Hey there! I’m John Green, and welcome to my cozy corner. Today, we’re diving into some unique and tasty regional foods from across the United States. Let’s get started!
First up, we have chitlins, also known as chitterlings, which are pig intestines. They’re quite popular in the southern U.S. but might be new to you. Another southern favorite is Hoppin’ John, a dish made with black-eyed peas, rice, ham, and onions, often eaten for good luck on New Year’s Day.
In Kentucky, there’s a stew called Burgoo, which used to include meats like raccoon or squirrel but now usually has chicken or pork. Cincinnati, Ohio, is famous for Goetta, a sausage made with oats, and Cincinnati chili, which might surprise you with its hint of chocolate or cinnamon.
Pennsylvania offers Whoopie Pie, a sweet treat, and the famous cheesesteak sandwich. There’s also scrapple, a loaf made from pig parts and cornmeal. In New York, you can try a garbage plate, a mix of tater tots, macaroni salad, and your choice of meats.
California is known for Avocado Pie, a dessert from the 1950s, and date shakes, which are milkshakes made with dates. In Texas, Frito pie combines chili, cheese, and Fritos for a crunchy delight. If you’re feeling adventurous, try Rocky Mountain oysters, which are actually bull testicles!
In Alaska, people enjoy reindeer hot dogs and a unique ice cream called akutaq, made with fat, meat, berries, and oil. Minnesota has borrowed Norwegian dishes like lutefisk, a jelly-like fish dish, and lefse, a special flatbread.
Hawaii offers Loco Moco, a breakfast dish with rice, a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and gravy. Spam musubi is another favorite, featuring fried Spam on rice wrapped in seaweed. For dessert, try Guava Chiffon Cake or Haupia, a coconut milk pudding.
In Buffalo, New York, you can find Beef on Weck, a roast beef sandwich on a special roll. Illinois offers the Horseshoe sandwich, loaded with fries, meat, and cheese sauce. Louisiana’s Po’ Boy is a baguette filled with fried shrimp or other meats.
The South is famous for dishes like gumbo, a soup with okra, and grits, a corn porridge. Add shrimp, and you have Shrimp and Grits. Chicken fried steak and Coca-Cola cake are also popular, along with Watergate Salad, a green dish with pistachio pudding and marshmallows.
Wisconsin is known for kringle, a flaky pastry filled with nuts or fruit. Louisiana’s King cake is a festive pastry with a hidden plastic baby inside. And don’t forget the cronut, a half-doughnut, half-croissant creation from New York City.
Thanks for joining me on this delicious journey through regional foods! If you have any mind-blowing questions, feel free to ask. And remember, as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome!
Choose one regional food from the article and research its history and cultural significance. Create a short presentation to share with the class, including interesting facts and any personal connections you might have to the dish.
With permission from your parents or guardians, try making one of the regional dishes at home. Document the process with photos or a video, and write a short reflection on the experience and how the dish turned out.
Create a map of the United States and label it with the regional foods mentioned in the article. Use different colors or symbols to represent each region, and include a brief description of each dish next to its location.
Participate in a class debate about which regional food is the most unique or interesting. Prepare arguments to support your choice and be ready to counter opposing viewpoints. Use evidence from the article and your own research.
Write a short story about a character who travels across the United States trying different regional foods. Include descriptions of the dishes and the character’s reactions. Be creative and have fun with the narrative!
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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Hi, I’m John Green. Welcome to my salon. Hey there, fake fireplace. This is Mental Floss on YouTube. I’m from Alabama, so I know that chitlins are a very common food in the southern United States. But you might not! Also known as chitterlings, chitlins are the small intestines of (usually) a pig. Intestines are actually pretty ordinary cuisine around the world, but in the U.S., we mostly see them eaten in the south.
Anyway, that’s the first of many regional foods I’m going to tell you about today. And I apologize to viewers from countries that aren’t the United States, but I’m still going to mention you occasionally… because we borrow a lot of dishes from you.
Kentucky is well-known for Burgoo, which is a kind of stew. It used to contain meat from animals like raccoons or possums or squirrels. These days, it’s more likely chicken or pork. Let’s talk about pie for a second. Avocado Pie from California is said to have originated in the 1950s. You should only really eat Marionberry pie in Oregon because marionberries are a kind of blackberry that were developed at Oregon State University. Shoofly Pie is a kind of molasses pie brought to the United States by the Pennsylvania Dutch.
And speaking of Pennsylvania, we can thank the Amish for Whoopie Pie, which is not what you might think it is. Also from Pennsylvania: of course, cheesesteak – a steak sandwich with cheese. And scrapple, which is made from parts of the pig that are usually not eaten, like heart and head, broiled, then mushed up and made into a loaf with cornmeal. It’s like meatloaf, but with a different twist.
Goetta is a popular sausage in Cincinnati, which they probably took from the Germans, you know, because it’s sausage. It’s like scrapple, but with oats instead of cornmeal, and turned into sausage instead of a loaf. The town’s also known for Cincinnati chili, which sometimes contains chocolate or cinnamon.
On New Year’s Day in the South, it’s considered good luck to eat black-eyed peas, especially in the form of Hoppin’ John. That dish contains black-eyed peas, white rice, ham, and onions. It’s also delicious. Rochester, New York is home to the garbage plate, a dish of half tater tots and half macaroni salad, or as I like to call it – heaven. Then you can choose what to add: cheeseburger, hot dog, egg, sausage, steak. Pile on some mustard and/or onions, and you have yourself a garbage plate.
Then there’s Frito pie, a dish that you can find in Texas containing chili, cheese, and Fritos. Frito pie is rumored to have been invented by Daisy Doolin, mother of Frito-Lay founder, Elmer Doolin. The Norwegian dish, Lutefisk, is white fish soaked in lye for days until it has a jelly-like consistency, and Madison, Minnesota calls itself the “lutefisk capital of the U.S.” Minnesota borrowed a lot of food traditions from the Norwegians, including lefse, which is a flatbread for special occasions.
One food we didn’t borrow from Europe: the Boston Cream Pie, invented in Boston in the 1850s. Boston’s nickname, Beantown, came from Boston Baked Beans, made from beans and molasses. And while we’re talking about Massachusetts, let’s discuss chowder. New England Clam Chowder is cream-based, and most other clam chowders contain tomatoes, but of course, that doesn’t fly in New England. In fact, in 1939, Maine tried to make it illegal to put tomatoes in chowder. Manhattan clam chowder is brothier and has tomatoes. Rhode Island clam chowder is very similar but without vegetable chunks.
Alaskans enjoy their reindeer, specifically eating them. They eat reindeer hot dogs and reindeer steak. They’ve also been known to eat sourdough pancakes, which sound delicious. And Alaska has its own kind of ice cream: akutaq. Ingredients include fat, meat, berries, and oil. In the local language, Yupik, akutaq means “something mixed.” Sometimes it’s made primarily out of Crisco, and I can tell you from experience that it’s quite unique.
From the 49th to the 50th state… Hawaii has a lot of regional dishes, like Loco Moco, a breakfast with white rice, a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and gravy. They also have a bunch of dishes made with Spam, like Spam musubi, which is fried Spam on rice and wrapped up with seaweed like sushi. And poke is Hawaiian for “to slice,” which explains why the dish is a salad made up of sliced raw tuna, seaweed, and vegetables.
But if raw fish and Spam are too daring for you, Hawaii also has its own regional desserts, like Guava Chiffon Cake (distinct for its orange color and guava flavor) and Haupia (a pudding made from coconut milk). Speaking of dessert, the date shake was invented in the 1940s by Russ Nichol, who ran a date shop in California. To be clear, date shakes are not things that you drink on a date; they’re shakes made of dates.
If you order Rocky Mountain oysters in the western U.S., you should know in advance that you are about to eat bull testicles, probably deep-fried. And if you’re into exotic meats, you might also want to try alligator sausage in Louisiana or geoduck in the Pacific Northwest, which is a large clam. And you can always head down to Texas to try some diamondback rattlesnake.
For less exotic meats, go for finger steaks in Idaho, which is just deep-fried steak. And then of course there’s Turducken – turkey stuffed with duck that’s stuffed with chicken. Believe it or not, this isn’t just an American invention; it’s very similar to ballotine in the UK. But anyway, it’s best known here for its Louisiana roots.
The state pastry of Wisconsin is kringle. It’s a flaky and doughy dessert filled with nuts or fruit. And it’s technically Danish, but it’s not a Danish, just to be clear. Anyway, Wisconsin is known for its kringle, not its originality. But they’re also famous for chicken booyah (a chicken and vegetable stew) and Limburger cheese, which is famous for its strong smell.
All right, let’s talk sandwiches for a minute. Beef on weck is a popular dish in Buffalo, New York. It’s basically just a roast beef sandwich on kummelweck roll. The spiedie sandwich, which is like a regular sub sandwich with cubes of marinated meat, also comes from New York. In Illinois, a Horseshoe sandwich is an open-faced sandwich with fries, meat, and cheese sauce on it. A typical horseshoe sandwich has around 1,900 calories, or enough to last you for a day.
The Po’ Boy is from Louisiana. It’s made of baguette, fried shrimp or other meats, and gravy. The sandwich used to be called a “peacemaker” because it’s so good you don’t even want to fight anymore. Other food you should eat in Louisiana: King cake on Mardi Gras (if you can’t make it to France) and Gumbo. King cake is a delicious pastry cake, and if you find a little plastic baby in your piece, then you’re special, which is one of the main ways that King cake is different from all other foods.
And gumbo is a famous soup that was invented in Louisiana. Okra is one of its main ingredients. In fact, the word “gumbo” probably came from a Bantu word meaning “okra.” All right, I gotta speed up, let’s talk about the South quickly! Grits are porridge made from corn. We borrowed this one from the Native Americans. Add shrimp, and you have Shrimp and Grits.
Chicken fried steak is just a steak prepared exactly like fried chicken. Coca-Cola cake is a regular chocolate cake with Coke as a primary ingredient, and it’s great. Chess pie was probably borrowed from England. It’s a pretty standard pie, but it contains cornmeal. And Watergate Salad is a delightful-looking green dish made from pistachio pudding, whipped topping, pineapples, and marshmallows.
Baked deviled crab is crab that’s prepared like deviled eggs and then baked. She-crab soup was probably Scottish before it became a favorite in the Carolinas. It’s a chowder made with crab eggs, which is why it’s named after the female crab. And the South is also known for conch chowder and frogmore stew (which has shrimp, corn, potatoes, and sausage).
Then we have some things that are exactly what they sound like: sweet potato biscuits, pickled pig’s feet, boiled peanuts, and fried green tomatoes. And finally, I return to my salon to tell you about one of Time Magazine’s top 25 inventions of 2013: the cronut. We may have only recently invented the half-doughnut, half-croissant, but already it’s a staple in New York City. Only 300 are made every day at Dominique Ansel Bakery, and they sell out every single day.
Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people. Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions. This week’s question is from RayIonomi8 who asks, “Is it true that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile?” Well, we don’t actually know. That expression is as old as time, but there are a lot of muscles involved in both, and it depends on how you’re smiling and how you’re frowning.
Anyway, thus far scientists have not been able to prove whether one involves significantly more muscles than the other. It’s a fertile area for research, though. If you have a mind-blowing question, please leave it below in the comments. We’ll endeavor to answer as many as we can. Thanks again for watching Mental Floss, and as we say in my hometown – don’t forget to be awesome.
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Regional – Relating to or characteristic of a particular area or part of a country – The regional cuisine of Italy varies greatly, with each area having its own special dishes.
Foods – Substances that people eat or drink to maintain life and growth – Different cultures have unique foods that are often tied to their history and geography.
Southern – Relating to the southern part of a country or region – Southern cooking in the United States is famous for its use of ingredients like cornmeal and okra.
Midwestern – Relating to the Midwest region of the United States – Midwestern states are known for their hearty foods, such as casseroles and pot roasts.
Eastern – Relating to the eastern part of a country or region – Eastern European foods often include dishes like borscht and pierogi.
Western – Relating to the western part of a country or region – Western cuisine in the United States often features barbecued meats and fresh produce.
Northern – Relating to the northern part of a country or region – Northern Italian foods are known for their use of butter and cream in cooking.
Hawaiian – Relating to Hawaii or its people, culture, or language – Hawaiian foods often include tropical fruits like pineapple and dishes such as poke.
Sandwich – A food typically consisting of two pieces of bread with filling such as meat, cheese, or vegetables – The sandwich is a popular lunch option because it is easy to make and eat on the go.
Unique – Being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else – Each culture has unique foods that reflect its history and traditions.
