Illinois

• 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

• 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

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