Think ‘American food’ and your mind quickly turns to fast, junk or processed foods. After all, that’s what most of the world thinks American food is. It might better be described by words like greasy, generally unhealthy, industrial output. When I first arrived in Switzerland I remember a few people wondering out loud if Americans ate anything other than hamburgers. I won’t dispute it, some Americans eat badly, but not all do.
To celebrate its sheer endless culinary creativity, good or bad, here’s the first in my list of the 24 most popular American foods or dishes. Of course, remember, I’m from the east coast (with a bit of Chicago thrown in for good measure). There will be inevitably missed regional specialties of foods I’ve never tried from places I’ve never been.
So let me just ‘dig in’ as it were, and begin. The list isn’t presented in any special order.
Thanksgiving dinner
In the United States Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated on the third Thursday in November. I wrote about our first big Thanksgiving celebration here in Switzerland and mentioned another Thanksgiving here.
So, the feast the pilgrims accomplished in three days during their first Thanksgiving, Americans nowadays cram into one. With, I must add, what is probably the same amount of food.
My mother told me about the first Thanksgiving she and my father had after they got married. She must have been about 19 or 20 at the time. Like I’ve mentioned before, cooking wasn’t her strongest point. She stuck to the devise ‘she who can read, can cook’ and took it from there. She made an apple and a lemon pie, both of which turned out perfectly. But unfortunately she burnt the turkey beyond recognition. What to do? Eating only pies for Thanksgiving just didn’t seem right. Luckily their neighbors, who rented the other half of the house they were living in, had a turkey but their desserts hadn’t turned out. That Thanksgiving turned out to be a shared meal with friends.
https://youtu.be/MzlkO8LIWrs?si=Uz_V8UXKXWgFMcTk
This is an interesting side note about Thanksgiving dinners. In 1953 a company branded the frozen packaged meal and called it TV dinner. Swanson, the company that makes them, had overestimated the number of turkeys they could sell, so they were looking for ways to do something with the rest. They borrowed the idea from packaged airplane food. The first TV dinner was a Thanksgiving meal of turkey, cornbread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes.
We never had a turkey TV dinner for Thanksgiving because my mom was a pro at roasting turkey by the time I was around. And, we always had enough leftovers that lasted almost until Christmas. But I remember having TV dinners occasionally. It was always something special eating while sitting in the living room, watching TV.
Pot roast
The childhood Sunday family dinner is a favorite of baby boomers everywhere. I’m a late baby boomer so, of course pot roast was our dinner almost every Sunday. We called it ‘roast beef’ but it is the same as ‘pot roast’ and is also known as ‘Yankee pot roast’. Pot roast claims a sentimental place in American comfort foods. There’s a whole generation that would be lost without it.
The dish is made by slow-cooking a usually tough cut of beef in moist heat. The toughness of the fibers makes it unsuitable for oven roasting. My mother always seared the meat at a high temperature to brown it first. Along with the meat’s juices you can add potatoes, carrots, onions or basically anything that strikes your fancy to simmer with it; like red wine for example. My dad added beer once and it was great. Then cover it and pop it in the oven to cook it slow and low. It can take anywhere between 2 to 2 ½ hours to cook at about 325°F.
The result is a home that smells like Sundays and a succulent meat that you can cut with a fork.
I tried to make a roast beef once. The results were as disappointing as my mother’s first turkey. I may try again someday.
Twinkies
Okay, this should appear pretty low on anyone’s list of ‘greatest American foods’ if at all. But it is just so typically American I had to list it. And, yes, it fulfills the cliché of unhealthy American food to a ‘T’.
Hostess is the company that makes the sponge cake with a creamy filling called Twinkies. I was often jealous because my friends in school had them in their lunch boxes as a dessert and I didn’t.
Beware, these little devils are anything but healthy. The package lists 37 ingredients of which you probably would recognize 5: flour, egg, water, sugar and salt. But even the whole food ingredients have been replaced in part by chemicals. For example, less egg is used and replaced by monoglycerides and diglycerides. These are chemicals that help add shelf life to the Twinkie.
Twinkies contains 5 different types of sugar including high fructose corn syrup. They use hydrogenated vegetable fats (trans fats) which should never appear together in a sentence with the word healthy. Also, the ‘cream’ center contains NO cream. It is made of a cheap fat: shortening. Yum. As an added surprise Twinkies contain a small amount of sodium stearate. I believe that is the most common ingredient found in soap. ‘Wash your mouth out with soap’ gets a whole new meaning.
I think I tried a Twinkie once in my life, which turned out to be three times: the first, last and only time. It’s beyond me why so many people love Twinkies, but they just do. As much as I wanted them as a kid, the more I thank my parents for not buying them.
Then, as if Twinkies weren’t unhealthy enough the Texas State Fair set the bar higher. They started the fad of deep-frying Twinkies. Seriously, if you are trying to eat healthy, find something else to eat.
Banana split
Does the banana in the banana split makes it healthy? Good question, probably not. Still, kudos to whoever invented this great variation of the sundae.
The classic banana split has three scoops of ice cream (vanilla, chocolate and strawberry). It is served between a banana that has been cut lengthwise (split) in an elongated, boat-like dish. The ice cream is topped with whipped cream and one or more maraschino cherries, then a sauce is drizzled over it.
If you go crazy for banana splits then you might not want to miss the next Banana Split Festival. It takes place on the second weekend in June in Wilmington, Ohio. Wilmington claims their stake to fame as being the birthplace of the banana split in 1907.
Of course, there are others who have claimed to have invented the dish. David Strickler in 1904 in Latrobe, Pennsylvania for example. At any rate, whoever did, we are eternally grateful.
Hope you enjoyed my list so far, there’s more on the way soon! Oh, and just because they are on my list doesn’t mean you have to go out and try everything, some things are better left untried.
Stay safe and healthy everyone.
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