Britain has become a nation of ‘culinary freestylers’ who only refer to the recipe twice a month, it has emerged. Rather than playing it safe with traditional British dishes, four in five Brits are experimenting with global cuisine, adding their own twist to international delicacies, a study of 2,000 adults found.
Curry dishes, stir fry and spaghetti Bolognese were all considered the easy playgrounds for cooks looking to express themselves in the kitchen with unusual ingredients and approaches. One in four Brits find Chinese recipes easiest to ‘freestyle’, adding in their own blends of spices, and 14 per cent prefer to experiment with bold Mexican flavours.
Yet Japanese food is considered the most intimidating cuisine by cooks looking for a challenge, followed by Vietnamese and Middle Eastern food, according to the study by Tilda rice. And while more than 40 per cent of Brits have enjoyed Thai food when eating on a night out, only one in five have ever felt brave enough to attempt to freestyle it in their own kitchen.
Tilda open their first Ricetaurant this month in London’s Shoreditch to offer a helping hand and fast track amateur freestyle cooks to aid them with being more experimental with global recipes at home. Anna Beheshti from Tilda said “Rice is the ultimate freestyle ingredient. It is the most widely consumed food in the world and unites almost every cuisine from Thai and Middle Eastern, to Mexican and Japanese. We hope our Ricetaurant will encourage people to embrace all of the world’s delicious cuisines and give them the confidence to try to be even more adventurous freestylers!”
All proceeds from the ‘Ricetaurant’ will go to The Felix Project. Tickets are £5 per group available from Tilda.com and novice cooks are invited to come alone or bring up to two friends for a lunchtime or dinnertime session.
TOP GLOBAL CUISINE BRITS ARE CONFIDENT IN
Chinese
Italian
British
Mexican
American
TOP GLOBAL CUISINE WE AREN’T CONFIDENT TO COOK FOR OURSELVES
Japanese
Caribbean
Thai
Middle Eastern
Vietnamese