page_title: Dutch cuisine
section_title: Fast food
hierarchical_section_title: Dutch cuisine / Structure of meals / Fast food
caption_attribution_description: Image of a en:frikandel, a Dutch snack. Picture taken by myself on 2/18/2006.
context_page_description: Dutch cuisine is formed from the cooking traditions and practices of the Netherlands. The country's cuisine is shaped by its location in the fertile North Sea river delta of the European Plain, giving rise to fishing, farming, and trading over sea, its former colonial empire and the spice trade.
  Traditionally, Dutch cuisine is simple and straightforward, with many vegetables and little meat: breakfast and lunch are typically bread with toppings like cheese, while dinner is meat and potatoes, supplemented with seasonal vegetables. The diet contains many dairy products and was relatively high in carbohydrates and fat, reflecting the dietary needs of the laborers whose culture molded the country. Without many refinements, it is best described as rustic, though many holidays are celebrated with special foods.
  During the twentieth century, Dutch cuisine and diet changed. Influenced by the eating culture of its colonies, it became more cosmopolitan and most international cuisines are represented in the major cities.
context_section_description: The Dutch have their own types of fast food, sold at a snack bar. A Dutch fast food meal often consists of a portion of French fries (called patat or friet), with a sauce and a meat product. The most common sauce to accompany French fries is fritessaus (a low fat mayonnaise substitute), while others can be ketchup or currysaus, hot peanut sauce, a pickle relish of chopped vegetables and spices, such as piccalilli or joppiesaus. Sometimes the French fries are served with a combinations of different sauces, most famously speciaal (lit. "special"), which consists of mayonnaise with spiced ketchup, chopped raw onions, and oorlog (lit. "war"), which consists of fries covered in a generous amount of hot peanut sauce, mayonnaise, and chopped raw onions. A recently introduced Dutch-Turkish variety from Rotterdam is the kapsalon (lit. "barbershop"), consisting of fries, topped with either shawarma, kebab, or döner kebab and finished with salad, cheese, and various sauces such as sambal and garlic sauce.
  Snacks made with meat are usually deep fried. This includes the frikandel (a skinless minced meat sausage), and the kroket (a meat ragout roll covered in breadcrumbs). They are available in bread rolls, especially Broodje kroket in order to take away. A smaller, round version of the croquette, which is the bitterballen, is often served with mustard as a snack in bars but also at official receptions. Regional snacks include the eierbal (a combination of egg and ragout) in the north and east of the country, and the slightly spiced Brabants worstenbroodje or saucijzenbroodje, slightly spiced sausage meat baked in pastry (similar to the English sausage roll). 
  Other snacks are the Indonesian-inspired bamischijf (a disk shaped mie goreng patty which is covered with breadcrumbs and deep-fried), nasischijf (similar to the bamischijf, a deep-fried nasi goreng filled ball covered in breadcrumbs), and kaassoufflé (lit. "cheese soufflé" it is a deep fried puff pastry envelope with a small amount of cheese in the center, popular with vegetarians).
  Fish is also sold as fast food at the so-called viskraam, most often street stalls and market stalls that specialize only in prepared fish products. The Netherlands is famous for its raw herring, optionally served together with chopped raw onions and gherkins, and which is eaten by lifting the herring high up into the air by its tail, and then biting into it upwards (except for Amsterdam, where the herring is cut to pieces and served on paper platter). Raw herring is also commonly sold in a soft white bun. Other popular fish snacks are kibbeling (deep-fried nugget-sized chunks of Atlantic cod), lekkerbekje (deep-fried cod, similar to the British fish and chips, but delicately spiced and with a more tempura-like batter), gerookte paling (smoked European eel), and rollmops.
caption: A frikandel with fries
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