When I think about people complaining about eating spam or other canned meats , I wonder how many hot dogs they have eaten at the ball game or picnic.
Yes! Spam fritters can be great. But even raw spam, sliced thin and in sandwiches are great
Spam should be sliced and fried.
I'll eat spam either out of the tin or fried. It's quite nice with a good dash of salt and black pepper. If it wasn't nearly 11 at night and I wasn't watching this in bed I would have been tempted to open a tin and make a sandwich.
Fried spam is delicious
This video only shows that the British had no idea how to properly cook food
no no, the RICH ones don't know.
Growing up in the early 70s in Australia, a lot of these foods were common in our house because my mum grew up eating this sort of stuff during the war (she grew up south of Perth in Western Australia) and could make a meal of what people would normally throw away these days. I still remember the taste of chips cooked in lamb dripping, spam jaffles, dripping on toast (especially the nasty black jelly from underneath the crust) with some Worcestershire sauce and pepper and home made pies and pasties made from mystery meats. Lots of homegrown vegetables and fruits and milk direct from the cow or goat, too. I kind of miss those days. Now everything is processed, homogenised, pasteurised and buggarised until there is no food value and as soon as we have a small interruption to normal life (like a pandemic for example) everyone freaks out and you can't get any toilet paper.
And the black jelly i under the drippings were my favorite!! A bit like marmite but not as yeasty
I can so relate to this, my childhood was in ireland, and we grew our veg, had chickens and pigs. Thanks to being the eldest of 7, and my mother's kitchen help, I am proud to say that I rarely ever eat out, cause I get better bank for my buck eating at home. Plus I cook better than most restaurants. Ahhhhh what a glorious childhood in a kitchen, cutting lettuces and collecting strawberries, strawberries, potatoes, eggs, making jams.... You dont miss it, till it's gone.
Too right!@@rmbc1971
My dad loved his bread and dripping too and would tell me (as a child ) that I didn't know what I was missing. Growing up there was a dripping bowl in the fridge - no olive oil in our house 😂
People went crazy didn't they? Then the pendulum swung the other way when they rediscovered home cooking/baking . I agree , non processed foods are so much better.
Wombats make a good replacement for toilet paper.
As a kosher eater i have never had spam but even i know you're supposed to cook it first
We make pasta salads with it it’s so good
You can eat it straight out of the can since it's fully cooked, but it's definitely better fried.
You don't have too. Soldiers can't always cook.
Bread and dripping is not what hes eating, Dan is eating bread and lard, any northerner will tell you that real beef dripping on bread is delicious
We are loads I'm 86 no clogged arteries
My grandfather served in the Pacific. His parents having a small farm in eastern Kentucky saved up ration stamps and sent a whole case of spam. It had been a less then delightful gift as he'd been eating it for two months.
😆
My mum loved dripping on bread, and although I was sceptical before trying it myself, it’s actually really nice with a sprinkle of salt on the top. That stuff Dan Snow was eating looked more like lard, hence the disgusting taste( I wouldn’t eat lard like that either!). Proper bread and dripping incorporates the fat and meat juices from the bottom of the roasting tin, scraped up when cold and spread on a slice of bread ( making sure to include the brown meat juices as well). Great taste, but probably not good for your cholesterol levels I’m afraid!
When I was a little kid Mum would make a boatload of toast every morning at breakfast time, big chunky doorstep wedges of bread.
Rather than waste the slices that didn't get eaten for breakfast she would slather it with something and give it to us with a big old mug of tea as an after school belly filler until dinner time.
Monday afternoons it would always be cold toast and dripping.
Pig trotters are delicious when cooked and spiced correctly. Our elders made do during lean times and I admire them for it.
I am Norwegian, I used to eat pig trotters when I grew up. I was born several years after the war. You can still buy it here, but I haven't eaten it for many years. Haven't thought about it really. But maybe I'll try it again soon! It is by no means so bad as Dan Snow says!
try to make jelly out of it with some carrot and other vegetables you have available. thats a winner trust me
If you think things were bad back then, wait until you see what the future has in store.
Imagine spices being hard to acquire because the enemy is blockading your supply routes… no proper seasoning on your pig‘s trotters.
@@OttoStrawanzinger I would be more focused on surviving the war than worrying about my food not being tasty 😉
Why did you eat everything cold?!! Spam is sliced and fried, my mother (who lived through WWII as a teenager) said whole meal bread was often home baked and stretched with dried ground peas or beans (and sliced VERY thin!), dripping is a classic Northern treat (and makes roast potatoes marvelous), dried eggs… well, you got me there, dried eggs aren’t great, but they’re better if they’re hot, carrot pie had the carrots grated finely, not sliced (like carrot cake), and pig’s trotters should be roasted, the fat saved, the meat carved off the bone, and the bones cracked and used to make marrow broth. Honestly, I wouldn’t have eaten anything presented cold like that. My mother also says they made “spinach” from cooked young nettles. She was amazed when she went to the US on assignment just after the war, and saw restaurants throw out half-eaten steaks!
Nope, we always had it sliced cold in sandwiches.
There's more than one way to cook pigs trotters.
My old mum in law used to use young nettles in a risotto…. Yummy!
In Hawaii, you can get fried Spam on a sticky rice slice, wrapped in nori. It’s in deli counter with other hot items. It’s pretty good and portable, eaten out of hand.
@@nicolad8822 with ketchup!
We used to have a special container in the fridge. It had a removable strainer on top. All the fat from cooking meat was poured into it. This is the dripping they probably had on bread. It had the flavours from the cooked meat. Pure rendered dripping doesn’t have that extra flavor.
Yes, the fat from cooking meat is really good to use in cooking. Back in Uni, some friends and I would club money together and get stuff for a proper roast dinner most weeks, often the one who's flat we met up in would cook bacon for his breakfast so we could use the bacon fat for roast potatoes.
Elvis loved the stuff
I have collected British magazines and Ministry of Food brochures from 1939-1945. Many of the recipes in these were for using home-grown potatoes, carrots and cabbages plus rationed flour or breadcrumbs and tiny amounts of rationed butter and meat. Many people raised rabbits or kept a few hens for eggs. Some neighbors pooled their scraps to feed a piglet (the "pig club" was registered with the government) which they were later allowed to slaughter and share the meat among the club members but NEVER allowed to sell. Others picked berries from hedgerows in late summer and went to canning centers, obtained a ration of sugar specifically given to make jams and jellies and used only government approved recipes to make small jars of berry jams and jellies. Jams and jellies were very important when there was not enough butter to spread on toast and when breakfast was often just oatmeal porridge and toasted slices of bread plus a cup of unsweetened tea. A can of Spam from a friendly GI was a treasure to be thinly sliced or diced and used in a variety of creative ways along with breadcrumbs or grated potatoes or oatmeal to make mock cutlets or mock roasts or other illusions of large portions of real meat or poultry.
This is the real story. My grandparents in inner city Birmingham had a pig and rabbits in their tiny back yard. People also had allotments
As an American, who has eaten lots of gravy with our biscuits, I have to say the Brit who prepared that bread and drippings gave me the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten. I like British people just not their idea of food.
Toast and dripping was one of my WWII-era teenaged father's dream foods. He got his wish for some more in his final year because, at 93, why the hell not. "This is repulsive," he said, "I'd rather have mayonnaise (a substance he wouldn't allow in the house because it caused him great spiritual pain even to see in the fridge)." What a difference 80 years makes.
I was a bit surprised that he didn't mention the national loaf.
Modern meats so are so gross compared to fresh unprocessed ones
@@hillppari a joint of meat hasn't changed much
Proper dripping toast has the meat juices as well as the fat, and needs salt and pepper, and then it IS delicious.
@@maggiesmith856what he had there was lard. dripping had brown tasty bits in
Winston Churchill asking to see an example of typical rations, and being shown a life-size wooden mock-up of the rations. He said with satisfaction: ‘All in all, a fine meal. A fine meal’. When told those rations had to last for a week, not for a single meal, as he had thought, Churchill thundered out: ‘Then the British people are starving. Something must be done.’
Funnily enough the health of the british people increased quite a bit thanks to rationing as they ate less bread, fats and meat and far more vegetables.
@@Nerathul1I think the point is Old Winnie and his Tory Cronies were so out of touch and protected from any privations caused by the war that they were probably ingesting a week's worth of calories at every meal.
As much as I like the sound of this, it does sound overly romanticised
That is an urban mouth it never happened.
Myth
bread and dripping was something we still had when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s. Mum and Dad loved it. Safe to say it's not very healthy, BUT it's a way to have no waste. We never threw out food (and I don't either). When you have a roast sunday dinner you save ALL the juices and you have either made gravy or kept the 'drippings' in a bowl and use it as gravy stock or base stock for pies you may make.
Yes, dripping always had some of the mucky black in it - delicious, especially on toast.
My mam used to get dripping from butchers and it had delicious jelly on top. Gorgeous on bread with salt Oh happy days.
Agree totally
Pig's trotters are still eaten in Sweden, they are traditional Christmas food, I used to love it when I was little (the jelly around them was the best!). They were my grandmother's favourite food, it really was a treat for her when she was able to get one, and all the way to the end, her family made sure that she could have her trotter every once in a while.
German here, we eat them too and it‘s always a big discussion around it because my mums ancestors were from west Germany where you eat them boiled in sauerkraut but my dad is from Bavaria and we eat them grilled. But either way they are seen as a delicacy.
China too. They’re usually boiled in spices until soft. Very delicious. One of my favorites as a kid.
I survived rationing, dripping on toast is still a favourite.
I love bread and dripping with a dash of pepper and I'm fifty-five, thanks Mum! I remember her telling me that British children were the healthiest children in the world for quite a number of years, as a result of rationing. It makes sense really when you see kids today!
@@robanderson473 Overweight children were rare when I was at school in the 50s and 60s.
@@arisnotheles Wow get away! Ha they probably charged an arm and a leg for it too, ha! I remember lamb shanks being $2.50 (AUD) now they're so blummin dear. Typical of hoity toity joints, pricing up working class grub. Mind you I usually have the lamb shanks at a pub when my pals are playing a gig there and it's worth it, as they're so delicious and the meat falls off the bone just by looking at it! Again, it's still just bloody lamb shanks for crying out loud! Bread and dripping though.... just so good!
In Mexico they cook the trotters until soft then grind up with meat and spices making it very tasty.
Fry that SPAM.
Specially prepared American Meats.
This is basically what it would have been like to eat WWII ration food if you had no idea how to cook or prepare anything.
i've eaten (and liked) pig's trotters since i was a kid, the problem with the ones in the video is that they were clearly not cleaned and seasoned properly. they're a great source of vitamin E, dietary fat, collagen (good for your hair and skin)!
Absolutely agree with you. Clean those trotters. Also, pull off the skin after it's been braised for hours. Pull off the meat and use it in noodle or rice dishes or meat pies and put in those turnips, carrots, rutabaga
.
I suspect that "muck from the farmyard" was a prop placed there by the producers.
Your supposed to fry the spam then its quite good
Yeah, Spam is technically edible straight out of the tin, but that's by far the worst way to eat it.
I brought a tin of spam three days ago. Brilliant fried (with or without batter) and served with baked beans. Real comfort food. Dripping is brilliant in sandwiches. Very tasty. Pigs trotters are totally suitable to eat (roasted) and popular. Yet again you appear spoilt and a fussy eater wanting heavily processed supermarket food. The WW2 diet was very healthy indeed.
That’s starvation food. It’s eaten out of necessity and isn’t healthy. And spam is about as processed as you can get, lol what are you talking about
@@Tsumami__ There were issues, certain vitamins and nutrients were hard to get on rationing, but compared to processed food with waaaay too much salt, sugar and fat as well as various other dodgy ingredients it's healthier by a significant margin.
There’s a series of great videos by Ian (Gun Jesus) on WW2 British civilian cuisine, where he tries out some of the recipes and foods, using what they would’ve had at the time. He def describes it better but he calls it monotonous.
Cheers for that. I want Gun Jesus and Tank Grandad to do a video together. The internet would probably break but it would be worth it😊
I'm only slightly older than Dan, and I have very fond memories from my childhood of visiting my grandmother in Yorkshire and being delighted when she gave us bread and dripping, a treat that we never got at home. To this day, I take every opportunity to retain the dripping from roast beef and try to make it as palatable as I remember, but I can never achieve the beautiful creamy product that my grandmother provided. Maybe you had to be there, but I adore bread and dripping.
Not to defend spam but...... i wouldnt call it disgusting. Plenty of people still eat spam. Its very popular in the pacific islands. You just gotta find a way to eat it. Ive only had it a handfull of times but usually fried and with some rice its not bad. Or with some eggs.
Im kinda noticing that a lot with these types of videos..... Maybe look up some rationing recipes. Even during the depression when they didnt have much they still found creative ways to make decent meals with things you wouldnt think of using
I'm seeing a pattern with these foods now. First Dan mistreats spam, then he mistreats powdered egg.
To make the best use of powdered egg you reconstitute it with a bit of butter (or any fat) and hot water or milk, thinning it to the normal consistency of beaten egg. You then take your slice of bread, use a tea cup to cut a hole in the middle, and start to fry the bread with the rest of your marge or dripping. Tip the egg into the hole so it cooks too, then once solid flip the bread to fry the other side (the egg will have soaked into the bread somewhat). Remove the slice to a plate and use the remaining circle of bread to mop up the remaining fats, frying it in the process.
Some salt and pepper and that sounds amazing
Dripping sounds delicious!
You would not waste butter on that with rationing.
During the war they did not use butter to reconstitute powdered eggs, butter was on ration and you would not waste it on that.
@@ek8710no pepper in wartime Britain I'm afraid
Unfortunately this didn't feel like it even tried to provide legitimate insight into rationing
Oh that’s made me chuckle, can tell as a posh lad he’s never had to eat food like that. I’m only a couple of years older than Dan, but for me growing up in the 70’s in the Black Country that was still normal food. Pigs trotters best put into a stew to get the goodness out, they doh taste nice how he ate it lol. I still use dripping now and my kids love the taste when I baste roasties and chips in it, having it on toast is nice and my favourite treat at Xmas is leftovers on a blinker load but spread with dripping. As a kid our meal was ribs roasted in the oven, then the whole pan put in the middle of the table so could mop up the hot fat with pieces of bread.
Just goes to show it’s how you’re raised, we thought we ate well back then
It is all how you cook it.(by the way, drippings are best eaten hot).
My parents were kids during the war and they got a taste for offal, so variations of dishes featuring kidneys, liver or tripe were often served up to us - despite rationing ending long before we were born! Also, porridge with salt was often a breakfast staple and there were other meals like Spam fritters or pork luncheon meat with chips. To be honest, none of it was inedible but, equally, none of my childhood 'wartime' meals are something I would choose to cook today.
IIRC offal wasn’t rationed in WW2, hence its popularity. Porridge with salt is the traditional Scottish way…
This is a slap in the face to people who have had to fend off hunger, not just enemies.
Dan......you are a very brave man. I will never complain about my wife's cooking again.
I tasted toast and dripping with my future father-in-law for tea one night. The dripping had dripped from the Sunday roast and had been carefully saved by my future mother-in-law, complete with the bits of beef that fell off the joint while it cooked. It was delicious! I suppose I must have experienced Spam as a youngster in the 1950s and 60s but was overloaded with it as a serviceman from the mid 70s and I still love it sliced thinly and fried (like bacon) or dipped in batter and fried ( fritter) or raw, from the tin for breakfast - a staple in "compo' (field rations). I've never had powdered egg or trotters and yours must have been raw if there was still mud on them. I am assuming you had a privileged upbringing if you turn your nose up at foods that country folk ate then, and eat still. You won't endear yourself to the working class, particularly Northerners by your food reviews.
My fav part of watching this video is seeing food aid/rationed goods the British had resemble what South Koreans had access to during and after the Korean War - and seeing how ultimately it’s about the food culture and not the rationed ingredients that decide if something is appealing.
Army stew. I've never had it but it looks at the very least interesting!
I watch the Korean Englishman, quite a few of the popular street favourites in South Korea have spam in.
🎯 Spam is revered in Hawaii. I'm in Alaska and know several Hawaiians who love them some Spam.
@@keithjones9546 It's a delicacy in Tonga too, so I'm told.
@@robanderson473 Yep. Lots of Tongans here in Alaska, too. Polynesians do like Spam. And lots of people in the US South liked it when I was growing up there many years ago -- fried crispy in an iron skillet.
My grandma told me about rationing in the United States during world war II. She worked as a tool supplier at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. She told me about all those blackouts in the city of Norfolk, Virginia at the time. She told me this was because of the U-Boats lurking off the coast. The government also authorized the air raid alarms to be used for drills so the public could prepare for anything. As for food, Beef, pork, and eggs were not available to civilians. You were required to have rationing cards as well. Heck, even gasoline was rationed. You needed a gas card for that. Some people got around it she said. She went on a date with a guy once who ran his car on kerosene. The engine was making all sorts of terrible noises going the restaurant they ate at and coming back to the workers dorm where she lived. She also told me she prayed the whole time going there and coming back. Sadly, she died at the age of 100.
The production team were having this guy on 😂
My Mom (born 1930) has vivid memories of rationing. It was a matter of eating what was available or go hungry. Fortunately her Dad was a butcher so managed to get a little extra meat every now and then. One dish my Mom has particular memories of was vegetables boiled in stock with cubed corned beef added at the end. Not particularly appetising but nutritious.
I admire all the (I imagine) mothers during the rationing years who managed to ensure that their families were well nourished in spite of all the difficulties. And I think those families, even the children, would have been aware of how limited supplies were and were just grateful for a decent and filling meal.
And parents now moan if they can't get their favourite brands.@@catgladwell5684
But wouldn’t they have done something else to the pig trotter to somewhat disguise what you’re eating? Not just plop it on a plate cold and plain. 😂 Also that Spam would most definitely have been cooked my friend.
I'm pretty sure they would boil them, getting all the marrow and fat out of the meat, like in a pork roast. Probably wasn't bad with potatoes and carrots.
You can stuff them with black pudding, or they were turned into a stew.
We had "victory gardens" in the US too. There's a community garden in Minneapolis with a sign saying it started in 1942. People in that neighborhood have kept it going ever since. I don't think they're expecting food shortages, but I guess they're set just in case. That "national loaf" sounds like it would actually be good, though I suppose not if you lived in a time when white bread was a bit of a luxury and suddenly you can't have it.
I love spam, but I've never tried to eat it cold. Slice it and stick it under the grill to caramelise the edges and heat the core, or do the same in a frying pan with a little oil or fat, though, and it's delicious. Fry a few halved tomatoes and stick them on top of the spam and a slice of fried bread, or put the hot and slightly crunchy grilled spam between two thick slices of buttered bread with a dab of HP sauce. Now you know what my preferred Saturday morning breakfast treat looks like.
Try it cold, I eat it in sandwiches as an alternative to ham or corned beef.
Fry that spam. Juice it with different configurations to get different taste combinations
Not sure who decided on the preparation and/or presentation of these foods - but Dan, you definitely didn't get the best experience. I've had several of your examples and they were delicious.
I think rationing was the point when British food finally bit the dust. My grandparents, who grew up on rationing, still insist on everything being boiled and bland. I cook anything else for them and I'll get a comment like "too foreign" or "I'd be happy with bread and jam".
Dan Snow eating is the reason I subbed to this channel.
Exactly! But you shouldn't talk with yer mouth full.
Now make him try those horrid British Boer War - WWI pemmican on one side, coffee on the other cylinder rations 😂
My mother survived 2 World Wars. She lived to tell the tale. Died at home, aged 107yrs in 2014. I was born February 1940. Had quite large suburban garden. Had veg. Chicks from city market, therefore didnt qualify for dried egg. Hens don't lay all the time. Dried egg made good omelettes. Had roast chicken (a luxury then) for xmas dinner. They were fed on mash made from potato peelings. Liverpool
Oh you are a mucky kid
Mucky as a dust bin lid
When he' sees the things that yer did
Yerl gerra belt from ya dad
We had storys of my grandma about what foods the americans brought with them and what cooking was done. She served in the women axillary in Edinburgh. Had her 100 birthday in February this year. Sadly on end of life care now 😢
Bless her, she's had a good innings. My sincere condolences to you and your family.
I’m so sorry she is reaching the end; but what a interesting and lovely life she must have had!
things like Spam or pork trotters are delicous when cooked or rather seasoned right!
Pickled pigs feet are still popular in some areas of the US! 😅
My mother loved pickled pigs feet, but she was born in 1919, in the U.S. to Portuguese immigrants. I was born in January of 1942, and luckily we lived next door to the owners of a small grocery store(my father was in the merchant Marines in the Pacific). They took a shine to me, and I probably got more candy than most kids during the war. Also, although meat was rationed, we had meat more often than not. Later, mom told me, sometimes it was darker than usual(she thought it was horse, but she never asked. I was to young to notice, and don't remember how it tasted). As to the video, I like Spam, but it's much better fried.
My wife makes trotters occasionally, and I love it. But she doesn't just boil them or whatever Dan's cook did. You're supposed to chop them up and slow cook them in with something else. We usually have them in red beans. Kind of like pork-n-beans, but tastier.
WARM dripping on bread, not cold. Chips fried in dripping are bloody awesome.
I've heard that rationing made the average Brit significantly healthier. At least the poor stopped dying of scurvy. And you should have mentioned carrot cake, which was invented before but popularized by the war and was (and is) pretty good.. Turnips and carrots can be grown in window boxes even if you don't have room for a garden plot.
My dad was a child in the war. He loved pig's trotters and continued to eat them after.
Grandma was still cooking from her 1940 issue ration book in the early 2000s
“They’d have to be desperate to eat this” THEY WERE BLOODY DESPERATE.. and that kind of comment coming from someone of this era shows how bloody SPOILT we are …😡🇬🇧
This is great! Enjoy this kind of content
Pig trotters are lovely. Braise them in some red wine (you said it was not rationed) some of the best recipes have come from the need to make best with what you have. "Curry" being a great example in the world.
I have never heard anyone singing the praises of pig's trotters before.
You expect mid-century british to know how to cook? XD
I remember hearing that my great grandmother used to work in a factory that made powdered eggs that were shipped to the UK. I know they aren't the greatest but I like to think he was helping keep people feed to a degree.
Love theses mini vids
Was your Dad talking about pork dripping, where the jelly that sits at the bottom is the best bit. The white fat on top of pork dripping goes well with the jelly, but beef dripping best left for frying chips!
Really like Spam and dripping sandwiches were a treat when I was kid (plenty of pepper). I am only 54 so this post dates rationing.
Yes, my mother remembers the family of 3 getting only one egg per week !
Her mother used it to make a small cake.
Usually, most meats were too expensive to buy. Most people had backyard vegetable gardens, and kept hens.
If you had the money, though, you could get more of anything on the black market.
I did as everyone did it was a case of having to make do with what you had. Ration books were a pain in the arse but it had to be done, we adjusted to the way of life during the war and we survived.
I remember at halls or residence at university the catering staff once prepared braised pigs totters. They consisted of hoof horn, bone, sinew, fat and skin, but no identifiable meat. After a cursory anatomical analysis they were all returned to the bin untouched.
Yup that's roughly what is in pig's trotters. The skin and cartilage etc. are actually delicious - I guess they must be an acquired taste!
Frankly we should all be eating more veggies. Also, I feel like salt, pepper, drippings, on toast can't be all that bad.
'All' is a bit of broad statement.
I'm thinking that spam (fried) with powdered eggs (heated) served over bread (toasted) and drizzled with drippings (melted) might be pretty good. Did someone ration your cookware, Dan?
Health in Britain improved substantially as a result of the rationing program. (and the effects of that extended well into the future with healthier children) Largely because the poorest in society were finally able to access a "decent" diet.... due to price controls and guarantees OF rationed items. Noone said it was "enjoyable" but scientists and dieticians employed by the Ministry of Food ensured it was HEALTHY. Frederick Marquis...Lord Woolton... Minister of Food until 1941, the man who took the (very good) existing pre war plans and made them WORK so well, deserves enormous credit for that achievement. I can't recommend the book "Eggs or Anarchy" highly enough to anyone interested in the rationing program. Great read.
We smoked trotters are great in beans and fried spam is good. I still have my Grandmother's ration book , she was 14.
Very cool.
How many men burned and drowned delivering that food😢😢😢 The British and allies were so brave.
Lest we forget eh🇬🇧🙏😢
Bread n dripping was one of my granny's favourites. I thought it was vile.
Brown bread with a generous smearing of dripping, and a cup of tea. She loved it.
The dripping I recall had jelly and crunchy bits. It was quite the delicacy.
The dripping you recall is homemade from bacon, pork or even steak or roast. It has all the seasoning from the meat and the flavor. It’s not terrible at all.
The last thing i would worry about was the taste as long as i got enough protein from the food
I lived off WW2 civilian rations for a couple of months, as an experiment.
I actually ate quite well.
People who lived through rationing did say that they were never hungry, but the food was so boring.
I had the advantage of having spices to add some flavour. Also there were shortages, which I didn't have to suffer.
Just wait until the fatlogic types find this video, and start shrieking that they would starve to death without their 10 lb of daily KFC.
Hey @gonzo_the_great1675 me too! I actually did it for a whole month using recipes from Feeding the Nation by Marguerite Patten, who worked for the Ministry of Food. Of course it was easy because I didn't *have* to do it for nigh on 7 years, and my rations were always there. It was fun and made me realise just how much we take for granted. :)
@@kerryrowles5217 Related material, look up 'Wartime farm' which was a BBC series. Also 'wartime kitchen and garden' with Ruth Mott. Think that was 90's series. Mostly on YT if the BBC have not taken them down.
Thanks to this handsome historian for this chapter of the series. And people dare to complain nowadays!
Home grown produce picked fresh was/is better than supermarket produce, which has been grown for transport rather than flavours, bought in bulk, frozen, defrosted and then lies around waiting to be sold, So, there was that one positive, with more people eating home grown, fresher, and generally less processed produce. A lot of children aren't growing up with that nutrition today.
I remember as a young child in the 60’s opening my grandmother’s fridge and there was a big cow tongue waiting to be cooked for dinner. They were still eating so-called “variety meats”.
I read a story about a US Army mess sergeant who asked his mother to mail him crushed eggshells. He would mix some into the dried eggs which were reconstituted into some sort of scrambled egg concoction and hoped that having bits of eggshells mixed into the eggs would help the soldiers think that the eggs were real.
That's pretty eggstreme....
I'll get my coat.
When I lived in Yorkshire about 20 years ago, bread and dripping was put out as a bar snack every Sunday lunchtime in the pub. Very tasty it was, too. Pinch of salt, and Bob's your uncle...
Spam is best fried as is, or in batter.
I seem to remember liver appearing often on my 1960s childhood menu. Suet puddings, too. Spotted dick, bread pudding, bread and butter pudding. Still favourites in my house.
You generally fry span or eat cold with something strong tasting like onion. Trotter are best boiled then put under a high grill until crisp, often served with mushy peas.
My grandfather talks about the Wartime Diet very affectionately. Its unpleasant to us, as we’re used to processed and multi ethnic world foods. But back then every meal was a treat, and the diet was fairly healthy
Some Toff who has never been skint going on about Rationing 😂
The national bread looks pretty good
Bread wasn't rationed until 1946, go figure?!
It’s a trendy modern wholemeal loaf.
I assumed they made the bread to the old recipe. Even though bread wasnt rationed its production was standardised into a protein, fibre and vitamin enriched recipe that also incoporated potato flour to stretch out wheat supplies. I have seen examples of it before.
I still eat Spam. I was raised on it. The entire list of food you show were all prepared in different ways. I can still remember my Grandmother cooking "Skillet Toast" by browning slices of bread in beef drippings, bacon fat or butter. Spam was sliced and fried in a skillet and served with eggs. They were farmers, so they always had some kind of fresh food to get by on. The Pigs Feet, as we called them were cleaned and scrubbed and cooked extensively. It was clean and usually served in gravy or some form of stew.
My family pulled up some lino tiles in a back room of my great grandparents house recently and they found newspapers used as insulation underneath. These newspapers where The Mercury, a Tasmanian paper, from 1943 and most where readable. In one Letter to the Editor a reader states that "with all the rationing happening, why don't we go back to whaling? There is plenty of meat swimming around in the sea and we have people who used to be whalers in their youth so it should be easy enough," Myself as a modern person was taken aback by that statement but with reflection I could see the merits of it. The whaling industry never restarted, thankfully. I didn't realise you could get tinned whale meat in Britian during the same time this question was being raised. Thank you to Dan for suffering for our education once again!
Another reason the British touted the eye benefits of carrots was to create a plausible excuse as to why they were shooting down so many planes at night without revealing it was cause of radar
I am increasingly impressed by you sir, with every bite of these historical foods. I always learn something too.. food for thought 😂✌️💗
read the comments
@@kevinroche3334 I have, lots of defender’s of spam.
Dan coming across a bit of a ponce here!
Spam is delicious and dripping is like liquid gold when you're actually hungry.
Interesting to see the comparison between this and when Ian from Forgotten Weapons did the same thing for a week. In Ian's case he fresh cooked each meal and tried it hot and while he found the meals bland and dull they were actually decent. The final verdict was that one could do well on it and with a bit of meat thrown in it would actually be very good.
I always found it interesting that rationing actually made the country healthier by allowing the poor to eat better then they every could in peacetime.
My grandfather and father used to tell me, "When you're hungry, you'll eat onion skins and eggshells".
Dan would probably be an interesting dinner guest.
Possibly, as long as he didn't mind being called a twat if he acted like one, like he is now.
We're not cut from the same kind of cloth as the Greatest Generation who won WW2... we're all a bunch of sissies. That said Dan, Old Boy, don't eat the Spam straight from the can like a savage, fry it up! Take that fine, nutritious bread and toast it. Put fried Spam on it and top it with powdered eggs. Yum. P.S. Tabasco sauce helps, or HP... whatever. God save the King!
McDonald's fries were cooked in beef fat when I was young. They were FABULOUS back then. ~1990's McD's started using vegetable oil. Beef fat has a much higher smoke point than vegetable oil, and the fries cooked in it were practically sizzling when you first got your order.
I'm in my 80s and I never had a problem with what I was given to eat during the war. Fortunately I never had Spam until the 50s/60s and then it was as a Spam fritter. Much depended on the capabilities of the person who was cooking. My grandmother was an excellent cook.