Belgian cuisine is widely varied with significant
regional variations while also reflecting
the cuisines of neighbouring France, Germany
and the Netherlands. It is sometimes said
that Belgian food is served in the quantity
of German cuisine but with quality of French
food. Outside the country, Belgium is best
known for its chocolate and beer.
Belgian cuisine traditionally prizes regional
and seasonal ingredients, leading to distinctive
dishes like carbonade flamande in Flanders
or the couque biscuit of the town of Dinant.
Belgians typically eat three meals a day,
with a light breakfast, light or medium sized
lunch and large dinner.
Typical dishes
Though Belgium has many distinctive national
dishes, many internationally-popular foods
like hamburgers and spaghetti bolognese are
also popular in Belgium. The list contains
dishes of Belgian origin, or those considered
typically Belgian.
Appetizers
Boterhammen / Tartines: Slices of rustic bread
and an uncovered spread, often pâté or soft
cheese, served on a cutting board. A typical
variety is a slice of bread with quark and
sliced radishes, typically accompanied by
a glass of gueuze.
Charcuterie: particularly smoked ham and pâté,
often made of game such as wild boar. The
forested Ardennes region in the south of Belgium
is renowned for this type of food.
Salade Liégeoise: a salad with green beans,
bacon, onions and vinegar. It is usually associated
with Liège.
Tomate-crevette / Tomaat-garnaal: a snack
or starter of grey shrimp and mayonnaise stuffed
into a hollowed-out raw tomato.
Savoury dishes
Moules-frites / Mosselen-friet: mussels cooked
or steamed with onions and celery served with
fries. The recipe has often been referred
to as the country's national dish but is also
popular in the neighboring Nord region of
France.
Waterzooi: a rich stew and soup of chicken
or fish, vegetables, cream and eggs, usually
associated with the town of Ghent.
Gegratineerde witloof / Chicons au gratin:
a gratin of endives in béchamel sauce with
cheese. Often the endives are wrapped with
ham.
Kip met frieten en appelmoes / Poulet-frites-compote.
Konijn in geuze / Lapin à la gueuze: rabbit
in gueuze, which is a spontaneously fermented
beer from the area around Brussels.
Filet américain: Very finely minced ground
beef eaten raw and cold. It is spread on a
sandwich or bread with and sometimes topped
with a sauce, usually with Sauce américaine,
and served with fries. When served as a dinner,
it is mixed with onions and capers like steak
tartare, but it retains the name américain.
Paling in 't groen / Anguilles au vert: Eel
in a green sauce of mixed herbs. Served with
bread or fries. Usually accompanied by a beer
or an Alsace wine.
Pêches au thon / Perziken met tonijn: halved
canned or fresh peaches stuffed with a mix
of tuna and mayonnaise, i.e. tuna salad.
Boudin / Pensen, beuling or bloedworst: a
type of sausage in which the meat, or blood,
is mixed with fine breadcrumbs. Often eaten
with potatoes and apple sauce, sometimes eaten
raw or barbequeued.
Stoemp: potato mashed with vegetables, often
served with sausages.
Carbonade flamande / Stoverij: a Belgian beef
stew, similar to the French Beef Bourguignon,
but made with beer instead of red wine. Served
with bread or fries and mustard. Usually accompanied
by a beer.
Sweet dishes and desserts
Waffles: sometimes eaten as a street snack
and sold by ice-cream vans. Among the better-known
styles are the Liège waffle, Brussels waffle
and the stroopwafel
Speculoos: a shortcrust cinnamon cookie.
Smoutebollen / Croustillons: Deep-fried balls
of sweet dough, eaten at fairgrounds or on
special occasions
Tarte au riz / Rijstevlaai: a pie with a filling
based on rice pudding, native to Verviers.
Sirop de Liège / Luikse siroop: a jam or
jelly-like spread made of evaporated fruit
juices
Fries
Fries, deep-fried chipped potatoes, are very
popular in Belgium where they are thought
to have originated. The earliest evidence
of the dish comes from a book entitled Curiosités
de la table dans les Pays-Bas-Belgiques written
in 1781, which described how inhabitants of
Namur, Dinant and Andenne around the Meuse
River had eaten fried potatoes since around
1680. Though they are usually known as "French
fries" in the United States, it is argued
that American soldiers during the First World
War erroneously believed that they were being
served the dish in France.
In Belgium, fries are sold at fast food stands
or in dedicated fast-food restaurants called
friteries, fritkot, or frituur. They are often
served with a variety of sauces and eaten
either on their own or in the company of other
snacks. Traditionally, they are served in
a "cornet de frites", a cone-shaped white
piece of cardboard then wrapped in a piece
of paper with the sauce on the top. Other
street foods like frikandel, gehaktbal or
croquette are sold alongside. In some cases,
the fries are served in the form of a sandwich
along with their sauce and meat; this is known
as a "mitraillette".
Most Belgian households have a deep fryer,
allowing them to make their own fries and
other deep-fried foods at home.
Sauces
Mayonnaise and ketchup are the sauces traditionally
eaten with fries in Belgium. Friteries and
other fast-food establishments tend to offer
a number of different sauces for the fries
and meats. including aioli and sauce Americaine
but also a spicy varieties like Béarnaise
sauce. There are frequently over a dozen options,
and most are mayonnaise-based. Varieties include:
Aioli / Look-saus.
Pepper-sauce - mayonnaise with green pepper.
Sauce andalouse - mayonnaise with tomato paste
and peppers.
Sauce Americaine - mayonnaise with tomato,
chervil, onions, capers and celery.
"Bicky" Dressing, a commercial brand made
from mayonnaise, white cabbage, tarragon,
cucumber, onion, mustard and dextrose.
Curry ketchup
Curry mayonnaise
Mammoet-sauce - mayonnaise, tomato, onion,
glucose, garlic, soy sauce.
Sauce "Pickles"- a yellow vinegar based sauce
with turmeric, mustard and crunchy vegetable
chunks, similar to Piccalilli.
Samurai-sauce - mayonnaise with harissa.
Tartar sauce.
Zigeuner sauce; A "gypsy" sauce of tomatoes,
paprika and chopped bell peppers, borrowed
from Germany.
These sauces are generally also available
in supermarkets. Occasionally warm sauces
are offered by friteries, including Hollandaise
sauce, sauce Provençale, Béarnaise sauce,
or even a carbonade flamande.
Beer
For a comparatively small country, Belgium
produces a very large number of beers in a
range of different styles – in fact, it
has more distinct types of beer per capita
than anywhere else in the world. In 2011,
there were 1,132 different varieties of beer
being produced in the country. The brewing
tradition in Belgium can be traced back to
the early Middle Ages and 6 Trappist Monasteries
still produce beer, which was initially used
to fund their upkeep.
On average, Belgians drink 84 litres of beer
each year, down from around 200 each year
in 1900. Most beers are bought or served in
bottles, rather than cans, and almost every
style of beer has its own particular, uniquely
shaped glass or other drinking-vessel. Using
the correct glass is considered to improve
its flavour.
The varied nature of Belgian beers makes it
possible to match them against each course
of a meal, for instance:
Wheat beer with seafood or fish.
Blonde or Tripel beers with eel, chicken or
white meat
Dubbel or other dark beers with dark meat
Fruit Lambics with dessert
A number of traditional Belgian dishes use
beer as an ingredient. One is carbonade, a
stew of beef cooked in beer, similar to boeuf
bourguignon. The beer used is typically the
regional speciality: lambic in Brussels, De
Koninck in Antwerp, so that the taste of the
dish varies. Another is rabbit in gueuze.
The Trappist monastery at Chimay also manufactures
cheese that is "washed" with beer to enhance
its flavour.
Jenever
Jenever, also known as genièvre, genever,
peket or Dutch gin, is the national spirit
of Belgium from which gin evolved. While beer
may be Belgium's most famous alcoholic beverage,
jenever has been the country's traditional
and national spirit for over 500 years. Jenever
is a "Protected Product of Origin", having
received eleven different appellations or
AOCs from the European Union, and can only
be crafted in Belgium, the Netherlands and
a few areas in France and Germany. Most of
the jenever AOC's are exclusive to Belgium
making Belgian jenever one of the best-kept
secrets in the liquor industry.
For centuries jenever has been bottled in
jugs handcrafted from clay. Its iconic shape
is recognizable and unique to jenever. Traditionally
the Belgians serve jenever in completely full
shot glasses that have just been pulled from
the freezer. The first step to drinking the
jenever properly is to keep the glass on the
table, bend down and take the first sip without
holding the glass. Once this traditional first
sip is completed one can drink the rest of
the drink normally.
Chocolate
Belgium is famed for its high quality chocolate
and over 2,000 chocolatiers, both small and
large. Belgium's association with chocolate
goes back as far as 1635 when the country
was under Spanish occupation. By the mid 18th
century, chocolate was extremely popular in
upper and middle class circles, particularly
in the form of hot chocolate, including with
Charles-Alexander of Lorraine, the Austrian
governor of the territory. From the early
20th century, the country was able to import
large quantities of cocoa from its African
colony, the Belgian Congo. Both the chocolate
bar and praline are inventions of the Belgian
chocolate industry. Today, chocolate is very
popular in Belgium, with 172,000 tonnes produced
each year, and widely exported.
The composition of Belgian chocolate has been
regulated by law since 1884. In order to prevent
adulteration of the chocolate with low-quality
fats from other sources, a minimum level of
35% pure cocoa was imposed. Adherence to traditional
manufacturing techniques also serves to increase
the quality of Belgian chocolate. In particular,
vegetable-based fats are not used. Many firms
produce chocolates by hand, which is laborious
and explains the prevalence of small, independent
chocolate outlets, which are popular with
tourists. Famous chocolate companies, like
Neuhaus and Guylian, strictly follow traditional
recipes for their products.
Seafood pralines are popular with tourists
and are sold all over Belgium.
See also
References
Further reading
Analysis and context
Scholliers, Peter; Geyzen, Anneke. "Upgrading
the Local: Belgian Cuisine in Global Waves".
Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food
Studies 10: 49–54. 
Recipes
Elkon, Juliette. A 
Belgian Cookbook. New York: Hippocrene Books.
ISBN 0-7818-0461-2. 
Gordon, Enid; Shirley, Midge. The Belgian
Cookbook. London: Macdonald. ISBN 0-356-09501-0. 
Blais, Denis; Plisnier, Andre. Belgo Cookbook.
London: Phoenix Illustrated. ISBN 0-75380-490-5. 
External links
Traditional Belgian cuisine and beer pairing
from BeerTourism.com
