The term 'Comfort Food'. What does it mean to you?

niemela23

niemela23

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Hello to all Cooking Bites members!

I figured I would post an open question about 'comfort food', in order to gain some insight in to the general foodie mind, as well as other cultures, seeing that this is such a wide-spread site and forum. :)

My question is, 'What does the term 'Comfort Food' mean to you personally?

Does it refer to:

a): a food or dish that is a sweet-tooth's guilty pleasure? For example, something that is very sweet, rich, and decadent, and not so nice to the teeth or weight part of things, due to all the sugar and high-calorie ingredients included in it's recipe (Devil's food cake, non-fat ice cream with only real cream, some impeccably iced cupcakes, shortbread cookies, etc.)?

b): a food or dish that you know is very unhealthy in general, due to a lot of wonderful (but many a time dangerous) fats, grease and or oil, gravies, (a big dish of nothing but fries and gravy, a double-pounder cheeseburger from McDonalds, chicken-fried steak with biscuits and no vegetables whatsoever, etc.)?

c): a food or dish that takes very little preperation or cooking time required, to make things just that much more simple?

d): take-out food?

e): a 'nostalgic' food or dish that you remember eating when you were younger, or from your childhood in general (mom or dad, aunt or uncle, sister or brother, a guardian's homemade soup with dumplings, or, peanut butter and jam on toast, or, a traditional roast dinner of some sort)?

f): Other (please let me know what and why, even if it's in a small description of sorts, thank you!)

g): All of the above

I look forward to any and all replies. Am very curious, have been wanting to make this post for some days now! :) (I'm just about to finish making a Shephard's pie, one of my comfort food favorites that I've been craving for a few weeks now, and that motivated me to finally write out and post these quuestions! Yum!)

Thank you for reading, and I'd love it if any fellow members or guests would contribute, and/or ask others to do the same!

Happy cooking and eating! :)


-J

(PS: just looked below and remembered I could have posted this in a pre-made poll-template. My apologies to everyone... please just reply as you normally would. Thank you all!)
 
Custard.

It takes me back to my childhood and my Grannie making custard to go over a crumble. I would be allowed to scrape out the pan after the custard had been poured into the serving jug. It was my treat for helping her to make it. It was also something that only happened at my Grannie's where I lived for some of my childhood and also every Wednesday after school (plus every weekday during school holidays) and life was easier. She cooked a meal for us (something my parents never did - we were on our own) and she always made something for me, being vegetarian. I wasn't a hindrance to her, I was a way of expanding her cooking repertoire and she enjoyed finding new recipes for me.

I now make it in a variety of ways - the dairy issues complicate matters a touch. There is a really nice custard powder that I use which I have found in one shop in Canberra, but I have been looking for alternatives and ironically found it in an Indian cookery book! Using rice flour, almond milk and vanilla paste and jaggery (or demerara sugar), I can replicate the taste and texture of custard, as well as using the proper egg method, but I hate the waste of the egg whites in that instance. So I will only make it using the egg yolk recipe if I have a use for the egg whites the next day (usually something savoury because I am not that keen on meringue).

It is easy to make, quick to make, tasty, not that sweet because I can control the sugar levels, and making it with fortified almond milk is full of calcium, something I need to ensure I get a good dose of each day.

In fact I am having some this evening! I will have it just by itself.

PS - great to see you back. What do you think of the new layout and colours? (We have redone some of the forums - you can PM me your response so as not to hijack this thread).
 
Soups & stews!

Those are my specialty. Especially during the winter! It makes you feel so comfy & cozy when you're home and the weather outside is just plain nasty & cold. It tends to warm you up inside & makes you feel good all over!!

Comfort food is pretty much anything, such as a soup, stew, casserole, meat loaf or a desert. it makes you feel good inside and gives you a real pleasure to know that you've accomplished making one or more of those dishes that you like so well!! :wink:
 
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I think for me, comfort food would be anything with chocolate. Chocolate is the real comfort food, it can be a chocolate cake or real dark chocolate.
 
jennifer.lawrence said:
I think for me, comfort food would be anything with chocolate. Chocolate is the real comfort food, it can be a chocolate cake or real dark chocolate.
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Can't stand the stuff! I know its what most people think of as comfort food but I don't get it. Savoury food for me anytime. A curry with as much chilli as I can take (which is a lot!) is my absolute comfort food and anytime food! The chilli affects the hind brain (true) and changes mood.:heat::hyper::D:dance::heat::dance::woot:
 
Shermie said:
Soups & stews!

Those are my specialty. Especially during the winter! It makes you feel so comfy & cozy when you're home and the weather outside is just plain nasty & cold. It tends to warm you up inside & makes you feel good all over!!

Comfort food is pretty much anything, such as a soup, stew, casserole, meat loaf or a desert. it makes you feel good inside and gives you a real pleasure to know that you've accomplished making one or more of those dishes that you like so well!! :wink:
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Beef stew and dumplings definitely. I agree that it makes you feel good inside when the weather outside is dreadful.
 
My husbands beef stew and dumplings

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Wow, these are all great replies. I am definitely a dumpling fan myself! Whether they are those, pillow-shaped drop-dumplings that are placed in to a simmering broth and cooked away happily, afterwards ate right with a big bowl of the stew or soup itself... or a minced prawn, garlic, and leek-filled dumpling, that's been fried just a bit and then braised/steamed to finish, served on a tasty rice or yummy noodles of some sort. Additionally to the many other types there are, and ways to both eat and prepare them!

As well, I agree that a lot of us tend to crave that 'dumpling' or 'soup and stew'-type of comfort food, the hot and nourishing type, right around when the weather starts to turn nasty. I'm guessing that it might have something to do with out bodies needs for those types of foods in our diets rising during this time of year. It seems to make sense to me that it could at least be possible.

Morning Glory: I very much like your answer about curry (I am just starting to learn more about them, I am loving becoming more involved with and learning about spices!), and SatNav', your reply about custard (I've never learned how to make it ,but one day, I intend to. Many friends of mine love the stuff.). :)

I really do enjoy a good shepherd's pie also (a dish layered with a spiced ground beef mixture -that may or may not also contained canned, frozen, or purchased fresh and then cooked assorted vegetables), a corn niblet mixture, a seasoned mashed potato mixture, & then with breadcrumbs & or cheese on grated top - all baked in the one vessel for roughly a half hour, and then broiled quickly to brown it's topping).

Buying me and myself only a big bunch of cooked, deveined, but tail-on pacific white shrimp and a container of seafood sauce and allowing my soul and taste-buds to mingle during a 'shrimp-night', while I relax and do whatever I feel like doing. The perfect beverage for this 'event', of mine, lol: fruit juice, cold. Lots of ice! :) Pineapple is great.

Pirogi are a favorite of mine too, but now I am thinking I just should have mentioned them above. They are really just a (usually) potato (-based)filled dumpling. I know how to make them by hand and they are somewhat time consuming but VERY worth it in the end!

And then, I do still get the occasional comfort-food-cry for something us Canucks call Kraft Dinner. It's an amount of both dehydrated pasta and dehydrated cheese-sauce which are packaged separately. It is an extremely budget friendly product, which is also extremely easy and efficient to make, and it also needs very few ingredients (just the box/product itself, and small amounts of margarine and water... but...if you really had to sacrifice your 'KD', as we call it over here, you can even get away with using water instead of milk and forgetting the margarine all together, resulting in a much more bland otherwise, soupy rather than creamy, end product). However, it is probably made with nuclear waste of some sort (just check out it's color), and I know that it could be MORE than a lot more nutritious than it currently is, while it's price continually goes up. Our kids just, ended up eating it up, literally, some more than others, and now many of us, to this day, still talk of getting the inevitable, periodic craving for that orang-ariffic, plastic-looking mac' & cheese. Lol. Yes, Google 'Kraft Dinner' if you really wish, click the 'Images' button, and prepare to be horrified. :P ;) :D

Ok, I will leave this here for now! Thank you very much to everyone who has contributed so far! :)
 
Curry is delicious, no kidding! Would you happen to have any recipes for a curry(s) that you'd feel good abut sharing with a newbie, Morning'? I am just starting to learn about it, the different types, spices, etc. Would love any feedback or info, tips or tricks.
 
These are recipes with the tag of Curry... https://www.cookingbites.com/tags/curry/ if it starts with the Recipe pre-fix it is a recipe. Also look under Indian and possibly Asian as well... Go to search Forums, then to Search tags and either start typing in what you want or select from the list... In site support there is a help thread on tags.
 
niemela23 said:
Curry is delicious, no kidding! Would you happen to have any recipes for a curry(s) that you'd feel good abut sharing with a newbie, Morning'? I am just starting to learn about it, the different types, spices, etc. Would love any feedback or info, tips or tricks.
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As @SatNavSaysStraightOn mentions there are quite a few curry recipes on the forum. But I'm thinking of writing up a very simple 'beginner's curry' recipe. Give me a day or so and watch this space!
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
These are recipes with the tag of Curry... https://www.cookingbites.com/tags/curry/ if it starts with the Recipe pre-fix it is a recipe. Also look under Indian and possibly Asian as well... Go to search Forums, then to Search tags and either start typing in what you want or select from the list... In site support there is a help thread on tags.
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Thank you very for the great resource, SNSSO! :)
 
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