I’m Dutch/British, and I can honestly say the Dutch don’t (historically) like tasty food. Maybe it’s the Calvinism, maybe were culturally broken. Maybe both.
Typical Dutch food is Stamppot. Which is boiled potatoes (poorly) crushed with 1 or 2 boiled vegetables in it. There are a dozen versions of it and people will argue which beacon of sadness is better.
Another typical Dutch food: pea soup so thick you can eat it with a fork. It has peas, bacon, potato and sadness. Recently people added stuff to make it tasty, but historically it’s just peas and potato.
As a little break from food talk, here’s a famous Dutch painter making a famous Dutch painting: People eating potatoes . Literally just potatoes.
A typical classic Dutch desert is Hangop, which is yoghurt you hang (hence the name) in a cheesecloth to let the water soak out to make it more dense. That’s it. Plain yoghurt. Maybe add some honey for this amazing Dutch “treat”.
Now, we have amazing cheeses today, but historically Dutch cheese was pretty shit. Most of the land isn’t suited for cattle, so the milk had very little flavour. The Dutch invented adding herbs and spices into cheese. While french cheese might have a vague hint of cumin due to the ripening process in an ancient cave system, the Dutch would just chuck cumin into cheese.
We hate food, and it’s a genetic problem we still haven’t managed to break.
I once spent three weeks in Amsterdam, mainly for weed tourism. Breakfast and lunch was just an utter wasteland; I just stayed in my apartment all day eating ice cream bars and ham salad. Dinner was salvaged by the Indonesian restaurants.
Yeah, I call bullshit or a case of not appreciating your own culture.
Dutch were the damn spice traders of the world. This can be still seen in many dishes, even damn cookies like hagel.
You have had proper meats, so all meat products were in your cuisine - rook and metworsts. Pancakes with bacon and shit. Tiger bread with spreads.
You eat the damn abomination of a spice liquorice like its good, and you’re per capita biggest liquorice consumers.
Regarding sweet desserts, you have had a shitton of different pies and buttercakes, as well as this weird cake sandwitch called tampons or smthing like that.
Stamppot is food for the poorest workers. Like literally Dutch version of, idk, mcdonalds or smiliar. Of course its going to be filling but not fancy. If you eat it daily then damn, I’m sorry for you, grab some pears and red wine and make stoofperen.
I’m just going to point out that the English were also spice traders and made good use of the spices themselves until they had to sell all their spices to prop up their collapsing empire.
Not only I don’t want them, I’m happy to designate Neatherlands (Holland specifically) to be world’s stockpile of the liquorice. Just keep it containted there :)
I had a Dutch roommate once who routinely ate sprinkles on toast for breakfast — she called it traditional.
Half my family is from the Caribbean and I’ll admit we eat some odd things (all manner of salted fruit for example), but I have a hard time computing sprinkle toast as a complete meal
I do love (quality) sprinkles on straight-up white bread, but I will usually toast the bread first and put on a thin layer of peanut butter instead of butter.
Dollar-store generic sprinkles are AWFUL. De Ruijter or bust.
Thank you! Nobody I’ve pointed this out to seems to understand what an abomination cold butter on raw bread, with sprinkles is, I thought I was the crazy one.
The first time I ever heard of this was in the game Dinkum. That was when I discovered Australians apparently say “hundreds and thousands” to refer to what we call sprinkles. I appreciate most of our little differences but that one puzzles me.
It’s not for me…I’d faster do it with melted butter and toast if I were going to. But then again, I eat hot pepper soaked pineapple rings, so maybe I don’t deserve to judge anyone…
The only major colonial empire which did not, in any way, import food from the colonies?
I’m from Denmark, we traditionally ate porridge and potatoes and pork, and of course rye bread so dense you can club someone to death with it if you want to.
See, I know almost nothing about the Dutch cuisine. I heard you deep fry almost everything, and I like stroopwafels a lot.
In 10th grade I spent 2 weeks in the Netherlands on a school trip, but I remember absolutely nothing about the food which is actually sort of odd.
If I had to guess, I’d assume you eat classic farmers food, carb heavy with some sort of meat and dairy. But maybe that’s just because I assume everyone north of the Rhine to eat that.
The fact that there is a snack that you warm on a cup of coffee but don’t dip in it (so as not to change the texture of either) is one of the most Dutch things I’ve ever heard of lol.
I’m partial to biscotti myself but I’ll admit a good stroopwafel is nice.
Bitterballen, poffertjes, awesome cheeses of all sorts, rookworst, stroopwafels, (…) pannekoek.
We’re great at snacks, that’s absolutely true.
But we share speculaas with Belgium and Germany, and spekkoek is Indonesian. Advocaat is… Probably an acquired taste, I’ve never seen anyone under 60 drink it
It’s not super difficult to make. Basically eggnog.
My stepmother make advocaat with (shudder) vanilla pudding mix and gin. It’s an abomination, but it’ll get you plastered pretty fast and it has the right consistency. I can’t honestly say I hate it, but I was happier not knowing how she made it.
I hate it when people overvalue food. I have chronic gastric issues and I’m just so fed up with people trying to feed me or tell me how I’ve not eaten enough.
I remember once hearing a Dutch person say something like “British food might be shit but at least they have something, there are no notable Dutch dishes”.
I do not know whether to be disgusted or sad. Probably both. I cannot comprehend a meal that does not contain a proper blend of spices and various interesting textures.
I’m Dutch/British, and I can honestly say the Dutch don’t (historically) like tasty food. Maybe it’s the Calvinism, maybe were culturally broken. Maybe both.
Behold the Dutch breakfast
Now behold the Dutch lunch
No, that’s not a joke or a mistake. That’s real.
Typical Dutch food is Stamppot. Which is boiled potatoes (poorly) crushed with 1 or 2 boiled vegetables in it. There are a dozen versions of it and people will argue which beacon of sadness is better.
Another typical Dutch food: pea soup so thick you can eat it with a fork. It has peas, bacon, potato and sadness. Recently people added stuff to make it tasty, but historically it’s just peas and potato.
As a little break from food talk, here’s a famous Dutch painter making a famous Dutch painting: People eating potatoes . Literally just potatoes.
A typical classic Dutch desert is Hangop, which is yoghurt you hang (hence the name) in a cheesecloth to let the water soak out to make it more dense. That’s it. Plain yoghurt. Maybe add some honey for this amazing Dutch “treat”.
Now, we have amazing cheeses today, but historically Dutch cheese was pretty shit. Most of the land isn’t suited for cattle, so the milk had very little flavour. The Dutch invented adding herbs and spices into cheese. While french cheese might have a vague hint of cumin due to the ripening process in an ancient cave system, the Dutch would just chuck cumin into cheese.
We hate food, and it’s a genetic problem we still haven’t managed to break.
I once spent three weeks in Amsterdam, mainly for weed tourism. Breakfast and lunch was just an utter wasteland; I just stayed in my apartment all day eating ice cream bars and ham salad. Dinner was salvaged by the Indonesian restaurants.
Direct embeds of breakfast and lunch above
Yeah, I call bullshit or a case of not appreciating your own culture.
Dutch were the damn spice traders of the world. This can be still seen in many dishes, even damn cookies like hagel.
You have had proper meats, so all meat products were in your cuisine - rook and metworsts. Pancakes with bacon and shit. Tiger bread with spreads.
You eat the damn abomination of a spice liquorice like its good, and you’re per capita biggest liquorice consumers.
Regarding sweet desserts, you have had a shitton of different pies and buttercakes, as well as this weird cake sandwitch called tampons or smthing like that.
Stamppot is food for the poorest workers. Like literally Dutch version of, idk, mcdonalds or smiliar. Of course its going to be filling but not fancy. If you eat it daily then damn, I’m sorry for you, grab some pears and red wine and make stoofperen.
I’m just going to point out that the English were also spice traders and made good use of the spices themselves until they had to sell all their spices to prop up their collapsing empire.
You can take my dropjes out of my cold, dead fingers. :D
Not only I don’t want them, I’m happy to designate Neatherlands (Holland specifically) to be world’s stockpile of the liquorice. Just keep it containted there :)
I had a Dutch roommate once who routinely ate sprinkles on toast for breakfast — she called it traditional.
Half my family is from the Caribbean and I’ll admit we eat some odd things (all manner of salted fruit for example), but I have a hard time computing sprinkle toast as a complete meal
It is! Hagelslag on bread is very much a Dutch traditional food.
Bread, apply butter, pour chocolate sprinkles on. Eat.
So many people don’t appreciate how good high-quality butter is!
Oh, Dutch people use unsalted, and often the cheapest butter on their bread. And the majority use margerine
Doesn’t change how great high-quality butter is. :)
I do love (quality) sprinkles on straight-up white bread, but I will usually toast the bread first and put on a thin layer of peanut butter instead of butter.
Dollar-store generic sprinkles are AWFUL. De Ruijter or bust.
Thank you! Nobody I’ve pointed this out to seems to understand what an abomination cold butter on raw bread, with sprinkles is, I thought I was the crazy one.
I know I’m weird, but thickly slathered cold butter on bread can be amazing.
It’s a treasured tradition in Australia and New Zealand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_bread
This is why you people were expelled to the furthest possible distance.
The first time I ever heard of this was in the game Dinkum. That was when I discovered Australians apparently say “hundreds and thousands” to refer to what we call sprinkles. I appreciate most of our little differences but that one puzzles me.
It’s not for me…I’d faster do it with melted butter and toast if I were going to. But then again, I eat hot pepper soaked pineapple rings, so maybe I don’t deserve to judge anyone…
The only major colonial empire which did not, in any way, import food from the colonies?
I’m from Denmark, we traditionally ate porridge and potatoes and pork, and of course rye bread so dense you can club someone to death with it if you want to.
The best Dutch food owes a lot to the occupation of Indonesia.
See, I know almost nothing about the Dutch cuisine. I heard you deep fry almost everything, and I like stroopwafels a lot.
In 10th grade I spent 2 weeks in the Netherlands on a school trip, but I remember absolutely nothing about the food which is actually sort of odd.
If I had to guess, I’d assume you eat classic farmers food, carb heavy with some sort of meat and dairy. But maybe that’s just because I assume everyone north of the Rhine to eat that.
Oh no, we imported lots of food. And we kept it nearly separate, never to mix it with our own.
We imported Indonesian food, mixed it with Cantonese food and called it “Chinese food”, or the “Chinese Indian Speciality Restaurant” https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinees-Indisch_restaurant
You take those stamppot hating words back or we’re gonna have a problem vriend
Tap for spoiler
But yeah our breakfast and lunches are dog shit
On the other hand… Bitterballen, poffertjes, awesome cheeses of all sorts, rookworst, stroopwafels, spekkoek, speculaas, advocaat…
And stampot is awesome, shut your piehole. :)
Oh yeah. Pannekoek
The fact that there is a snack that you warm on a cup of coffee but don’t dip in it (so as not to change the texture of either) is one of the most Dutch things I’ve ever heard of lol.
I’m partial to biscotti myself but I’ll admit a good stroopwafel is nice.
Yeah, Dutch snackbars have all kinds of foods that I haven’t even seen in Belgium, like mexicanos and kapsalons.
Also, hagelslag en chocoladevlokken, and the best peanut butter in the world.
Also, Dutch bread is actually good, so you don’t need to put a lot of stuff on it to make it tasty.
We’re great at snacks, that’s absolutely true.
But we share speculaas with Belgium and Germany, and spekkoek is Indonesian. Advocaat is… Probably an acquired taste, I’ve never seen anyone under 60 drink it
Funny story, we were in the Netherlands around the holidays last year and COULD NOT find advocaat. :( It definitely seems to be an old-person drink.
Comes of being a second-generation Canadian. I grew up with advocaat but I guess it’s a snapshot of ye olde times.
I’d be drinking Advocaat all the time if it wasn’t so expensive.
It’s not super difficult to make. Basically eggnog.
My stepmother make advocaat with (shudder) vanilla pudding mix and gin. It’s an abomination, but it’ll get you plastered pretty fast and it has the right consistency. I can’t honestly say I hate it, but I was happier not knowing how she made it.
Bitterballen is up there as one of the best drinking foods I’ve had.
Oh that’s the best food culture I could imagine.
I hate it when people overvalue food. I have chronic gastric issues and I’m just so fed up with people trying to feed me or tell me how I’ve not eaten enough.
The only person to appreciate Dutch food is this self professed broken person here.
You know it’s bad when a Brit thinks your food is bad.
I remember once hearing a Dutch person say something like “British food might be shit but at least they have something, there are no notable Dutch dishes”.
Man I loooove split pea soup. You can use it as mortar but every spoonful is a warm hug in a way other soups can’t match
I do not know whether to be disgusted or sad. Probably both. I cannot comprehend a meal that does not contain a proper blend of spices and various interesting textures.
Relevant: https://youtube.com/shorts/co9ue2CQjEA
As a Finn I feel sorry with a side of unexpected kinship over this post.