What’s your go-to comfort food?
…..I have but I think if I did, it would be a sweet suet pudding and custard!
For those of you who don’t live in the UK, suet pudding is made with an animal based fat. I believe it’s the fat found on cows, ground up. That may sound disgusting to you – it does to me, but I love suet puddings! Chocolate suet pudding, vanilla suet pudding, raspberry suet pudding, all are lovely with custard.
Suet can be used for savoury British puddings, too like steak and kidney pudding. It is beyond delicious but, I hasten to add, not served with custard. It should be served with gravy!
These are all foods that I had no knowledge about before we settled in England and it was years before I was introduced to the sweet variety. When I was a teacher at a primary school in Snodland, Kent, I was allowed a school dinner if I was on ‘dinner duty’. The cooks at the school were absolutely brilliant at making so many gorgeous dishes and I was always pleased to see the suet puddings, be they sweet or savoury. Something else I loved were warm donuts with jam sauce.
It’s no wonder I started putting weight on in my 40’s!
White Haired Woman 
Growing up in the 1940s,we often had suet pudding and gravy all on its own to start a meal. Looking back, it was probably to fill us, as meat was so scarce after the war.
We also had it served as ‘afters’ with golden syrup. Suet dumpling was slightly different. It was steamed in a cloth for hours on end and we called it “Baby’s Bottom” because that’s what it looked like.
However, I’m not sure if I’ve ever made it since being a grown up. Suet, to me now, is what I feed to my garden birds.
LikeLike
Suet pud and gravy sounds good to me!.I used to feed the birds visiting me here with suet and peanuts and mealworms, and seeds but then we saw rats climbing the pole holding the containers and stopped putting out food! Now I throw down the occasional bit of bread (I know, it’s not healthy but it’s not a lot!) or some nuts but they are seen from above by the gulls or the pigeons and are gone before the rats could even get a whiff from wherever they are. We have some mysterious holes in the lawn which are too small for foxes so must be rats.
I don’t think suet exists as a cooking ingredient in America as we never had it before we got here. I’ve not had suet dumplings so can’t comment on them. I love the dumplings we used to have at my great grandmother’s house but I haven’t a clue what they were made from. I’ve made little suet dumplings that are cooked in a stew towards the end of its cooking time and I love them. I have given up ’real’ cooking on the whole. I’d been doing most of the cooking at home since I was 14 and I couldn’t go on doing it so I haven’t made a stew for about ten years! Or a pie with home made pastry or even a cake from ingredients, though I have used a cake mix.
LikeLike