Before Protein Bowls, Britain Had This Old-School Lunch Dish

British food is often unfairly maligned as being uncreative or bland. However, the country that gave us the full English breakfast, fish and chips, and chicken tikka masala knows a thing or two about making a good meal. Sometimes you just need to look a little harder to find it, and that's how you stumble upon things like the ploughman's lunch, which has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity thanks to social media. If you're the type of person who likes to pick and snack, this may be the lunch you've been waiting for.

A traditional ploughman's lunch, so named because it's supposedly what a farmer might unpack during a hard day ploughing fields, is served cold. In its simplest form, it might be a wedge of cheese, some cured or smoked meat, and bread. More elaborate versions will include a few cheese and meat selections, maybe a chutney, a relish, or mustard for dipping, and a variety of fruits and fresh vegetables, hard boiled eggs, and pickled vegetables. You can think of it like a rustic charcuterie board.

A ploughman's lunch is a British pub favorite, and you can enjoy it with a pint of beer or cider. For a meal consisting of honey ham, Wensleydale cheese, rolls, pork pie, salad, olives, and crackers with that classic condiment Branston pickle, you might pay between £17 and £18, or about $23 to $24. Of course, making it yourself would be more cost-effective and allow for more customization.

Although the meal is presented as if it were a throwback to olden times, its prevalence was mostly the result of a marketing push by the Milk Marketing Board in the 1950s and 1960s to sell more cheese. That said, farm workers would have taken something cold and probably simple into the field for lunch for centuries. 

After popping up in some recent viral TikTok videos, viewers became obsessed with the idea and the popularity spread. The renewed appeal seems to lie in its versatility and quirkiness. If you want to have a crust of sourdough bread with an entire pickled beet and a wedge of blue cheese, you can call that your lunch. It's a convenient way to make use of some snacky items by pulling them all together on a plate. It's also less rigid than traditional lunches, which seem to have more rules. Even a simple sandwich has more rules. You don't assemble anything here; you just eat it however you like. 

The simplicity of the ploughman's lunch is one of its strengths. It can be as complex and delicious as you want to make it. Once you've perfected it, you may want to explore some of these other English dishes we think you need to try at least once, too.