Skip Navigation

What's something you can't buy ready made, but have to make at home?

For example, Marmite Crumpets don't exist. You cannot buy them at the supermarket. To be clear: you can buy crumpets, you can buy marmite, you can buy butter; but you have to assemble them at home.

If you walk into a breakfast cafe, they will happily serve you sausage / egg / bacon / french toast / bubble / squeak (whatever that is). But no marmite crumpets. If you ask them to make it, they will give you a very strange look. It's not typically offered. It's something you just have to make at home.

It is unbuyable. Any tourist who comes to the UK to try a Marmite crumpet would need to bring a toaster or an oven with them, or quickly befriend a brit and hope that they have all the ingredients at home.

It's not a secret. You just can't have it.

munches into crumpet thoughtfully, and salivates at the juicy savory delight, whilst staring at you pityingly and condescendingly

Anyway, what's something that I could never experience unless I made it myself in your local?

93 comments
  • Ha! We can get marmite and vegemite here in the states. And they're both fucking delicious when used right.

    But, you can't get applebutter anything in the wild around here. Might be possible elsewhere, but I haven't run across it.

    Not sure what is and isn't a thing elsewhere, but applebutter isa strongly spiced apple product used as a spread. It's sweet rather than savory. It typically features cloves, cinnamon and allspice as the main spices, in varying proportions. It is also fucking amazing.

    But you won't find it in restaurants at all.

    There is a great southern tradition of applebutter biscuits. Biscuits here, again in case it isn't known, are a fluffy, light, scone-like quickbread. And it's similar to your scenario. Places could offer that as a menu option and bring it to you. They could possibly make a deal for individual packets of it like exist for jelly, and bring that with biscuits. But nobody does.

    It's one of those things that if you came over here, you can't find it in restaurants. Even worse, while you can buy commercially made applebutter (there's a few brands out there) they are all inferior to even mid tier homemade applebutter. So you can't even buy the experience the way people can at home. You can't just go out and buy Whitehouse applebutter and get the right texture and taste on your biscuits (or toast, or crumpets).

    The commercially made options are all too thin for one thing. They don't spread like applebutter is supposed to. It's supposed to have a thick consistency, closer to something like a jam or preserve. The commercial stuff is also over-homogeneous and too finely textured. Homemade is going to have small chunks of softened apple as opposed to a blended texture.

    The spice mix in store bought also tends to be both blander and too , I dunno, even? Homemade, you get layers of the spices. Store bought, you get one layer, there's no depth to it. Part of that is it being made in huge batches, and part is the longer time from jar to your mouth; so I can't say it's anything the makers have cheaped out on or anything. But it is not as good as what you make yourself (or someone's grammy makes).

    Also, marmite and applebutter on toast is absurd in how good it is. The savory and salty bang of marmite with a spoonful of sweet, spicy applebutter on top will make you want to slap yo mama. I find marmite and vegemite don't do well on biscuits compared to toast, english muffins, or the like. Too much bread for it to really pop unless you do an entire spoonful, at which point it's too much.

  • Marmite crumpets shouldn't exist!

    What other cosmic horrors are you creating in your kitchen‽

    • we have a chicken stew that we make with barley and oats that sometimes has entire pieces of cartillage in it, if that helps

    • The British were so focused on whether they could, they didn't stop to think about whether they should.

    • Marmite crumpets shouldn’t exist!

      You're right. Not without cheese.

  • Buckwheat kasha, you won't find it even in a Slavic restaurant. It is a simple dish of cooked buckwheat and milk, with sugar added if one desires. Such a simple breakfast dish is sold nowhere to my knowledge.

    • It sounds like chinese congee, but with wheat instead of rice

    • I've never had buckwheat that wouldn't have funky smell/aftertaste. It just weird all the time. Probably trying wrong brand or IDK. I'm slavic so my ancestors ate shitton of buckwheat, though it was almost non existent in my childhood. And now it's weird ingredient I'm scared of :-D

  • Maybe most of the food is based in the ideals of what we want it to be, but the reality is the ingredients and the people who cook of your region.

93 comments