American cuisine is considered one of the youngest in the world, because by the time Columbus discovered the continent, borscht cooked in Russia for centuries, and pizza was prepared in Europe. The bulk of the "traditional" US dishes is borrowed from Europeans and slightly modified taking into account the taste preferences of American eaters. But not without a “cherry on the cake.”

Characteristics of American cuisine and the history of formation

From the moment the former Native American settlements began to disappear under the weight of skyscrapers, tens of thousands of people from all over the world poured into America to find work. Representatives of European, Asian, African-American nations brought with them a piece of their small Motherland, its culture and, of course, cuisine. But the foundation of mouth-watering innovations is still English and Native American delicacies.

Modern Americans “left” corn, potato with sweet potato and maple syrup from the latter, traditionally supplementing not only milkshakes and cupcakes, but also salmon, pork, and beef. Syrup is popular not only because of its universal taste, equally suitable for both sweets and meat products. It contains a minimum of calories, which is very important for residents of the United States, accustomed to quick and far from harmless snacks, which often cause obesity, heart problems and the formation of cholesterol plaques.

Fast food or "fast food" is also the "brainchild" of Americans. But the “roots” of hamburgers and “hotdogs” spread around the globe go to the German “Hamburger sausages” and Italian pizzas.All that remains to be improved is to sprinkle the sesame buns and fill them with pickles, cheese, fried onions and some other ingredients.

US cuisine features

The American way of life does not allow you to waste time empty, therefore, during short working breaks, the main lunch becomes fast, high-calorie and unbalanced food. There are practically no liquid dishes in the USA, because they need to be cooked longer than any sandwich. A dairy breakfast becomes a kind of alternative to the first.

 

Despite some general trends (fast food, sweet potatoes, Thanksgiving fried turkey and others), American cuisine is heterogeneous and directly depends on the geographical location of the state, climate and other similar parameters.

So, the most popular dishes:

  • In Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia steak;
  • in Montana, oysters;
  • in California, Cobb Salad;
  • in Illinois, Chicago-style pizza;
  • in New Mexico and Texas - braised chili and fajitos;
  • in New England - baked beans, seafood, cranberry pies;
  • in Maine - a lobster roll;
  • in Miami and South Florida - grilled chicken, navels, etc.

Recipes of national and popular dishes

The variety of culinary masterpieces of national scale amounts to dozens of spicy, sweet, fried, stewed or raw dishes. Some of them were discovered by chance, others were also “brought in” with immigrants from Italy, Germany, France, Russia and other countries.

Christmas turkey

Thanksgiving is a family holiday in America, and a number of special traditions, including culinary ones, are associated with it. The main dish of the holiday is a turkey, baked in the oven as a whole.

For a festive delicacy you need:

  • turkey carcass - from 3 kg or more;
  • orange - 1 pc.;
  • carrots - 2 pcs.;
  • onion - 2 pcs.;
  • dried cloves - 5-7 inflorescences;
  • sugar - 5 tbsp. l .;
  • water - 3-5 l;
  • ground pepper;
  • oil - 200 g;
  • garlic - 1 head.

Prepare the bird like this:

  1. Choose a turkey with a skin of light shade (it is softer).
  2. A marinade is prepared from water, sugar, spices, onion slices and carrots, citrus juice. The carcass is kept in the marinade for 1 to 3 days.
  3. In soft butter (100 g) ground pepper is added, the mass is stirred.
  4. The whole orange is heat-treated and dried cloves are stuck in its peel.
  5. The turkey is removed from the marinade, moisture is removed with a paper towel. Rub the carcass with an oil-pepper mixture.
  6. Stuff the bird with an orange, sliced ​​with a clove of garlic and vegetables from the marinade.
  7. The turkey is wrapped in foil and baked for 3 hours.
  8. Remove the foil and bake the turkey for another 2-3 hours until cooked.

A turkey carcass weighing up to 5 kg is kept in the oven for at least 4.5-6 hours.

Barbecue ribs

Regardless of state, all Americans roast meat in the fresh air. A variety of American recipes offer hundreds of cooking options.

For classic use:

  • ribs - 1.5 kg;
  • barbecue sauce;
  • salt;
  • paprika - 1 tbsp. l .;
  • dry mustard - ½ part of the bag.

The dish is prepared in two stages.

  1. The main ingredient is rubbed with barbecue seasoning, wrapped in foil and simmer in the oven at a temperature of no higher than 100 degrees for about an hour.
  2. Ribs are removed from the oven, the foil is removed, the workpiece is cut into pieces of 2-4 ribs, abundantly watered with homemade barbecue sauce.
  3. Pieces are fried on both sides until golden brown.

Burger

Soft bun, cutlet, greens are standard components of the American burger. There are a lot of recipes for its preparation, in the USA they use beef of 20% fat. Minced meat for cutlets is twisted independently, onions are not added to it.

For a burger take:

  • soft buns;
  • pickled onion;
  • Tomatoes
  • lettuce;
  • butter.

Prepare a burger like this:

  1. Cutlets of 2-2.5 cm thickness are formed from minced meat. They are fried to taste (different degrees of roasting are allowed).
  2. Vegetables are cut into thin circles.
  3. The loaf is divided in half, greased with oil.
  4. Spread lettuce, cutlet, onion (optional), tomato and cucumber on a roll.

The top of a traditional American dish is smeared with ketchup, mustard or mayonnaise.

American recipe apple pie

American cuisine is famous for the abundance of pies, the simplest and fastest of them is apple.

For baking you will need:

  • water - 50 ml;
  • wheat flour - 1 ½ cup;
  • apples - 6-8 pcs.;
  • butter - 200 g;
  • sugar - a glass;
  • cinnamon - 1 tsp;
  • starch - 1 tbsp. l .;
  • chicken egg - 1 pc.;
  • lemon juice - ½ tsp

Cooking process:

  1. Soft butter triturated with flour. Pour water with lemon juice into the mixture. For 30-40 minutes, the dough covered with a film is left in the cold.
  2. Apples are peeled, cut into large slices. Combine the slices with starch and lemon juice.
  3. The dough is divided into 2 unequal parts. A large roll out and spread in a baking dish, evenly falling asleep with a dense layer of apples. Cover the pie in a smaller proportion.
  4. In the middle of the workpiece make a puncture.
  5. Beat the egg and grease the cake before sending it to the oven.
  6. Bake the cake for 50 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees.

The dish was first prepared for the English royal lords in 1390 by the court chef Samuel Peg. It did not differ from the modern classic recipe. But commoners had to be content with a fresh treat, because sugar was considered a rarity and the poor were not supposed to. In the USA, such baked goods took root much later - in the 19th-20th centuries.

Pancake

Another name for pancakes is cakes in a pan, American or magnificent pancakes. There is not a single region in the United States where breakfast syrup pancakes are served. The recipe for their preparation is identical to ordinary thin pancakes, but about 0.5 cm of dough is poured into the pan, due to which magnificent pancakes are obtained.

Ingredients:

  • Chicken eggs - 2 pcs.;
  • wheat flour - 2 cups;
  • baking powder - 1 tsp;
  • salt - 1 tsp;
  • sugar - 3 tbsp. l .;
  • milk - 400 ml;
  • vanillin (optional);
  • vegetable oil.

Sequencing:

  1. Beat eggs with sugar.
  2. A little warmed milk is poured into the mass, mixed.
  3. Add flour, baking powder and vanillin.
  4. Heat a frying pan and alternately fry the pancakes on both sides.

Cobb salad

A nutritious dish rich in herbs and various healthy ingredients was spontaneously invented by restaurateur Bob Cobb. According to one version, he simply mixed all the products that he found in the refrigerator, according to another, he was looking for a new taste from incompatible components. Surely it is only known that the author liked the result so much that the cobb salad was included in the restaurant menu and today is a national dish of American cuisine.

Prepare it from the following products:

  • lettuce leaves;
  • chicken breast (whether boiled or baked);
  • tomatoes - 2 medium or 1 large;
  • boiled eggs - 2 pcs.;
  • celery;
  • avocado - 1 pc.;
  • cheddar cheese;
  • bacon - 200 g.

Dress the mixture with a sauce of the following components:

  • mustard (Dijon and grain) - 1 tsp;
  • pressed garlic - 1-2 cloves;
  • olive oil - 4 tbsp. l .;
  • white grape vinegar - 2 tbsp. l

A step-by-step instruction looks like this:

  1. Fried bacon.
  2. Eggs, bacon, chicken breast, tomatoes, celery are cut into cubes or thin strips.
  3. The components are not mixed, unlike traditional typical dishes, but laid out in stripes on lettuce.
  4. The sauce is served separately.

Chicago-style pizza

One of the few culinary delights that "officially" has an author. Pizza in Chicago was first created in the early 40s. The twentieth century, its creator was the chef of the UNO pizzeria in Chicago Ike Sewell. The main difference between Chicago pizza and its "thin-skinned relatives" lies in the bulkiness and abundance of the filling. Outwardly, the product resembles more like a pie. But the visibility of the latter is due to the small amount of dough for the base, but only to the high sides (2-3 cm), which are necessary to keep the mouth-watering “entrails”.

For cooking you need:

  • cornmeal - 100 g;
  • wheat flour - 3 cups;
  • dry yeast - 2 sachets;
  • olive, vegetable oil - 2-3 tbsp. l .;
  • butter - 40 g;
  • hard cheese - 300 g;
  • granulated sugar - 3 tbsp. l .;
  • zucchini - 1 pc.;
  • salt - 2 tsp;
  • Parmesan - 150 g;
  • tomato sauce;
  • oregano;
  • basil;
  • pepperoni (spicy salami) or any meat filling.

They are guided by the general rule: the filling is “stacked” in the reverse order, starting with cheese and ending with sauce.

  1. Knead the dough by combining flour, yeast, salt, sugar, water and butter.
  2. Add parmesan, grated, chopped garlic to the tomato sauce.
  3. Zucchini, peeled, cut into small cubes. Fried vegetable with onions.
  4. Roll out the dough in a thin layer and spread in a deep baking sheet or a special baking dish. In the middle, spread grated cheese, pepperoni, roasting and basil.
  5. The mass is abundantly sprinkled with parmesan and sent to the oven for ¾ hours.

The dough for the base is puff and sand thanks to butter and olive oils. A crisp is formed due to a small amount of cornmeal.

Shrimp and arugula corn porridge

The classic “rustic” breakfast dish is a mix of Italian-American culinary influences. The cuisines of Louisiana, Alabama, Carolina, Virginia in some places are inconceivable without a soulful, tender and fragrant corn porridge with seafood (shrimp) and arugula.

Outwardly, such breakfast does not at all resemble the usual porridge, giving the impression of an expensive restaurant delicacy. Cooking time is 30 minutes.

Essential Ingredients:

  • corn grits of any grinding (grits are used in America, in the processing technology of which alkali is used) - ½ part of a glass;
  • milk or purified water - 3 cups;
  • butter - 30 g;
  • cheddar cheese - 200 g;
  • bacon - 250 g;
  • shrimp - 400-450 g;
  • green onions;
  • parsley - 1 bunch;
  • garlic - 1 clove;
  • lemon - ¼ part;
  • spice.

Prepare a "branded" Carolina corn porridge as follows:

  1. The liquid is brought to a boil and salted. Pour groats and cook until cooked (depending on the grinding, the cooking time is 7-30 minutes, the finished consistency is similar to the classic semolina porridge).
  2. Add cheese, previously grated on a coarse grater, butter, ground black pepper to the pan. The ingredients color the mass orange.
  3. Cook the bacon.
  4. In bacon fat, peeled shrimps are fried until a pinkish tinge is formed.
  5. Grind the greens.
  6. Shrimps are mixed with herbs, bacon, lemon juice and garlic, which are pressed in advance with a knife so that it starts the juice. The mass is stirred for 3 minutes.
  7. Porridge is laid out on plates, pouring ready-made dressing on top.
  8. Decorate with herbs and served without a side dish.

Spring Carnival festivals are traditionally held in South Carolina, where all comers compete in cooking cornmeal. Milk porridge with shrimp, grated cheese and butter is abundant here.

Grills and salads are at the core of American cuisine. With speckles, maple syrup, citruses or traditional beef (which is more common in the USA than pork), dishes are to the taste of both the indigenous people and tourists.

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