WCC Day 19: United States of America

The good ‘ole US of A.  Our latest installment of our World Cup Cuisine lands in the land of the free, a country who’s military and political heritage precede it in nearly everything it does.  Americans are stereotypically labeled as patriotic and narrow minded, but it would be rather disrespectful to label by judging so quickly.

Canada and the USA are both countries that have a very diverse population, but somehow, the USA have managed to actually carve out some great food, while us Canadians are stuck combining a bunch of different cuisines into a new mangled cuisine. At least we can call poutine a thing of our own, but as soon as Quebec separates, we lose the right to claim it as ours.

Join me as I try and do some justice to a food culture so massive, the entire interwebz simply cannot contain it.  I also include my first foray into homemade beef jerky as a tribute to the American way.

The cuisine has a history dating back before the colonial period when the American Indians had a rich and diverse cooking style for an equally diverse amount of ingredients. With European colonization, the style of cookery changed vastly, with numerous ingredients introduced from Europe, as well as cooking styles and modern cookbooks. The style of cookery continued to expand into the 19th and 20th centuries with the influx of immigrants from various nations across the world. This influx has created a rich diversity and a unique regional character throughout the country.

Native Americans utilized a number of cooking methods. Grilling meats was common. Spit roasting over a pit fire was common as well. Vegetables, especially root vegetables were often cooked directly in the ashes of the fire. As early American Indians lacked the proper pottery that could be used directly over a fire, they developed a technique which has caused many anthropologists to call them “Stone Boilers.” The American Indians would heat rocks directly in a fire and then add the bricks to a pot filled with water until it came to a boil so that it would cook the meat or vegetables in the boiling water.

The American Indians are credited as the first in America to create fire-proof pottery to place in direct flame. In what is now the Southwestern United States, American Indians also created ovens made of adobe called hornos in which to bake items such as breads made from cornmeal. American Indians in other parts of America made ovens out of dug pits. These pits were also used to steam foods by adding heated rocks or embers and then seaweed or corn husks (or other coverings) placed on top to steam fish and shellfish as well as vegetables; potatoes would be added while still in-skin and corn while in-husk, this would later be referred to as a clambake by the colonists.

The American colonial diet varied depending on the settled region in which you lived. Local cuisine patterns had established by the mid 18th century. The New England colonies were extremely similar in their dietary habits to those that many of them had brought from England. A striking difference for the colonists in New England compared to other regions was seasonality.

While in the southern colonies, they could farm almost year round, in the northern colonies, the growing seasons were very restricted. In addition, colonists? close proximity to the ocean gave them a bounty of fresh fish to add to their diet, especially in the northern colonies. Wheat, however, the grain used to bake bread back in England was almost impossible to grow, and imports of wheat were far from cost productive. Substitutes in cases such as this included cornmeal.

As many of the New Englanders were originally from England game hunting was often a pastime from back home that paid off when they immigrated to the New World. Much of the northern colonists depended upon the ability either of themselves to hunt, or for others from which they could purchase game. This was the preferred method for protein consumption over animal husbandry, as it required much less work to defend the kept animals against American Indians or the French.

One characteristic of American cooking is the fusion of multiple ethnic or regional approaches into completely new cooking styles. Asian cooking has played a particularly large role in American fusion cuisine.

Similarly, while some dishes considered typically American many have their origins in other countries, American cooks and chefs have substantially altered them over the years, to the degree that the dish as now enjoyed the world over are considered to be American. Hot dogs and hamburgers are both based on traditional German dishes, brought over to America by German immigrants to the United States, but in their modern popular form they can be reasonably considered American dishes.

Since we recently purchased a smoker/grill from Atlanta (Georgia), we’ve been trying out new recipes on it.  Beef jerky is almost never done at home, for many reasons, but with this new tool in our arsenal we decided it was high time to pay tribute to a tasty American treat that we love so dearly.

If you’d like to learn more about the process, our recipes and what we learned, be sure to read our post, Homemade Beef Jerky.