EEL JELLY: How do British people eat this!?

Today Barry from Sorted Food takes us for one of the most traditional British Meals: Pie & Mash with a side of Jellied Eels!

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Kyle Ann
TIFFANY JACOBS
Johnathon Randle
Li Winslow
Bettie Meier
Claim2Game (a.k.a isaiah gollan 20)
James Wilson
63angel
Florian Adamek
Raileigh GJ
tralalaladee
Vicky Bham
Jamedalamus
David Whitener
Reilly Willoughby
12rose3
Julian Leung
Yun Lim
Laykan Dowdy
heather owen
CitrusQuill
Gloria Kwon
lira12tan
Andi526

Hi, I’m Josh. I’m Ollie. I’m Barry from Sorted Food. And today we are trying Britain’s first original pie and mash. Manze’s. The first. It’s the oldest pie and mash shop in the UK. Started in the 1800s. You guys have been doing this quite a while now,

And I’m amazed you’ve not checked this place out. I know. We needed you to bring us here. Well, that’s what I’m here for. I am craving some pie and mash. OK. So this place better be good. As we walked in, a policeman, on the way out

Told us this is the best food in the world. Which is a big claim. I’ve been watching you. Barry, what are we ordering? I presume it’s quite simple. There’s plenty of options. You can either have one pie, one mash, one pie, two mash, two pies, two mash, or two pies, one mash.

Or you can have three pies. Four pies. No. But that’s not on the menu. You can just keep going. Well, what kind of order do you think I am, just looking at me? One pie. Well, it all depends how hungry you are. One pie, one mash. Yeah. I think that checks out.

She saw straight through me. Child appetite. When we were waiting outside I heard someone order a double double. Yeah, double, double. That sounds really good. Just don’t have gravy, have liquor. Don’t have gravy. Don’t have gravy. OK. I’m starving. Let’s do it. What about jellied eel? Yeah. You don’t like it?

Well, I don’t. But we’ve got, we do stewed eels as well. Pot eels. Can we have some jellied and some stewed, yeah? Yes, please. What’s in the pot? Mincemeat. Just minced beef. The recipe, has it changed? No. It’s been the same. Since when? 1892? Wow. Oh, that’s a lot of jelly.

That’s a solid amount of jelly. Your favorite. OK. Is the jelly just the stock you’re cooking? The brine or Just some sort of jelly. What do you mean, some sort of jelly. You’ve got to sell it to me. Come on. I don’t think she wants that. Excellent. Thank you. All righty.

Come on in, Barry. Wow. I feel like I’m back at church. It is like an altar. It really is. Should we take a moment? Yeah. Wow. Let’s reflect. From what we’re about to receive, please protect us. Don’t gag on camera. I must say, it all looks delicious except for one thing.

Is that the jelly? It’s the jelly. Did you watch the videos of how they prepare this as well? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Hard core. They used to catch the eels in the thames, right? I know. The place used to be full of them. I think even back then, in the 1800’s,

It was still really badly polluted. And it’s one of the only things that could survive. Now it’s so bad, there’s no chance of them getting this. I’m not sure where these are from. Look at the size of those. There is a lot going on. Ollie’s got a little mini plate. A Goldilocks situation.

I love the way they scrape the potato on the side. Should we flip? I’ve had a many of pie and mash, Oh, wow. – in my day, – It’s a different… – I never knew, – It’s a different… This is how they’re originally supposed to be eaten.

We’ve got a puff on the top and a suet on the bottom. Look at that. So that’s like beef and gravy. Oh, wow. Look at that. It’s a really basic Gosh. You’ve got eel, right, the cheapest cut back in the day. Yeah. And then you’ve got the cheapest minced beef as well.

It’s good quality, but at the same time, it’s affordable. You’re getting the liquor sauce as well. Because that, as a name, concerned me, first of all. Yeah. But it is just parsley sauce. OK. There’s no liquor. There’s no alcohol. It’s got nothing to do with alcohol. Isn’t liquor eels? No, it’s just parsley.

Parsley sauce. OK, so I feel like Beckham told us liquor was eel. What does Beckham know about pie and mash? It’s his favourite food, apparently. Yeah, right. Apparently. What I grew up on was traditional pie and mash from the East End of London. So it’s a mince pie, mashed potato,

And then it’s called liquor. So liquor is parsley and stewed eels. All right. Look at that. That is the biggest name drop I’ve ever heard in my life. Yeah, yeah, sorry. It’s Beckham. He told us this on the second occasion that we had dinner with him. Alright, rub it in. What’s that taste?

It doesn’t taste of much. That’s warming. That tastes brown. Soul food. It tastes beige. It does taste beige. It does, yeah. And this tastes slightly green. Yeah. That’s true. Not too green. No, no, no. All right. You don’t want that. OK. Bit of salt. And they have vinegar.

Look at the size of that bottle of vinegar. I’ve never seen anything like that. It says chili vinegar. Yeah, chili vinegar as well. And chili vinegar. So it’s just Now, that is something I never knew was a thing. It’s a British version of, like, chili oil in Italy. Oh, is it? Oh, gosh.

Some on the plate would’ve been useful! Wow. Let’s give it a go. Not having a knife is bothering me slightly. – But. – I know. She was very clear that knives were not allowed. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, that’s completely different. It lifts it. Yeah, I’m not surprised you like that.

Well, there’s actually something to it. It tastes like a pack of salt and vinegar crisps almost. It does. Which s like Ollie’s favourite thing in the world. It’s like salt and vinegar soup. Yeah. The crispy puff pastry top is kind of needed, because everything else is just the same texture. Yeah.

Now it’s got the vinegar in it in particular. It almost unlocks the whole flavour. For me, it’s very similar to what fish and chips does. In terms of you bring someone over. Welcome to my country. I’m always a little bit embarrassed by going “try fish and chips”,

Because it’s not the finest of dining. Yeah. I’ve got plenty of friends, who have this on a semiregular basis. Yeah. They’re almost like, I don’t want to get my friends over, because they might judge me for it, but I really love it. It’s like British soul food, really. Well, yeah.

It is a window into our soul, maybe. Maybe. I get really nervous when I see what you think. I see you searching for… Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never know what’s going to come out. You never know. I know. You also never know what he’s going to surprise you with.

Turns out he’s going to have written an autobiography about you without you knowing. OK, so now Ducky has never tried pie and mash before. And I should just say, like most pies you get in the UK now, they come with gravy instead of liquor. They’re not quite this simple.

I’m going to let you taste this without putting any vinegar or anything on it first. I get the feeling Ducky’s had some of the finest food in the world. Yeah, well, Ducky’s been with us, eating our way around the world. Yet has somehow still never had a British pie and mash. Big mouth.

Yeah, that was a very big mouthful. You comitted. You went all in. It’s so bland. It’s so bland. OK, look. OK, look here. Try some chili vinegar. Give it some life. Give it some life. It really is. So do you like some vinegar crisps? Yeah. OK, good. A little bit more. Yeah.

All right, well, imagine salt and vinegar, but with a really mushy, warm texture. Much better. That is better. OK. Way better. OK. You prefer that. I mean this. It tastes like something that was invented two years ago and hasn’t been changed since. True.

Sorry I just realized, Luke, you haven’t had any pie yet. You want some pie? Wow. Hand feeding a whole pie now. It’s fine. It’s a little bit juicy. Yeah, it is a little bit juicy. Very juicy. Come on. Luke’s going to be on my side. Come on. Yeah, I like that. It’s good.

Yeah. OK. I want to know why. I wouldn’t have it every day because We’ve been trying loads of foods from around the world so my palate’s expanded. I could always go back to that. But I know when Adam’s ever back in the UK, He’d just have to go for it.

You don’t get food, weirdly, like this anywhere. – I know you were going to say this is horrible. – It’s very, very distinctly British. No, it’s not horrible. I guess you’re right. There’s a nostalgia to it. You feel part of something. But also, that’s a fiver. Yeah, important. Wow. Important clarification there.

Like, that’s a full meal for a fiver. You can pay like 20 quid for a pie and mash in a gastropub. Yeah, yeah. Easy. If this was next to our office, I’d have this once a week. Yeah. Once a week. This is around the corner from our office.

One of the girls on our team comes here every week. For a double pie double mash. I think I would go for the single mash next time. I don’t think I really, – look at this scraped around the edge. – You have a wall. I don’t think I really realized how much,

– mash that is. – It’s like a tsunami of potato. I think it’s just potato. There’s very little butter or dairy in that. And I don’t think any salt either. Yeah, it’s unseasoned. I think that’s an interesting thing about English food. It’s often, and we had this growing up,

You guys probably had it with your parents too. Often a meal is reasonably, almost completely unseasoned. And then you have salt and pepper on the table and you season to your own taste. Which my wife Gabie was quick to point out. That’s not really how cooking works.

You usually have to season the food while cooking it in order to unlock all the flavours. Yeah. But. Not in England. We prefer our flavours locked away. I grew up in north of London. And I have many friends who are in the building trades or so on, who swear by these pies,

They still be like, you’ve got to try the eels. Yeah. On that note. Let’s do it. We need to try some eels. – You go first. – You look worried. OK, so this is stewed eels, which I’ve never had. We let it sit for a little bit.

You very rarely get served food with a gag and a warning of don’t choke on the bone. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so the first time I ever had jellied eels, absolutely disgusted. Oh, oh, it’s juice. There’s juice. I then watched a few videos of Beckham really enjoying them

And other people actually liking the eels. Have you met Beckham before? Yeah. You should have mentioned that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t like to say. I kind of got won over. All right, OK. Very sharp bones. Very sharp. Wow. – I forgot how sharp the bones are. – It’s like eating,

A bunch of pins. Well, I tell you what, this flavour. It’s not great flavour. Oh, it’s lovely. That was lovely. But you can’t accuse of that being bland. There’s a bone. Yeah. A little bone. OK. So, right, let’s start before we react, let’s dissect that. That’s what we do, OK? Super meaty. OK.

In terms of like, back in the day, bang for your buck. Cheap cut and meat. Really meaty. As far as seafood goes, maybe the meatiest. Yeah, probably so. Very, very meaty. Still got a bone in my throat, which is really annoying. Yeah, you’ve got to be careful about that.

My biggest problem with that actually was the texture of what it’s in. It’s like this slimy, liquor sauce. But then you bite you’re expecting to hit something hard, but there’s nothing hard, until you hit bone. All right, jelly. Jelly. Maybe it’ll be better.

We do this thing on our show where we do poker face. Eat this and no expression whatsoever. No reaction. No reaction. OK. See who can hold it the longest. Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness. Sorry. It’s triggering my gag reflex. Cheers. Cheers. Wow. Why is my eye twitching? Oh. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Oh. Yeah.

Did you swallow it? The jelly is the hardest bit. It’s so gelatinous. So I initially, first bite, I way preferred that to that. I think I did. Actually, I agree. I agree. Because you can taste, – The meat. – A bit more of a bitey the meat’s got a bite to it.

We have a lot of eels in Korea and grilled. It’s beautiful. It’s one of my favorite things to eat. And you’ve got a little hint of that. That’s really enjoyable until then the texture of the jelly. It’s the jelly. You bite through the meat,

And then all the texture of the jelly is left. The jelly holds a lot of fishy flavour. Yeah, it does. It does. And that flavour and that texture don’t belong together. They don’t. I’d say the jellied eels, – I think I prefer it to that. – better than the stewed eel. Like significantly.

Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah. They’re like yeah. That is borderline inedible. Yeah. I would say. Maybe just cook it a different way. Maybe just grill it. Wow. Barry, that has been a real experience. Yeah. I’m glad I’ve introduced this to you. Yeah. I’d like to have a go at making this ourselves.

– Like, – Ooh! make your own suet. Yeah. Puff pastry, filling, liquor, season the mash. Yeah. We can make that amazing. Did we finish on a positive? I think so. Yeah. We got there. Well, if we didn’t go over to Sorted Food. We could turn anything to a positive. Yeah.

I mean, you’ve been doing that for a while, right? Yeah, nearly 15 nearly, yeah, 14 years. Wow. Have you sorted it all? OK. Right. Is it Right. Come on, look. Sorted, as a word, is the one sense it can be to get things organized. That’s not the meaning we apply to it.

That was the joke I was making. I know. It’s frustrating me. Coz you make it every single time I see you. Yeah, OK. You guys always JOLLY? Pretty much, yeah. That’s kind of our thing.