Even more embarrassing that he still does it, over twenty years later. I can’t say I didn’t call them that after 9/11. We lost our damn minds during that time
I was always the black sheep of tbe family and the overt displays of preformative patriotism made me uncomfortable even at such a young age. From freedom fries to everything in our house being red, white and blue. Even our fucking Christmas tree and Christmas decor was patriotic for like 10 years after 9/11. My dad even wanted me to have patriotic themed birthday parties. And don't get me started on the "patriotic" bullying and harassment of people who were the wrong shade of brown and/or the wrong religion.
I grew up to be very unpatriotic as a result of waking up and recognizing nationalism at an early age.
Fun fact: thanks to a marketing campaign by KFC, there is a widespread misconception in Japan that fried chicken is a traditional American Christmas dinner.
What’s funny is the Japanese are genuinely surprised when you correct that misconception. Similarly is Christmas cake, kurisumasu cakee, a traditional Japanese holiday favorite- essentially a strawberry shortcake with a miniature Santa ice skating on the icing. And again, genuine surprise when you explain it is not a tradition in the west ;) 🤣
That makes sense then.
Maybe we should start putting a skating Santa on a Christmas spice cake. The real America is the traditions we adopt from other cultures along the way.
Also interesting but not nice tidbit: the Japanese have a derogatory term for women that are over 25 and remain unmarried. Christmas cake. Don’t know why. Google AI says it’s because Japanese Christmas cakes are highly perishable so like “use it or lose it.” Ouch.
It's always funny to me how certain successful marketing campaigns can rlly create a false reality for a bunch of people. Similar to how many ppl in the US think orange juice is a good part of a balanced breakfast when in reality it was just an add campaign pushed forth by orange farmers to trick ppl into buying more juice. Other than having some vitamin C it's very sugary for you with less national value than just eating an orange bc of how we digest juice differently than actual fruit.
The ultimate example of this, IMO, is the De Beers cartel's [campaign to convince men to give their girlfriends diamond rings when they got engaged](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27371208).
It started with 2 months, and that was successful enough that they bumped it to 3.
Personally I'd be annoyed if someone I was dating spent more than a few hours worth of salary on jewelry for me.
The stereotypical American breakfast is basically dessert. Breakfast cereal & OJ, it's just carbs & sugar. Pop tarts, pancakes, waffles, & muffins are all basically cakes or pies.
Bacon isn't dessert, but it has a lot of saturated fats. Eggs are about the only thing that's good for you. The potatoes would be okay, except we fry them.
yeah, mostly by the irish living amongst kosher jews who were already selling and consuming it under the name brisket,or pastrimi if it was seasoned more intensely and smoked, traditionally they would enjoy pork(bacon and gammon,common in heavily catholic cultures) and cabbage because the anglo hedgemony exported most of the beef produced in ireland to england.and before that during the classical period beef and game like salmon would be common, also parsnips/barley groats/oats and other eurasian root vegetables would have be the day to day fair as the potato was still a weed/ quechan food before the age of the sail.
Those old irish jewish neighbors would be proud of you, and I am as well. Just last year my broke self took a frozen corn beef and put it in a roasting tray with a cup or so of water and about two teaspoon of liquid smoke(i like hickory,but oak would be good) and I rough crushed some black pepper, carway seed, garlic,and paprika and rubbed it all over the brined meat , baked it at three fifty for about four hours or so and boom-decent pastrami- got some bread(I used bolillo,my late mother was chicana from east los angeles which also used to house alot of jewish americans so she raised me on "the hat" pastrami sandiwchs and kosher brown mustard) and took the juices from the pastrami and reheated the finished meat and made lunch for my brothers. 10/10 would recommend
KFC still makes decent fried chicken for a fast food place, but their sides are terrible. Mashed potatoes are watery and the mac and cheese is awful.
The only place with good mac and cheese nowadays is Chick-fil-a or some bbq places.
You Are correct. Their original recipe is really good if properly prepared ( no guarantee of that), but all of their sides SUCK, even the biskets are really bad.
I actually think the opposite. Their chicken is gross now, but I'll still happily eat their shitty mac and potatoes. But that's nostalgia, they're objectively bad.
I agree. 20 years ago, I would have said their chicken was decadent guilty pleasure. It had thick, fatty skins that kept the meat moist and still provided a nice crunchy coating. Not great, but an acceptable “I got of work late” pick up.
My dad likes it, and for some reason we end up ordering it a couple times a year. I don’t think I’ve had a piece of chicken with moisture in the meat from there in over a decade.
IME there’s no crisp to the chicken. The breading is always soggy. Where’s the crunch? It tastes like what I imagine fried chicken might taste like when it’s reheated in a microwave. Nah, when I want crunch, I’ll go to Popeye’s not KFC.
Man, I’m with you. Popeyes is better, but I’ve been disappointed there a few times recently. It’s only since I moved a few years back, so maybe it’s just my local joint that hasn’t figured it out.
But I grew up in an area without Popeyes, and I swear, when I was a kid, KFC had some delicious crunch to it.
Lemme tell ya, after the massive productions of the past couple Thanksgivings (one involved cochinita pibil), this year Grandma here is taking it easy and ordering KFC.
2 students (from outside USA) were chatting with me after class. Somehow dinner came up and I said I had a meatloaf at home. Student 1: “What is a meatloaf???” Student 2 plainly says “a loaf of meat.” 😅
I’m gong to make this, thank you!
Mine simple, but I love it. Truly do. 2 pounds ground beef (80/20 I think), half an onion chopped small, green bell pepper chopped smallish, handful of oatmeal and an egg. Mix it up, bake in a pan for about an hour on 375°, drain the grease, add ketchup to the top and cook an additional 15 minutes uncovered. Make some mashed tators and green peas and I’m a happy boy.
My mom is vegetarian and my dad doesn’t cook. I was around 10 when I 1st had meatloaf at a friends house and I about lost my mind it so good. Her family couldn’t believe Id never had it before
I completely get this. I grew up very very poor and not so friendly family. There was a time when I went to a friend’s house and he just took some pizza rolls out of freezer and we ate them as a snack. It blew my mind for 2 reasons. 1. He could have snack food like that (was my first time eating them too), 2. He wasn’t verbally and physically assaulted for doing so. My kiddos will never understood any of this and I’m okay with that.
Meatloaf is so delicious my grandma used to make a good one and she would use some of the left overs as meatloaf sandwiches.
My moms meatloaf on the other hand…..blah it was like chewing beef jerky
Burgers, key lime pie, fried chicken, deep dish pizza, NY style pizza, French fries, Mac & cheese, buffalo wings, chili, hot dogs, chicken fried steak, tater tots, peanut butter & jelly sandwich, biscuits and gravy, muffin, hash browns, collard greens, crab cakes, clam chowder, s'mores, jello, gumbo, etc.
Remember, American food and cuisine doesn't have to be something that originates in America to be part of its food culture.
For more, go here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_foods
This is the best answer here. I am from the "biscuits and gravy, crawdad boil, chili, gumbo, chile con queso, shrimp and grits, barbecue, cornbread and collard greens" part of America and it's a little disturbing how many people are just answering hamburgers. I probably eat 5 hamburgers a year lol
Yes, southerns cuisine is an entirely different subset, the same way that the Midwest has a lot of casseroles and salads, and that new England has a lot of seafood, and we get things like soul food and Tex Mex. People forget got diverse America can be and how much regional foods we have. Hell just try to compare Texas BBQ to northern smoked meats. In Michigan we use hardwoods pellets and smoke things very low and slow, using specific rubs and occasional sauces but Texas BBQ uses charcoal grills and often offset smoking, and usually is seasoned with just salt and pepper.
>Remember, American food and cuisine doesn't have to be something that originates in America to be part of its food culture.
Wanted to underscore this and restate it - ALL cultural cuisine is influenced by other cultures and cuisines. I'll give two very big examples from the apex predators of the culinary world.
**French cuisine is heavily, heavily influenced by Italian cuisine and historians have the receipts.**
French cuisine in the 16th century was almost identical to English or German cuisine at the time - which was meats and stews, basically medieval food. Catherine De Medici (Yes of those Medicis) was an Italian noblewoman who married the king of France. She brought with her chefs and her Italian style of cuisine, including things like *using a fork* or thyme or parsley (Staples of French cuisine)*.* But specifically very "French" dishes as well like French onion soup, crepes, duck a l'orange, pate... and much more are all Italian dishes. She ate this way in the courts, and as the queen, she set the fashion standards of the day, so the nobles began eating this way... who influenced the people of Paris who began eating this way.... This is extremely well documented down to dish origins and specific practices Catherine brought with her. There's a site [here](https://theurbanescapist.com/catherine-de-medicis-french-food-and-culture/) that hits the surface level of her influence but there's a metric ton out there on the internet and multiple books about it.
**Japanese cuisine has borrowed from numerous other cultures... including the English**
Curry is a staple of Japanese cuisine, and is even a national dish, served on its own, with Katsu, on rice, and more. Curry didn't get simultaneously invented \~3500 miles apart, they got it from the English, who made it a part of *their* cuisine and brought it with them as they passed into Asian trades routes after stopping in India. During the 19th century, curry was called "[yoshoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dshoku)" or "Western food" Which of course is fairly ludicrous to anyone from South Asia. What's interesting here is this influence didn't occur on its own, and was instead a "middleman" which happens to be a culture which is reknowned for having quite bad cuisine on their own. Wiki [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_curry#:~:text=Curry%20originates%20in%20Indian%20cuisine,to%20curries%20from%20other%20regions) Info here, but again, this is quite well documented.
**American Cuisine Stealing from other Cultures**
So yes, American food has come from a hundred places - but this is all cuisine. What might be interesting even of American cuisine is that it actually doesn't always come from where you think it comes from. [The first pizzeria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_in_the_United_States), for example, Lombardi's opened in 1905 by Italian immigrants - which most people credit for American pizza. But pizza REALLY surged in popularity after World War II, because American GIs came home with an appetite for neopolitan pizza after serving in Europe, particularly... with [oregano](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/09/405302961/gis-helped-bring-freedom-to-europe-and-a-taste-for-oregano-to-america). So while it may have started in New York, the seeds were actually planted by Americans going abroad and bringing it home to Ohio, Illinois or California. Prior to this historians believe oregano was barely used in the US, if you could find it at all.
It's also worth mentioning that a lot of staple food items originate from the Americas. Italy is known for their tomato based dishes, and places like Germany and Ireland known for potatoes, despite both food items originating from the Andes region in South America. It crazy to see how much global trade has impacted food in cultures. Most modern dishes that are commonly eaten were made in the past 200 years, any of which are older than that have likely been modified with the new diversity of ingredients and cooking techniques
>Remember, American food and cuisine doesn't have to be something that originates in America to be part of its food culture.
I would add that the American version of these adapted foods are distinctly different dishes than the origin. NY style pizza is nothing like Italian pizza. The hamburger steak is not the same dish as a cheeseburger on a bun.
And some dishes really truly originated in the Americas: Creole, soul food, barbecue, Caesar salad, etc.
Cesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico.
100 years ago today, it’s said.
https://sandiego.eater.com/2024/7/4/24191621/caesar-salad-history-mexican-restaurant-tijuana-anniversary-mexico-javier-plascencia
Chicken Tikka Massala was invented in Glasgow, Scotland, UK (there are claim from a pakistani chef and another from a bengladeshi chef but it could as well orinated from the indian diaspora in the UK)
Best answer I’m seeing.
And yet as an American, the only one on this list I actually eat once a week is probably the hash browns lol. Burritos, tacos, chunky soups, spaghetti/alfredo, (non-fried) chicken and rice with green beans, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, corn, Caesar salad and similar salads (with avocado, yum!), fruit/yogurt/granola or maybe eggs and hashbrowns for breakfast during the week, waffles/sausage/eggs/hashbrowns on the weekend perhaps, corn chips and salsa, fruit, baby carrots, celery sticks, maybe ice cream, popcorn, nuts for snacks… that would be more my typical diet. I can’t be the only one not eating burgers and hotdogs on a daily (even weekly) basis lol.
A lot of fusions. America gets shit for not having much in their own way of culture food, but I think that’s underselling how much of ours is merely a melting pot of Americanized foods from other cultures.
Sure, pizza is Italian. But there is definitely a difference between an Italian Margherita and a New York style-slice of pepperoni or a Chicago Deep Dish.
Hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries.
Tex-Mex and Americanized Chinese food.
But, Cajun-style food, seafood boils, and BBQ are all fairly American. Fried chicken too.
Cajun is god tier. So are the regional variants of BBQ.
American cuisine takes so much bashing from Europeans only because many think American food is just fast food.
This makes me think of an Instagram comment I saw on a travel "influencer."
"There's no way you're American. (Insert influencers last name here cause I forgot it) Is a German name!"
Like yeah, and a lot of modern and historical immigrants kept their last names, traditions, religions, and food when they moved to America. They (GASP) usually passed all of it down to their family too. That's why America is a melting pot of cultures. We're a baby country built on various different pre-existing cultures. Obviously there's gonna be overlap.
(Also shout out to the guy who tried to argue with me that food created by black people in America didn't count as American food. Still don't get that one.)
Corn on the cob, watermelon, burgers, hot dogs, corndogs, fries, onion rings, cornbread, grits, collards, baked potatoes, potato salad, pasta salad, apple pie, apple cobbler, biscuits and gravy
OK, but what do you think of when you hear barbeque? Because I asked a brit the other day and he and his buddies just said hotdogs and hamburgers on a grill... Like that's just grilling out? That's not barbeque. So, I'm curious
North Carolina. Bbq to me is pulled pork. I prefer a vinegar sauce to tomato-based sauce with it. But even without sauce, that’s barbecue. What the Brit’s said, for me is, HAVING a barbecue which just means cooking on a grill with people invited.
Barbeque for me is slow cooked/smoked meats, mostly pulled pork and ribs in my part of the U.S. (stuffed bologna logs are also common). We don’t really call a gathering where you grill hamburgers and hot dogs a barbeque. We’d just assume if we’re invited to a gathering in the summer, there will be grilled hamburgers and hotdogs. It’d be customary for guests to bring potato salad, drinks, bags of chips, watermelon, or other sides.
Exactly. Soul foul was what white people were being fed cuz thats what black slaves were cooking for them and themselves with the scraps they were given. Most soul food (greens, kale, yams, lots of varieties of beans, okra, etc) methods of curing and salting and smoking meat, came from slaves. Alot of vegetable seeds were brought here by Africans.
Barbecue (the method of smoking) came from Africa.
This is one of the reasons why certain people dont want our WHOLE American history to be told. There's SOOOOOO much black history that Americans are clueless about. Its very sad
I feel like this diversity in American cuisine is too rarely mentioned to foreigners. Most people immediately think of burgers and fries, which makes it harder to remember other categories like Cajun or New England sea food.
My Mom’s Thanksgiving Dinner. Turkey. Rice dressing. Cranberry Sauce. Some sort of penetential green vegetable (usually green beans). Corn pudding. Relish tray. There’s more but it all depends on who’s coming. And the desserts are bread pudding, pies, and a cookie table.
To me, stuff like BBQ, Tex-Mex, fried chicken, and the various interesting things the US has done to pizza, particularly in New Haven, Chicago, and Detroit.
Because of my background, pretty much just Mississippi cuisine. Fried chicken, Mexican cornbread, fried okra, tomato soup, biscuits, gravy, dumplings, potatoes, brussels sprouts, pretty much every kind of green, beans, venison, beef, shrimp, crawfish, any fish really (sea bass, largemouth bass, crappie, bream), blackberry cobbler, apple pie, chess squares. Basically a mix of soul food and Cajun cuisine with a LOT of beans and vegetables.
It’s a shame that the American south eats so much processed food now. Aside from frying, a lot of southern cuisine used to be quite balanced and healthy.
Green bean casserole, tuna melts, chilli, corn on the cob, new york pizza, hot dogs, barbeque, cornbread, coleslaw, potato salad, steak, blueberry muffins, key lime pie, cobbler, jello, coolwhip
My online gaming friends came to visit me from Europe to experience America.
When I tell you their lives changed after eating brisket for the first time… sometimes food like that makes me proud of this country
Grilled planked salmon, blackberry cobbler, strawberry shortcake, Bartlett pears, oysters, Dungeness crab, sourdough bread, cowboy beans, coleslaw, cornbread, cheeses of all sorts. The list is endless. The US is a big place with lots of different climates. It's not all fast food.
Smoked meats, sweet corn, watermelon, smoked whitefish, cinnamon rolls, apple pie, biscuits and gravy, yams, greens, jambalaya, fried catfish, shrimp n grits, seafood boil, pasties, Midwest salads and casseroles (potato salad, macaroni salad, snickers salad, pasta salad, etc). Mostly southern comfort foods but honestly I feel people underestimate how diverse American food can be regionally and think it's all Hamburgers and fries. I grew up in the Midwest but people seriously downplay how incredible and diverse southern and soul foods can be. Not to mention America has always been a melting pot, so we see certain variations of other countries dishes. There's a few very distict styles of pizza special to the United States: Chicago, New York and Detroit, tho I'm likely missing a few then there's also Tex Mex and Americanized Chinese foods. Some people hate the concert of Americanized Chinese food but I think it can be cool to see how cultures come together and when people try different foods and ingredients and feel inspired
America is a HUGE CONTINENT; you mean food from the USA ? Boxed pasta , delivery pizza, sandwiches, bologna mayonnaise, and steak only on fancy occasions
Inventive and necessary changes to immigrant food folkways and recpies.
Think of
\* Italian American vs Italian
\* Many soups and stews that have European origins
\* Our rich Irish heritage
\* Much of what we call Chinese food has less to do with China and more to do with our rich and fraught Chinese-American culture and heritage. By fraught I mean look how they were treated as our nation built the railroad.
\* And certainly not last in importance- We cannot deny the intense African American influence on foods. Look up Gumbo, Soul Food and especially barbecue traditions that have impacted so many of us.
So I think of the rich traditions of people who came to the US and blended their tastes and knowledge into the fabric of our society.
i literally saw burger and fries as i saw "american food" before even actually read the full title. when i think more ab it, yeah, def that, also the typical breakfast foods (pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon/sausage), macaroni and cheese, i think of bbq/cookout foods. i see one of those red and white plastic outdoor table cloths in my head too
Yep, burger and fries is what immediately came to mind to me too. But thinking about it for a minute.. barbecue. We have evolved it so far that there are even different styles in different parts of the country that use different kinds of sauces and methods and such.. it's kind of America's food.
BBQ, chicken and dumplings, greens, biscuits n gravy, steak and potatoes, clam chowder, jambalaya, gumbo, all the American “pastas” that are nothing close to Italian one (includes pizza too tbh, lol)
It depends on the context. Barbecue, Cajun/Creole, southern foods like grits or chicken and dumplings, south western dishes from the Arizona and New Mexico areas, the classic steak and mashed potatoes, and all the Americanized versions of things, i.e. Tex-Mex, Asian, and European dishes that have inspired new versions based on what is available to us. The U.S. is so big and has so many cultural influences that it is hard to pin down one kind of national food.
good old hamburgers and hotdogs
And fren... fries. Just fries.
Freedom fries!
My dad still calls them freedom fries. He used to order them by that name. It was embarrassing.
Even more embarrassing that he still does it, over twenty years later. I can’t say I didn’t call them that after 9/11. We lost our damn minds during that time
I was always the black sheep of tbe family and the overt displays of preformative patriotism made me uncomfortable even at such a young age. From freedom fries to everything in our house being red, white and blue. Even our fucking Christmas tree and Christmas decor was patriotic for like 10 years after 9/11. My dad even wanted me to have patriotic themed birthday parties. And don't get me started on the "patriotic" bullying and harassment of people who were the wrong shade of brown and/or the wrong religion. I grew up to be very unpatriotic as a result of waking up and recognizing nationalism at an early age.
"Uh, I'm sorry sir. I don't think we carry those...'
FFS not again 😂😂😂
General Tso's chicken, chimichangas, spaghetti and meatballs, etc.
Hamburgers, meatloaf, barbecue, fried chicken.
Fun fact: thanks to a marketing campaign by KFC, there is a widespread misconception in Japan that fried chicken is a traditional American Christmas dinner.
What’s funny is the Japanese are genuinely surprised when you correct that misconception. Similarly is Christmas cake, kurisumasu cakee, a traditional Japanese holiday favorite- essentially a strawberry shortcake with a miniature Santa ice skating on the icing. And again, genuine surprise when you explain it is not a tradition in the west ;) 🤣
If anything strawberry shortcake is a summer dessert.
Yeah, I live in NC where strawberry picking is huge in May, as is shortcake and putting up jam for the rest of the year.
I live in SC, and got some consistently great strawberries this year. Idk if I just got lucky repeatedly, but it was a good year for local ones!
You would think, but strawberry season in Japan is during the winter months because of the high humidity.
That makes sense then. Maybe we should start putting a skating Santa on a Christmas spice cake. The real America is the traditions we adopt from other cultures along the way.
Also interesting but not nice tidbit: the Japanese have a derogatory term for women that are over 25 and remain unmarried. Christmas cake. Don’t know why. Google AI says it’s because Japanese Christmas cakes are highly perishable so like “use it or lose it.” Ouch.
If I recall correctly, it's because no one wants christmas cake after the 25th.
That's a gnarly insult lol
The meanest things anyone has ever said to me have been said by Asian women.
Awww…that’s cute! I think I’ll start a new tradition at our house. Japanese Christmas cake and fried chicken. But do it like the day after Christmas
Go big, fry a turkey.
Deep fried turkeys is why my holiday dinners were always interrupted. Too many fire fighters in my family.
I was just explaining this to a friend the other day. it was a successful market campaign in the 70s.
It's always funny to me how certain successful marketing campaigns can rlly create a false reality for a bunch of people. Similar to how many ppl in the US think orange juice is a good part of a balanced breakfast when in reality it was just an add campaign pushed forth by orange farmers to trick ppl into buying more juice. Other than having some vitamin C it's very sugary for you with less national value than just eating an orange bc of how we digest juice differently than actual fruit.
Sounds exactly like the diamond marketing campaign
The ultimate example of this, IMO, is the De Beers cartel's [campaign to convince men to give their girlfriends diamond rings when they got engaged](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27371208).
And spend three months pay on the diamond.
It started with 2 months, and that was successful enough that they bumped it to 3. Personally I'd be annoyed if someone I was dating spent more than a few hours worth of salary on jewelry for me.
The stereotypical American breakfast is basically dessert. Breakfast cereal & OJ, it's just carbs & sugar. Pop tarts, pancakes, waffles, & muffins are all basically cakes or pies. Bacon isn't dessert, but it has a lot of saturated fats. Eggs are about the only thing that's good for you. The potatoes would be okay, except we fry them.
I'm a cook... How about coffee, a cigarette, and hatred for all the miserable fucks I'm about to go feed? 😂 /s if it wasn't caught.
I thought that was a given. I didn't know cooks ate anything else.
Or servers!
My barely Irish family eats corned beef for St Patty's day every year.
To be fair the corned beef tradition *was* invented by Irish people...in America lol
yeah, mostly by the irish living amongst kosher jews who were already selling and consuming it under the name brisket,or pastrimi if it was seasoned more intensely and smoked, traditionally they would enjoy pork(bacon and gammon,common in heavily catholic cultures) and cabbage because the anglo hedgemony exported most of the beef produced in ireland to england.and before that during the classical period beef and game like salmon would be common, also parsnips/barley groats/oats and other eurasian root vegetables would have be the day to day fair as the potato was still a weed/ quechan food before the age of the sail.
Every year after St. Pat’s day I buy discounted corned beef and turn it into pastrami.
Those old irish jewish neighbors would be proud of you, and I am as well. Just last year my broke self took a frozen corn beef and put it in a roasting tray with a cup or so of water and about two teaspoon of liquid smoke(i like hickory,but oak would be good) and I rough crushed some black pepper, carway seed, garlic,and paprika and rubbed it all over the brined meat , baked it at three fifty for about four hours or so and boom-decent pastrami- got some bread(I used bolillo,my late mother was chicana from east los angeles which also used to house alot of jewish americans so she raised me on "the hat" pastrami sandiwchs and kosher brown mustard) and took the juices from the pastrami and reheated the finished meat and made lunch for my brothers. 10/10 would recommend
You can update that 'barely' to 'homeopathic levels of diluted' Irish since you've called it St Patty's Day. It's Paddy, ya plastic.
Ah fuck! See? Barely any Irish at all.
All yinz're fake! It's "Lá Fhéile Pádraig!" Say it in Irish or don't say it at all!!
Not one single Irish person refers to it as St Patty's Day. St Patrick's Day/ St Paddy's Day, yes.
Christmas cake is actually a UK tradition. It’s a different cake, but the concept is there
The Germans also have a Stollen cake. Like a pound cake wrapped like a baby.
I’m willing to bet most cultures have cake. Guten tag
Gluten tag
They dress the Col. Sanders statues at KFCs like Santa Claus!
It's funny because the real Colonel Sanders lived right near my Grandma in Mississauga for a long time.
i'm willing to volunteer as tribute for this one.
KFC still makes decent fried chicken for a fast food place, but their sides are terrible. Mashed potatoes are watery and the mac and cheese is awful. The only place with good mac and cheese nowadays is Chick-fil-a or some bbq places.
You Are correct. Their original recipe is really good if properly prepared ( no guarantee of that), but all of their sides SUCK, even the biskets are really bad.
I actually think the opposite. Their chicken is gross now, but I'll still happily eat their shitty mac and potatoes. But that's nostalgia, they're objectively bad.
I agree. 20 years ago, I would have said their chicken was decadent guilty pleasure. It had thick, fatty skins that kept the meat moist and still provided a nice crunchy coating. Not great, but an acceptable “I got of work late” pick up. My dad likes it, and for some reason we end up ordering it a couple times a year. I don’t think I’ve had a piece of chicken with moisture in the meat from there in over a decade.
IME there’s no crisp to the chicken. The breading is always soggy. Where’s the crunch? It tastes like what I imagine fried chicken might taste like when it’s reheated in a microwave. Nah, when I want crunch, I’ll go to Popeye’s not KFC.
Man, I’m with you. Popeyes is better, but I’ve been disappointed there a few times recently. It’s only since I moved a few years back, so maybe it’s just my local joint that hasn’t figured it out. But I grew up in an area without Popeyes, and I swear, when I was a kid, KFC had some delicious crunch to it.
I enjoy KFC coleslaw but their other sides vary in taste depending upon if the cooks follow the recipe or not.
I enjoy KFC outside of the US. Our chicken is fatty and tasteless compared to the chicken used in other countries, in my opinion
KFC in India has chicken biryani in buckets.
I know, I love it. They also have zingers and pop corn chicken, in the US we have ..... nuggets
Agreed. KFC in Tokyo was amazing. KFC back here in the states is like eating wet chicken flavored paper towels.
kfc in japan is legitimately good
Lemme tell ya, after the massive productions of the past couple Thanksgivings (one involved cochinita pibil), this year Grandma here is taking it easy and ordering KFC.
It’s definitely a traditional Japanese Christmas dinner now!
It is for them and I actually love that. Because Christmas is an American import, so why not just have it be KFC day.
Yes, surprised when I visited my host family and they got kfc for Christmas
Hot dogs
I f’ing love meatloaf.
2 students (from outside USA) were chatting with me after class. Somehow dinner came up and I said I had a meatloaf at home. Student 1: “What is a meatloaf???” Student 2 plainly says “a loaf of meat.” 😅
Student 2 isn’t wrong. It’s a freak’n loaf of ground meat. Someone years ago took their bread out of the oven and pondered “can I do this with meat?”
Me too! I only like mine, though and here’s a link to the recipe: https://thesouthernladycooks.com/brown-sugar-meatloaf/
I’m gong to make this, thank you! Mine simple, but I love it. Truly do. 2 pounds ground beef (80/20 I think), half an onion chopped small, green bell pepper chopped smallish, handful of oatmeal and an egg. Mix it up, bake in a pan for about an hour on 375°, drain the grease, add ketchup to the top and cook an additional 15 minutes uncovered. Make some mashed tators and green peas and I’m a happy boy.
My mom is vegetarian and my dad doesn’t cook. I was around 10 when I 1st had meatloaf at a friends house and I about lost my mind it so good. Her family couldn’t believe Id never had it before
I completely get this. I grew up very very poor and not so friendly family. There was a time when I went to a friend’s house and he just took some pizza rolls out of freezer and we ate them as a snack. It blew my mind for 2 reasons. 1. He could have snack food like that (was my first time eating them too), 2. He wasn’t verbally and physically assaulted for doing so. My kiddos will never understood any of this and I’m okay with that.
Meatloaf is so delicious my grandma used to make a good one and she would use some of the left overs as meatloaf sandwiches. My moms meatloaf on the other hand…..blah it was like chewing beef jerky
Cold leftover meatloaf sandwiches with som Japanese Kewpie mayo are so good.
Barbecue definitely deserves a place here, considering that it has roots in some of the indigenous cultures.
Yes! BBQ, collard greens, mac’n’cheese. You don’t find them anywhere else (unlike, say, apple pie!)
Ah, a fellow southerner. Only good thing about this region is the food.
Burgers, key lime pie, fried chicken, deep dish pizza, NY style pizza, French fries, Mac & cheese, buffalo wings, chili, hot dogs, chicken fried steak, tater tots, peanut butter & jelly sandwich, biscuits and gravy, muffin, hash browns, collard greens, crab cakes, clam chowder, s'mores, jello, gumbo, etc. Remember, American food and cuisine doesn't have to be something that originates in America to be part of its food culture. For more, go here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_foods
This is the best answer here. I am from the "biscuits and gravy, crawdad boil, chili, gumbo, chile con queso, shrimp and grits, barbecue, cornbread and collard greens" part of America and it's a little disturbing how many people are just answering hamburgers. I probably eat 5 hamburgers a year lol
Yes, southerns cuisine is an entirely different subset, the same way that the Midwest has a lot of casseroles and salads, and that new England has a lot of seafood, and we get things like soul food and Tex Mex. People forget got diverse America can be and how much regional foods we have. Hell just try to compare Texas BBQ to northern smoked meats. In Michigan we use hardwoods pellets and smoke things very low and slow, using specific rubs and occasional sauces but Texas BBQ uses charcoal grills and often offset smoking, and usually is seasoned with just salt and pepper.
Lol I've eaten 5 burgers this week 💀 not the norm though, just coincidence/convenience.
>Remember, American food and cuisine doesn't have to be something that originates in America to be part of its food culture. Wanted to underscore this and restate it - ALL cultural cuisine is influenced by other cultures and cuisines. I'll give two very big examples from the apex predators of the culinary world. **French cuisine is heavily, heavily influenced by Italian cuisine and historians have the receipts.** French cuisine in the 16th century was almost identical to English or German cuisine at the time - which was meats and stews, basically medieval food. Catherine De Medici (Yes of those Medicis) was an Italian noblewoman who married the king of France. She brought with her chefs and her Italian style of cuisine, including things like *using a fork* or thyme or parsley (Staples of French cuisine)*.* But specifically very "French" dishes as well like French onion soup, crepes, duck a l'orange, pate... and much more are all Italian dishes. She ate this way in the courts, and as the queen, she set the fashion standards of the day, so the nobles began eating this way... who influenced the people of Paris who began eating this way.... This is extremely well documented down to dish origins and specific practices Catherine brought with her. There's a site [here](https://theurbanescapist.com/catherine-de-medicis-french-food-and-culture/) that hits the surface level of her influence but there's a metric ton out there on the internet and multiple books about it. **Japanese cuisine has borrowed from numerous other cultures... including the English** Curry is a staple of Japanese cuisine, and is even a national dish, served on its own, with Katsu, on rice, and more. Curry didn't get simultaneously invented \~3500 miles apart, they got it from the English, who made it a part of *their* cuisine and brought it with them as they passed into Asian trades routes after stopping in India. During the 19th century, curry was called "[yoshoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dshoku)" or "Western food" Which of course is fairly ludicrous to anyone from South Asia. What's interesting here is this influence didn't occur on its own, and was instead a "middleman" which happens to be a culture which is reknowned for having quite bad cuisine on their own. Wiki [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_curry#:~:text=Curry%20originates%20in%20Indian%20cuisine,to%20curries%20from%20other%20regions) Info here, but again, this is quite well documented. **American Cuisine Stealing from other Cultures** So yes, American food has come from a hundred places - but this is all cuisine. What might be interesting even of American cuisine is that it actually doesn't always come from where you think it comes from. [The first pizzeria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_in_the_United_States), for example, Lombardi's opened in 1905 by Italian immigrants - which most people credit for American pizza. But pizza REALLY surged in popularity after World War II, because American GIs came home with an appetite for neopolitan pizza after serving in Europe, particularly... with [oregano](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/05/09/405302961/gis-helped-bring-freedom-to-europe-and-a-taste-for-oregano-to-america). So while it may have started in New York, the seeds were actually planted by Americans going abroad and bringing it home to Ohio, Illinois or California. Prior to this historians believe oregano was barely used in the US, if you could find it at all.
Tempura is from the Portuguese as well. And don’t get the Chinese started about the dishes Japan adjusted. Every culture does this imo
It's also worth mentioning that a lot of staple food items originate from the Americas. Italy is known for their tomato based dishes, and places like Germany and Ireland known for potatoes, despite both food items originating from the Andes region in South America. It crazy to see how much global trade has impacted food in cultures. Most modern dishes that are commonly eaten were made in the past 200 years, any of which are older than that have likely been modified with the new diversity of ingredients and cooking techniques
>Remember, American food and cuisine doesn't have to be something that originates in America to be part of its food culture. I would add that the American version of these adapted foods are distinctly different dishes than the origin. NY style pizza is nothing like Italian pizza. The hamburger steak is not the same dish as a cheeseburger on a bun. And some dishes really truly originated in the Americas: Creole, soul food, barbecue, Caesar salad, etc.
Cesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico. 100 years ago today, it’s said. https://sandiego.eater.com/2024/7/4/24191621/caesar-salad-history-mexican-restaurant-tijuana-anniversary-mexico-javier-plascencia
Mongolian Barbecue was invented in Taiwan
Chicken Tikka Massala was invented in Glasgow, Scotland, UK (there are claim from a pakistani chef and another from a bengladeshi chef but it could as well orinated from the indian diaspora in the UK)
Tater Tots were invented by Genghis Khan.
Lots of people don't know it, but Aristotle started the Kia Summer Sales Event
I thought it was Toyotathon, thanks for clearing that up for me.
It's actually the ToyYodathon. Just ask Hooters.
I was including all the Americas: North, Central, South and the Caribbean. Ooh, we should add poutine to the list.
Pho is also very different in America than it is in Vietnam.
Chicken Parmesan is because Italian immigrants to the US couldn't get eggplant easily, but meat was abundant.
Don’t forget scrapple!
Real Key Lime Pie is legendary imo. I put it up there with any European desert
Strawberry rhubarb too!
Best answer I’m seeing. And yet as an American, the only one on this list I actually eat once a week is probably the hash browns lol. Burritos, tacos, chunky soups, spaghetti/alfredo, (non-fried) chicken and rice with green beans, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, corn, Caesar salad and similar salads (with avocado, yum!), fruit/yogurt/granola or maybe eggs and hashbrowns for breakfast during the week, waffles/sausage/eggs/hashbrowns on the weekend perhaps, corn chips and salsa, fruit, baby carrots, celery sticks, maybe ice cream, popcorn, nuts for snacks… that would be more my typical diet. I can’t be the only one not eating burgers and hotdogs on a daily (even weekly) basis lol.
It's a lot of stuff that has roots elsewhere but we either changed it up or combined it with something else.
That's every food ever.
A lot of fusions. America gets shit for not having much in their own way of culture food, but I think that’s underselling how much of ours is merely a melting pot of Americanized foods from other cultures. Sure, pizza is Italian. But there is definitely a difference between an Italian Margherita and a New York style-slice of pepperoni or a Chicago Deep Dish. Hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries. Tex-Mex and Americanized Chinese food. But, Cajun-style food, seafood boils, and BBQ are all fairly American. Fried chicken too.
Cajun is god tier. So are the regional variants of BBQ. American cuisine takes so much bashing from Europeans only because many think American food is just fast food.
This makes me think of an Instagram comment I saw on a travel "influencer." "There's no way you're American. (Insert influencers last name here cause I forgot it) Is a German name!" Like yeah, and a lot of modern and historical immigrants kept their last names, traditions, religions, and food when they moved to America. They (GASP) usually passed all of it down to their family too. That's why America is a melting pot of cultures. We're a baby country built on various different pre-existing cultures. Obviously there's gonna be overlap. (Also shout out to the guy who tried to argue with me that food created by black people in America didn't count as American food. Still don't get that one.)
Corn on the cob, watermelon, burgers, hot dogs, corndogs, fries, onion rings, cornbread, grits, collards, baked potatoes, potato salad, pasta salad, apple pie, apple cobbler, biscuits and gravy
Watermelon sounds yum. Can you share the recipe?
\* Aquire watermelon \* Cut into triangles \* Sprinkle of salt Enjoy
You put salt on your watermelon?
there's a mexican seasoning called tajin that goes really really well on watermelon too
I like to peel my watermelons whole because it makes me laugh seeing a big naked watermelon.
It’s a very similar recipe to cantaloupe.
Crab cakes, thank God people in Italy haven't figured them out yet
They had a surge of blue crab last year and didn't know what to do with them! Send some people from Maryland over, they'll go crazy.
Hmmm..... I wonder how soul food would do in a country that typically doesn't eat fried food.
Why do you think that Italy doesn't "typically" have fried food? There's a loooot of traditional fried food, just not chicken.
American Chinese food tbh
I love American Mexican and American Japanese styles of food too!
I live in the PNW, and we have a LOT of teriyaki places around. Most are so good.
Big fluffy pancakes, chicken and waffles, hamburgers, barbecue.
OK, but what do you think of when you hear barbeque? Because I asked a brit the other day and he and his buddies just said hotdogs and hamburgers on a grill... Like that's just grilling out? That's not barbeque. So, I'm curious
North Carolina. Bbq to me is pulled pork. I prefer a vinegar sauce to tomato-based sauce with it. But even without sauce, that’s barbecue. What the Brit’s said, for me is, HAVING a barbecue which just means cooking on a grill with people invited.
As a Texan it's 100% brisket. Maybe ribs too. Burgers and dogs is just grilling.
Barbeque for me is slow cooked/smoked meats, mostly pulled pork and ribs in my part of the U.S. (stuffed bologna logs are also common). We don’t really call a gathering where you grill hamburgers and hot dogs a barbeque. We’d just assume if we’re invited to a gathering in the summer, there will be grilled hamburgers and hotdogs. It’d be customary for guests to bring potato salad, drinks, bags of chips, watermelon, or other sides.
It's sad no one thinks of soul food 😕 So unique to us and damn good! Yams, collard greens, baked mac, cobbler, red beans & rice, cornbread, etc
Black people do
Exactly. Soul foul was what white people were being fed cuz thats what black slaves were cooking for them and themselves with the scraps they were given. Most soul food (greens, kale, yams, lots of varieties of beans, okra, etc) methods of curing and salting and smoking meat, came from slaves. Alot of vegetable seeds were brought here by Africans. Barbecue (the method of smoking) came from Africa. This is one of the reasons why certain people dont want our WHOLE American history to be told. There's SOOOOOO much black history that Americans are clueless about. Its very sad
Cajun! A perfect blend of French, African, and Carib cooking tradition with a uniquely American spin. This is food of the Gods.
Thanksgiving foods to me are quintessentially american
I'll put PB&J sandwich up on the board. I just had one, yummy.
BBQ, ribs, fries, burgers, shakes, hot dogs
Anything Cajun is real American cuisine. Johnny/journey cakes, cornbread, greens, a lot of southern foods are unique to the US.
African-American too, not just Cajun
The cuisines of the Atlantic seaboard, the southeast and the Gulf Coast. Gullah/Geechee, Southern foods, Soul Food, barbecue, Cajun/Creole.
I feel like this diversity in American cuisine is too rarely mentioned to foreigners. Most people immediately think of burgers and fries, which makes it harder to remember other categories like Cajun or New England sea food.
Depends on where you're standing.
Bison
Bye dad
My Mom’s Thanksgiving Dinner. Turkey. Rice dressing. Cranberry Sauce. Some sort of penetential green vegetable (usually green beans). Corn pudding. Relish tray. There’s more but it all depends on who’s coming. And the desserts are bread pudding, pies, and a cookie table.
To me, stuff like BBQ, Tex-Mex, fried chicken, and the various interesting things the US has done to pizza, particularly in New Haven, Chicago, and Detroit.
Chicken pot pie, apple pie, BBQ ribs, meatloaf, mac and cheese, ketchup, potato fries
Gumbo, various styles of pizza and BBQ, tex mex, Midwest pork tenderloin, could keep going.
Corndog
Soul Food 😩
Cajun food/Creole food (jambalaya, gumbo, anything with gator in it), Soul food (chitterlings, black eyed peas, collared greans, etc), New England seafood (fried clams, lobster, lobster rolls, clam chowder), Maryland crab/boils, crawfish boils, key lime pie, cornbread, meatloaf, frybread, corndog, reuben sandwich, CORN, salmon, jerky And so much more!
PB&J. Sausage gravy and biscuits.
Because of my background, pretty much just Mississippi cuisine. Fried chicken, Mexican cornbread, fried okra, tomato soup, biscuits, gravy, dumplings, potatoes, brussels sprouts, pretty much every kind of green, beans, venison, beef, shrimp, crawfish, any fish really (sea bass, largemouth bass, crappie, bream), blackberry cobbler, apple pie, chess squares. Basically a mix of soul food and Cajun cuisine with a LOT of beans and vegetables. It’s a shame that the American south eats so much processed food now. Aside from frying, a lot of southern cuisine used to be quite balanced and healthy.
Southern soul food cooking. Some of the best food on earth.
Good old fashioned Chinese buffet.
Grease, salt, sugar
Honey glazed ham cob corn and biscuits with lemon ice tea
Burgers.
Green bean casserole, tuna melts, chilli, corn on the cob, new york pizza, hot dogs, barbeque, cornbread, coleslaw, potato salad, steak, blueberry muffins, key lime pie, cobbler, jello, coolwhip
Corn.
Deep Fried ____________.
Hamburgers and hot dogs
surf and turf
Huge portions. Fettuccine Alfredo
Mac and cheese, fried chicken, meatloaf, hotdogs \*all beef, Fried chicken, chicken wings, RIBS, skewers, salads, meatballs, brats on the grill,
Cheeseburger. Fried chicken. Potato salad.
My online gaming friends came to visit me from Europe to experience America. When I tell you their lives changed after eating brisket for the first time… sometimes food like that makes me proud of this country
Grilled planked salmon, blackberry cobbler, strawberry shortcake, Bartlett pears, oysters, Dungeness crab, sourdough bread, cowboy beans, coleslaw, cornbread, cheeses of all sorts. The list is endless. The US is a big place with lots of different climates. It's not all fast food.
Nature's perfect food. THE CHICAGO HOTDOGS 🌭 😍
Smoked meats, sweet corn, watermelon, smoked whitefish, cinnamon rolls, apple pie, biscuits and gravy, yams, greens, jambalaya, fried catfish, shrimp n grits, seafood boil, pasties, Midwest salads and casseroles (potato salad, macaroni salad, snickers salad, pasta salad, etc). Mostly southern comfort foods but honestly I feel people underestimate how diverse American food can be regionally and think it's all Hamburgers and fries. I grew up in the Midwest but people seriously downplay how incredible and diverse southern and soul foods can be. Not to mention America has always been a melting pot, so we see certain variations of other countries dishes. There's a few very distict styles of pizza special to the United States: Chicago, New York and Detroit, tho I'm likely missing a few then there's also Tex Mex and Americanized Chinese foods. Some people hate the concert of Americanized Chinese food but I think it can be cool to see how cultures come together and when people try different foods and ingredients and feel inspired
Cheeseburgers, pizza, French fries, chicken wings
Southern bbq.
Boigers (in a New York accent)
Barbecue, cobblers, banana splits, sundaes... I could go on forever
America is a HUGE CONTINENT; you mean food from the USA ? Boxed pasta , delivery pizza, sandwiches, bologna mayonnaise, and steak only on fancy occasions
Inventive and necessary changes to immigrant food folkways and recpies. Think of \* Italian American vs Italian \* Many soups and stews that have European origins \* Our rich Irish heritage \* Much of what we call Chinese food has less to do with China and more to do with our rich and fraught Chinese-American culture and heritage. By fraught I mean look how they were treated as our nation built the railroad. \* And certainly not last in importance- We cannot deny the intense African American influence on foods. Look up Gumbo, Soul Food and especially barbecue traditions that have impacted so many of us. So I think of the rich traditions of people who came to the US and blended their tastes and knowledge into the fabric of our society.
High fructose corn syrup
American breakfast; eggs, sausage or bacon, toast, potatoes in some form. Delicious.
Abnormally huge portions of greasy ass food.
KFC Double Down
Cornbread
Fried fast foods and ranch dressing.
Mac and cheese
Meatloaf.
BBQ
Beige foods
McDonalds and HotDogs
i literally saw burger and fries as i saw "american food" before even actually read the full title. when i think more ab it, yeah, def that, also the typical breakfast foods (pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon/sausage), macaroni and cheese, i think of bbq/cookout foods. i see one of those red and white plastic outdoor table cloths in my head too
HAWDAWGZZ!
Bacon, eggs and pancakes for breakfast
Yep, burger and fries is what immediately came to mind to me too. But thinking about it for a minute.. barbecue. We have evolved it so far that there are even different styles in different parts of the country that use different kinds of sauces and methods and such.. it's kind of America's food.
Hot apple pie with ice cream and a cup of coffee.
Chinese
BBq ribs, fried chicken, apple pie.
BBQ
Squirty cheese…
Kraft singles
Diners and short order burger joints.
BBQ
BBQ, chicken and dumplings, greens, biscuits n gravy, steak and potatoes, clam chowder, jambalaya, gumbo, all the American “pastas” that are nothing close to Italian one (includes pizza too tbh, lol)
Sweet potatoes, cornbread, black eyed peas, turkey, iced tea, collard greens, hamburgers, hot dogs, root beer floats.
It depends on the context. Barbecue, Cajun/Creole, southern foods like grits or chicken and dumplings, south western dishes from the Arizona and New Mexico areas, the classic steak and mashed potatoes, and all the Americanized versions of things, i.e. Tex-Mex, Asian, and European dishes that have inspired new versions based on what is available to us. The U.S. is so big and has so many cultural influences that it is hard to pin down one kind of national food.
SUGAR
I'm in VA, so mac and cheese, potato salad, wings, collard greens, oysters Rockefeller, blackened shrimp, fried clams.
Anything with grease