Random Thread Of The Week! Tinned Food & Saucepans.

[RSB]

I figured I would do if I can just a pointless random thread of the week so here goes. This one has been bothering me for a while.

Remember the day’s when one would put a tin in a sauce pan of water and bring it to the boil to cook the tin’s content rather than pour the content into the sauce pan and warm it that way? Is it just me who remembers people doing this? Do you still do it? Why did it die out?

? ?

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Dave Rice]

Yes I remember doing that. Easy answer, microwaves.

[Richard]

There were also the tinned pies from which you removed the lid and then baked in an oven.

Apparently not enough potential customers now know how to remove the lid from a tin that does not have a peel off lid and tinned pies do not do very well in a microwave…

Now it is a majority plastic this, that and the other to contain them. Best remove the plastic before the oven stage in many, not all cases.

[blacklion1725]

yeah steak and kidney puddings, spotted dick, treacle pudding and the like. Like boiling an egg I supporse.

[Ed P]

Just one comment from a Food Inspector friend. Always wash a tin lid (or bottle neck) before opening it. As a minimum give it a wipe with an Anti-bacterial wipe.

The reason is that warehouses and stores are rarely rat-proof, and a rats pees all the time if it urinates on the tin lid/bottle neck and that touches the food/drink then you could get in deep doodah with Wiel’s disease.

Drinking out of a bottle/can is a bad habit, as is letting a tin lid drop into the food.

[The Duke]

That’s why I don’t drink out of beer bottles.

[Tippon]

Richard wrote:

There were also the tinned pies from which you removed the lid and then baked in an oven.

They’re still about. I’ve got a few of the Fray Bentos pies in the cupboard. The steak & kidney are the best 🙂

[Bob Williams]

Twice during Army service I had to drive an Eager Beaver from north Germany to Bavaria in the south, for the annual exercise my unit carried out with the Bundeswehr Alpini troops. Eager Beaver:

What happens when you overload it:

I took 2 days to get there, alone, slept in a US Army base on the way. (Erlangen, I think) I used to heat tins of soup in an old mess tin on the engine and exhaust, pies and stuff wrapped in foil. Cheese or ham toasties were great! These are older photos: eventually Elfin Safety caught up and mine had a safety cage. I didn’t turn that one over, btw! Someone else got the job after my first 2 years, thanks be.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[dwynnehugh]

In response to Richard’s comment – Fry Bentos tinned pies – lovely BUT they need a special can opener to open them – even FB suggest that – it costs about £8-10 depending where you buy it. FB say that the can is strengthened so a bog standard tin opener won’t do the job – been there and saw the amount of metal chards in the pastry after struggling to open them.

Until FB sell a canned pie that doesn’t need an expensive opener to open it – they can stay on the shelf. The above advice came from FB after I complained to them – love the pies but the metal grinds my teeth!!!!

 

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Tippon]

I’ve always used a bog standard butterfly tin opener to get into a Fray Bentos pie. Just make sure that the whole section with the blade is over the lip of the tin, not just the front half like with most tins (both black bits in the image).

[Richard]

I have not had an FB pie since the early 1970s to the best of my recall, but I never remember anything very exotic in the opener stakes. OK it was not a great idea idea to use one of the stab and go openers, (anyone remember those?) but one of the ‘modern flash’ wheel drive ones, I think mine cost  70 pence in Woolworth or the like. It was like a utility version of yours Tippon and nowhere near so flash, but used with a modicum of care, i.e. grip the *&^%$£ can first it ‘just worked’. Have they changed the cans I wonder?

(I have just checked, you can still get a ‘stab can opener’ I thought that ‘elf and safe-tea had banned them see an example at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stab-opener-FASHIONED-PUSH-OPENERS/dp/B004AFELB0/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1530512406&sr=8-16&keywords=can+opener,

[dwynnehugh]

Strangely the Fray Bentos saga seems only to have come to the fore in the last few years – we always successfully used a bog standard tin opener then they seemed to stop working – FB actually told me that their tins now have a deeper recess around the top for strength which makes it much harder to use a standard butterfly opener – exactly what we found. Sod buying a £8 opener to open a pie tin costing £1!!

PS – who remembers the wall mounted Beech Nut chewing gum machines that gave you 2 packs every fourth penny (1d – I mean!!)?

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[JayCeeDee]

One crazy situation regarding saucepans came from many years ago when the MiL was alive.

It was her birthday coming up and we were determined to get her something useful as a present as opposed to another brass ornament for her hubby to polish. We saw that she needed some new saucepans so we went to John Lewis and bought a prettily enamelled set of Tower non-stick saucepans. Best part of £150.

We’d also been on holiday and brought her back an onyx smokers set – ashtray, cigarette box and lighter.

Bonus pressie – a snazzy ironing board.

Well – she thought the smokers set was too pretty to use, so it stood on the coffee table in her “posh” front room, that she used for visitors and anybody that went to use the ashtray or lighter got told off!!!

The saucepans were such a pretty pattern that she sellotaped the lids on and hung them from the kitchen ceiling. Not long after she did that, the condensation and heat that is ever present in kitchens de-stickied the sellotape and one of the lids fell down on the old man’s head, so she superglued the lids on!!!

She did however get 10 years out of the ironing board.

I told the wife never again and resorted to buying her knick knacks from then on.

[Richard]

Years ago we bought a new set of saucepans to replace the scabby old ones, the new ones are still safely put away in the cupboard ready for when their day in daylight might arrive. The microwave took a lot of the saucepan work away, except for dirty tasks like hard boiling eggs. They are not tasks for 30 plus year old ‘brand new’ saucepans.

The old pans got new lid knobs 5 years ago, so they should be good for another 43 years give or take.

[Bob Williams]

The first home that the current Mrs. W and myself shared, was an ex-NCB estate home, newly taken over by a new Community Housing Association. Single glazed windows, coal fires, much like the one in which I grew up in, unchanged for decades. The winter of ’90 or ’91 (can’t recall which) was a really bad time: heavy snow cut the village off for days, accompanied by deep frosts. The power  failed for 3 days and we had no way to cook except by a small calor gas ring and the saucepans we had, which were newly bought. The oven that had been in for decades, had been removed by the previous occupant and replaced by a temporarily useless electric oven. I knew that I had made a very good choice of lady, when I came home after overtime from the workshop and Recoveries in the snow, wet through and cold, to find that my SWMBO had knocked up a full beef dinner, complete with veg and dessert,  on the coal fire and the calor ring. Have to say here that my Gert had also been to work, having done a full day as a PA to 3 bosses in a furniture factory.

Unfortunately the saucepans were now ruined, being made to use on a gas or electric oven. Shortly after this, we bought and modernised another NCB house, with GCH and electric cooker, but we also bought a full camping oven, with a large calor gas bottle: just in case! We also bought a set of stainless steel pans and steamer tower from Boots and they are still with us, still in very good condition and used almost daily.

Early struggles we had aplenty, but it just made us stronger.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[RSB]

I have never managed to get a fray bentos pie out of the tin with out burning my self. You can tip it upside down but you end up with half of it still in the tin and even worse burns trying to get the rest out. Hungry and upset I looked into this and apparently you are supposed to eat them out of the tin. Seems simple enough. Lets not forget the other tinned pie, steak & kidney pudding if I remember correctly.

Hot dogs out of a tin. That’s an other battle. I don’t think I have ever managed to keep one of them in it’s bun with additions like onions and tom sauce. Maybe they just do not make the buns like they used to?

Speaking of tin’s again I have not had any tinned fruit for years. I bought a tin of carnation cream the other day. What for I am not sure, I just thought at that time it may come in handy for something but in the mean time it can stop in the cupboard.

Speaking of tins again I also have a fair few rice puddings in the cupboard. Same reason for buying them as above.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Richard]

Carnation’s sickly sweet cousin, Ideal Milk was used a lot in the Middle East for making Chai, it had to have the addition of extra sugar before the brew was considered complete. They might also have made coffee that way in the Suq but I never was much of a coffee drinker so did not test that one out.

[Bob Williams]

Condensed milk was used on exercise in Army camp kitchens to make massive amounts of tea in huge urns. It was usually a colour between khaki and orange, had vast amounts of sugar and tasted absolutely vile, but if it was hot we drank it. Carnation is Evaporated milk, which my FIL used to call “Exasperated milk”.

The only meat pies I eat are either made by by my Gert, or are from the local butcher. His Steak or S&K pies are delicious. I also recall my old mam’s meat and potato pies, which were made with layers of thinly sliced lean beef and thinly sliced, half fried potato, interspersed with veg and mushrooms, with mam’s special thick beef gravy on top. My Romany gran taught her how to make that.

If I hadn’t just had lamb chop with a bucket of salad and buttered Jersey spuds, I would be drooling now.

EDIT: remember Lenny Henry’s condensed milk sandwiches?

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Author]

Posts