I’ve mostly seen it used to distinguish between fried chicken and fried chicken patties.
Fried chicken has bones in it. Chicken fried chicken is made with a boneless and skinless chicken cutlet, prepared the way chicken fried steak would be prepared if your cutlet were made out of beef.
I’m an American doper but I spent years two through 21 not living in America.
Rootbeer Floats: meh
Sloppy Joes: meh
Velveeta: gross!
Hot dogs: do not like the taste.
Cheese Whiz: gross!
Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie: Pretty good as pie goes. I prefer rhubarb crumble over pie, though.
Pumpkin Pie: See above. Also I like sweet potato pie better.
Frito pies: I have lived here since 1979 and I have no clue what this is. I don’t like fritos, though.
Grits: OK with runny eggs and hot sauce.
Corn dog: gross!
Jello: Meh, but OK with fruit.
Chicken fried steak: meh.
Red velvet cake: Yum!
White sandwich bread: OK sometimes.
Peanut butter: YUM!
Biscuits and gravy: Just fine with that sausage-studded white gravy. And hot sauce.
At the restaurant I work at, they do take a mallet to both the steak and chicken but don’t pound them 1/3 inch thick. I’m not sure exactly what is done but both come out fried with a TON of batter. They look and taste more like fried chicken then say at a diner. Very flavorful.
Why it’s called chicken fried chicken? Like someone else said, I guess to differentiate from chicken fried steak.
As I observed above, a sloppy joe is not just “minced beef in a bun”, or even minced beef in a bun with tomato sauce. Even the “sloppy Joe Mix” you can buy includes spices for the tomato paste, as well as dehydrated vegetable bits. A proper Sloppy Joe will have sautéed vegetable bits added to drained cooked ground beef, mixed with tomato sauce and spices. My Joy of Cooking cookbook even dispenses with the tomato paste, although that seems to me to be eliminating an essential part of the mix. I generally add Worcestershire sauce or teriyaki sauce as well.
Strawberry-rhubarb pie? Spare me.* Rhubarb does just fine by itself!*
Rootbeer Floats - When McDonalds started opening branches in the UK they often had root beer available. Thing is, it has the same flavour as the antiseptic mouthwash my childhood dentist used. Not a great taste association, really.
Sloppy Joes - Never heard of them, but from descriptions in the thread they look tasty
Velveeta - All fake cheese is shit except Dairylea Triangles
Hot dogs - Who doesn’t like the lips and arseholes type of sausage? :dubious:
Cheese Whiz - All fake cheese is shit except Dairylea Triangles
**Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie **- Sounds good to me. I like both, but my abiding rhubarb memory is being given as a kid a stick of raw rhubarb and a paper back with sugar in it as a treat. See mention of childhood dentist above.
Pumpkin Pie - Never had it
Frito pies - Chili over corn chips sound fine to me. Isn’t that just chili with nachos?
Grits - Meh, not keen on peasant bulk filler, generally
Corn dog - Don’t know
Jello - Kids food
Chicken fried steak - sounds nice
Red velvet cake - Don’t know
White sandwich bread - Good for toast
Peanut butter - Loved it all my life. For the longest time there seemed to only be the UK Sunpat brand available, but there’s loads now. No added sugar for preference.
Biscuits and gravy - Don’t know
Not quite. The scone part is close. The gravy, if made properly, has a white sauce base but is made with pork sausage, pepper and sage, IMO. In the American South, the gravy is often more of a milk gravy, made with bacon fat, flour and milk. To me, it’s bland to point of being like thin library paste. Even when sausage is used, there are usually no herbs to add deeper flavor (see online recipes). I use both sage and fennel in mine, and people rave about it.
I’m sorry. I should have read the thread properly before posting. Sloppy Joes, as you describe them, sound tasty enough. I guess part of it is that I am not totally comfortable with having the word “sloppy” in the name. It sounds like something Joe might have scraped up off the floor. I guess you guys have the same problem with British names like Spotted Dick, not that we actually eat that very often.
(I know that I may have just invited jokes about how often British people “eat dick”. Have at it.)
If you take out the tomato paste/sauce, wouldn’t that just make it a loosemeat sandwich. IMHO a sloppy joe is a form of loosemeat sandwich, but not all loosemeat sandwiches are sloppy joes.
Comments from an English person:
Rootbeer Floats – Does it?
Sloppy Joes – A bar? I’m imagining one with various bodily fluids on the floor. And in the drinks.
Velveeta – Is this some kind of cloth? How do you eat it?
Hot dogs – Yes. I am familiar with these. Ours are mainly horse.
Cheese Whiz – “taking a wizz” is UK slang for urinating. Moving swiftly on.
Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie, Pumpkin Pie – OK, these sound like actual food. Would eat them. But not if they’re being served at Sloppy Joes.
Frito pies – Frito is Spanish for Fried, no? So, fried pie? I’m in.
Grits – I believe this to be polenta. A peasant food of which I want no part.
Corn dog – Don’t be ridiculous.
Jello – I am not five. Take it away.
Chicken fried steak – OK. Give this to me. Now.
Red velvet cake – What is it with you people and eating cloth? Have you no food? Or are you wearing your food? Is Lady Gaga’s meat dress normal in your country?
White sandwich bread – White bread? For making SANDWICHES! I’ve never heard the like.
Peanut butter – Butter made of peanuts! Are you all stark raving mad?
Biscuits and gravy – Sounds soggy. I will take one portion of this with a chicken fried steak. You’ll probably try to make me eat some corduroy ice cream afterwards while wearing spaghetti trousers, but so be it.
Lucky, ours are lips hooves and assholes.
Same here. As far as I’m concerned, cheese whiz is not something you eat, it’s something you go see a doctor for.
So what do you guys make Spotted Dick from?
It does indeed but you need to add gobs of sugar to straight rhubarb. The strawberries add a little bit of “natural” fruity sweetness.
I shudder to think. But if you ever visit here I’d be happy to whip you up a batch of faggots.
Yes! Exactly. When I got to that item, I stopped taking anything on the list seriously. Because, you know, Italians just HATE polenta. There are some minor differences between grits and polenta, but they’re negligible. (And I say that as a West-Coaster with Italian heritage who grew up eating polenta for years before I even heard of grits, let alone tried them.)
And hot dogs are also on the list. You know how Germans HATE sausage of any kind. Germans also hate mustard, pickles and sauerkraut.
Chicken fried steak? Apparently the original author doesn’t know the words scallopini or schnitzel. In fact, I’ll bet anything that chicken fried steak became American just the way hot dogs did - thanks to German immigrants.
I suppose we can call red velvet cake American… but only the buttermilk and the red coloring sets it apart from a pretty standard chocolate cake. If you only allowed people to see in black and white, I don’t think they could tell the difference.
And while sloppy joes are clearly American, put sloppy joe filling on pasta and the Italians will be asking for your grandmother’s bolognese recipe. Anyone who says they can tell the difference is lying; there are too many regional variations on both recipes.
Now for Jello… maybe that brand is uniquely American and maybe certain flavors are uniquely American, but the idea of setting foods using gelatin is certainly not. For crying out loud, aspic predates the discovery of America! (By at least 100 years)
Spotted Dick isn’t made with peanut butter.
Ha! I just noticed that a 2002 Straight Dope article is one of the references for Spotted Dick. 
Brain’s faggots are surely the best. Although I hear that some people enjoy faggots’ brains.
I’m still not totally clear on the meaning of “chicken fried”, as in the gloriously self-referential “chicken-fried chicken”. Sticking to my rule of not simply Googling it, I think that it is frying meat like you would fry chicken. So chicken-fried steak is like steak, if you bought it at KFC, and the cook was a strict follower of KFC cooking policy?
As a (American) northerner who moved south, I considered some items like biscuit & gravy and grits (also collard greens) to not look all that appetizing. Actually trying the foods disabused me of any wrong headed notions I used to have. It also helped that I realized if you add cheese to grits they are delicious and hot sauce to collard greens makes them fantastic (like I said, I was from the north, I just didn’t know!).
I had Frito Pie for the first time a year ago and found it fantastic! (It was in the bag variety, but I think a bowl would work far better).
I enjoy hot dogs from time to time (esp at sporting events - its perfect for those). Corn dogs also can be quite good (depending).
I enjoy jello and chicken fried steak, though they aren’t my favorite things.
Velveeta is good for when you need very melty cheese. Aside from that its not worth it, but few things work better (though one of those things is the queso in the Mexican aisle at the local grocery story) for a cheese dip with salsa or chili or what have you.
Cheese Wiz is fine. As is peanut butter (even the sweet varieties).
Sloppy Joe’s are ok, but I tend to find them too sweet. Interestingly, I find the same for Red Velvet Cake ;).
I think my adoration of fake cheese may be the trashiest thing about me. I rarely have Velveeta or Easy Cheese (Cheese Whizz) in the house, not because it’s an abomination, but because I will eat all of it. ALL of it. I think it harkens back to my childhood or something - I used to eat Ritz Bitz with Cheese from the vending machine at the swimming pool.
I’ve heard several times that people in the UK think Root Beer tastes like medicine. Lucky bastards, US medicine doesn’t taste nearly so good.
The word “loosemeat” sounds even more revolting than “Sloppy” with regards to food to my British ears. It’s probably the association of “loose” with diarrhoea…