Classic American Recipes
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Explore the diverse flavors of classic American recipes. Discover the rich history and indigenous ingredients that shape American cuisine.
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Defining American Cuisine
Does the United States have a classic American cuisine? From its very beginning, America was a cross-cultural people with diverse languages, traditions, methods, and cuisines.
In those early years, our only commonality was the indigenous ingredients found in this bountiful land. While there were skirmishes and unrest, misunderstandings, and barriers to survival, the people of this land found that food could help bridge that wide cultural divide.
When considering American cuisine, one must look at the abundant natural resources in the 16th and 17th centuries. Native Americans hunted, trapped, fished, gathered wild plants, cultivated, and grew from seed foods every spring. Indigenous ingredients part of their everyday diet were foods like:
- Corn
- Crab
- Lobster
- Oysters
- Blueberries
- Cranberries
- Turkey
- Tomatoes
- Potatoes
- Pumpkins
- Squash
With Native American aid, settlers adapted to this new land, learning how to find and grow food. They brought innovation, like grist mills, but they also brought their unique blend of traditions, including livestock like chickens, goats, sheep, and cows. Together, they began to form a new land, a melting pot of flavors, textures, and goodness we can see reflected in our food—even in the 21st century.
When considering what constitutes American classic cuisine, the answer is… there isn’t really a “classic” cuisine. But when you look at ingredients, you see the trend. As the Native Americans did, we find ourselves eating locally, eating seasonally, and eating many of the same ingredients, with new flavors, twists, and adaptations, just as the Pilgrims and the Native Americans before us.
Do we have a classic American Cuisine? Regionally, we most definitely have our culinary differences. Yet, from region to region across America, we find hints of our Founding Cuisine.
Classic American Recipes
Here, you will find classic American dishes from the four regions of the United States. Let’s begin in New England.
New England
New England cuisine is noted for its seafood, “a legacy inherited from coastal tribes like the Wampanoag and Narragansett, who equally used the rich fishing banks offshore for sustenance. Favorite fish include cod, salmon, winter flounder, haddock, striped bass, pollock, hake, bluefish, and, in southern New England, tautog.” However, in addition to fish and shellfish, New England is also known for its meats, like Yankee Pot Roast and boiled meats.
While in my mind, I can’t help but think of Clambakes as the perfect meal to symbolize New England regional cuisine, we chose instead:
New England Clam Chowder
I will never forget the bowl of clam chowder I had in Boston near the North End. Perhaps it was the setting, or perhaps the freshness of the seafood. I will never know, but the memory is incredibly tasty. While JFK’s Favorite Fish Chowder will always be a favorite, this classic clam chowder is a nice substitution.
Mid-Atlantic
The mid-Atlantic region (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Northern Maryland) has been a cross-culture amalgamation of flavors since its founding in 1653 by the Dutch. New York City is and always has been a major cultural capital of the United States, and immigrants from every corner of the world have influenced its cuisine, like the Dutch, Italian, German, Irish, British, and Jewish.
Dishes of note originating or popularized in New York City include; The New York Strip Steak, Lobster Newberg, Waldorf salad, vichyssoise, and eggs benedict. But did you know this region is also responsible for American classics like; apple pie, cole slaw, hot dogs, mayonnaise, doughnuts, waffles and all forms of pasta like spaghetti and macaroni and cheese? Just to name a few.
The original Dutch settlers of New York brought recipes they knew and understood from the Netherlands… in many quarters of New York their version of apple pie with a streusel top is still baked… their predilection for waffles in time evolved into the American national recipe, and they also made coleslaw, originally a Dutch salad. The internationally famous American doughnut began as a New York pastry that arrived in the 18th century as the Dutch olykoek.
But it’s Baltimore, where they host the annual Maryland Crab Feast, that we’ll head for the mid-Atlantic region:
Classic Baltimore-Style Crabcakes
“This is the best crab cake recipe you will ever find. If you don’t overmix, and don’t pack your mounds too tightly, you will experience pure, unadulterated crab cake heaven,” Andrew Zimmern says.
Midwest
The Midwest region (states comprised near the Great Lakes and the Great Plains) is a land filled with almost endless waves of grain, a vast prairie land populated only by interwar ring nomadic tribes like the Sioux, Osage, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. These tribes survived on beans, maize, and squash, plants from the Three Sisters. The region is known for its roaming herds of bison and vast corn and wheat production.
With an influx of Eastern and Northern Europeans, regional cuisine certainly represents those cultures. In particular, the Germans from Russia immigrated in large numbers into the Dakotas, influencing common dishes. See our Apple Kuchen recipe, a favorite any time of the year. But whether it’s Cincinnati Chili or Kansas City Barbecue, the Midwest offers an abundant supply of classic American cuisine.
Kansas City Ribs
Ribs never tasted so good!
American South
Sources say European influence began soon after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, and the earliest recipes emerged by the end of the 17th century. To the upper portion of the South, French Huguenots brought the concept of making roux for sauces and soups, and later French settlers hunted for frogs in the swamps to make frog legs.
Germans often settled in Appalachia on small farms or in the backcountry and invented an American breakfast delicacy, apple butter, based on their recipe for Apfel kraut, and later introduced red cabbage and rye. Settlers from the UK, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales brought seed stock for peaches, plums, and apples to grow orchards. The staples meat of the South is pork.
Fried Chicken in the 18th Century
Southwest
This region comprises the states in the Four Corners (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) plus Nevada, Southern California, and West Texas. Originally part of the Spanish Empire for more than two centuries before California’s statehood in the 1830s, immigrants from Mexico and Central America largely influenced its regional cuisine. High-quality beef is a feature of this region known for its cowboys and cattle ranches.
Cuisine in this region tends to have certain key ingredients: tomatoes, onions, black beans, pinto beans, rice, bell peppers, and cheese, in particular Monterey Jack, invented in Southern California in the 19th century. Chili peppers, namely the Anaheim and Hatch, play an important role in the cuisine. Cornbread is also a favorite. Outdoor cooking is popular and still utilizes an old method settlers brought from the East with them, in which a cast iron Dutch oven is covered with the coals of the fire and stacked or hung from a tripod: this is very different from the earthenware pots of Mexico.
America has been in love with Southwest cooking for ages. We all have our favorites, which most likely appear regularly on our weekly menus.
To bring a little corn and a little cast iron flavor to our classic American cuisines, we choose
Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread
Get the recipe here.
Northwest
The Pacific Northwest as a region generally includes Alaska and the state of Washington near the Canadian border and terminates near Sacramento, California. Here, the terrain is mostly temperate rainforest on the Coast mixed with pine forest as one approaches the Canadian border inland.
One of the core favorite foodstuffs is Pacific salmon, native to many of the larger rivers of the area and often smoked or grilled on cedar planks. In Alaska, wild game like ptarmigan and moose meat are featured extensively since much of the state is wilderness.
Fresh fish like steelhead trout, Pacific cod, Pacific halibut, and pollock are fished for extensively and feature on the menu of many restaurants, as do a plethora of fresh berries and vegetables, like Cameo apples from Washington state, the headquarters of the U.S. apple industry, cherries from Oregon, blackberries, and marionberries, a feature of many pies.
Hazelnuts are grown extensively in this region and are a feature of baking, such as in chocolate hazelnut pie, an Oregon favorite, and Almond Roca is a local candy.
Crabs are a delicacy, including Alaskan king crab, red crab, yellow crab, and the world-famous Dungeness crab. Californian and Oregonian sportsmen pursue the last three extensively using hoop nets and prepare them in many ways.
Alaska king crab, which can weigh up to 10 kg, is often served steamed for a whole table with lemon butter sauce or with chunks of salad and avocado. Native crabs are the base of dishes like the California roll, cioppino, a tomato-based fisherman’s stew, and Crab Louie, another salad native to San Francisco.
Wheat is the region’s favorite grain, and it is famous for sourdough bread. The region’s cheeses include Humboldt Fog, Cougar Gold, and Teleme.