Corned Beef

strange isn't it ...

The background to it (if you don't already know), Corned beef It's actually pretty simple ? corned beef was named after the dry curing process used to preserve the meat. This involves covering beef with 'corns' which are large pieces of salt. This sucks out the moisture and preserves the meat by inhibiting bacteria growth.

Traditional corned beef is a very tasty meat, nothing like the slices/cans of what you get in supermarkets.

Princes is the worst ...

Jim GM4DHJ ... laid this down on his screen :

Princes in my opinion, is the worst tinned food generally. It used to be reputed to be the very best, but now best avoided.

disgusting

Drifting OT, but I haven't seen John West smoked mackerel for a while. Loads of other stuff, but conspicuous by it's absence from any supermarket.

Correct.

Ask for a corned beef sandwich in New York - and you will not get something that even looks as though it came out of a tin.

They do the best sild.

Other brands just don't taste "right".

I made an enquiry with John West some years ago, when I was puzzled by the absence of their sild from supermarket shelves.

It seems that supplies (in sufficient quantities) of some things mean that they can only produce batches from time to time. That applied to their sild, and may apply to mackerel.

young herring...disgusting

I blame brexit

That's not how you spell "delicious".

Sild... much nicer than sardines.

Interesting, thanks. It has a whiff of truth.

I also contacted them, but just got a "we're sorry" reply.

Sainsburys and Morrisons do a sweetcure smoked mackerel which is not bad. But as a rule I detest being curated into a "choice".

You can get some fancy packaged smoked brisling in olive oil which are nice.

I love fish - don't think there's one I don't like. Once again SWMBO conservative tastes mean it's a challenge experimenting.

Considering Britain is an island, it's quite a surprise how little fish features in everyday diets.

sardines are nice

They are.

And sild are nicer.

A Spanish couple of my acquaintance (Seville) told me that I was the only visiting British friend who ever ate the fish varieties of tapas on our late night bar crawls.

A nearby British retired mutual friend (ex-Oxford Uni) said he thought that a lot of Brits don't like fish because of the smell.

What we get in the supermarkets is, near enough, the quality of corned beef HMG decided to import during the war, mostly for feeding troops. The lower quality corned beef could be produced in greater quantities and that was more important at the time than quality.

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