The 20 greatest dishes you'll ever eat in American cuisine
America is called a melting pot – and that's certainly true of its food.
The USA's culinary history is that of reinvention. Waves of food influences – First Nations, African, British, continental European, Asian and Latin – have landed on our shores (and still do).
People take those classics, mix 'n' match 'em and then slowly (or quickly) turn them into definitive American dishes.
And then we oftentimes send the reformulated food back out into the wider world to complete the cycle.
From starters to desserts, here are the greatest American food dishes...
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Barbecue
People enjoy barbecue around the world, but Americans have taken a collective passion for low 'n' slow cooked meat to the next level.
Spanish conquistadors brought the cooking style practiced by indigenous Caribbean tribes north.
It's arguably one of the most-argued about foods in the United States – and we're well-aware of the grand pizza rivalry.
Four classic, regional BBQ rivalries and styles reign: Carolinas (where they've gone whole hog for pork); Texas (where beef is king); Memphis (where it's all about ribs and rubs); and Kansas City (where a sweet, tomato-based sauce is a must).
But that's just the beginning.
Regional types have their own subsets of disputes.
For instance, head to the South and you'll discover a South Carolina / North Carolina split on sauces.
Then in just North Carolina, there's the epic division of Eastern (whole hog, vinegar sauce) and Western (pork shoulder, tomato-and-vinegar sauce).
In parts of South Carolina, a mustard-based sauce from German immigrants is preferred, and in even more select spots, a relatively secret "barbecue hash" is beloved.
Meanwhile, "Texas big city barbecue" is sweeping the whole nation.
Fried okra
Fried okra is a delicious combination of two long-standing American culinary traditions.
The first is how Americans came to embrace various foods and cuisines from Africa that were brought over during the era of the brutal transatlantic slave trade.
Okra, which thrives in heat and humidity, became a regular feature in the South on tables of all races and classes.
Then comes in a second tradition: the American love of deep-frying. (We are the nation of the deep-fried Twinkie, after all.)
Okra can be found swimming in gumbos, succotashes and such.
Hard-core fans might enjoy the slimy green pods simply steamed or boiled. They're even pickled.
But breaded and fried is often the entry point for reluctant first-timers, who can be quickly won over with the crunch and distinctive "grassy" flavour.
It's still wildly popular in the South. Irmo, a small town in South Carolina, holds a yearly Okra Strut to celebrate the fuzzy-skinned, cylindrical veggie. Fried okra makes a great snack, a proper side dish or one part of another concoction such as the Fried Shrimp and Okra Po'boy a la the Williamsburg Inn in Virginia.
Cobb salad
California's trendy tendencies go back for decades. After all, this is the state that introduced the pleasing Cobb salad to the rest of the United States.
Credit for the Cobb salad generally goes to Bob Cobb, owner of the now-defunct Brown Derby chain in Los Angeles.
Back in 1937, he whipped up and then chopped up a late-night salad at the North Vine location for Sid Grauman of Grauman's Theater with what he had on hand.
Grauman loved it. Then LA loved it. Then America followed suit. And why not?
The combination of crispy bacon, blue cheese, cold chicken breast, avocado, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and lettuce is hard to resist.
Of course, Americans love to tinker, and salads can withstand a lot of messin' around.
So there are all kinds of variations, such as a tropical Cobb with spiced chicken and mangoes.
PBJ sandwich
A satisfying and often humble economic mainstay of the masses, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich was once a decidedly fancy treat for elites in the early 20th century.
According to the National Peanut Board, peanut butter was first introduced at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and became popular in upscale tea rooms.
Peanut butter and watercress, anyone?
The first known PB&J sandwich recipe was published in 1901 in the Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science and used currant or crab-apple jelly.
Eventually, mass production techniques in the early 1900s and the introduction of the sandwich as a ration for US military personnel in World War II helped spread the appeal.
Parents did the rest, packing the easy-to-assemble, irresistible combo into their kids' lunch boxes – or sneaking it into their own brown bags.
The sandwich continues to have a dedicated and sometimes upper-crust following.
Fry bread
Flour, salt, baking powder and maybe sugar combined and cooked in lard or oil.
What could be more simple? Or more complicated?
This Native American fare was born of brutal necessity in the mid-1800s when tribes were forced off their lands and relocated to what's now New Mexico on "The Long Walk."
With their native fresh foods unavailable, they made do with government-provided processed staples to keep from starving to death.
Since then, fry bread has become a ubiquitous staple passed down through generations and sometimes sold to tourists visiting native lands.
It's quite delicious but not particularly nutritious. It's a symbol of repression and resilience.
As Kevin Noble Maillard puts it in 2019's Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story: "Fry bread is us. It is a celebration of old and new, traditional and modern, similarity and difference."
Red beans and rice
Talk about a successful food partnership.
Rice has been a vital US crop going back to colonial America, namely in the Carolinas and Georgia where tidal flows and weather made for ideal growing conditions.
It was gruelling work, conducted by slaves. In the 1800s, Louisiana joined the rice-growing game as mechanisation allowed for profitable production there.
Meanwhile, red beans were a staple in Haiti. After its revolution against France, refugees fleeing to New Orleans brought the red bean tradition with them.
The two foods made for a natural pairing and became an integral part of the New Orleans and Louisiana culinary identity.
Traditionally enjoyed on Mondays (but hardly limited to that day), red beans and rice is often made with cayenne pepper, smoked andouille sausage along with onions, celery and bell pepper.
The allure isn't just in the rich, smoky, belly-filling taste. The dish is easy on the budget, and red beans are part of the nutritionally powerful legume family.
Hamburger
With the possible exception of apple pie, nothing says "American food" quite like a hamburger.
Its super-compressed origin story could be fancifully called "From the Golden Horde to the Golden Arches." Burger expert George Motz traces the modern burger's ancestry back to 13th-century Mongolia.
The raw mutton concoction from the remnants of the Mongol Empire eventually made its way over centuries to Hamburg, Germany, and shifted in make-up to cooked chopped beef.
German immigrants brought it over to the United States, where it eventually made its way onto a bun.
The Founding Fathers weren't scarfing burgers down on the regular while crafting breakaway documents in Philly in the late 1700s, but by the start of the 20th century, hamburgers were quickly ascending as a dominant food in the United States.
And in post-World War II America, hamburgers were the foundation of a vast Fast Food Empire.
There's no misunderstanding the hamburger's juicy, versatile appeal.
It's the perfect food for meat-loving, on-the-go, super-size-me, bargain-hunting, cheese-eating, condiment-craving, make-it-my-way Americans.
Apple pie
The fruit itself originally hailed from Asia.
The centuries-old penchant for pie came over with colonists from England.
But somehow the United States did it again – turning imports into a thoroughly American-identified product.
In the case of apple pie, it hit peak patriotism during World War II as the US soldier fought "for mum and apple pie." It's now American down to the core.
Geography and climate also helped it claim fruit pie ascendancy. Good-sized chunks of the US mainland – all with four distinct seasons and sloping terrain – proved ideal for growing apples.
The top 10 states for apple production cover a lot of territory: Washington, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Virginia, North Carolina, Oregon, Ohio and Idaho.
Attesting to its enduring popularity: Food & Wine published 22 of its most popular pie recipes in 2022. Three of them were apple pie varieties.
As a bonus, warm apple pie pairs well with another American obsession: Ice cream.
Poke
The last state to join the union launched one of America's more recent food trends: the poke bowl.
The dish – which today usually consists of cubes of raw ahi tuna or sometimes other cuts of raw seafood such as shrimp or octopus – goes back centuries in Hawai'i, well before contact with Westerners.
Chef Sam Choy, one of the early drivers of the Hawai'i regional cuisine movement in the 1990s, helped expand its popularity well beyond the island chain's shores.
Like many vaunted American dishes, poke (pronounced poh-kay) is an amalgamation of multiple influences. Japanese and Chinese immigrants added the use of shoyu (a type of soy sauce) and sesame oil.
Variations of poke abound. It can be served atop rice, seaweed or in a salad of greens.
You might even find it in tacos for a Hawaiian-Latin fusion.
