German equivalents for favourite foods from home

Okay the other day I was thinking about making a potato salad when I realized that I was out of my trusty Hellman's mayonnaise, I even did the classic clank the knife in the jar..

HM now before I rush off to the Bank and take a loan and then go to the local English shop and get the smallest jar available for the highest price imaginable, I was thinking it just might be time to give in and start trying to find the German equivalent to the products I can't seem to live with out.. Like the vlassic crunchy dills pickles and Frenches mustard, sweet pickle relish, spicy Thai chilli sauce, so lets share, what have you learned..
Share your German equivalent to your favorite products from home

tell us the brand and where you found it:

I've started making my own mayonnaise. Easy peasy and I get exactly the flavour & texture I want. That said, I've no objection to the Kraft mayo I can buy at my local shop.

Slightly off topic, but at Kaufland I happened across a special little spatula designed to scrape the last bits out of your Nutella glass. The blade is off-center from the hilt so it fits under the rim. I'm sure it's available wherever you can buy Nutella and hope for our own sakes that it can be purchased independently from the vilest spread since anchovy paste.

Back on topic, Thommy has various kinds of mayonnaise. Give them all a try and see if they're a good replacement.

I can only speak about whats available in Munich.


Branstons versions of various relishes, including sweetpickle, are now on sales at Karstadt, Münchener Freheit, in the food bit. There was also another brand of sweet pickle relish, cannot remember what. This is not in the foreign foods section, just the normal sauces section.


Cok brand chilli dipping sauce for chicken is now available in lots of places, not just asian stores. Again at Karstadt, I saw it on the counter at the butchers section!??! It's become super popular.

There are some OK mayos here I reckon, but I was never much of a Hellmans fan myself. If you don't have a food processor, and cannot be arsed to whisk really hard, home-made mayo can be made easier by putting just a little bit of jarred mayo into your mix, because it is normally crammed with emulsifiers that make it...well, emulsify easier.

Tartare sauce, which I NEED for pub grub style scampi n chips, I've not seen here, but it can be whacked together in seconds by mixing 1tbsp chopped capers, 1 tbsp chopped gherkin, 1 tbsp parsley with a bit of mayo and a squirt of lemon juice. Cheapest option for the scampi is crappy "scampi spiese" from Aldi, which are stupidly cheap. Take the prawny chaps off the wooden stick, flour, egg and breadcrumb them with paniernehl, and deep fry. Make sure you follow pub grub rules, and serve with chips, peas, and a salad "garnish" consisting of some shredded iceberg lettuce, 1 tomato quarters, 3 slices of cucumber, some raw onion rings cut from a big metzgerzweibel, and top with some mustard cress. Awesome.

I found out years ago, making it all yourself is much more rewarding, quicker easier to boot.

I always miss crap quality chinese takeaway food, be it from a takeaway, or in a box from Sainsburys or whatever. You have to get a few bits from an asian shop, but the rest you can get at your local purveyor of rubbish produce, Aldi.

Sweet n sour pork balls

Reduce down (boil) a good few glugs of Aldi pineapple juice, I dunno, lets say 250ml of the stuff, until you have a thick syrup. Squirt in a good squirt of Aldi tomato ketchup, then keep adding little glugs of the white balsamic vinegar they sell EVERYWHERE here, including Aldi, until you balance out the sweetness of the juice. Mix up a tsp or so of Aldi cornflour in a tbsp of water, add to the sauce, and stir until its thick and gloopy.
If you want something a bit posher, stir fry up some chopped bell peppers, and add them, and also lob in some pineapple chunks.
Get an Aldi pork fillet, cut into chunks. Make a batter up by getting a load of flour in a bowl, and adding cold lager and whisking until its like thick paint. Add some salt. Dip the pork in the batter, and deep fry, then serve with the sweet and sour sauce.

Egg fried rice

Get some basmati rice. Cook it. Cool it - the rice HAS to have been cooled, cook it a day before maybe. Chop up a clove of garlic or two and an equal amount of ginger. Get a fair amount of oil going in a wok, chuck in your garlic and ginger, and stir fry for a few seconds, then chuck in your cold rice. and start tossing it about a bit to separate the chunks, and get the oil a bit distributed through the rice. Then, pack all the rice down into the pan with your spatula, and pour a beaten egg on top. LEAVE IT. Don't stir it yet. Leave for a minute or so, then stir it, and keep stir frying until the egg is all cooked, and the rice is really separated out into grains, with no chunky lumps. Add a few drops of sesame oil, and you are done.

Crispy duck noodles

Get an Aldi half duck - knusperente or something - from the freezer section. Roast it off for 40 minutes, remove the skin, and with the back of a blade, scrape away any fatty membranes from the underside of the skin. fry it a bit in a pan to get it super crispy, then chop it up finely into a sort of breadcrumb texture. Shred the duck meat up with 2 forks. Cook off some egg noodles, drain, and toss in a bit of sesame oil. Get a pan on the go with some oil, whack in some chopped ginger and garlic, fry for a few seconds, then add some sliced onion. Chuck in your duck meat, and the noodles, stir fry for a couple of minutes, then chuck in some shredded spring onion, some beansprouts, and a gluf of soy sauce. Done.

There are loads of crappy UK style friday night chinky dishes you can bang out in your own kitchen. Who cares about authentic, decent chinese food, when you can have fat drenched awesomeness direct from Aldi eh.

... and don't forget 4 or 5 button mushrooms that have been sitting in boiling water for about 2 weeks.

To explain Crawlie and me talking absolute tripe about pub garnishes, it's worth noting that we worked in a crap pub kitchen together about 20 years ago. Aaaaah, the good ol' days. Bet you 20 quid that Ken the drunken glaswegian "chef" is now dead.

Glaswegian? I thought he was from Tyneside. The man had a permanent red face through drinking obscene amounts of alcohol and sticking his face in the steak grill and nobody could understand a word he was saying anyway. Oh, and he would have been the perfect match for Amy Winehouse in the figure stakes

Was he a geordie? I thought he was a celt. Could have been russian really, never understood a word the bloke said.

It is extremely difficult to get good quality beef period. Steaks? forget about it, what there is, is a joke. Horrid chain restaurants like Blockhaus and the like are embarrassing "australian-US wannabes"...but if you do look deep enough, you can find the occasional good quality cuts of the cow. I only eat so much red meat anyway, so I will spend for good quality, those rare times of the year.