I really like cooking and eating good food from around the world and often set myself little weekend projects to make an authentic feast from a specific country or region. In the past I have done (amongst others) Thai, Tex-Mex, classic British, French and last week I did Jamaican/Caribbean and cooked jerk chicken with a mango salad followed by curry goat with rice an’ pea which was delicious (if I do say so myself!). This week I want to do some really authentic American food but have been a bit stumped as to what to cook, I was thinking maybe some good quality steaks, corn on the cob, potato wedges, coleslaw and some sour cream dip or something perhaps with some fried chicken as a starter but this seems kind of weak. Please can you guys suggest some authentic American dinners I could cook and possibly include a breakfast as well? To summarise I am after an authentic American breakfast recipe, a three course dinner and some drink options, obviousley JD and Bud is probably the most two recognisable drinks but I’d rather drink my Granny’s tears than drink Bud.
Boston baked beans? I found one recipe here. Pumpkin pie?
For drinks… I expect most of our exported beers are crap. Have they started exporting Samuel Adams yet?
Fried chicken wouldn’t be a starter in the US, typically. It’s the main course.
Boston beans, what an awesome idea - I’m going to do that! Ok, so I have my main course and could do pumpkin pie for dessert but still need a breakfast. Any more ideas guys? Are there any other dessert ideas?
I think I’ve seen Sam Adams in Tesco of all places, might be the right time to try it.
Tex-Mex IS authentic American (i.e., US) food. It ain’t Mexican, that’s for sure.
While the things you suggest work, keep in mind that making authentic American food is sort of like making authentic European food. The US is a huge dang country, with a lot of regional variation. What’s traditional for Minnesota is very different from what’s traditional for coastal South Carolina, which is very different from the traditional food of New Mexico.
Is there a particular region of the US whose food you’d like to make?
Daniel
Yes, I realised that Tex-Mex is actual American food but I wanted to steer away from the Texas Chili vibe as I had already covered that, I really went to town on that one as well and pored over hundreds of recipes from this website:
http://www.g6csy.net/chile/recp-texas.html
I read chile recipes for hours until I got a combination of techniques that would be both authentic and flavoursome and the end result was really good (diced meat instead of ground, no beans, no tomatoes, beer and loads of chile) but this time I want to do something more Northern American I suppose, I don’t have a particular region in mind but just want some really American recipes without edging too near to Tex-Mex if poss.? The Boston beans recipe really fit’s the bill. I hope this is clearer?
I’m an Aussie and I know that somewhere along the line you have to serve apple pie. Skip breakfast and have coffee and pie for brunch.
Chicken Fried steak used to be a common brunch, but it’s much less common now as people are trying to be healthyer. And for the fried chicken as a starter, Chicken wings would be more of an appetiser. Just don’t let anyone talk you into the crappy “authentic” Franks and butter version.
I’m healthy enough to handle it Wolfman, chicken fried steak sounds so wrong yet also so right - have you a recipe?
An authentic American breakfast is somewhat tough, since the typical breakfast of eggs and meat is patterned after the English breakfast, and pancakes are patterned after French crepes. Perhaps if you look at a more Southern breakfast, you’ll find something that has more American roots, such as biscuits and gravy (here is one such recipe; I like to add sage to the gravy), or eggs and grits (which you probably won’t find in Merrye Olde). Typically, a standard breakfast in America is fried or scrambled eggs, hash-browned potatoes or home-fries, bacon/ham/sausage, toast and coffee.
Though you can get polenta, which is coarsely ground corn meal, the same coarsely ground corn meal that goes into yellow grits.
Have the apple pie with a slice of cheddar for breakfast. That’s about as American as you can get.
Your basic British fry-up is a good place to start. Dump the puddings, cold toast, and all the vegetation and you have a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast. Serve with Tabasco sauce and ketchup instead of brown sauce.
If you decide to cook grits, hit them with as much butter, salt and pepper as the law will allow. And eat them hot. Cold grits are banned by the Geneva Convention.
Basic Chicken-fried Steak: Start with a well-tenderized hunk of cube steak, pounded down to maybe 1/2 inch thickness. Dredge in flour that has a bit of salt added. Fry in hot oil until nice and crispy on both sides. Serve with Sausage gravy.
Sausage gravy: Fry up a bunch of bulk sausage patties. Allow some to sieze to the bottom of the skillet. Remove the sausage, and scrape up the stuck bits while slowly adding whole milk. Stir and reduce, adding a bit of flour as a thickener. When the right consistancy, add back in some of the reserved sausage and quickly pour over your steak and biscuits. Pepper the bejebus out of it and eat, knowing your are dining like a god.
Barbecue comes to mind - that’s pretty American. Brisket, sausage, chicken (yes I’m in Texas - we don’t do the pork butt here, but I’m sure you could find lots of recipes for that!)
Baked beans, cole slaw, corn-on-the-cob.
Mmm!
Man, the chicken fried steak with sausage gravy sounds awesome if somewhat life threatening! I think I might go with that, I don’t want to definatley decide on it though as I’m really enjoying everyones suggestions, I am also intrigued by the apple pie with cheddar idea but my baking skills are weak, pancakes with maple syrup may be french originally but it’s got to be considered a typical American brekkie surely? Especially with a load of crispy bacon with it! I need more drinks ideas if possible guys - cocktails, soft drinks (homemade lemonade perhaps? Homemade lemonade with JD perhaps? 
)
Soul food, my friend. Cornbread (can’t get much more American than that); black eyed peas; collard greens with a little fatback; oxtail soup. And some sweet iced tea. (That involves a process in which perfectly good tea is not only allowed to cool, but actually put on ice.)
ETA: Ice involves a process in which water . . . just kidding.
The tea must be sweetened! To within an inch of its life, while still warm. Don’t ask if anybody wants sweet tea, just assume that they do and serve it that way.
I don’t think they have collards in Britain. Might have to go with turnip greens.
Scribbling ice recipe down ‘Go on…?’
I think that if I am going to make this properly they all need to be from the same region, I can’t just create a hodge podge of American recipes and mix it all together, it’d be like serving l’escargot then moussaka followed by spotted dick, it’d be wrong. I am going to raise the bar a little bit then if you don’t mind - how about suggesting a breakfast, three course meal and maybe a drink that would be typical of a particular region in America? Baldwin has pretty much started things off, just need to know what ‘collard greens’ are? Also needs to be makeable (is that a word?) from ingredients that can be found in Britain. The chicken fried steak recipe calls for ‘Saltines’ for example which I am not sure what they are but I expect there may be a simialr version here if someone could describe them?
I will be back to this thread later tonight or tomorrow morning btw.
That’s a southern version, and it’s damn good. As you can see from the recipe link there are as many ways to make it as there are Grandma’s in Amercia.
What we did where I was growing up was similar to this, except we did a flour dip, then egg-milk dip, then dredged in a mixture of flour, bread crumbs, with lot’s of Black pepper and cayenne mixed in.(Granma actually fried in lard, but I switched to Vegetable oil so I could live past 16). The main thing is to get a big heavy cast-iron pan to shallow fry(Maybe 3/16th to 1/4 inch deep oil when all the meat is in). If you don’t have a heavy cast-iron to hold a bunch of heat, the mass of cold meat overwhelms the oil, and you end up with breaded meat lounging in luke-warm oil getting soggy and greasy rather than crispy until the temp comes back up.
We also don’t use actuall sausage in the milk gravy, But the base is flour and leftover sausage or bacon grease, with milk salt and pepper mixed in.
Saltines are crackers. I just use flour for the breading though. Dredge in seasoned flour, dip in beaten egg, dip and press in seasoned flour again. Like you fry chicken! (Hence the name, chicken-fried steak.)