Porridge

Porridge (also spelled porage, porrige, parritch) is a dish made by boiling ground, crushed, or chopped starchy plants - typically grain - in water and/or milk, often with flavourings. It is usually served hot in a bowl. It may be sweetened with sugar, honey etc. and served as a sweet dish, or mixed with spices, vegetables etc. to make a savoury dish.

The term is often used specifically for oat porridge (called oatmeal in the U.S. and parts of Canada), which is eaten for breakfast with salt, sugar, milk, cream and/or butter, and sometimes other flavourings. Oat porridge is also sold in ready-made or partly-cooked form as an instant breakfast.

Other grains used for porridge include semolina, rice, wheat, barley, corn and buckwheat. Many types of porridge have their own names, e.g. polenta, grits and kasha.

Porridge is a staple food in much of Africa.

Historically porridge was a staple food in much of Northern Europe and Russia, often made from barley, though other grains and yellow peas could be used, depending on local conditions. It was primarily a savoury dish, with meats, root crops, vegetables and herbs added for flavour. Porridge could be cooked in a large metal kettle over hot coals or heated in a cheaper earthenware container by adding hot stones until boiling hot. Until leavened bread and baking ovens became commonplace in Europe, porridge was a typical means of preparing cereal crops for the table. It was also commonly used as prison food for inmates in the British prison system, and so "doing porridge" became a slang term for a sentence in prison.

Porridge (disambiguation)

Porridge is a dish made by boiling oats or other cereal in water, milk or both.

Porridge may also refer to:

See also

Porridge (TV series)

Porridge was a British sitcom broadcast on BBC1 from 1974 to 1977, running for three series, two Christmas specials and a feature film also titled Porridge (the movie was released under the title Doing Time in the United States). Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates at the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland. "Doing porridge" is British slang for serving a prison sentence, porridge once being the traditional breakfast in UK prisons.

Porridge was critically acclaimed and is widely considered to be one of the greatest British sitcoms of all time. The series was followed by a 1978 sequel, Going Straight, which established that Fletcher would not be going back to prison again.

History

Porridge originated with a 1973 project commissioned by the BBC Seven of One, which would see Ronnie Barker star in seven different situation comedy pilot episodes. The most successful would then be made into a full series. One of the episodes, "Prisoner and Escort", written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who appear in one episode) about a newly convicted criminal, Norman Stanley Fletcher (Barker), being escorted to prison by two warders: the timid Mr. Barrowclough (Brian Wilde) and the stern Mr. Mackay (Fulton Mackay). It was broadcast on 1 April 1973 on BBC2. Despite Barker's initial preference for another of the pilots, a sitcom about a Welsh gambling addict, "Prisoner and Escort" was selected. It was renamed Porridge, a slang term for prison; Barker and Clement and La Frenais actually came up with the same title independently of each other.