Make America Great Again Hat Dinner Table Top View

(CNN) — Fast, junk, candy -- when information technology comes to American nutrient, the country is all-time known for the stuff that's described by words meliorate suited to greasy, grinding industrial output. Only citizens of the USA accept an impressive appetite for good stuff, too.

To celebrate its endless culinary inventiveness, we're throwing our list of 50 most succulent American nutrient items at you. Nosotros know you lot're going to want to throw back.

Basis rules: acknowledge that even trying to define American nutrient is tough; further admit that picking favorite American items inevitably means leaving out or accidentally overlooking some much-loved regional specialties.

Now get the rubber apron on because nosotros're going commencement. Let the food fight brainstorm:

50. Key lime pie

Key lime pie is a staple on south Florida menus.

Courtesy Joe's Rock Crab Restaurant

If life gives y'all limes, don't make limeade, brand a Cardinal lime pie. The official country pie of Florida, this sassy tart has made herself a worldwide reputation, which started in -- where else? -- the Florida Keys, from whence come the tiny limes that gave the pie its name.

Aunt Sally, a melt for Florida's commencement self-fabricated millionaire, send salvager William Curry, gets the credit for making the showtime Key lime pie in the belatedly 1800s. But you might also thank Florida sponge fisherman for likely originating the concoction of key lime juice, sweetened condensed milk, and egg yolks, which could be "cooked" (by a thickening chemical reaction of the ingredients) at body of water.

49. Irish potato tots

Tater tots are crunchy fried potatoes.

Courtesy stu_spivack/Artistic Commons/Flickr

Nosotros love French fries, just for an American nutrient variation on the tater theme, one beloved at Sonic bulldoze-ins and school cafeterias everywhere, consider the Tater Tot.

Notice it often has the registered trademark -- these commercial hash brown cylinders are indeed proprietary to the Ore-Ida company. If you lot'd been 1 of the Grigg brothers who founded Ore-Ida, you'd have wanted to come up with something to practise with leftover slivers of cut-upwards potatoes, besides. They added some flour and seasoning and shaped the mash into tiny tots and put them on the marketplace in 1956. A petty more than 50 years later, America is eating about 32 one thousand thousand kilos of these taters annually.

48. San Francisco sourdough breadstuff

Sourdough staff of life is San Francisco's most beloved baked treat.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America/Getty Images

Sourdough is every bit old every bit the pyramids and not coincidentally was eaten in ancient Egypt. But the hands-downwardly American favorite, and the sourest variety, comes from San Francisco.

As much a role of NoCal culinary civilization as Napa Valley wine, sourdough staff of life has been a staple since Gold Rush days. Once upon a frontier fourth dimension, miners (called "sourdoughs" for surviving on the stuff) and settlers carried sourdough starter (more than reliable than other leavening) in pouches effectually their necks or on their belts.

Thank goodness that's not the way they practice it at Boudin Baker, which has been turning out the bread that bites dorsum in the City by the Bay since 1849.

47. Cobb salad

Originally made with leftovers, Cobb salad at present 1 of America's favorite appetizers.

Courtesy Jodimichelle/Artistic Eatables/Flickr

The chef's salad originated back East, just American nutrient innovators working with lettuce out Due west weren't going to be outdone.

In 1937, Bob Cobb, the owner of The Dark-brown Derby, was scrounging around at the eating house'southward North Vine location for a meal for Sid Grauman of Grauman's Theater when he put together a salad with what he found in the refrigerator: a head of lettuce, an avocado, some romaine, watercress, tomatoes, some cold chicken chest, a hard-boiled egg, chives, cheese, and some sometime-fashioned French dressing.

Brownish Derby lore says, "He started chopping. Added some crisp bacon, swiped from a busy chef." The salad went onto the menu and straight into the heart of Hollywood.

46. Pot roast

Braised beef and vegetables -- the perfect warming hot pot.

Courtesy Kim/Creative Commons/Flickr

The childhood Dominicus family dinner of babe boomers everywhere, pot roast claims a sentimental favorite place in the top 10 of American condolement foods. There'south a whole generation that would be lost without it.

Beef brisket, bottom or meridian round, or chuck prepare in a deep roasting pan with potatoes, carrots, onions, and any else your mom threw in to be infused with the meat'due south simmering juices, the pot roast could be anointed with red vino or fifty-fifty beer, then covered and cooked on the stovetop or in the oven.

45. Twinkies

Twinkies are known for their durability and shelf life -- rumour says they could survive a nuclear attack.

Scott Olson/Getty Images N America/Getty Images

Hostess' iconic "Golden Sponge Block with Creamy Filling" has been sugaring us up since James Dewar invented it at the Continental Blistering Company in Schiller Park, Illinois, in 1930.

The Twinkie forsook its original assistant cream filling for vanilla when bananas were deficient during World State of war 2. As if they weren't ridiculously good enough already, the Texas Country Fair started the fad of deep-frying them.

Dumped in hot oil or simply torn from their packaging, Twinkies endear with their name (inspired past a billboard advertizing Twinkle Toe Shoes), their ladyfinger shape (pierced three times to inject the filling), and their evocations of lunchtime recess. They were temporarily taken off the shelves betwixt November 2012 to July 2013 -- when Hostess filed for bankruptcy. Now they are back and going potent.

44. Jerky

It might not look appetizing, but the gustation speaks for itself.

Courtesy Larry Jacobsen/Creative Commons/Flickr

Dehydrated meat shriveled virtually beyond recognition -- an unlikely source of and then much gustatory pleasance, merely jerky is a loftier-protein favorite of backpackers, road trippers, and snackers everywhere.

It's American food the way nosotros like our wilderness grub -- tough and spicy.

We like the cosmos myth that says information technology's the directly descendant of American Indian pemmican, which mixed fire-cured meat with animal fat. Beef, turkey, chicken, venison, buffalo, fifty-fifty ostrich, alligator, yak, and emu. Peppered, barbecued, hickory-smoked, honey glazed. Flavored with teriyaki, jalapeno, lemon pepper, chili.

Jerky is so versatile and portable and packs such nutritional power that the Ground forces is experimenting with jerky sticks that have the caffeine equivalent of a loving cup of coffee.

Nonetheless you take your jerky -- caf or decaf; in strips, chips, or shreds -- prepare to chew long and hard. Yous've still got your own teeth, correct?

43. Fajitas

Fajitas: the prototype of Tex-Mex cuisine.

Courtesy Shutterstock

Take some vaqueros working on the range and the cattle slaughtered to feed them. Throw in the throwaway cuts of meat as part of the hands' accept-dwelling pay, and allow cowboy ingenuity get to work.

Grill skirt steak (faja in Spanish) over the campfire, wrap in a tortilla, and you've got the beginning of a Rio Grande region tradition. The fajita is thought to accept come off the range and into popular culture when a sure Sonny Falcon began operating fajita taco stands at outdoor events and rodeos in Texas beginning in 1969.

It wasn't long before the dish was making its mode onto menus in the Lone Star State and spreading with its beloved array of condiments -- grilled onions and greenish pepper, pico de gallo, shredded cheese, and sour cream -- across the country. Don't forget the Altoids.

42. Banana split

The assistant makes it good for you, right?

Cindy Ord/Getty Images N America

Like the assistant makes information technology good for you lot. Nevertheless, kudos to whoever invented the variation of the sundae known as the banana split. There's the 1904 Latrobe, Pennsylvania, story, in which future optometrist David Strickler was experimenting with sundaes at a chemist's soda fountain, split a banana lengthwise, and put it in a long boat dish.

And the 1907 Wilmington, Ohio, story, wherein restaurant owner Ernest Hazard came upwardly with it to draw students from a nearby higher. Fame spread after a Walgreens in Chicago made the carve up its signature dessert in the 1920s. Whatever the history, yous'll find enough food for idea at the annual Banana Split Festival, which takes place on the second weekend in June in Wilmington.

41. Cornbread

Cornbread is popular beyond the country, only information technology's a Southern archetype.

Courtesy Alice Henneman/Artistic Commons/Flickr

Information technology'southward one of the pillars of Southern cooking, but cornbread is the soul food of many a culture -- blackness, white, and Native American -- and non only southward of the Mason-Dixon. Grind corn coarsely and you've got grits; soak kernels in alkali, and you've got hominy (which we encourage you lot to cook up into posole). Leaven finely ground cornmeal with blistering powder, and y'all've got cornbread.

Southern hushpuppies and corn pone, New England johnnycakes; cooked in a skillet or in muffin tins; flavored with cheese, herbs, or jalapenos -- cornbread in any incarnation remains the quick and like shooting fish in a barrel go-to bread that historically made it a favorite of Native American and pioneer mothers and keeps it on tables across the country today.

twoscore. GORP

Trail mix: fueling hikers across the Us.

Courtesy Helen Penjam/Creative Commons/Flickr

"Good Quondam Raisins and Peanuts," GORP is the energy salvation of backpackers everywhere.

Centuries earlier trail mix came by the handbag and the bin, it was eaten in Europe, where hiking is practically a national pastime.

The thing to remember here is that the stuff is American nutrient rocket fuel. Add all the granola, seeds, basics, dried fruit, candied ginger, and M&Ms you want. Just be sure to store in a bear-proof canister considering suspending from a co-operative in a nylon sack isn't going to do it.

39. Jambalaya

Whether you have it Creole style or Cajun, Jambalaya is a delicious dish.

Courtesy Gloria Cabada-Leman/Creative Commons/Flickr

Jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo ... what dish could be and so evocative that it inspired Hank Williams to write a party song for it in 1952 and dozens more to cover it (including everyone from Jo Stafford to Credence Clearwater Revival to Emmylou Harris)?

The sweep-up-the-kitchen cousin of Spanish paella, jambalaya comes in red (Creole, with tomatoes) and brownish (Cajun, without). Made with meat, vegetables (a trinity of celery, peppers, and onions), and rice, Louisiana's signature dish might be nearly memorable when made with shrimp and andouille sausage.

Whatever the colour and underground ingredients, you tin can be sure of one affair when you sit down with friends to a big bowlful: son of a gun, gonna have big fun on the bayou.

38. Biscuits 'n' gravy

American biscuits are more akin to European scones.

Courtesy @joefoodie/Creative Commons/Flickr

An irresistible Southern favorite, biscuits and gravy would be a cliche if they weren't so darned delicious.

The biscuits are traditionally made with butter or lard and buttermilk; the milk (or "sawmill" or country) gravy with meat drippings and (usually) chunks of good fresh pork sausage and black pepper. Cheap and requiring just widely available ingredients, a meal of biscuits and gravy was a filling way for slaves and sharecroppers to face a hard day in the fields.

"The Southern way with gravies was born of privation. When folks are poor, they make do. Which means folks brand gravy," says The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook. The soul, you lot might say, of soul food.

37. Smithfield ham

Legend has information technology that the first auction of Smithfield Ham occured in 1779.

Paul Morigi/Getty Images Due north America/Getty Images for Smithfield

"Ham, history, and hospitality." That's the motto of Smithfield, Virginia, the Smithfield of Smithfield Virginia ham. Detect "ham" comes before history, which actually says something considering this village of viii,100 was first colonized in 1634.

Epicenter of curing and production of a head-spinning number of hogs, Smithfield comes by the title Ham Capital of the Globe honestly: lots of ham is chosen Virginia, but at that place's only one Smithfield, as defined by a 1926 law that says information technology must be candy within the city limits.

The original land-mode American ham was dry out cured for preservation; salty and hard, information technology could keep until soaked in water (to remove the salt and reconstitute) before cooking. The deliciously authentic cured Virginia land ham happens to accept been the favorite of that famous Virginian, Thomas Jefferson.

36. Craven fried steak

How practise y'all brand steak even tastier? Pan fry it in bread crumbs, of grade.

Courtesy kennejima/Creative Eatables/Flickr

A guilty pleasance if at that place always was one, chicken fried steak was born to go with American food classics like mashed potatoes and black-eyed peas.

A slab of tenderized steak breaded in seasoned flour and pan fried, it's kin to the Weiner Schnitzel brought to Texas by Austrian and German immigrants, who adapted their veal recipe to utilize the bountiful beef found in Texas.

Lamesa, on the cattle-ranching Southward Texas plains, claims to be the birthplace of the dish, merely John "White Gravy" Neutzling of Alone Star State cowboy boondocks of Bandera insisted he invented information technology. Practice you intendance, or do you but want to ladle on that fiery white gravy and dig in?

35. Wild Alaska salmon

Salmon is succulent and nutritious -- what more could you desire?

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Due north America/Getty Images

Guys risk life and limb fishing for this delish superfood.

Unlike Atlantic salmon, which is 99.8% farmed, Alaska salmon is wild, which means the fish live costless and consume make clean -- all the better to glaze with Dijon mustard or real maple syrup. Alaska salmon season coincides with their return to spawning streams (guided past an amazing sense of scent to the exact spot where they were built-in).

Worry not: before fishing season, state biologists ensure that plenty of salmon accept already passed upstream to lay eggs. But permit's go to that cedar plank, the preferred method of cooking for the many Pacific Northwest Indian tribes whose mythologies and diets include salmon.

Use ruby-red cedar (it has no preservatives), and cook slow, for that rich, smoky flavour. Barring that, there's always lox and bagels.

34. California roll

A department of the world's largest California Scroll. Any the size, this is America's favorite sushi.

Courtesy Chris Martinez/Stringer

And then much more than the gateway sushi, the California roll isn't simply for wimps who can't become information technology raw -- although that's substantially the fashion it got its start in Los Angeles, where sushi chefs from Japan were trying to gain a beachhead in the tardily 1960s/early 1970s.

Most credit chef Manashita Ichiro and his assistant Mashita Ichiro, at Fifty.A.'s Tokyo Kaikan restaurant, which had one of the land's first sushi confined, with creating the "inside out" roll that preempted Americans' aversions by putting the nori (seaweed) on the within of the rice and substituting avocado for toro (raw fatty tuna).

The avocado-crab-cucumber roll became a hit, and from that SoCal beachhead, sushi conquered the country. After leading the charge for the sushi invasion of the 1980s, the California curl at present occupies grocery stores everywhere. Wasabi anyone?

33. Meatloaf

The most humble of comfort food. Who would have imagined when the recipe for "Cannelon of Beef" showed up in Fannie Farmer'southward 1918 "Boston Cooking School Cook Volume" that every mom in America would someday accept her own version?

Fannie made hers with slices of salt pork laid over the top and served information technology with brown mushroom sauce. (In her twenty-four hour period, you had to cut the meat finely by hand; the appearance of commercial grinders inverse all that.)

However your mom made it -- we're guessing ketchup on superlative? -- she probably served that oh-so-reliable meatloaf with mashed potatoes and light-green beans.

And yous were probably fabricated to sit in that location, all night if demand exist, if you lot didn't eat all your beans. A better threat might have been no meatloaf sandwich in your tiffin tomorrow.

32. Grits

Grits tin be pudding, breakfast or dinner.

Courtesy Kate Hopkins/Creative Commons/Flickr

People who didn't grow up eating them wonder what the heck they are. People who did abound upwards eating them (and that would exist just about everyone in the South) wonder how anyone could alive without them.

Grits, beloved and misunderstood -- and American down to their Native roots. They're the favored hot breakfast in the and so-called Grits Belt, which girdles everything from Virginia to Texas and where the dish is a standard offering on diner menus.

Grits are cypher if not versatile: They tin can go plain, savory, or sweet; pan-fried or porridge-like. Simple and cheap, grits are also greatly satisfying.

Which might be why Charleston'south The Post and Courier opined in 1952 that "Given enough [grits], the inhabitants of planet Earth would have null to fight about. A man full of [grits] is a human being of peace." Now don't that merely butter your grits?

31. Macaroni and cheese

We have the third president of the U.S. Thomas Jefferson to thank for this cheesy treat.

Monica Schipper/Getty Images Northward America/Getty Images for NYCWFF

The ultimate condolement food, macaroni and cheese is likewise the conservancy of many a mom placating a finicky toddler.

Null particularly American about pasta and cheese -- except for the fact that on a European trip, Thomas Jefferson liked a sure noodle dish and then much he took notes and had it served back abode at a state dinner equally "macaroni pie."

Jefferson'due south cousin Mary Randolph included a recipe for "macaroni and cheese" in her 1824 cookbook "The Virginia Housewife."

So whether you're eating a gourmet version by one of the countless chefs who've put their ain spin on information technology, or but digging like a desperado in the pantry for that box of Kraft, give mac and cheese its patriotic props.

30. Maryland crabcakes

An American classic, best served with a view across the Atlantic.

Courtesy ocean yamaha/Creative Eatables/Flickr

The Chesapeake Bay yields more just the regatta-loving suntanned course in their sock-costless topsiders.

It'due south the home habitat of the blue crab, which both Maryland and Virginia claim as their own.

Boardwalk style (mixed with fillers and served on a bun) or restaurant/gourmet style; fried, baked, or baked, crab cakes tin can exist made with any kind of crab, merely the blue crabs of Chesapeake Bay are preferred for both tradition and taste.

When Baltimore magazine rounded up the best places to go the metropolis's signature food, editors alleged simplicity the central, while lamenting the fact that most crabmeat doesn't even come from home turf these days. Kind of makes you crabby, doesn't it?

29. Potato chips

America'south most pop -- and nigh addictive -- snack?

Courtesy Kate Ter Haar/Artistic Commons/Flickr

We accept a high-maintenance resort guest to thank for America'south easily-down favorite snack.

Saratoga Springs, New York, 1853: Native American chef George Crum is in the kitchen at the elegant Moon Lake Lodge. A persnickety customer sends back his French fries (so highfalutin fare eaten with a fork) for beingness also thick. Crum makes a second, thinner, order.

Still likewise thick for the picky diner. Annoyed, Crum makes the next batch with a piffling attitude, slicing the potatoes and then thin, the crispy things can't possibly exist picked up with a fork. Surprise: the wafer-thin fried potatoes are a hit.

Traveling salesman Herman Lay sold them out of the torso of his motorcar before founding Lay'due south Potato Chips, the starting time nationally marketed brand. Lay's would ultimately merge in 1961 with Frito to create the snack behemoth Frito-Lay.

28. Cioppino

Cioppino: Portugal meets meets Italy meets French republic by way of San Francisco.

Courtesy LWYang/Artistic Commons/Flickr

San Francisco'due south answer to French bouillabaisse, cioppino (cho-pea-no) is fish stew with an Italian flair.

It's an American food that'due south been around since the belatedly 1800s, when Portuguese and Italian fishermen who settled the North Beach department of the city brought their on-board catch-of-the-twenty-four hour period stew back to land and area restaurants picked up on it.

Cooked in a tomato base of operations with vino and spices and chopped fish (whatever was plentiful, just almost ever crab), cioppino probably takes its proper name from the classic fish stew of Italy's Liguria region, where many Aureate Rush era fishermen came from.

Go a memorable bowl at Sotto Mare in North Embankment, Scoma'due south on Fisherman's Wharf, and Anchor Oyster Bar in the Castro District. Don't experience bad about going with the "lazy man's" cioppino -- it only means yous're non going to spend half the meal cracking shellfish.

27. Fortune cookies

Wondering what your hereafter holds? Peradventure its time for a Chinese.

Courtesy Tomasz Stasiuk/Artistic Commons/Flickr

Culinary snobs like to look down their holier-than-thou chopsticks at ABC (American-born Chinese) food, just nosotros're not afraid to stand upward for the honour of such North American favorites as Full general Tso'due south chicken, Mongolian beef, broccoli beef, lemon craven, deep-fried leap rolls and that nuclear orangish sauce that covers sweet-and-sour annihilation.

Every bit the seminal symbol of all great American-born Chinese chow, withal, nosotros salute the mighty fortune cookie. Most certainly invented in California in the early 1900s (origin stories vary between San Francisco, Los Angeles and fifty-fifty Japan), the buttery sugariness crescents are now establish in Chinese joints around the globe ... with the notable exception of Cathay.

That's OK -- the crunchy biscuits are still our favorite way to close out whatever Chinese meal.

26. Peanut butter sandwich

A peanut butter and banana sandwich, Elvis Presley'south favorite snack.

Mario Tama/Getty Images N America/Getty Images

Creamy or chunky? To each his own, but everybody -- except those afflicted with the dreaded and dangerous peanut allergy and the moms who worry ill almost them -- loves a good peanut butter sandwich.

First served to clients at Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's sanatorium in Boxing Creek, Michigan, peanut paste was improved upon when chemist Joseph Rosefield added hydrogenated vegetable oil and called his spread Skippy.

That was 1922; not quite 100 years later, peanut butter is an American mainstay, oft paired with jelly for that lunchbox workhorse the PB&J. For a rocking alternative, try peanut butter sandwiches the way Elvis Presley liked them: with ripe mashed bananas, grilled in butter.

25. Broiled beans

Broiled beans popularity in Boston pb to the nickname 'Beantown'.

Courtesy Marcelo Trasel/Creative Eatables/Flickr

Information technology'due south non a cookout, potluck, or the stop of a long twenty-four hours in the saddle without a bubbling pot full of them. But ask the Pioneer Woman, who waxes rhapsodic virtually the broiled-bean recipe on her site (not a version with piddling weenies, but how fun are they?).

Yummy and enough historical. Long before Bostonians were blistering their navy beans for hours in molasses -- and earning the nickname Beantown in the process -- New England Native Americans were mixing beans with maple syrup and bear fatty and putting them in a hole in the ground for ho-hum cooking.

Favored on the frontier for beingness cheap and portable, chuck carriage, or cowboy, beans volition forever alive hilariously in popular civilization as the catalyst behind the "Blazing Saddles" bivouac scene, which yous can review in unabashed immaturity on YouTube.

24. Popcorn

When your beloved for popcorn goes that step too far...

Stephen Chernin/Getty Images N America/Getty Images

Equally the imperative on the Orville Redenbacher site urges: "All hail the super snack." The bow-tied entrepreneur pitched his popcorn tent in Valparaiso, Indiana, which celebrates its heritage at the Valparaiso Popcorn Festival the starting time Sat afterward Labor Mean solar day.

It's just one of several Midwestern corn belt towns that vie for the title of Popcorn Capital of the Globe, but centuries before Orville's obsession aromatically inflated in microwaves or Jiffy Pop magically expanded on stovetops, Native Americans in New United mexican states discovered corn could be popped — manner back in 3600 B.C.

23. Fried chicken and waffles

The original and the all-time.

Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles

Scottish immigrants brought the deep-fry method across the swimming, and it was good old Colonel Saunders who really locked in on the commercial potential in 1930 when he started pressure level-frying craven breaded in his undercover spices at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky, paving the way for Kentucky Fried and all the other fried chickens to come up.

Nuggets, fingers, popcorn, bites, patties -- one of our all-time favorite means to consume fried craven is with waffles. And 1 of our favorite places to eat information technology is at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles.

Immortalized in "Pulp Fiction" and "Swingers," the L.A. institution got the soul-food seal of approval when Obama himself related to Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show" that he'd popped in for some wings and waffles and downed them in the presidential limo.

22. New England clam chowder

New England flossy mollusk chowder -- take no subsitutes.

Courtesy Maya83/Artistic Eatables/Flickr

Gone are the days when Catholics religiously abstained from eating meat on Fridays, merely you'll still detect clam chowder traditionally served in some E Coast locales -- not that it reminds anyone of penance these days.

In that location are time-honored versions of chowder from Maine to Florida, but the well-nigh famous and favorite has to be New England style: creamy white with potatoes and onions.

At that place's Manhattan: clear with tomatoes. And at that place's even Minorcan (from around St. Augustine, Florida): spicy with hot datil pepper. The variations on East Coast clam chowder are deliciously numerous.

Even the West Declension has a version (with salmon instead of pork). With your fistful of oyster crackers ready to dump in, y'all might stop to wonder: What were the Pilgrims thinking when they fed clams to their hogs?

21. New Mexican apartment enchiladas

Mouth-watering enchiladas -- are you lot hungry yet?

Courtesy jeffreyw/Creative Commons/Flickr

Information technology was the pre-Columbian Maya who invented tortillas, and apparently the Aztecs who started wrapping them around bits of fish and meat. You have but to go to any Mexican or Tex-Mex identify to run across what those ancients wrought when someone dipped tortillas "en chile" (hence, the name).

"Flat" (the stacked New Mexico style) or rolled, smothered in red chili sauce or green (or both, for "Christmas" style), enchiladas are the source of much cultural pride in the Land of Enchantment; they're specially enchanting fabricated with the land's famed blue-corn tortillas -- fried egg on top optional.

20. Southward'mores

S'mores -- you can't just have ane, the inkling's in the proper noun.

Scott Olson/Getty Images North America/Getty Images

Proust's madeleines? We'll go you one amend on remembrance of things past: due south'mores.

Gooey, melty, warm and sweet -- nothing evokes family vacations and carefree camping under the stars quite like this archetype American food.

Whether they were first to roast marshmallows and squish them betwixt graham crackers with a bar of chocolate no 1 seems to know, but the Daughter Scouts were the outset to get the recipe down in the 1927 "Tramping and Abaft with the Girl Scouts," transforming many a standard-issue campfire into a quintessential experience.

Celebrate sweetly on August x: Information technology'south National S'mores Twenty-four hours. Get those marshmallow sticks sharpened.

xix. Lobster rolls

The New England classic that never gets old.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America/Getty Images

Boiled or steamed live -- animal cruelty some insist -- lobsters practically ascertain a corking Down East occasion. And maybe nowhere more and so than in Maine, which provides eighty% of the clawed creatures, and where lobster shacks and lobster bakes are culinary institutions.

Melted butter on knuckle, claw, or tail meat -- we love it uncomplicated. Simply the perfect accompaniment to a salty body of water air day in Vacationland would have to exist the lobster roll. Chunks of sugariness lobster meat lightly dressed with mayo or lemon or both, heaped in a buttered hot dog bun makes for some seriously satisfying finger nutrient.

Fabulous finger-licking lobster time in Maine is during shack flavour, May to October, and every August, when Rockland puts on its annual lobster festival. Suggested soundtrack for a weekend of shacking: B-52s' "Rock Lobster."

xviii. Buffalo wings

Buffalo wings are coated in cayenne pepper and hot sauce.

Courtesy Larry Hoffman/Creative Commons/Flickr

Long before Troy Aikman became pitchman for Wingstop, folks in Buffalo, New York, were enjoying the hot and spicy wings that most agree came into being by the hands of Teressa Bellissimo, who endemic the Anchor Bar and showtime tossed chicken wings in cayenne pepper hot sauce and butter in 1964.

According to Calvin Trillin, hot wings might have originated with John Young, and his "mambo sauce" -- besides in Buffalo. Either way, they came from Buffalo, which, by the way, doesn't call them Buffalo wings.

If you think your kitchen table or couch-in-front-of-football represents the extreme in wing eating, recall again: Every Labor Twenty-four hours weekend, Buffalo celebrates its great contribution to the nation'south pub grub with the Buffalo Chicken Wing Festival.

17. Indian frybread

When Indian frybread meets tacos...

Courtesy jeffreyw/Creative Commons/Flickr

If you've had it at Indian Market place in Santa Fe or to a powwow or pueblo anywhere in the state, you're probably salivating at the very thought.

Who would recollect that a flat chunk of leavened dough fried or deep-fried could exist and then addictive?

Tradition says it was the Navajo who created frybread with the flour, carbohydrate, table salt, and lard given to them past the authorities when they were relocated from Arizona to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, 150 years ago.

Frybread's a calorie bomb all correct, but drizzled with dear or topped with basis beef, tomatoes, onions, cheese, and lettuce for an Indian taco or all by its lonesome, it's an American Indian staple not to be missed.

sixteen. Charcoal-broil ribs

Barbecue ribs -- the gluey fingered classic.

Courtesy jonobacon/Creative Eatables/Flickr

Pork or beef, slathered or smoked -- we're not about to wade into which is more than embraced, what's more than accurate, or even what needs more napkins. There are melt-offs all over the country for your own judging pleasure.

Just we will acknowledge nosotros're partial to pork ribs. The Rib 'Cue Capital? Nosotros're not going to bear upon that i with a 3-meter tong, either. We'll just follow signs of grinning pigs in the South, where the tradition of gathering for barbecues dates to before the Civil State of war and serious attending to the finer points of pork earn the region the title of the Charcoal-broil Chugalug.

Outside of the belt, Texas smokes its way to a claim as a charcoal-broil (beef) epicenter -- bank check out the 'cue-rich town of Lockhart. And let'due south not forget Kansas City, where the sauce is the thing. Simply why debate it when you lot can just eat information technology?

fifteen. BLT

Don't tell us this doesn't brand your mouth h2o.

Courtesy stu_spivack/Creative Commons/Flickr

How many sandwiches get to go by their initials?

When tomatoes come into season, there's inappreciably a better manner to celebrate the bounty than with a juicy bacon, lettuce, and tomato.

Food guru John Mariani says the BLT is the no. 2 favorite sandwich in the United States (afterward ham), and it'southward no. 1 in the Uk.

Bread can be toasted or non, bacon crispy or limp, lettuce iceberg or other (only iceberg is preferred for imparting crunch and not interfering with the flavor), and mayo -- skilful quality or just forget virtually it.

Provenance of the BLT isn't clear, but a remarkably like club sandwich showed upwards in the "1903 Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book." The sodium level gives the health-minded pause, only the BLT tastes like summer -- and who can resist that?

14. Apple pie

Apple tree pie is a stalwart of American culture.

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According to a pie chart (seriously) from the American Pie Quango, apple really is the U.S.'s national favorite -- followed by pumpkin, chocolate, lemon meringue and cherry.

Not to burst the patriotic bubble, just information technology's not an American nutrient of ethnic origin.

Food critic John Mariani dates the appearance of apple tree pies in the United States to 1780, long after they were popular in England. Apples aren't even native to the continent; the Pilgrims brought seeds.

And so what'southward the bargain with the star-spangled association? The pie council's John Lehndorff explains: "When you say that something is 'every bit American as apple pie,' what you're really maxim is that the item came to this land from elsewhere and was transformed into a distinctly American experience."

And you're saying Americans know something practiced enough to be an icon when we eat information technology, with or without the cheddar cheese or vanilla ice cream on top.

13. Frito pie

Frito Pie: not pie at all only Fritos with chili on top, served in the flake bag itself.

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Fifty-fifty the about small chili has legions of fans. Consider Kit Carson, whose dying regret was that he didn't have fourth dimension for ane more bowl. Or the mysterious "La Dama de Azul," a Spanish nun named Sis Mary of Agreda, who reportedly never left her convent in Spain but came dorsum from i of her astral projections preaching Christianity to Indians in the New Globe with their recipe for venison chili.

Less apocryphally, "chili queens" in 1880s San Antonio, Texas, sold their spicy stew from stands, and the "San Antonio Chili Stand up" at the 1893 Chicago globe's fair secured chili's nationwide fame.

We really love the American ingenuity that added corn fries and cheddar cheese to make Frito pie, a kitschy delight you can order served in the bag at the V & Dime on the Santa Iron Plaza, the same physical location of the original Woolworth's luncheon counter that came upwards with it.

12. Po' boy

Po'boy -- the ultimate American sandwich.

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The muffaletta might be the signature sandwich of Crescent Urban center, but the po' boy is the "shotgun house of New Orleans cuisine."

The traditional Louisiana sub is said to have originated in 1929, when Bennie and Clovis Martin -- both of whom had been streetcar conductors and union members before opening the coffee store that legend says became the birthplace of the po' boy -- supported hitting streetcar motormen and conductors with nutrient.

"We fed those men gratis of charge until the strike ended," Bennie was quoted. "Whenever we saw 1 of the striking men coming, ane of united states would say, 'Hither comes another poor boy.'"

Enjoy the beloved everyman sandwich in its seemingly space variety (the traditional fried oyster and shrimp can't exist beat out) and fight the encroachment of chain sub shops at the annual Oak Street Po-Boy Festival each Fall.

11. Greenish chile stew

Light-green Chile Stew is a traditional New Mexican dish.

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Have pork and green chiles e'er spent such succulent time together? Green chile stew has been called the queen of the New Mexican winter table, merely we don't need a cold winter day to swallow this fragrant favorite.

We like it someday -- so long as the Hatch chiles are roasted fresh. Order them from Hatch Chile Express in Hatch, New Mexico, the Chile Capital of the World; they come already roasted, peeled, deseeded, chopped, and frozen.

Better however, brand the trip to green chile stew state and lodge upwardly a basin. Whether yous eat it in New Mexico at a table most a kiva fireplace or at your ain kitchen tabular array, the odour and sense of taste are to die for, and the comfort level remarkable on the resurrection scale.

10. Chocolate-fleck cookies

The chocolate flake cookie was invented past American chef Ruth Graves Wakefield in 1938.

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Today the name most associated with the killer cookie might be Mrs. Fields, but we actually have Ruth Wakefield, who owned the Price Business firm Inn, a popular spot for dwelling cooking in 1930s Whitman, Massachusetts, to give thanks for all spoon-licking love shared through chocolate flake cookies.

Was Mrs. Wakefield making her Butter Drib Exercise cookies when, lacking baker's chocolate, she substituted a cut-upward Nestle's semisweet chocolate bar? Or did the vibrations of a Hobart mixer knock some chocolate bars off a shelf and into her saccharide-cookie dough?

However chocolate chips concluded up in the batter, a new cookie was born. Andrew Nestle reputedly got the recipe from her -- information technology remains on the package to this day -- and Wakefield got a lifetime supply of chocolate chips. Can you experience the serotonin and endorphins releasing?

9. Huckleberry cobbler

Cobblers emerged in the British American colonies and remain beloved today.

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As well charmingly called slump, grunt, and buckle, cobbler got its offset with early oven-less colonists who came up with the no-crust-on-the-bottom fruit dish that could melt in a pan or pot over a burn down.

They might have been lofting a mocking revolutionary eye finger at the female parent country by making a sloppy American version of the refined British steamed fruit and dough pudding. Cobblers go doubly American when made with blueberries, which are native to North America (Maine practically has a monopoly on them).

We beloved blueberries for how they sex activity up practically any crust, dough, or batter, possibly most of all in cobblers and that other all-American favorite, the huckleberry muffin.

8. Delmonico's steak

The famous Delmonico'due south -- where the steak magic happens.

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There are steakhouses all over the country simply perhaps none so storied -- with a universally acclaimed steak named for information technology no less -- as the original Delmonico'south in New York.

The first diner called by the French name restaurant, Delmonico's opened in 1837 with unheard-of things like printed menus, tablecloths, private dining rooms, and tiffin and dinner offerings. Among other firsts, the restaurant served the "Delmonico Steak." Whatsoever the excellent cutting (the current restaurant uses boneless rib center), the term Delmonico's Steak has come to hateful the all-time.

Lightly seasoned with table salt, basted with melted butter, and grilled over a live burn down, information technology'south traditionally served with a thin clear gravy and Delmonico'due south potatoes, fabricated with cream, white pepper, Parmesan cheese, and nutmeg -- a rumored favorite of Abraham Lincoln's.

7. Chicago-style pizza

Deep dish pizza is a Chicago speciality.

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Naples gave u.s.a. the first pizza, but the City of Big Shoulders (and even bigger pizzas) gave us the deep dish. The legend goes that in 1943, a visionary named Ike Sewell opened Uno'southward Pizzeria in Chicago with the idea that if you made it hearty enough, pizza, which upward till then had been considered a snack, could be eaten as a meal.

Whether he or his original chef Rudy Malnati originated it, ane of those patron saints of pizza made information technology deep and piled it high, filling a tall buttery crust with lots of meat, cheese, tomato plant chunks, and accurate Italian spices.

Sparse-chaff pizza made in a brick oven has its place, simply if you lust for crust, nothing satisfies quite like Chicago-style.

6. Nachos

A Northern Mexican snack which has become a business firm favorite North of the border.

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The blight of diets and the boon of happy hours -- could at that place exist a more than perfect calorie-dense accessory to a bullpen of margaritas?

Less rhetorically: why does Piedras Negras, Mexico, just over the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, host The International Nacho Festival and the Biggest Nacho in the World Contest every Oct?

Because information technology was there that Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya invented nachos when a gaggle of shopping wives of American soldiers stationed at Fort Duncan arrived at the Victory Guild restaurant afterward closing time.

Maitre d'Ignacio improvised something for the gals with what he had on paw, christening his melty creation nachos especiales. From thence they have gone along across the border, the continent and the world.

five. Philly cheese steak

Philly cheese steak has famous fans -- including former President Barack Obama.

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It's a sandwich so greasy and hallowed in its hometown that the posture you lot must adopt to eat it without ruining your dress has a proper noun: "the Philadelphia Lean."

Made of "frizzled beef," chopped while beingness grilled in grease, the Philly cheese steak sandwich gets the residual of its greasy goodness from onions and cheese (American, provolone, or Cheese Whiz), all of which is laid into a long locally fabricated Amoroso bun.

Pat and Harry Olivieri become the credit for making the first cheese steaks (originally with pizza sauce -- cheese plain came afterwards, courtesy of ane of Pat'southward cooks) and selling them from their hot dog stand in due south Philly.

Pat afterwards opened Pat's King of Steaks, which still operates today and vies with rival Geno'due south Steaks for the title of best cheese steak in boondocks.

4. Hot dogs

Hot dogs are a staple of American street nutrient -- sold at carts and stands across the country.

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Nothing complements a baseball game or summertime cookout quite similar a hot dog.

For that we owe a debt to a like sausage from Frankfurt, Germany (hence, "frankfurter" and "frank") and German immigrant Charles Feltman, who is frequently credited with inventing the hot dog by using buns to save on plates.

Only it was Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker's hot dog stand on Coney Island that turned the hot dog into an icon. Every Fourth of July since 1916, the very same Nathan'southward has put on the International Hot Dog Eating Competition (electric current five-time winner Joey Anecdote took the championship in 2011, downing 62 hot dogs and buns in the x-minute face-stuffing).

Meanwhile in Windy City, the steamed or water-simmered all-beef Chicago canis familiaris (Vienna Beef, please) is however being "dragged through the garden" and served on a poppy seed bun -- absolutely without ketchup.

3. Reuben sandwich

Corned beef, swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Russian dressing -- the ultimate combination for the Reuben sandwich.

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Who knew sauerkraut could be and then sexy? Was it the tardily-nighttime inspiration of grocer Reuben Kulakofsky, who improvised the eponymous sandwich in 1925 to feed poker players at Omaha's Blackstone Hotel? Or perhaps the abstraction of Arnold Rueben, the German possessor of New York's now-defunct Reuben's Delicatessen, who came up with information technology in 1914?

The respond might exist important for lexicon etymologies, simply the better office of the secret to the Reuben is not who information technology'southward named afterwards but what it's dressed with. Aficionados agree: no store-bought Russian or Thousand Isle -- the sauce needs to be bootleg.

And you'll desire thick hand-sliced rye or pumpernickel, and skillful pastrami or corned beefiness.

two. Cheeseburger

The cheeseburger became popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

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Luncheon counter, traditional, gourmet, sliders, Kobe. White Castle, Whataburger, Burger Rex, In-North-Out, McDonald's, Steak N' Milk shake, Five Guys, The Eye Attack Grill. It's hard to believe, but it all began with a uncomplicated mistake.

Or then say the folks in Pasadena, California, who claim the archetype cheeseburger was born in that location in the late 1920s when a immature chef at The Rite Spot accidentally burned a burger and slapped on some cheese to embrace his corrigendum.

Our favorite rendition might be the way they practice cheeseburgers in New Mexico: with green chilis, natch. Follow the Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail.

one. Thanksgiving dinner

The Thanksgiving Turkey is a staple of the American vacation.

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No fancy centerpieces or long-simmering family squabbles at that get-go Thanksgiving when the Pilgrims decided not to fast only to party with the Wampanoag tribe in 1621 Plymouth.

Today we eschew the venison they most certainly ate, and we cram their 3 days of feasting into i epicurean gorge.

Indigestion all the same, zilch tastes so expert as that quintessential all-American repast of turkey (roasted or deep-fried bird, or tofurkey, or that weirdly popular Louisiana contribution turducken), dressing (former loaf bread or cornbread, onion and celery, sausage, fruit, chestnuts, oysters -- whatever your mom did, the sage was the thing), cranberry sauce, mashed and sweet potatoes, that funky greenish bean casserole with the French-fried onion rings on top, and pumpkin pie.

Nearly as iconic (and if you ask nigh kids, as delicious) is the turkey TV dinner, the 1953 brainchild of a Swanson salesman looking to use upwardly 260 overestimated tons of frozen birds. No joke: He got the idea, he said, from tidily packaged plane food. We practise love those leftovers.

Editor's annotation: This commodity was previously published in 2012. It was reformatted, updated and republished in 2017.

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Source: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/american-food-dishes/index.html

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