1. Thanksgiving dinner
No fancy centerpieces or long-simmering family squabbles at that first Thanksgiving when the Pilgrims decided not to fast but to party with the Wampanoag Indians in 1621 Plymouth.
Today we eschew the venison they most certainly ate, and we cram their three days of feasting into one gluttonous gorge.
Indigestion notwithstanding, nothing tastes so good as that quintessential all-American meal of turkey (roasted or deep-fried bird, or tofurkey, or that weirdly popular Louisiana contribution turducken), dressing (old loaf bread or cornbread, onion and celery, sausage,
fruit, chestnuts, oysters -- whatever your mom did, the sage was the thing), cranberry sauce, mashed and sweet potatoes, that funky green bean casserole with the French-fried onion rings on top, and pumpkin pie.
Almost as iconic (and if you ask most kids, as delicious) is the turkey TV dinner, the 1953 brainchild of a Swanson salesman looking to use up 260 overestimated tons of frozen birds. No joke: He got the idea, he said, from tidily packaged airplane food. We do love those leftovers. See More Know Click Here
2. Cheeseburger
Lunch counter, traditional, gourmet, sliders, Kobe. White Castle, Whataburger, Burger King, In-N-Out, McDonald’s, Steak N’ Shake, Five Guys, The Heart Attack Grill. It’s hard to believe, but it all began with a simple mistake.
Or so say the folks in Pasadena, California, who claims the classic cheeseburger was born there in the late 1920s when a young chef at The Rite Spot accidentally burned a burger and slapped on some cheese to cover his blunder.
Our favorite rendition might be the way they do cheeseburgers in New Mexico: with green chilis, natch. Follow the Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail at www.newmexico.org (don’t miss them at Bobcat Bite and Bert’s Burger Bowl in Santa Fe). See More Know Click Here
3. Reuben sandwich
Who knew sauerkraut could be so sexy? Was it the late-night inspiration of grocer Reuben Kulakofsky, who improvised the eponymous sandwich in 1925 to feed poker players at Omaha’s Blackstone Hotel? Or perhaps the brainchild of Arnold Rueben, the German owner of New York’s now-defunct Reuben’s Delicatessen, who came up with it in 1914?
The answer might be important for dictionary etymologies, but the better part of the secret to the Reuben is not who it’s named after but what it’s dressed with. Aficionados agree: no store-bought Russian or Thousand Island -- the sauce needs to be homemade.
And you’ll want thick hand-sliced rye or pumpernickel, and good pastrami or corned beef. Don’t have a serious deli near you? Go to www.foodnetwork.com and try the recipe from Ann Arbor, Michigan’s famed Zingerman’s deli -- proof you don’t have to be named Reuben to do this classic right. See More Know Click Here
4. Hot dogs
Nothing complements a baseball game or summer cookout quite like a hot dog.
For that we owe a debt to a similar sausage from Frankfurt, Germany (hence, “frankfurter” and “frank”) and German immigrant Charles Feltman, who is often credited with inventing the hot dog by using buns to save on plates.
But it was Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker’s hot dog stand on Coney Island that turned the hot dog into an icon. Every Fourth of July since 1916, the very same Nathan’s has put on the International Hot Dog Eating Contest (current five-time winner Joey Chestnut took the title in 2011, downing 62 hot dogs and buns in the 10-minute face-stuffing).
Meanwhile in Windy City, the steamed or water-simmered all-beef Chicago dog (Vienna Beef, please) is still being “dragged through the garden” and served on a poppy seed bun -- absolutely without ketchup. See More Know Click Here
5. Philly cheese steak
It’s a sandwich so greasy and hallowed in its hometown that the posture you must adopt to eat it without ruining your clothes has a name: “the Philadelphia Lean.”
Made of “frizzled beef,” chopped while being grilled in grease, the Philly cheese steak sandwich gets the rest of its greasy goodness from onions and cheese (American, provolone, or Cheese Whiz), all of which is laid into a long locally made Amoroso bun.
Pat and Harry Olivieri get the credit for making the first cheese steaks (originally with pizza sauce -- cheese apparently came later, courtesy of one of Pat’s cooks) and selling them from their hot dog stand in south Philly.
Pat later opened Pat’s King of Steaks, which still operates today and vies with rival Geno’s Steaks for the title of best cheese steak in town. See More Know Click Here
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