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Netherlands - Food

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A traditional Dutch dinner can consist e.g. of boiled potatoes, panfried meat (popular choices are pork chops, beef balls, thick sliced pork bellies) and a boiled vegetable (e.g. cauliflower, green beans, broccoli). The Dutch are famous for their dairy products and especially for their (cow milk) cheeses. Famous Dutch cheeses include Goudse, Edammer, Leidse cheeses. The Dutch have their own types of fastfood. A Dutch fastfood meal often consists of a portion of french fries (called friet or patat) with a sauce and a meat product. The most common sauce to accompany French fries is mayonaise, while others can be ketchup or spiced ketchup, peanut sauce or piccalilli. Sometimes the fries are served with combinations of sauces, most famously speciaal (special): mayonnaise, with (spiced) ketchup and chopped onions; and oorlog (literally "war"): mayonnaise and peanut sauce (sometimes also with ketchup and chopped onions). The meat product is usually a deep fried snack; this includes the frikandel (a deep fried skinless minced meat sausage), and the kroket (deep fried meat ragout covered in breadcrumbs). A typical Dutch delicacy is raw herring which is ususally eaten with raw onions. Because of the Dutch colonial past, there has been a considerable Asian influence on the Dutch cuisine. From the 16th century onwards all sorts of spices mainly from the Dutch Indies were introduced into Dutch cuisine.
Fast food machine in Leiden	Man eating raw herring, a Dutch delicacy	Raw herring at the fish market in Leiden
Seafood at the fish market in Leiden	Dutch stroopwafels for sale at a market stand in Leiden