Shocking survey reveals millions of Brits are clueless about food ingredients
It turns out some people believe the popular Indian spice, turmeric, is a flower and curry flavouring Garam Masala is an actual chef.
THINK yourself a bit of a whiz in the kitchen? Well, you might just be mistaken.
A new survey has found millions of Brits are totally clueless in the kitchen and actually think a caper is a small fish and a cardamom is a kind of caramel.
Other culinary gaffes include believing popular Indian spice turmeric is a flower and curry flavouring Garam Masala is actually a chef.
A survey of 2,000 people by food standards scheme, Red Tractor, found the average UK adult only ever uses half the ingredients in their kitchens.
Each kitchen has an average of 10 jars of spices or herbs in the cupboards but only half of them get used regularly – probably because people don’t know what it is they have bought.
Red Tractor Lamb spokesman Nick White said: “Brits cook at home around six times a week, and the results of this survey showed that very few are getting the most out of their kitchens.
“From ingredients to equipment, there’s a huge difference in what people have and what they actually use on a day-to-day basis.
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“At Red Tractor Lamb, we’re on a mission to get Brits to make use of all those neglected items in the cupboard, and spice up their mealtimes with the versatile Lamb Keema.
“This spiced Indian lamb mince is the perfect dish to get experimenting with. Once the base recipe is mastered, the door is open to over 10 different dishes making important use of both new and forgotten spices.”
Of all the jars people buy to stock their cupboards, nearly a third has been used just once or not at all.
And a quarter of them are suspected to have long gone past their use-by-date.
In fact, 54 per cent of respondents admit that they’ve got dusty items that they needed to use once and then never used again, or was simply an impulse buy.
Nick added: “There is plenty of education to be done in the kitchen as the survey results showed that 56 per cent of the population would like a better understanding of spice in their cooking, and just under half would use them more if they knew what to do with them.
“Fifteen per cent of people say they never experiment with spices, which is far too low – we want people to dig into their cupboards, find an unused spice and try to create something special.
“That’s why we at Red Tractor Lamb have created ‘The Keema Sutra’, to inspire people and give them access to a new world of flavours that may have been in their kitchen the whole time.”