American cuisine is not just traditional fast food and barbecue, it’s quite diverse, with lots of original recipes that are popular all over the world. Americans are great at cooking meat, vegetables and even seafood. They have dishes with unusual names, excellent flavours, which are often achieved by combining the ingredients in an original way.
The history of American cuisine
American cuisine has borrowed a lot from other nations. There is something from Italy, France and Germany. This fact can be explained by the influence of immigrants from different countries. Especially Italians who started to emigrate to America en masse at the end of the nineteenth century. By the middle of the 20th century, traditional Italian dishes, such as pasta and apple pie, have become a familiar and favoured dish for Americans. Thanks to the immigrants, Americans became fond of pizza and aubergines.
French cuisine also did its part; it became particularly popular in Louisiana. French natives were actively settling the region, changing American cooking. They prepared dishes with seafood, beans, and corn, adding hot peppers to them. The first seafood Americans liked was crayfish and shrimp, cooked in a clay pot. Also popular was jambalaya, a paella-like rice dish. The gambo soup was also popular, with a thick consistency and spices, more akin to a stew. It is served in local catering establishments.
Chinese cuisine made American cooking even more interesting. This came about as a result of the arrival of workers from China.
Consumption habits of Americans
Americans also have their own culinary traditions. They make extensive use of ice, for instance. Jugs filled with ice cubes are placed on restaurant tables. Beer drinks are most often served cold in chilled glasses. Americans also enjoy iced tea.
Classic American cooking is a combination of melted cheese, cottage cheese and butter. Spices are sure to be added.
Another traditional American product is peanut butter. The dish is simple to make: the peanuts are chopped and salt and sunflower oil are added. These snacks are in demand all over the world.
Rice is often used as a side dish by Americans, and ranges from long rice to wild rice.
Traditional American cuisine is full of spices; the Americans add cloves, ginger, many varieties of pepper, laurel, cumin to their food.
And, of course, almost all Americans love fast food – hamburgers, hot dogs, shawarma, chicken sandwiches.
In the US, it is common to cook convenience foods, and dishes based on them are also often served in fast-food restaurants.
There are grill bars, steak houses (places that specialise in cooking steaks and chops) across America.
The daily diet of US residents is based on the principle of minimum time and financial expenditure. It is difficult to call American food healthy, and few people in the country follow healthy eating habits.
The American family table seems a little monotonous, with dishes made mainly of rice, potatoes and chicken. Almost all meals are simple to prepare and even somewhat primitive.
Typical American dishes
America is commonly associated with fast food and its people love to cook meat outdoors. For this reason, barbecue recipes abound.
But other national dishes shouldn’t be forgotten either. For example, turkey, which is cooked in the US for Christmas and Thanksgiving.
In South Carolina, people love to eat corn porridge with prawns and rucola for breakfast.
Louisianians are crazy about doughnuts and New Mexicans are crazy about stewed green chilli peppers.
It is quite common for Americans to make salads out of fruit and vegetables, using original sauces to dress them.
They regularly indulge in a variety of hot sandwiches, using ham, breast and simple vegetables as toppings.
When it comes to baked sweets, pumpkin pie is the most popular. Americans love cheesecake with various toppings, banana split, which is an ice cream-based dessert with banana. The brownie, a brownie filled with liquid chocolate, is also popular.
The dishes that feature atypical American foods are the ones that stand out:
- corn chowder is a soup made from milk and corn;
- Clam chowder is a seafood soup;
- A corn dog is a sausage in cornmeal dough;
- Pecan pie based on custard and corn syrup with pecans.
Combining dishes that don’t go together
In America, they like to combine seemingly incongruous foods. One example is fried chicken. It is most often served as a second course, complemented with vegetables and cereals. In the United States, they can be accompanied by waffles, pancakes, honey and maple syrup. The combination is quite original, but delicious. Meat and sweet notes go well together. It’s one of the favourites in the South of America.
Meat, like chicken, is often supplemented with sweet and sour sauces, such as lingonberry sauce.
Also in America, cucumbers are fried. The vegetables are sliced and then fried in a batter. People in other countries find this way of cooking cucumbers strange, but Americans like it.
And what a combination of oysters and calf testicles – a dish often served in Montana.
Equally interesting is the combination of celery with peanut paste and dried grapes. In Russia, such a combination is not practised, but for Americans it is considered the norm. Such an unusual dish is often made for children, as it’s high in vitamins, carbs and fats.
The USA is an amazing country, its culinary traditions are full of subtleties that not everyone knows about. Americans like to experiment with products and come up with original dishes. The people of this country have proved that simple ingredients can be used to make works of culinary art.