American recipes, state by state
Explore regional dishes from across the United States. Pick a state, discover its recipes, and bring a local favorite to your kitchen.
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Arkansas Cheese Dip
The orange restaurant dip of central Arkansas: mild green chiles, cumin and a pound of American cheese taken to a pour that holds all night over a low flame.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 280 per serving
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Baltimore Pit Beef, Charred Outside and Rare Through the Middle
A top round rubbed with salt and paprika, burned black over open charcoal in under an hour, shaved paper-thin and piled on a kaiser roll with raw onion and a cold horseradish sauce.
- Total
- 1 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 520 per serving
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Basque Beans with Chorizo
A pot of red beans cooked slowly with onion, garlic and Spanish chorizo, where the sausage fat and the paprika do all the colouring and nothing is fried first.
- Total
- 2 hr 35 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 548 per serving
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Basque Chorizo with Beans
White beans cooked slowly with onion and garlic while whole chorizos poach in the pot, then come out to be split and crisped and laid back on top.
- Total
- 2 hr 20 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 542 per serving
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Basque Lamb Stew
Lamb shoulder browned hard, then stewed down with onions, sweet peppers and paprika until the meat gives and the sauce turns the colour of the peppers.
- Total
- 3 hr
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 624 per serving
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Bison Chili
Ground bison cooked with a purée of toasted dried chiles and enough added fat to carry them, then simmered with pinto beans until it is thick enough to stand a spoon in.
- Total
- 2 hr 10 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 455 per serving
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Bison Stew
Bison chuck browned in fat it does not supply itself, then braised low and slow with onion, root vegetables and red wine until the collagen gives way and the meat stays short of dry.
- Total
- 3 hr 25 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 520 per serving
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Boardwalk Fries with Cider Vinegar, Cut from Whole Potatoes and Fried Twice
Whole russets cut into batons, fried once to cook them through and once more to set the crust, salted while they are still dripping and doused from a vinegar shaker into a paper cup.
- Total
- 1 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 700 per serving
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Breakfast Tacos on Flour Tortillas
Flour tortillas rolled thin, cooked dry in a hot skillet, and filled from the same pan with potatoes, chorizo and soft eggs — the argument is the tortilla, and the tortilla is northern.
- Total
- 1 hr 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 735 per serving
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Butte Pasty
Diced sirloin, potato and onion mixed together, wrapped in plain pastry and baked hot, then eaten with brown gravy poured over it — the Butte version, written from the recipe a Cornish woman gave the Montana Writers' Project in 1943.
- Total
- 1 hr 35 min, plus 1 hour chilling the pastry
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 990 per serving
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Butte Pork Chop Sandwich
A thin boneless loin cutlet dipped in a loose batter, fried hard and fast, and put on a small soft bun with mustard, pickle and raw onion — nothing else, and no bone anywhere in it.
- Total
- 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 770 per serving
-
Carne Adovada
Pork shoulder buried overnight in a thick purée of whole dried red chile, garlic and oregano, then braised in the same purée until it falls apart under a fork.
- Total
- 3 hr 45 min, plus overnight
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 615 per serving
-
Cedar-Planked Salmon
A king salmon fillet salted, dried and cooked on a soaked cedar board over an indirect fire, pulled at 120°F while the fat is still in it.
- Total
- 2 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 435 per serving
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Chicken and Slippery Dumplings, Rolled Flat and Boiled in the Broth
A whole chicken simmered down to broth, then squares of unleavened dough rolled thin and boiled in that broth until the dumplings go slick and the pot thickens itself.
- Total
- 2 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 470 per serving
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Chislic
Cubes of lamb fried hard in deep fat, hit with garlic salt the second they come out, and eaten off toothpicks with saltines — the official nosh of South Dakota by act of the legislature.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 460 per serving
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Chocolate Gravy over Biscuits
Cocoa, sugar and flour cooked into a thin sweet gravy and poured over split hot biscuits — the Ozark breakfast that is built exactly like sausage gravy and tastes nothing like it.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 745 per serving
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Chuckwagon Sourdough Biscuits
An overnight sourdough sponge cut with cold fat and lifted the next morning by soda meeting the acid the night put there, baked hard and fast in a cast iron pan.
- Total
- 45 min, plus 8 to 12 hours fermenting
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 205 per serving
-
Cider Doughnuts
A cake doughnut leavened with soda and powder, where two cups of sweet cider are boiled down to half a cup before they go anywhere near the flour.
- Total
- 2 hr 25 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 375 per doughnut
-
Connecticut Hot Lobster Roll with Butter
Warm picked lobster turned through melted butter off the heat and piled into a griddled split-top roll — no mayonnaise, no celery, and nothing else in the bun.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 615 per serving
-
Connecticut Steamed Cheeseburger
A thick beef patty cooked through in a steam cabinet instead of on a griddle, with a block of sharp cheddar melted to a sauce in its own tray and poured over it.
- Total
- 31 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 845 per serving
-
Corn Chowder
The stripped cobs boiled for twenty minutes to make the broth, salt pork and onion for the fat, and no flour anywhere — the chowder of the towns that had no clams.
- Total
- 1 hr 5 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 350 per serving
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Crab Imperial, Bound with a Cooked Sauce Instead of Mayonnaise
A pound of lump crab folded into a thick cooked milk sauce, filled into shells or ramekins, glazed with mayonnaise and baked until the edges bubble and the top browns in patches.
- Total
- 45 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 320 per serving
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Delaware Peach Pie, Drained and Reduced Before It Goes in the Crust
The state dessert of Delaware by statute: ripe freestones, sugar, lemon and a double crust, with the fruit drained and its juice boiled down first so the slice stands up instead of flooding the plate.
- Total
- 6 hr
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 530 per serving
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Disco Fries
Twice-fried potatoes under melted low-moisture mozzarella and a dark brown gravy, finished under the broiler in a metal dish — the North Jersey diner order that exists for two in the morning.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 546 per serving
-
Dutch-Oven Chuckwagon Beans
A pound of pinto beans soaked overnight, thrown into fresh water with salt pork and dried chile, and left in a low oven under a lid until the pot liquor thickens by itself.
- Total
- 3 hr 35 min, plus overnight soaking
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 335 per serving
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Finger Steaks
Strips of beef in a thin beer batter, fried hard and fast and served in a basket with fry sauce, the way every Idaho roadhouse has sold them since at least 1964.
- Total
- 45 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 686 per serving
-
Fleischkuechle
Raw seasoned beef sealed thin inside a soft buttermilk dough and deep fried, so the meat cooks in its own steam while the pastry blisters — the fried filled pastry of German-Russian North Dakota.
- Total
- 1 hr 35 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 560 per serving
-
Fried Green Tomatoes
Mature green tomatoes sliced thick, salted until they weep, dredged in cornmeal and fried in bacon fat, with a cream gravy made in the pan they came out of — the way the syndicated columns had it a hundred years before the novel.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 396 per serving
-
Fried Peach Hand Pies
Dried peaches stewed back to a stiff dark paste, sealed in a lard crust and fried in an inch of fat — the winter pie of the upland South, built to be carried.
- Total
- 3 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 375 per pie
-
German-Russian Cabbage Borscht
A pot of pork broth thick with cabbage, potato and dill, finished with cream off the heat and a spoonful of sour cream at the table — the borscht of German-Russian North Dakota, which is not the beet soup the word makes you expect.
- Total
- 2 hr 10 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 430 per serving
-
Hartford Election Cake
A yeast-raised fruited loaf, spiced with nutmeg and mace, wetted with brandy and wine and frosted white — the Connecticut election-day cake, cut down from eight pounds of flour to one loaf.
- Total
- 20 hr
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 475 per serving
-
Huckleberry Pie
A double-crust pie of wild mountain huckleberries, set with tapioca and sweetened just enough to stop short of jam, because the fruit is not a blueberry and should not be treated as one.
- Total
- 1 hr 30 min, plus 1 hour chilling and 4 hours cooling
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 490 per serving
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Ice Cream Potato
Vanilla ice cream shaped into a russet, frozen hard, rolled in cocoa and split open with whipped cream for butter and chocolate for the bacon bits.
- Total
- 3 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 600 per serving
-
Indian Pudding
Cornmeal cooked into scalded milk, sweetened with molasses and ginger, and left in a slow oven for three hours until it sets dark and soft.
- Total
- 3 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 205 per serving
-
Iowa Chop
A centre-cut pork loin chop an inch and a half thick, brined, seared hard and finished in the oven in the same pan it browned in.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 520 per serving
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Kansas City Burnt Ends
The point of a brisket cooked once for tenderness, cut into inch cubes, tossed with rub and sauce and cooked a second time until every face has its own crust.
- Total
- 10 hr
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 650 per serving
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Knoephla Soup
Little flour dumplings cut off a rope and dropped into a thick potato and cream broth — the soup of German-Russian North Dakota, and a dish whose whole argument is how the dumpling gets into the pot.
- Total
- 1 hr
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 570 per serving
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Kuchen
A sweet yeast base pressed into a pie tin, fruit laid over it and a cream custard poured on top, dusted with cinnamon — the official state dessert of South Dakota, carried through two legislatures by the town of Eureka.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 320 per serving
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Lane Cake with Raisin and Whiskey Filling
Four thin white layers split by a cooked filling of eight egg yolks, sugar, butter, clipped raisins and a wine-glass of whiskey, iced in boiled white icing — printed under this name, by the woman whose name it is, in Clayton, Alabama, in 1898.
- Total
- 2 hr 15 min, plus overnight
- Serves
- 16
- Calories
- 565 per serving
-
Las Vegas Shrimp Cocktail
Shrimp poached four minutes in a seasoned pot, shocked cold, and packed into a stemmed glass over a sauce built on horseradish rather than sugar.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 156 per serving
-
Lefse
Riced potato worked cold with a little flour, rolled paper thin and baked dry on a hot griddle until it freckles — the Norwegian half of North Dakota, in a soft grey sheet.
- Total
- 5 hr 20 min
- Serves
- 16
- Calories
- 150 per serving
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Loose Meat Sandwich
Ground beef steamed apart in its own liquid until every crumb is separate, spooned into a steamed bun and eaten with a spoon in the other hand.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 370 per sandwich
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Maine Lobster Roll with Mayonnaise
Cold picked lobster barely dressed with mayonnaise and lemon, piled into a split-top roll whose flat sides have been buttered and griddled crisp.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 442 per serving
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Maine Whoopie Pies
Two soft domed chocolate cakes baked like drop cookies and sandwiched around a white filling beaten from butter, shortening and confectioners' sugar.
- Total
- 1 hr 20 min, including cooling
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 486 per serving
-
Maine Wild Blueberry Pie
A double-crust pie built on small sharp lowbush berries, sugared lightly and thickened with a spoonful of starch, so it sets without turning into jam.
- Total
- 5 hr 45 min, including cooling
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 496 per serving
-
Maryland Crab Soup, Red and Built on the Shells
A beef broth run through crab shells, loaded with corn, lima beans, cabbage, potato and tomato, and given its crab meat in the last five minutes.
- Total
- 3 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 300 per serving
-
Memphis Barbecue Spaghetti
Chopped smoked pork shoulder simmered into a tomato-and-molasses base, with spaghetti boiled, drained and finished in the pan until it has drunk some of it.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 660 per serving
-
New England Boiled Dinner
Corned beef simmered until it gives, then the root vegetables cooked in its broth in the order they take to soften, and the beets kept out of the pot so the dinner stays its own colour.
- Total
- 4 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 560 per serving
-
New Haven White Clam Apizza
A thin, blistered, coal-dark crust with no tomato on it at all: littleneck clams shucked raw over the dough, their liquor, garlic, oregano, grated cheese and olive oil.
- Total
- 24 hr 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 605 per serving
-
New York Cheesecake
Two pounds of full-fat cream cheese, a little cornstarch and five eggs baked slow in a water bath until the middle still wobbles, then chilled overnight so it sets dense rather than fluffy.
- Total
- 12 hr
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 533 per serving
-
New York System Hot Wieners
Small veal-and-pork wieners in steamed buns under a dry, dark, tomato-free meat sauce, yellow mustard, raw chopped onion and celery salt, dressed three and four at a time.
- Total
- 1 hr 35 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 600 per serving
-
Newark Italian Hot Dog
Deep-fried hot dogs and deep-fried potato rounds packed into a quarter of a round pizza bread with fried peppers and onions, built as a pocket rather than a sandwich.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 946 per sandwich
-
Pan-Fried Hagerman Trout
A whole pan-dressed rainbow trout in a cornmeal crust, cooked in bacon fat in a hot skillet for four minutes a side, which is all a fish this size ever needed.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 502 per serving
-
Pan-Fried White River Trout
A whole pan-dressed trout in white cornmeal, fried hard in lard in one skillet and turned once — the fish a federal dam put in an Arkansas river that never had one.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 445 per serving
-
Philadelphia Cheesesteak
Ribeye sliced thin against a hot griddle, onions cooked down beside it, cheese melted into the pile and the whole thing scooped into a long roll — fifteen minutes of cooking and a great deal of argument nobody has ever settled with a document.
- Total
- 30 min, plus 45 min freezing
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 925 per sandwich
-
Philadelphia Roast Pork with Broccoli Rabe and Sharp Provolone
Pork shoulder rubbed with garlic, rosemary and fennel, roasted slow, sliced thin and wetted with its own pan juice, then packed into a long roll with bitter greens and sharp provolone — the other Philadelphia sandwich, and the one the city's own agency says is exactly as old as the famous one.
- Total
- 4 hr 30 min, plus overnight
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 840 per sandwich
-
Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese
Thick slices of cured, smoked pork roll notched at the edge so they fry flat, a fried egg, American cheese melted on the meat in the pan, all of it on a kaiser roll.
- Total
- 20 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 748 per sandwich
-
Portland Italian Sandwich
A soft white roll split along the top, laid with ham and cheese and then loaded with raw onion, green pepper, tomato, sour pickle and black olives, finished with oil, salt and pepper.
- Total
- 30 min, including 10 minutes wrapped
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 726 per serving
-
Posole
Whole lime-treated corn simmered with pork until every kernel bursts open, with red chile stirred in for the last hour rather than the first.
- Total
- 4 hr 25 min, plus overnight
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 510 per serving
-
Rhode Island Doughboys
A flat round of risen dough pulled thin between the hands, dropped into deep fat and thrown hot into sugar. Four things in the dough and nothing at all in the middle.
- Total
- 2 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 510 per serving
-
Roast Pheasant with Cream Gravy
Two young birds blanketed in bacon, roasted hot and fast so the breast does not dry out, and a gravy built in the pan with cream — the method South Dakota's own extension service wrote down in 1960.
- Total
- 1 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 590 per serving
-
Rocky Mountain Oysters
Calf testicles peeled of their outer membrane, sliced, soaked in salted water to draw the blood, and fried in a cornmeal crust until they are crisp outside and pale and firm within.
- Total
- 55 min, plus 2 hours soaking
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 270 per serving
-
Scotcheroos
Peanut butter and boiled sugar syrup stirred through puffed rice cereal, pressed flat and covered with melted chocolate and butterscotch chips.
- Total
- 1 hr 25 min
- Serves
- 24
- Calories
- 240 per bar
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Scrapple
Pork scraps simmered to shreds, the broth thickened with equal weights of cornmeal and buckwheat, seasoned with sage and summer savory, set in a loaf overnight and fried in slices — printed in Pennsylvania in 1880 and defined by the federal meat regulations in 1970.
- Total
- 4 hr 15 min, plus overnight
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 455 per serving
-
Seattle Dog
A grilled frankfurter in a toasted bun spread with cream cheese and buried in griddled onions, built the way the street carts build it, in half an hour on a home griddle.
- Total
- 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 500 per serving
-
Seattle Teriyaki Chicken
Boneless thighs soaked in soy, mirin and brown sugar, grilled until the sugar blackens at the edges, then sliced across and laid over short-grain rice with a heap of vinegared cabbage.
- Total
- 40 min, plus 2 hours marinating
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 839 per serving
-
Sheepherder's Bread
One enormous round loaf baked in a greased Dutch oven, where the dough rises until it lifts the lid and then browns against the iron on every side.
- Total
- 3 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 16
- Calories
- 218 per serving
-
Sour Cream Raisin Pie
A cooked custard of sour cream, sugar, yolks and spice, thick with plumped raisins, poured hot into a baked shell and sealed under meringue — the pie South Dakota gave a state contest and a crowned queen.
- Total
- 4 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 565 per serving
-
St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake
A thin yeast-raised coffee cake base under a topping of butter, sugar and corn syrup that sets soft and stays soft, baked until the edges are firm and the middle still moves.
- Total
- 3 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 470 per serving
-
St. Louis Toasted Ravioli
Cheese ravioli breaded in a fine dry crumb and fried straight from the package, showered with Parmesan while the oil is still on them, with red sauce alongside rather than over.
- Total
- 30 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 520 per serving
-
Steak de Burgo
Tenderloin medallions cooked hard in butter with garlic and basil, set on French bread so the bread takes everything the pan gives up.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 590 per serving
-
Sugar on Snow
Maple syrup boiled past syrup to the wax point and poured in ribbons over packed snow, eaten off a fork with a sour pickle and a plain doughnut between mouthfuls.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 215 per serving
-
Tex-Mex Cheese Enchiladas with Chili Gravy
Corn tortillas rolled around grated cheese and raw onion under a gravy that starts as a roux: fat and flour cooked together, chili powder bloomed in the fat, beef stock whisked in after.
- Total
- 1 hr 10 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 530 per serving
-
The St. Paul Sandwich
An egg foo young patty fried lacy at the edges and laid hot on cold white bread with mayonnaise, pickle, tomato and lettuce — the St. Louis takeout sandwich named after a city in Minnesota.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 540 per serving
-
Trenton Tomato Pie
Cheese on the dough first, then uncooked crushed tomatoes dropped over it in ladlefuls — a thin pie built in the opposite order to a pizza, and baked hot enough to finish in twelve minutes.
- Total
- 3 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 738 per serving
-
Vermont Cheddar-Crusted Apple Pie
Six ounces of two-year cheddar grated into the pastry instead of laid on the plate beside it, over sour apples sweetened with maple sugar the way the state's own 1915 bulletin does it.
- Total
- 5 hr
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 530 per serving
-
Vermont Maple Baked Beans
Yellow-eye beans baked six hours with salt pork and dark maple syrup, half the syrup in at the start and half in the last hour, because maple loses its flavour long before beans lose their chalk.
- Total
- 6 hr 25 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 410 per serving
-
Vermont Maple-Glazed Ham
A bone-in ham warmed gently over cider, then finished in three coats of maple syrup reduced with vinegar and mustard until it is thick enough to stay where you put it.
- Total
- 3 hr 20 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 390 per serving
-
Wet-Bottom Shoofly Pie
Molasses, boiling water and soda poured into a pastry shell and buried under flour-and-brown-sugar crumbs, so the bottom stays dark and sticky while the top bakes to cake — the construction printed in a Pennsylvania German recipe book in 1915, under a different name.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min, plus 3 hr cooling
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 555 per serving
-
Apple Butter
Sliced apples cooked down in sweet cider until the two stop separating, sweetened late and spiced off the heat, dark enough to stand up on a saucer.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 32
- Calories
- 65 per serving
-
Banana Pudding
Boiled custard poured hot over vanilla wafers and sliced bananas, with the leftover whites beaten into a meringue and browned on top — the dish as the southern church cookbooks printed it in the 1920s.
- Total
- 50 min plus 1 hr resting
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 418 per serving
-
Beef on Weck
Top round roasted rare and shaved thin onto a hard roll baked under coarse salt and caraway, the crown dipped in the roast's own jus, horseradish underneath.
- Total
- 3 hr
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 455 per serving
-
Beer Cheese
Sharp cheddar ground smooth with garlic, dry mustard, cayenne and flat beer, then left overnight so the heat comes up — the snappy cheese of the road houses on the Kentucky River.
- Total
- 15 min, plus overnight
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 168 per serving
-
Beer Cheese Soup
A roux carries the cheese, the cheese goes in off the heat, and the beer goes in last of all — which is the order the oldest printed version of this soup already gave in 1962.
- Total
- 45 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 465 per serving
-
Bierock
An enriched yeast bun sealed around beef, cabbage and onion and baked shut, from the Volga German villages of Ellis and Rush counties.
- Total
- 2 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 380 per bierock
-
Boiled Peanuts
Green peanuts simmered in heavy brine for hours until the shells go soft and the kernels inside turn savory and beanlike, eaten hot out of the pot.
- Total
- 4 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 245 per serving
-
Boston Baked Beans
Pea beans boiled soft before anything sweet touches them, a scored block of salt pork buried rind up, and six hours in a slow oven with the lid off for the last one.
- Total
- 6 hr 50 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 450 per serving
-
Boston Cream Pie
A butter cake baked in two pie tins, split by a cooked cream filling, with powdered sugar on top — the way every nineteenth-century book that prints it prints it.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 465 per serving
-
Bourbon Chocolate Walnut Pie
A single-crust pie with a butter-and-brown-sugar filling set just firm enough to slice, loaded with toasted walnuts and chocolate and cut through with bourbon.
- Total
- 4 hr 15 min, with cooling
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 592 per serving
-
Bratwurst Simmered in Beer and Onions
Browned first, then held in a pan of beer and sliced onions kept deliberately under the boil, so the casings stay whole and the onions become the sauce.
- Total
- 1 hr
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 610 per serving
-
Breaded Pork Tenderloin Sandwich
A slice of boneless pork loin pounded out to twice the width of its bun, breaded in cracker crumbs and fried until the crust is rigid — the sandwich Indiana names after a muscle it does not contain.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 690 per serving
-
Brunswick Stew
Chicken and pork simmered down with salt pork, onion, tomato, corn and butter beans until a spoon will nearly stand in it, the way the stew sheds at a Georgia barbecue have always made it.
- Total
- 4 hr
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 628 per serving
-
Buckeyes
Peanut butter and powdered sugar rolled into balls, frozen hard, and dipped in chocolate all the way but for a circle at the top — a portrait in candy of a nut nobody can eat.
- Total
- 50 min, plus 1 hr chilling
- Serves
- 48
- Calories
- 143 per piece
-
Burgoo
Mutton, beef and chicken boiled off the bone and cooked down with corn, limas, potatoes and tomatoes until the meat is in shreds and a spoon stands in it — the stew Kentucky cooks by the barrel at political gatherings and race meets.
- Total
- 5 hr
- Serves
- 10
- Calories
- 516 per serving
-
Calabash Fried Shrimp
Small shrimp through a milk dip and a thin flour-and-cornmeal dredge, fried two minutes in hot peanut oil so the coating shatters and the shrimp inside is barely set.
- Total
- 35 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 462 per serving
-
Central Texas Brisket over Post Oak
A whole packer brisket, salt and coarse black pepper and nothing else, cooked over post oak the way the Central Texas meat markets cooked what they could not sell raw.
- Total
- 9 hr
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 505 per serving
-
Cheese Frenchee
A cheese sandwich made with mayonnaise, dipped in batter, rolled in crushed corn flakes and deep fried until the crust cracks and the inside has gone to liquid.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 645 per sandwich
-
Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza
A short, oily dough pressed up the walls of a steel pan, lined with sliced mozzarella, filled with sausage and covered with barely cooked tomato — built upside down so that half an hour in the oven does not burn the cheese.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 880 per serving
-
Chicago Hot Dog, Dragged Through the Garden
An all-beef natural-casing frankfurter steamed rather than boiled, laid in a steamed poppy-seed bun, and buried under seven things added in a fixed order, finishing with celery salt over the lot.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 420 per serving
-
Chicago Italian Beef
A lean round roast cooked rare, chilled hard overnight, shaved to the thickness of paper against the grain, then warmed through in its own seasoned juice and loaded into a roll that gets dipped in the same juice on the way out.
- Total
- 3 hr, plus overnight chilling
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 790 per serving
-
Chicken-Fried Steak with Cream Gravy
Cube steak dredged twice, fried in half an inch of oil until the crust blisters, and served under a milk gravy built on the crumbs left in the pan.
- Total
- 45 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 735 per serving
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Chili with a Cinnamon Roll
A thick beef-and-bean chili with a soft iced cinnamon roll on the same plate — the Kansas school-lunch pairing, built the way the federal meal pattern built it.
- Total
- 3 hr
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 750 per serving
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Cincinnati Chili
A fine-grained meat sauce simmered three hours with cinnamon, clove and unsweetened chocolate, chilled overnight and skimmed, then ladled over spaghetti under a mound of shredded cheddar.
- Total
- 3 hr 20 min, plus overnight chilling
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 735 per serving
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Cleveland Polish Boy
A smoked kielbasa in a soft bun under a load of hot fries, a thin sweet-hot barbecue sauce poured over them, and cold slaw on top — assembled in that order and eaten standing up.
- Total
- 1 hr
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 960 per serving
-
Country Ham with Red-Eye Gravy
A quarter-inch slice of dry-cured Virginia ham fried until its edges buckle, and the brown crust left in the pan loosened with hot black coffee into a thin, salty, bitter gravy.
- Total
- 20 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 296 per serving
-
Crawfish Étouffée
Peeled crawfish tails and the orange fat from their heads smothered in butter and onion, thickened with flour cooked pale rather than brown, and spooned over rice.
- Total
- 55 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 420 per serving
-
Czech Kolache
A soft egg-yolk dough pressed into wells, filled with thick stewed prune and buried under posypka, the crumb topping that keeps the fruit from drying out.
- Total
- 3 hr
- Serves
- 16
- Calories
- 295 per kolache
-
Delta Hot Tamales
Small cornmeal tamales rolled in shucks, tied three to a bundle and simmered standing up in seasoned liquid, then served in that liquid with saltines.
- Total
- 2 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 712 per serving
-
Detroit Coney Dog
A natural-casing beef frank in a steamed bun under a loose beanless beef sauce, a stripe of yellow mustard and a handful of raw onion, built in that order and no other.
- Total
- 1 hr
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 440 per serving
-
Detroit-Style Pizza
A wet dough pressed into an oiled steel pan, brick cheese laid to the walls so it fries into a lace of crust, and the sauce striped over the top after it comes out.
- Total
- 3 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 500 per serving
-
Eastern North Carolina Chopped Pork with Vinegar Sauce
Shoulder and belly cooked slowly over low heat, chopped together with their crisped skin, and dressed with nothing but vinegar, salt and two kinds of pepper — the eastern sauce with no tomato anywhere in it.
- Total
- 7 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 612 per serving
-
Friday Night Fish Fry, Yellow Perch
Small perch fillets in a cold beer batter, fried hot and short, with tartar sauce, rye bread and a wedge of lemon — the plate a Wisconsin Friday is built around.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 745 per serving
-
Fried Biscuits with Apple Butter
A plain yeast dough cut small and dropped into deep fat, where it puffs hollow in ninety seconds, served hot by the basket with cold apple butter to put inside it.
- Total
- 45 min, plus about 1 hr 40 min rising
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 420 per serving
-
Fried Catfish with Comeback Sauce
Pond-raised fillets in a fine cornmeal crust, fried hot and drained standing up, with the orange garlic dressing that Jackson's Greek restaurant families put on everything.
- Total
- 45 min plus rest
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 812 per serving
-
Fried Cheese Curds
Cheddar stopped halfway through its own making — salted, never pressed, never aged — chilled hard, dropped in a cold beer batter and fried for ninety seconds.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 540 per serving
-
Fried Okra
Small pods cut into rounds, soaked in buttermilk, tumbled in seasoned cornmeal and fried hard, so the slipperiness that ruins boiled okra becomes the glue that holds the crust on.
- Total
- 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 245 per serving
-
Fried Onion Burger
A four-ounce ball of chuck with a fistful of paper-thin onion smashed into it on a hot griddle, cooked until the onion has fried into the crust and become half the burger.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 560 per serving
-
Georgia Peach Cobbler
A deep dish of sliced freestone peaches under one sheet of butter pastry, baked until the juice boils up through the vents and sets.
- Total
- 2 hr
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 385 per serving
-
Goetta
Cincinnati's pork and pinhead-oat loaf: shoulder simmered to threads, oats cooked three hours in the same broth, set overnight in a pan and fried in slices until both faces are black-brown and brittle.
- Total
- 4 hr 50 min, plus overnight chilling
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 425 per serving
-
Hoppin' John, Cooked in the Pea Liquor
Red peas simmered with bacon until the water turns to broth, then the same pot measured out to steam a cup of rice in it, one grain at a time.
- Total
- 1 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 340 per serving
-
Ipswich Fried Clams
Whole soft-shell clams, belly and neck together, through evaporated milk and corn flour and ninety seconds of hot fat.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 665 per serving
-
Jucy Lucy, or Juicy Lucy
Two thin patties of plain ground chuck sealed around a folded slice of process American, griddled hard on both sides and rested until the cheese inside stops being dangerous.
- Total
- 45 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 870 per serving
-
Key Lime Pie
Condensed milk thickened by lime acid, set briefly in the oven, under a meringue made from the yolks' own whites.
- Total
- 4 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 430 per serving
-
Lexington Pork Shoulder with Red Slaw
Shoulder alone over hickory, cooked without basting, chopped with its outside brown and served with a thin tomato-touched dip — plus the red slaw that the same dip turns pink.
- Total
- 9 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 496 per serving
-
Maryland Steamed Blue Crabs with Old Bay
Two dozen live crabs stacked above a half inch of vinegar and water, seasoned between every layer, steamed twenty-five minutes and tipped out onto newspaper.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 310 per serving
-
Memphis Dry-Rub Ribs
St. Louis-cut spareribs over charcoal and hickory, basted with nothing but vinegar and water, and shaken with the rub a second time as they come off the fire.
- Total
- 5 hr 30 min plus overnight rub
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 780 per serving
-
Midlands Pulled Pork with Yellow Mustard Sauce
A Boston butt held at 275°F until it pulls apart under a fork, dressed with the yellow mustard sauce that belongs to the middle of South Carolina and nowhere else.
- Total
- 8 hr 5 min
- Serves
- 10
- Calories
- 470 per serving
-
Mississippi Mud Pie
The baked version the state's own encyclopedia describes: butter, chocolate, sugar and eggs in a pastry shell, with a thin cracked crust over a soft chewy middle.
- Total
- 2 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 653 per serving
-
Muffuletta
A round sesame loaf split and packed with provolone, Genoa salami, mortadella and capicola, under an olive salad that is made the day before and pressed into the bread for two hours.
- Total
- 26 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 1005 per serving
-
Nashville Hot Chicken
Fried chicken lacquered with a paste of cayenne and the fat it just came out of, served the way north Nashville serves it: on white bread, under pickles.
- Total
- 1 hr plus brining
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 989 per serving
-
Pan-Fried Walleye
Skinless walleye fillets in a thin coat of crushed saltines, fried three minutes a side in oil with butter added at the end, and eaten with lemon and nothing else.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 380 per serving
-
Pastrami on Rye
A beef navel cured a week with salt and nitrite, crusted in cracked pepper and coriander, smoked to 160°F and then steamed for hours until it gives — the last step being the one everybody leaves out.
- Total
- 8 days
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 585 per serving
-
Pecan Pie
A pie built on toasted halves and dark brown sugar, with cream in the custard and less syrup than the standard, baked until the centre reads 200°F and moves as one piece.
- Total
- 4 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 565 per serving
-
Pepperoni Rolls
Soft white bread baked around sticks of cured pepperoni, so the fat renders out in the oven and soaks into the crumb instead of running off the plate.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 295 per roll
-
Persimmon Pudding
Pulp from the native persimmon, taken when the fruit is soft enough to look spoiled, baked flat in a pan with sugar, flour and milk until it sets dark and sinks in the middle.
- Total
- 1 hr 25 min, plus cooling
- Serves
- 12
- Calories
- 235 per serving
-
Ramps with Fried Potatoes
Potatoes fried hard in bacon fat in one skillet, with ramp bulbs going in near the end and the leaves barely a minute before it leaves the stove.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 275 per serving
-
Red Beans and Rice
Kidney beans started in cold water with a ham bone and simmered until a spoonful mashes against the pot, served over rice boiled dry and separate the way the Picayune insists on.
- Total
- 2 hr 50 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 560 per serving
-
Reuben Sandwich
Corned beef, Swiss and drained sauerkraut between buttered rye, griddled slowly so the cheese goes before the bread burns.
- Total
- 27 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 755 per sandwich
-
Rhode Island Clear Clam Chowder with Clam Cakes
Quahogs steamed open, their broth turned into the whole liquid of the chowder, and the same broth beaten into a batter and dropped into hot fat for the cakes.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 540 per serving
-
Runza
A sweet yeast dough folded around beef, cabbage and onion cooked down until dry, then baked shut so the filling steams inside its own bread.
- Total
- 2 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 425 per runza
-
Savannah Red Rice
Long-grain rice cooked in tomato fried down in bacon fat until it darkens, then steamed until every grain is separate and stained through.
- Total
- 1 hr 5 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 410 per serving
-
She-Crab Soup, Carrying One Teaspoon of Flour
Crab, milk, a little cream and sherry, held together by puréed rice and sieved egg yolk instead of the roux that turns this soup to paste.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 385 per serving
-
Shrimp and Grits, the Way Charleston Printed It
Stone-ground grits cooked slowly in water and shrimp stock, with headless shrimp turned in butter for four minutes and tipped over the top, pan butter and all.
- Total
- 65 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 365 per serving
-
Slugburger
A thin ground-beef patty stretched with soy flour and mashed potato, fried crisp in deep fat and dressed with yellow mustard, dill pickle and raw onion.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 755 per serving
-
Smoked Chicken with Alabama White Barbecue Sauce
A split bird smoked over hickory until the skin can take a wetting, then lowered whole into cold mayonnaise, cider vinegar and cracked black pepper — the north Alabama finish, which goes on after the fire and never over it.
- Total
- 2 hr 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 702 per serving
-
Smoked Mullet Dip
Salt-cured mullet smoked over hickory until the fat runs, then flaked coarse into cream cheese with lemon, scallion and enough hot sauce to keep it awake.
- Total
- 6 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 320 per serving
-
Spoonbread
White cornmeal scalded into a mush, slackened with milk and eggs and baked in a buttered dish until it rises, cracks and has to be served with a spoon because it will not hold a slice.
- Total
- 55 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 244 per serving
-
Springfield Horseshoe Sandwich
Two slabs of thick toast, a horseshoe of carved ham laid over them, a pile of hot fries banked around the plate, and a beer-and-cheese rarebit sauce poured over the whole platter.
- Total
- 1 hr
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 1240 per serving
-
Stacked Red Chile Enchiladas with a Fried Egg
Whole dried red chile pods soaked, blended and strained into a sauce, then corn tortillas passed through hot fat and laid flat on the plate with cheese and raw onion between the layers.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 880 per serving
-
Stone Crab Claws with Mustard Sauce
Cold cracked claws and a cold mustard sauce sharp enough to stand up to them — the only cooking is a short boil, and often that has already been done for you.
- Total
- 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 420 per serving
-
Sugar Cream Pie
Cream, sugar and a spoonful of flour stirred together, poured into a baked shell, dusted with nutmeg and baked until it barely holds — a pie made entirely of things that keep on a shelf in February.
- Total
- 1 hr 10 min, plus blind-baking and 4 hours cooling
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 470 per serving
-
Sweet Potato Pie
Baked sweet potato warmed and mashed with butter, pressed through a sieve, and bound with eggs, sugar and nutmeg — the 1907 Raleigh method, with the sugar brought down to something a modern mouth can stand.
- Total
- 4 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 352 per serving
-
Tampa Cuban Sandwich
Mojo-marinated roast pork, sweet ham, Genoa salami, Swiss and pickle on Cuban bread, pressed flat in a dry pan until the crust shatters.
- Total
- 4 hr 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 985 per serving
-
Tater Tot Hotdish
Browned beef and a can of condensed soup under a single close-packed layer of frozen potato tots, baked uncovered until the top is gold and the underneath is bubbling at the edges.
- Total
- 1 hr 25 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 610 per serving
-
The Louisville Hot Brown
Roast turkey on hard-toasted bread under a Mornay sauce, run under the broiler until the top blisters, finished with bacon and a roasted tomato half.
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 862 per serving
-
Traverse City Cherry Pie
Sour Montmorency cherries, frozen rather than fresh, set with cornstarch under a lattice — a pie built from the one fruit too sour to eat and too fragile to ship.
- Total
- 3 hr 45 min, plus 4 hours cooling
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 560 per serving
-
Upper Peninsula Pasty
Diced beef, potato, rutabaga and onion sealed raw in a lard crust and baked slowly, so the filling cooks in its own steam inside the pastry that carried it down the shaft.
- Total
- 1 hr 45 min, plus 1 hour resting the pastry
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 970 per serving
-
Verenike with Ham Gravy
Dry-curd cheese dumplings boiled and then browned in butter, under a cream gravy built on ham fat — the Low German Mennonite Sunday dish of Harvey, Marion and McPherson counties.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 610 per serving
-
Virginia Oyster Stew
Oysters cooked in their own liquor only until the edges ruffle, dropped into milk warmed with country ham and onion, and salted at the very end so they stay tender.
- Total
- 35 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 482 per serving
-
Virginia Peanut Soup
Onion and celery softened in butter, thickened with flour, loosened with chicken stock and ground roasted peanuts, then pushed through a sieve until it pours like cream.
- Total
- 55 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 388 per serving
-
West Indies Salad
Mobile's cold crab salad, which is four things and one rule: a pound of lump blue crab and a sliced onion layered in a bowl, doused with oil, cider vinegar and ice water, and then left alone in the refrigerator overnight without being stirred.
- Total
- 4 hr 20 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 302 per serving
-
West Virginia Slaw Dog
A steamed bun, mustard, a fine-ground beef sauce simmered soft rather than browned, raw onion and a cold sweet slaw laid over the top of all of it.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 590 per dog
-
Wild Rice Soup
Hand-harvested lake rice cooked apart in its own water, then finished in a mushroom and turkey broth with a little cream stirred in off the heat.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 430 per serving
-
Zwieback
A rich little roll with a second ball of dough thumbed into its back, from the Mennonite settlements of central Kansas that brought hard winter wheat with them.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 16
- Calories
- 175 per roll
-
Creamy Garlic Butter Tuscan Chicken
Seared chicken cutlets in a garlic cream sauce with sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan and spinach. One skillet, thirty minutes.
- Total
- 30 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 592 per serving
-
Stuffies, Rhode Island Stuffed Quahogs
Chowder-size quahogs steamed open, chopped, bound with their own liquor and stale bread, and baked back in the half shells with linguiça.
- Total
- 1 hr 5 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 350 per serving
-
Garlic Butter Shrimp Scampi with Orzo
Shrimp in a lemon-garlic butter sauce, with orzo cooked in the same pan. One skillet, twenty-five minutes, no pasta pot.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 610 per serving
-
New England Clam Chowder
Clams steamed open in the pot the chowder is built in, salt pork rendered in the same pot, and milk that never comes to a boil.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 425 per serving
-
Buffalo Wings
Wings fried naked, no batter anywhere, then tossed in an emulsion of cold butter and cayenne pepper sauce that hangs on the skin instead of running off it.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 845 per serving
-
Texas Chili con Carne, No Beans
Beef chuck cut into cubes by hand and simmered in a sauce squeezed out of whole dried chiles, built from the recipe the army printed in 1896: no beans, no tomato, no powder.
- Total
- 3 hr
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 585 per serving
-
New Mexico Green Chile Stew
Pork shoulder simmered with two cups of roasted, peeled New Mexico green chile and potatoes, thin enough to eat with a spoon and never thickened with flour.
- Total
- 2 hr 30 min
- Serves
- 6
- Calories
- 465 per serving
-
Maryland Crab Cakes, Jumbo Lump and Almost No Filler
A pound of jumbo lump crab held together with half a cup of cracker crumbs and one egg, shaped by hand and run under the broiler so nothing ever has to be flipped.
- Total
- 55 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 280 per serving
-
Chicken and Andouille Gumbo
A dark-roux gumbo of chicken on the bone and smoked sausage, built in the order the Picayune gumbo chapter lays down, with the filé stirred into the bowl and never into the pot.
- Total
- 2 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 8
- Calories
- 670 per serving
-
Braised White Beans with Kale and Lemon
Canned cannellini beans braised in garlic, rosemary and their own broth until creamy, with kale stirred through and a lot of lemon at the end.
- Total
- 35 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 418 per serving
-
Crispy-Skin Salmon with Charred Broccolini
Salmon started skin-down in a cold pan so the skin renders crisp, with broccolini charred in the fat it leaves behind.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 486 per serving
-
Skillet Chicken Thighs with Lemon and Olives
Bone-in thighs roasted on top of potatoes so the skin crisps in the oven while the fat runs down into everything underneath.
- Total
- 50 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 624 per serving
-
Spicy Peanut Noodles with Charred Cabbage
Cabbage charred hard in a dry skillet, then tossed with noodles in a peanut sauce loosened with the water they cooked in.
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Calories
- 558 per serving