Over the years, American food has established its marks by developing its taste and flavors. By introducing creativity in every food item, American cuisine has won the hearts of millions of citizens. Its taste has crossed the boundaries. People love to travel long distances to get experience with American dishes. The United States is famous for having lots of cheap junk food.
Food portions are massive. And delicious. And usually not very expensive. However, Americans often put quantity over quality when making recommendations. It does - but it also has almost endless amounts of cheap, healthy food, sadly often out of fashion these days. The use of fascinating food boxes adds to their attractiveness. They protect the food items from spoilage and contamination. Moreover, the food boxes are designed in a way to retain the flavor and make them last longer.
Salmon is king, crab and clams are close seconds. Also, enjoy the amazing variety of berries and apples. For the true experience, go to a pancake feed and a pork chop/sweet corn feed put on by a local Boy Scout Troop or American Legion, then follow that up with a Lutheran Church potluck and sample all of the ways that jello, scalloped potatoes, and crock-pot meatballs can be prepared.
Try the birch syrup if you stay for breakfast! There are also more micro-regional cuisines of course. New York City is famous for specific types of pizza and cheesecake. Chicago is famous for specific types of pizza and hot dogs. New Orleans and surrounding areas is famous for Cajun fair like jambalaya and beignets and crawfish boil.
The Minnesota State Fair is a seasonal culinary destination of “I didn’t know you could fry that and serve it on a stick”. Wisconsin is home of the eternally aging wheel of cheddar along with a hundred other cheeses. The western mountains yield wild-caught trout (best when stuffed with Meyers lemons and walla-walla sweet red onions and broiled or pan fried), and much more.
Below are some of the most popular foods in USA to experience:1. Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies are the best example of a balanced diet and is one of the most popular foods in America. Thanks to Ruth Wakefield who came up with an idea of introducing chocolate to butter cookies. The concept became popular in the 1930s. If you are crazy about the flavor of cookies, bake a batch of crunchy cookies and sprinkle your dose of chocolate on it.
This will take your nutrition to the next level. It keeps you healthy and active all day long. Chocolate chip cookies are one of the most common food items in the USA. You can find it in a number of bakeries and American cuisines. They are presented in colorful cookie boxes to make them appealing for everyone. Cookie boxes protect the delicate creations from spoilage and mishandling.
2. Cronut
Cronut is a combination of a croissant and a doughnut. The craze of the foodies about cronuts has made it a world-famous snack. It is made with laminated dough, which is first proofed and fried at a controlled temperature. For frying, grapeseed oil is used. The fried pastry is then filled and glazed with sugar. Cronuts were the first creation of a French chef named Dominique Ansel.
The taste of the delight traveled across the borders and became a loved food item of Americans. Cronuts combine the crispiness of croissants and the goodness of donuts for getting a perfect taste. As their shape is similar to a doughnut, so they are served in attractive donut boxes to make them more tempting? Donut boxes usually come up with a window to facilitate the customers in viewing the delight.
3. Pancakes
Pancakes are one of the favorite breakfast items of Americans. Pancakes are thin flat cakes with a round shape. They come in abundant variations. The main ingredient used in starch-based butter. Pancakes are cooked on a hot surface. They are topped with a variety of condiments like bacon, egg, chocolate sauce, fruits, maple syrup or whatever you like.
People love to prepare them according to their favorite toppings. Pancakes are delicate food items. They require special care for handling and serving. For this purpose, specially designed cake boxes are used according to the size of the pancake. Most of them come up with inserts to keep the pancakes at their place. Cake boxes prevent the toppings from spreading all around as the customer carries the food item.
4. Hot Dogs
Among most popular American meals, nothing is more delightful than a basic American hot dog, sandwiched between two slices of the bun. Hot dogs are usually topped with ketchup, mustard paste or a combination of both. Hot dogs are linked to the creation of sausages in the late 1600s. They were first created by a butcher in Germany, John Geoghehner.
Chicago dog is the best hot dog in America. It uses a beef frankfurter, poppy seed bun, mustard, diced onions and pickle relish, sliced tomatoes, sport peppers, and no ketchup.
They popularized in Chicago by 1893. Everyone's favorite hot dogs are basically sausages which are grilled or steamed in the places to eat in Chicago. They are garnished with ketchup, mustard, cheese, relish, chilies, onions, and mayonnaise. Hot dogs are packed in a paper wrapper or custom food boxes to be used as take away food item for eating in Chicago.
5. Sesame Chicken
Sesame chicken is one of the popular food item found throughout a number of restaurants in the USA. It has a Chinese origin, being similar to Tso's chicken. Its taste is sweet rather than spicy which make it similar to Chinese food. Sesame chicken is the fried chunks of chicken. They are coated in a sweet sauce with sesame seeds.
People can get them topped with other favorite toppings as well. Most of the American cuisines have started serving it with peppercorn and toasted chili and sesame. It gives crunch like that of American-Chinese cuisine with a little more flavors. Sesame chicken has become one of the favorite choices of foodies.
Therefore they are packed in Chinese takeout boxes for taking away. Chinese takeout boxes can be easily converted to a plate. This facilitates the consumers to eat the meal anywhere anytime.
6. Hamburger
Rare is also the American restaurant that does not offer hamburgers in its menu. They are usually eaten both in shabby food trucks and in luxury restaurants and the hamburger is undoubtedly the most characteristic dish in the United States.
Every single American will have a unique idea from where to find a perfect hamburger in the country. Hamburger is one of the most popular American foods. There are a number of options starting from fast food chains to fine dine-in restaurants. You will never miss it in an American's menu. However, the Library of Congress in New Haven, US state of Connecticut was the birthplace of hamburgers.
Louis Lunch established it in the 1900s. Today five of his grandsons serve the hamburgers made from a blend of five types of meat. The meat is cooked in the century-old casted iron grill to give it a remarkable taste. The foodies can customize it with various toppings along with caramelized onions, mayonnaise, mustard paste, and relish.
Americans often combine it with two bread slices and a steak of grounded beef to make a hamburger sandwich. The hamburger is served in custom food boxes as a takeaway item.
7. Poke
Over the past half-decade or so, fast-casual poke restaurants have sprung up across the contiguous United States. They come in all shapes and sizes, but the bowls generally have the same contents: a bed of grains (or zucchini noodles), marinated raw fish of some kind, and big ice cream scoops of other ingredients like edamame and imitation crab.
This is not how poke is traditionally served in Hawaii, but mainland influences are creeping into the poke culture of the Aloha State.
8. Fried chicken
Real American fried chicken is unable to be duplicated. In the US, especially in the Southeastern states, you can find fried chicken with perfectly crispy skin outside and tender, juicy chicken inside. In many countries you’ll only find KFC, an American-based franchise that serves one of our worst examples of American fried chicken. Sadly, this will be the only fried chicken that many foreigners ever eat.
9. Cheesecake
There is nothing in other countries that can match the cheesecakes made at the finest American bakeries. No question, France has the best baked sweets on the planet. But no other country can replicate that rich, creamy New York style cheesecake with the graham cracker or ginger snap crust.
10. Buffalo Wings
Only the US can make those succulent, tender chicken wings with a crispy exterior in the perfect buffalo sauce. It’s especially good in Upstate New York. If you’re visiting Europe, even if you eat at an American-based chain restaurant, the chicken wings will be prepared in some weird tomatoey marinara-like sauce that doesn’t even closely resemble buffalo sauce.
11. Pecan pie
The buttery, gooey interior with freshest pecans and the perfect, slightly sugary crust best served up in Georgia cannot be replicated in any other country.
12. Barbecue
The Australians and Argentinians can make some mean barbecue. But there is nothing that matches the slow-roasted brisket of Texas, or the pulled pork of North Carolina and Tennessee.
Barbecue is cooked slowly with indirect heat from a wood fire. There are different styles around the American South. In Georgia you’ll mostly find hickory-smoked pulled pork in a mild tomato-vinegar sauce. In Texas you’ll find more beef brisket. In the Carolinas you’ll find a mustard sauce. In Florida you can find goat and gator tail.
As you head northward you’ll find more ribs. Rule 1 is, don’t eat barbecue any place that you can’t smell half a mile away. If they cook it on premises, you’ll know! Try it in every state, as it varies greatly from Virginia to Florida to Texas and all points in between (is it made with beef, pork, or chicken; is the sauce sweet, spicy, or vinegary; what side dishes and is it served on a bun, etc).
Kalbi beef is another delicious Hawaiian breakfast food that you will not find anywhere else. It's tender beef in a sweet Hawaiian marinade.
13. Fried Catfish
There is nothing quite like the tender taste of freshly-caught catfish deep fried in the perfect cornmeal batter! When it’s fresh, it’s so flaky and delicious and almost falls apart amidst the crispy coating.
14. Collard
Soul food is the traditional Southern diet of agricultural people. It’s identified with African American culture, largely because black migrants took it north, but whites and blacks alike ate it.
Greens were and are a very important part of the Southern US and African-American diet. One favorite - actually very popular in Indiana, which has been called the northernmost Southern State and the southernmost Northern State is collard greens. Collards - known as acelgas in Spanish are a cabbage that grows very quickly in the heat, so it loves the tropics and sub-tropics.
Collards are TOUGH, and need a lot of cooking! In the old days, people - mostly ladies - would cook them all day long.
15. Corn dog
When you are trying to be low-carb - or lower carb - corn is your friend! It’s gluten-free, high in fiber, and one of the least glycemic grains. In the US, corn is always cheap, but it’s especially cheap in the summer. You can eat corn on the cob all you want, often getting three or five ears per dollar, and you can also eat popped corn. You can get these chips plain, and that’s the most nutritious.
In the South, you’ll also get salt-cured ham, and corn grits with red eye gravy (made from the pan drippings from the ham).
Corn dogs call for hot dogs, corn bread batter, a stick and a deep fat fryer. The hot dog is skewered onto the stick, with about three inches left protruding from the dog. That’s the handle. Then the dog is dunked into corn bread batter and swirled around, to make sure it is evenly coated. The coated dog goes from the batter to the fryer and cooked until golden brown.
16. Cuban Sandwich
A glorious monument to all that is pork, it is constructed with three different kinds of pork like roast pork, boiled ham, Genoa salami, pickles, Swiss cheese, mustard and mayo. Lettuce and tomato are optional, but you should eat your veg Cuban bread, a peculiar bread that looks like a baguette, but made with lard. It’s tender inside, crunchy and flaky outside.
This one is served pressed, the outside lightly toasted, the cheese inside melting to minimize tectonic slide. It is utterly perfect, unimprovable, the best lunch you can have, and enough for a snack later.
17. Chop suey
Chopsuey is not a dish found anywhere in China. In fact, it derives its name from the Cantonese word, which loosely translates to miscellaneous ingredients. During the mid twentieth century, immigrants from Taiwan came to America and opened restaurants. However, when they served the salty Taiwanese cuisine, American customers could not stand the taste.
They had already been convinced that the sweet and mushy chop suey they had been fed for over half a century was real Chinese food. In response, Taiwanese restaurants modified their recipes, made them sweeter, and deep-fried the food. By the close of the twentieth century, an increasing number of Chinese immigrants entered America, and restaurants began serving somewhat authentic Chinese food.
However, despite the efforts made by countless chefs to reclaim Chinese food, chop suey and General Tso's Chicken will forever remain on the menus of many Chinese restaurants in the States.
18. Cheez-It crackers
These tasty squares of goodness are the number-one-selling snack item in all of America and come in 33 flavors. It’s a quarter-of-a-billion dollar business for the Sunshine Biscuits division of Kellogg’s, outselling America’s secondmost popular snack food Pepperidge Farm Goldfish by nearly 30%! They’ve been manufactured since 1921, and sales of Cheez-Its account for a whopping 5% of all of Kellogg’s massive annual revenue!
You can’t walk into an American grocery store without seeing dozens of styles of graham crackers! Americans take them for granted, and we can’t seem to make two of the most popular American desserts without them, s’mores and cheesecake. They sure are delicious!
Pop-Tarts are strangely-addicting frosted rectangles are pretty much a staple of American breakfasts for families on the go, serving as a quick treat for the kids and even adults. Another product of Kellogg’s, the company sells 2 billion Pop-Tarts per year.
19. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
In the multi-billion-dollar business of candy bars and similar confectionery delights, Reese’s is the American champion! Reese’s outsells the next most profitable brand of candy by 62%, with more American households buying these peanut butter cups than any other type of confection. Reese’s has developed the absolute perfect combination of peanut butter and chocolate!
20. Chex Mix
This is the fourth most popular snack food in the US, a $300-million-dollar annual business. It can be found in a few other countries under the name Nuts & Bolts, but the Chex Mix name is almost exclusive to American stores.
21. Butterfingers
This candy bar is among the top ten most beloved chocolate bars in America. Despite being manufactured by the Ferrara Company founded by Italian immigrants, and being owned by Swiss company Nestle for decades, the candy rarely appears outside of the United States.
22. Breads
Cheddar Biscuit is the holy grail of restaurant breads and will leave you feeling like a million bucks! Try to eat at least 4 of them. Next up we have the Rolls with Cinnamon Honey Butter. You literally cannot eat enough of these. And, they are unlimited. It's not uncommon for people to eat 10 to 15 of these rolls during the course of a meal. Add the delicious honey butter and you have a treat worthwhile.
The Honey Wheat Bread with creamy butter is third on the list. They only give you one to start with, but you can ask for more. I like to ask for at least 3 of these as I love them and love bread. And if you're reading this, chances are high you love bread too. Make sure to grab a few of these with a steak and a Fosters!
Coming in fourth on the list is the Rosemary Bread. This bread used to be To Die For. But in recent years it’s slipped down the list but beware sometimes the bread can be a few hours old and dry. Request fresh rolls and lots of virgin olive oil with fresh cracked black pepper.
Last but not least we have the famous Breadsticks. Delicious and sure to please. Unlimited. Appetizing. Get them with a bowl of soup. Try to eat 20 of them. It’s crazy to think that 20 years ago these would have been ranked #1 but the times have changed.
The main reason for companies to give out breadsticks is not to fill you up. It's not to make you thirsty so you'll drink more. They give out breadsticks to give you a small feeling that they are doing you a favor. And they hope that favor leads you to return to their restaurant.
23. Whoopie pie
Whoopie pies are a considered a New England phenomenon and a Pennsylvania Amish tradition. They are one of Maine’s best known and most loved comfort foods. People from Maine even claim that they were weaned on Whoopie Pies.
24. Cheesesteak
A cheese steak is a sandwich native to the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It’s often called a Philly cheese steak or cheesesteak. Every restaurant puts their own twist on the sandwich but these are the nuts and bolts. It starts with a good quality roll. Steak shops get them delivered fresh daily, day old bread is not allowed.
The bread is important and is a good quality hoagie roll. These are often Amoroso rolls. Long submarine rolls are usually cut in half or a shorter hoagie roll is used. Mushrooms may or may not be added.
The other ingredients are: thinly sliced ribeye steak, chopped onions and cheese. The cheese can be white American, cheddar, provolone or cheese whiz. That’s about all that goes on a Philly cheesesteak. Some people like pickled peppers but they’re not the norm. Thinly sliced steak (ribeye, sirloin, or loin strip) is quickly grilled or pan-seared in oil. Sliced or chopped onions and bell peppers (preferably red ones) are browned.
To make a cheesesteak, they begin by cooking the beef on a flat top grill and seasoning it well with salt and pepper. Some places will finely chop the meat, some leave it in strips, both are accepted methods of preparation. The onions are precooked on the grill until caramelized and mixed into the cooked steak to order, as some don’t like onions.
The sliced cheese is laid on top of the hot meat and allowed to melt, and the whole mess is picked up with a spatula and placed into the awaiting roll. If the diner wants cheese whiz, it is ladled on at this time.
25. Cheetos
This cheesy snack food is one of the most popular items in the potato chip aisle in American grocery stores. But its popularity has never caught on overseas. Again, it’s probably the imitation cheese flavor that turns foreigners off. But they are freakishly addicting, even for this chef who enjoys fine foods. If you can’t live without your Cheetos, you better stock up before that international vacation!
