What do Americans and Canadians eat?

Just wondering what do people on the other side of the globe have on their dinner plates. Now I'm not interested in cheeseburgers, pizza and tacos; rather in the food that you actually cook. Do you have any national dishes?

Baked beans. various types of marinated or breaded meats grilled, broiled or pan-fried. Mixed vegetables out of bags from my grocers freezer. Salads. Potatoes prepared in various ways, baked, oven fries, buttered red skinned potatoes.

Growing up, we usually had chicken/beef/pork with potatoes and a vegetable on the side, or pasta usually spaghetti or lasagna.

Now that I'm cooking my own dinners, it's a lot of chilli, chicken and rice, fresh pasta, bbq, and eggs.

Chicken, but they only really sell the legs, wings, and breasts.

Enchiladas! Down here in New Mexico we put green chile on everything. We love posole, chili con carne, chili rellenos, and tamales.

I don't think anyone actually cooks here anymore. Not from my generation at least; the older folks do. Now all we eat are precooked meals from the frozen aisle at the grocery store.

Personally I hate the precooked stuff and I actually know how to cook, plus you can't get moose or seal commercially. Normally for supper I'll have a piece of meat (steak, porkchop, salmon, cod, chicken, etc) and I'll fry it with mushrooms, onions and peppers, or grill it and have it with rice, peas, corn, carrots and beans. For breakfast I like cream and cheese scrambled eggs with maple sausage.

We eat a lot of food from other parts of the world too. Pizza, spaghetti, lasagna, burritos, tacos, sushi, fish & chips, etc. The only things that I can think of as uniquely Canadian are poutine, nanaimo bars and beaver tails. In Newfoundland we also have seal flipper pie but you can't get that in the rest of the country.

Green tea and chives.

Things from Labrador that I like are caribou, moose, salt beef, and fish and brewis(hard bread that is soaked in water, mixed with salt fish and topped with pork scrunchions.). Poutine would be the national dish, I guess. There's a hockey arena Quebec town that me and friends go to when our team goes over to play them. They make a deadly poutine.

I won't add anything here other than, well, I don't care for taco's as you had mentioned. Burrito's are better.

It's pretty culturally diverse over here so there isn't a set 5 dishes that we all eat or something. For example, my family will make some kind of Mexican dish one night, something Mediterranean another night, something British another night, and so on.

Canadians and Americans.

It varies by state. Pigs and corn are big in Iowa, fish and Cuban/Puerto Rican food are prevalent in Florida, lobster in Maine, etc. It just depends on the geographic region and what is readily available there.

Each Other

Americans eat everything. If I walk north of my apartment for 10 minutes I'll pass Indian, Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Korean, BBQ, hamburgers, sandwiches, Ethiopian, bagels, Greek, Italian, pizza (no, not the same as an Italian restaurant), steak, seafood, etc. We've adopted cuisines from around the world. I love to cook and do so regularly and I've made dishes from most of the cuisines listed above. I have a lot of family roots consisting of farmers that go back to before many of the English colonies even existed in North America and we don't really eat any classic English dishes either.

Canadians eat Kraft dinner.

You have to remember the things we actually cook in the US are the same, or variations of, "European" dinners. This is a country of immigrants, after all.

While growing up my family made the following from scratch:

Vegetable Beef Soup, Chicken Noodle Soup, borscht, lasagna, carpaccio, fuckin' apple pie, beef pot roast.

This is coming from a family German/Scottish/Native American decent. I'd say the most "North American" thing we would eat was steak, texas toast, and a salad.

Something that is common in Canada that isn't anywhere else in the world from what I can tell is smoked meat sandwiches.

I'm American and we don't really have any special dishes at my house, we buy local vegetables (when we can), maybe some fruit as well and usually serve it with meat, fish, steak or chicken and sometimes pork. Nothing special

i either assume people in the united states eat a lot of things that are particularly from their familial background (for example we've always been fond of pierogies and kielbasa, and golumpkis (stuffed cabbage) since my family has polish roots). a combination of that and most of the time eating like, generic cut of cow/chicken/pork with some kind of starch and vegetable. fish doesn't seem as popular a lot of the time, but I'm from new england so seafood is pretty available. i don't know much about canada, i have a friend in vancouver but their eating habits sound much the same.

There are no "national dishes". The U.S. is a melting pot and people eat different things. I thought that was pretty obvious, but whatever.

Food.

This just in, pizza, tacos, and hamburgers are not things you cook.

@louiedog said:

Americans eat everything. If I walk north of my apartment for 10 minutes I'll pass Indian, Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Korean, BBQ, hamburgers, sandwiches, Ethiopian, bagels, Greek, Italian, pizza (no, not the same as an Italian restaurant), steak, seafood, etc. We've adopted cuisines from around the world. I love to cook and do so regularly and I've made dishes from most of the cuisines listed above. I have a lot of family roots consisting of farmers that go back to before many of the English colonies even existed in North America and we don't really eat any classic English dishes either.

Canadians eat Kraft dinner.

Hey! I eat all those different things!

...but I also had Kraft dinner last night.

I won't know aboot Canadians but given America's history then the food here is extremely diverse. As far as traditional things then it really varies by region. Here in Wisconsin the main influence is German and Dutch so you'll see a lot of kinds of meats you'll find in those countries. However, you can also find foods from all over the world in almost every major city here.

A majority of American food came from the great depression. Things like Hot Dogs, Spam, and probably other processed foods similar I'm not thinking of. Ham hocks and Black eyed pea soup, Chicken and mash potatoes (with gravy), Chicken and dumplings... etc.

There isn't a lot that is eaten in America that didn't come from somewhere else beyond Burgers and fries or maybe processed foods (which there is a lot of these days). I know there's other stuff but majority of the food here is just something from somewhere else or an American spin on it.

Cheese on Apple Pie seems to blow some peoples minds. Or Ketchup on eggs. That seems to be a southern thing though (a lot of my Family is from the South). Going around the US at times is like going to different countries sometimes. There's a lot of differences even by states.

I'm about to have some cereal in milk for breakfast, and I've been sipping on this black tea here and there.

@antikorper: each other when they can get away with it

im sorry i just could not stop my self

Köttbullar. Nothing else.

@antikorper said:

Just wondering what do people on the other side of the globe have on their dinner plates. Now I'm not interested in cheesbugers, pizza and tacos; rather in the food that you actually cook. Do you have any national dishes?

I'm offended that you'd not consider pizza, tacos, and cheeseburgers national dishes! I cooked one of each of those at home last week.

@BraveToaster said:

The U.S. is a melting pot

So fondue, then.

@MrKlorox said:

This just in, pizza, tacos, and hamburgers are not things you cook.

you can cook a hamburger I beg to differ

@Brendan said:

It's pretty culturally diverse over here so there isn't a set 5 dishes that we all eat or something. For example, my family will make some kind of Mexican dish one night, something Mediterranean another night, something British another night, and so on.

You kind of missed the point of the question. Those aren't national dishes. What are national dishes of America/Canada?

E: From holidays there, I can tell you grits are an American thing. I dunno what the fuck they are, but I have only ever seen them in America.

@MrKlorox said:

This just in, pizza, tacos, and hamburgers are not things you cook.

you can cook a hamburger I beg to differ

Pasta, paninis, grilled meat/veggies, mashed potatoes, a variety of Tex-Mex (I'm from Texas), among other things. There's really no shortage of diverse food, too, if you want something exotic.

Soylent Green.

Poutine and Donair.

I can't speak for Canada but here, it's kind of a mixing pot when it comes to food culture. BBQ is huge here.

Personally, I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana so I love seafood and creole cajun cooking. Fried catfish, boiled crawfish, blue crab, shrimp, po-boys (french bread sandwiches), muffuletta (Sicilian sandwich), Jambalaya, étouffée, gumbo, ect. All of those foods I just listed are the backbone of Louisiana cuisine but it's influenced from around the world. African, Spanish, French, Italian, ect. And that's just one state.

What I'm saying is it's hard to answer your question in a sentence or two when speaking of real American food and not just the hot dog/hamburger stuff.

Absolutely anything.

@dcgc: canadians do make fun of americans. a lot.

But the people in both US and CAN who partake in this 'rivalry' are usually the people who have never been to the other place. The cultural differences are not as vast as each thinks.

=)

I would say roughly 90% of the average American's diet consists of animal fat and candy.

Canada's very multicultural so we eat a lot of different things

Where is OP from? Most of my diet consists of peanut butter sandwiches and black tea with sugar. Also, a lot of microwaveable food of Mexican or Italian variety. Then sometimes I have a sandwich on white wheat made out of black forest ham and American cheese.

@louiedog said:

Americans eat everything. If I walk north of my apartment for 10 minutes I'll pass Indian, Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Korean, BBQ, hamburgers, sandwiches, Ethiopian, bagels, Greek, Italian, pizza (no, not the same as an Italian restaurant), steak, seafood, etc. We've adopted cuisines from around the world. I love to cook and do so regularly and I've made dishes from most of the cuisines listed above. I have a lot of family roots consisting of farmers that go back to before many of the English colonies even existed in North America and we don't really eat any classic English dishes either.

Canadians eat Kraft dinner.

Pretty much that. I don't know about Canadians, but Americans just pick something and eat it.

A generic meal around here (North Carolina, for me) is chicken or pork chops and a side or two of vegetables. Mashed potatoes, macaroni n' cheese, and biscuits (not cookies, biscuits) are often present.

@gorkamorkaorka said:

Most of my diet consists of peanut butter sandwiches and black tea with sugar.

I forgot about those. Yeah Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are basically a staple for me, gotta have one every couple of days. Also Burritos from various Mexican "Grilles" where you pick the contents of the burrito, restaurants such as Chipotle, Qdoba etc., there's a million of them.

Bacon and fried anything is the national food of the USA. Also molten cheese.

But really. It's all regional in the US. The US is too big and culturally stratified to have something like a national food.

Rice, Beans, Chicken, Ox Tail, Steak, Plantains (Green or Yellow), Pasta, Beef, Avocados, Yuca, Potato etc... Spanish speaking home. Since living on my own I make it on occasion but not often. I know plenty of people with restaurants that I can get that type of food at or just go to a relative's house. They are always happy to see me. =)

But if not that type of food, tuna sandwiches, halal cart, pizza and on occasion a burger. But I prefer what my family makes. Lots of cultures and variety of food.

Edit: Oops, mine are not national. =/ Sorry.

@antikorper said:

Just wondering what do people on the other side of the globe have on their dinner plates. Now I'm not interested in cheesbugers, pizza and tacos; rather in the food that you actually cook. Do you have any national dishes?

I'm offended that you'd not consider pizza, tacos, and cheeseburgers national dishes! I cooked one of each of those at home last week.

BBQ is is pretty big out here in USA

You have to understand that North America is an Incredibly diverse continent. Different people cook different things. There is no national standard. We have Italian, Mexican, Polish, Cuban, Peurto Rican, Chinese, Indian, Jamaican and every other conceivable kind of food here. Some people are incredibly unimaginative and eat boring food, but a lot of Americans mix and match many of the dominant culinary influences on a daily basis. Most importantly everyone is different and, i'll say it again, there is NO STANDARD.

EDIT:: That being said there is a lot of iconic American food down south.

@AlexW00d said:

@Brendan said:

It's pretty culturally diverse over here so there isn't a set 5 dishes that we all eat or something. For example, my family will make some kind of Mexican dish one night, something Mediterranean another night, something British another night, and so on.

You kind of missed the point of the question. Those aren't national dishes. What are national dishes of America/Canada?

E: From holidays there, I can tell you grits are an American thing. I dunno what the fuck they are, but I have only ever seen them in America.

Grits are similar if not the same as polenta and I think Mexicans use it to make tortillas. Just ground up corn meal.

@antikorper said:

Now I'm not interested in cheeseburgers, pizza and tacos; rather in the food that you actually cook.

Those are foods I actually cook. -__-