The most iconic dishes of your state

[Dirt Roads]

Kentucky Fried Chicken 

Actually, our state's nominees would probably be either a Hot Brown or burgoo.

And perhaps Chocolate Chess Pie?  With a Mint Julep perhaps (only the first weekend of May)?

[Dirt Roads]

West Virginia

Ramps (or even better, pickled ramps)
Cabbage soup
Biscuits and white sausage gravy
Flint-ground cornbread baked in cast-iron skillets
Cornbread and milk (the next day for breakfast, of course), includes lots of sugar
Pinto beans and cornbread based with corn/peppers/onions
Mixed bean soup with pickle relish on top (or cabbage/hot pepper chow-chow, perhaps piccalili)
Pepperoni rolls
Venison chili with beans (both types of kidney beans plus pintos)
Homemade pizza made in a cast-iron skillet (even better if fried in the oven)
West Virginia hot dogs
Potato soup with ramps or hot scallions (baked cheesy potato soup, even better)
Fried catfish, creamed potatoes and fried mixed greens (kale/mustards/collards or Swiss chard/turnips/collards, depending on season) with white gravy over the entire plate
Baked keilbasa (pronounced keel-bossy) with homemade sauerkraut (yank out the keilbasa and put horseradish mustard on top)
Hungarian goulash
Green fried tomatoes with white sausage gravy
plus where I came from:  Red fried tomatoes with red-eye gravy (for breakfast)
Chicken-fried steak or Steak-fried chicken
Blood pudding
Buckwheat cakes
Chicken and dumplings (true dumplets, not the rolled flat kind)
Squirrel gravy on most anything
Pickled beets
Pickled corn (the sour salty stuff, not the vinegar version like down South)
White sweet potatoes (we call them orange ones yams, even if they hain't)
Plain ole' white bread with every meal, with butter and Apple butter or butter and Elderberry jelly
Huge assortment of homemade pickles on the side, including sweet Gherkins, spicy bread-and-butter and also watermelon rind pickles

Snacks:
RC Cola and Moon Pies
Fried Pork Rinds with Cream Cheese
Smoked sunflower seeds
Venison jerky (even better, the hot spicy type)
Pickled eggs or pickled pigs feet

Desserts:
German chocolate cake with crushed hickory nuts
Dump salad (cottage cheese mixed with jello powder and mixed fruit)
Tomato compote
7-Up Cake
Homemade Maple Candy
Gooseberry cobbler (the ones that look like little green basketballs, not the wild blueberries)
Strawberry and rhubarb cobbler
Homemade rootbeer
Apple Jack (the stronger, the better)

[Bruce]

Washington:

A bag of Dick's 
Seattle-style chicken teriyaki with a scoop of rice and a salad slathered in buttermilk ranch.
A seafood buffet: Dungeness crab, Pacific salmon, Taylor oysters, etc
Rainier Beer, some local microbrew, a Yakima/Walla Walla wine, or Jones Soda
Rainier cherries for dessert
Aplets & Cotlets or Frango mints for a midnight snack

[mgk920]

Here's Michigan

Coney Island Hot Dog
Upper Peninsula Pasty
Detroit-style Pizza
Pan Fried Lake Fish
Smoked Whitefish
Flint-style Olive Burger
Saginaw-style Steak Sandwich
Mackinac Island Fudge
Superman Ice Cream
Paczkis

Nahhhh, Michigan is the beef, potatoes and veggies pasty!



Mike

[mgk920]

For Wisconsin, it is a tossup between boiled potatoes and whitefish (don't forget the overboil!) or bratwurst and kraut served in the parking lot before major sports events.



Mike

[JayhawkCO]

For Wisconsin, it is a tossup between boiled potatoes and whitefish (don't forget the overboil!) or bratwurst and kraut served in the parking lot before major sports events.



Mike

Cheese curds? Ridiculous Bloody Marys? Shots of Angostura Bitters?

[elsmere241]

I can't think of anything for Delaware that isn't borrowed from another state.  Help me out here.

[formulanone]

I can't think of anything for Delaware that isn't borrowed from another state.  Help me out here.

Scrapple? Not sue if it was invented there, but it always seems to get mentioned with Delaware.

[elsmere241]

I can't think of anything for Delaware that isn't borrowed from another state.  Help me out here.

Scrapple? Not sue if it was invented there, but it always seems to get mentioned with Delaware.

I was going to list scrapple, but I think it's actually from Pennsylvania.

[MikieTimT]

Arkansas:
-Fried pickles
-Chocolate gravy
-Possum pie

[Takumi]

I can't think of anything for Delaware that isn't borrowed from another state.  Help me out here.

Scrapple? Not sue if it was invented there, but it always seems to get mentioned with Delaware.

It's certainly associated with the Delmarva area. Last week the Delmarva Shorebirds, a minor league baseball team in Salisbury MD, had a scrapple night.

[kirbykart]

West Virginia
Biscuits and white sausage gravy
West Virginia hot dogs
Desserts:
Dump salad (cottage cheese mixed with jello powder and mixed fruit)

A few notes:
1.) What exactly is a West Virginia Hot Dog?
2.) Your "dump salad" seems to be the same thing as ambrosia salad, minus the mini marshmallows.
3.) I could hardly say biscuits with sausage gravy are a West Virginia thing. Seems more general Southeast and parts of the Midwest.

[Big John]

For Wisconsin, it is a tossup between boiled potatoes and whitefish (don't forget the overboil!) or bratwurst and kraut served in the parking lot before major sports events.



Mike

Cheese curds? Ridiculous Bloody Marys? Shots of Angostura Bitters?

For drinks:  Brandy Old-Fashioned.

[Dirt Roads]

West Virginia
Biscuits and white sausage gravy
West Virginia hot dogs
Desserts:
Dump salad (cottage cheese mixed with jello powder and mixed fruit)

A few notes:
1.) What exactly is a West Virginia Hot Dog?
2.) Your "dump salad" seems to be the same thing as ambrosia salad, minus the mini marshmallows.
3.) I could hardly say biscuits with sausage gravy are a West Virginia thing. Seems more general Southeast and parts of the Midwest.

Tag!  You bit on two of the questions you were supposed to ask. 

My favorite joke here in North Carolina:

Q.  What's the difference between a Carolina Dog and a West Virginia Hot Dog?
A.  In West Virginia, the cole slaw is on top.

The standard ingredients for a Carolina Dog and a West Virginia Hot Dog are chili sauce, slaw, mustard and onions.  But they are not really the same critter.  In West Virginia, you get a wetter sauce that is more like a meat spread with plenty of tomato flavor, whereas in North Carolina the chili sauce tends to be drier with crumbly meat and often tastes like Texas Pete.  In West Virginia, the cole slaw is often thick cut cabbage with bits of red cabbage and carrots and lots of sweet sauce; in North Carolina the slaw tends to be finely ground a vinegary.  But the dogs themselves differ as well.  In West Virginia, the weiner tend to be mostly beef whereas in North Carolina, the locals prefer the bright pink weiners that are all pork.  (In West Virginia, the locals will tend to buy the cheapest weiners they can find, which traditionally were mostly chicken, in addition a little bit of beef and pork).  No beans, either place.  Some parts of West Virginia say "chili and slaw" and some say "sauce and slaw".  In North Carolina, ketchup on a hot dog is taboo in many diners, whereas in West Virginia the ketchup is encouraged for little kids as a means to help them transition from ketchup -to- chili-and-ketchup -to- chili-and-ketchup-and-slaw -to- chili-and-ketchup-and-mustard-and-slaw-and-onions (then eventually dropping the ketchup altogether).

West Virginia famously has a "Slaw Line" across the North-Central part of the state where the hot dogs south the "Slaw Line" come with slaw as a standard ingredient.  However, I can't find a rhyme-or-reason for the differences between the use of the term "chili" versus "sauce", except that "sauce" is term most common in both Ohio and Kentucky.

For the record, my aunt prefers the cole slaw on top of everything so that the onions don't fall off.  When the sweet cole slaw is on the very top, I need something else like salt or pepper to kill the sweetness.

3.) I could hardly say biscuits with sausage gravy are a West Virginia thing. Seems more general Southeast and parts of the Midwest.

Agreed.  But what if the sausage gravy gets poured all over your pancakes, sausage links, bacon and grits at the same time?  Nothing is sacred here.

2.) Your "dump salad" seems to be the same thing as ambrosia salad, minus the mini marshmallows.

First off, ambrosia is a common salad in the mountains of West Virginia and might be quite a bit different than what you are used to.  They start with heirloom mountain apples, grapes and finely chopped celery, along with chopped black walnuts (or chopped hickory nuts, whichever is in your backyard),   And in an interesting coincidence, this is all mixed with the same homemade sweet slaw sauce that we make hot dog slaw with (usually a family recipe).  My family always added mixed fruit (no cherries) and mandarin oranges, but we were an exception.  I knew of some folks that added powdered jello for coloration, but not in my family.  No cottage cheese here. 

Dump salad was a totally different critter.  Nothing sweet, other than the mixed fruit (with cherries).  Dump salad tends to be bitter, with the raw flavor of the jello package dominating everything else.  No recipe required.  Simply dump whatever quantity the store sells the stuff to you and mix for 30 seconds and chill.  Kids usually don't like it at first.

[skluth]

For Wisconsin, it is a tossup between boiled potatoes and whitefish (don't forget the overboil!) or bratwurst and kraut served in the parking lot before major sports events.



Mike

Cheese curds? Ridiculous Bloody Marys? Shots of Angostura Bitters?

For drinks:  Brandy Old-Fashioned.

Wisconsin accounts for over half the brandy Korbel sells.

[jp the roadgeek]

I can't think of anything for Delaware that isn't borrowed from another state.  Help me out here.

Scrapple? Not sue if it was invented there, but it always seems to get mentioned with Delaware.

It's certainly associated with the Delmarva area. Last week the Delmarva Shorebirds, a minor league baseball team in Salisbury MD, had a scrapple night.

I always associated scrapple with Philly and Lancaster County.  It's a staple at any Philly area greasy spoon breakfast-type place.  Delaware is more known for its chicken farms, so I associate chicken dishes with Delaware.

[bing101]

These are the first ones that sprang to mind for California:

Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
Mission-style burrito
Santa Maria tri-tip
California roll
BBQ chicken pizza

Here's Michigan

Coney Island Hot Dog
...

I'd like to know more - how is Michigan famous for a hot dog from New York?

I heard other stuff that we call "Chinese Food" had some of it's origins in Northern California from the Gold Rush era and not from China itself. It's origins is from the Sacramento delta and San Francisco.


Note I know in California we also tend to import food from other places like Philippines, Vietnam, Mexico and Japan it became part of the landscape.

[zachary_amaryllis]

Colorado's has got to be Rocky Mountain Oysters. I have been fortunate enough to grow up like 2 miles away from Bruce's Bar, one of the best in the state. I go there about once a month. Palisade Peaches are also quite good out west.

I don't think I've even been out to that town, in probably 17 years, shame since you're right, they're super good. I think I blew by the turn off 14 a few times lately, but thats about it.

The peaches are all over town right now and omg yes.

[Rothman]

I can't think of anything for Delaware that isn't borrowed from another state.  Help me out here.

Scrapple? Not sue if it was invented there, but it always seems to get mentioned with Delaware.

It's certainly associated with the Delmarva area. Last week the Delmarva Shorebirds, a minor league baseball team in Salisbury MD, had a scrapple night.

I always associated scrapple with Philly and Lancaster County.  It's a staple at any Philly area greasy spoon breakfast-type place.  Delaware is more known for its chicken farms, so I associate chicken dishes with Delaware.

RAPA scrapple is made in Bridgeville, DE and a lot of Pennsylvanians buy that brand...

[US 89]

Palisade Peaches are also quite good out west.

I'd never heard of Palisade Peaches until I saw some lady selling them at a gas station in Grand Junction several years back. I bought a few and they were some of the best peaches I'd ever had.

[kirbykart]

West Virginia
Biscuits and white sausage gravy
West Virginia hot dogs
Desserts:
Dump salad (cottage cheese mixed with jello powder and mixed fruit)

A few notes:
1.) What exactly is a West Virginia Hot Dog?
2.) Your "dump salad" seems to be the same thing as ambrosia salad, minus the mini marshmallows.
3.) I could hardly say biscuits with sausage gravy are a West Virginia thing. Seems more general Southeast and parts of the Midwest.

Tag!  You bit on two of the questions you were supposed to ask. 

My favorite joke here in North Carolina:

Q.  What's the difference between a Carolina Dog and a West Virginia Hot Dog?
A.  In West Virginia, the cole slaw is on top.

The standard ingredients for a Carolina Dog and a West Virginia Hot Dog are chili sauce, slaw, mustard and onions.  But they are not really the same critter.  In West Virginia, you get a wetter sauce that is more like a meat spread with plenty of tomato flavor, whereas in North Carolina the chili sauce tends to be drier with crumbly meat and often tastes like Texas Pete.  In West Virginia, the cole slaw is often thick cut cabbage with bits of red cabbage and carrots and lots of sweet sauce; in North Carolina the slaw tends to be finely ground a vinegary.  But the dogs themselves differ as well.  In West Virginia, the weiner tend to be mostly beef whereas in North Carolina, the locals prefer the bright pink weiners that are all pork.  (In West Virginia, the locals will tend to buy the cheapest weiners they can find, which traditionally were mostly chicken, in addition a little bit of beef and pork).  No beans, either place.  Some parts of West Virginia say "chili and slaw" and some say "sauce and slaw".  In North Carolina, ketchup on a hot dog is taboo in many diners, whereas in West Virginia the ketchup is encouraged for little kids as a means to help them transition from ketchup -to- chili-and-ketchup -to- chili-and-ketchup-and-slaw -to- chili-and-ketchup-and-mustard-and-slaw-and-onions (then eventually dropping the ketchup altogether).

West Virginia famously has a "Slaw Line" across the North-Central part of the state where the hot dogs south the "Slaw Line" come with slaw as a standard ingredient.  However, I can't find a rhyme-or-reason for the differences between the use of the term "chili" versus "sauce", except that "sauce" is term most common in both Ohio and Kentucky.

For the record, my aunt prefers the cole slaw on top of everything so that the onions don't fall off.  When the sweet cole slaw is on the very top, I need something else like salt or pepper to kill the sweetness.

3.) I could hardly say biscuits with sausage gravy are a West Virginia thing. Seems more general Southeast and parts of the Midwest.

Agreed.  But what if the sausage gravy gets poured all over your pancakes, sausage links, bacon and grits at the same time?  Nothing is sacred here.

2.) Your "dump salad" seems to be the same thing as ambrosia salad, minus the mini marshmallows.

First off, ambrosia is a common salad in the mountains of West Virginia and might be quite a bit different than what you are used to.  They start with heirloom mountain apples, grapes and finely chopped celery, along with chopped black walnuts (or chopped hickory nuts, whichever is in your backyard),   And in an interesting coincidence, this is all mixed with the same homemade sweet slaw sauce that we make hot dog slaw with (usually a family recipe).  My family always added mixed fruit (no cherries) and mandarin oranges, but we were an exception.  I knew of some folks that added powdered jello for coloration, but not in my family.  No cottage cheese here. 

Dump salad was a totally different critter.  Nothing sweet, other than the mixed fruit (with cherries).  Dump salad tends to be bitter, with the raw flavor of the jello package dominating everything else.  No recipe required.  Simply dump whatever quantity the store sells the stuff to you and mix for 30 seconds and chill.  Kids usually don't like it at first.

OK, I get you. To me ambrosia salad is cottage cheese, mini marshmallows, vanilla pudding mix, canned pineapple cut in pieces, and canned mandarin oranges in pieces (sometimes cherries also). I see that your ambrosia salad, and dump salad, are both different now.

[Flint1979]

Anyone from Michigan remember Hudson's maurice salad?

[Rothman]

The whole hot dog thing in WV is very localized to me.  It's not like Chicago dogs or Jersey dogs or other regionally or nationally known hot dogs.

Unfortunately, I think the WV hot dog hype doesn't extend much past the I-79/US 19 corridor between Beckley and Morgantown.

[Billy F 1988]

If you're from Western Montana, Flathead. Cherries, y'all. Mmmm. Best seasonal fruit snack in Missoula, really anywhere in Western Montana for that matter. Huckleberry flavored dishes come real close, but, harvesting them is a challenge, as with most fruits and vegetables.

If you crave melons, Dixon melons are awesome when at their peak ripeness. Juicy and sweet.

The Bison Burger is one of a few favorite Montana dishes, but very spendy due to the sourcing of the meat itself. Definitely not your mamma's burger.

Big Dipper ice cream is a huge sensation every season in Missoula. A good cold snack to have especially during these awfully hot Montana summer days.

Montana is an angus haven. Like the Bison Burger, there is a good majority of angus dishes like grilled steak, burgers among others, but just as expensive as bison meat. Montana Club's angus meals have that Montana ranch style flavoring that is best paired with a local microbrew or IPA.

[TheGrassGuy]

Lemme try to guess each state before reading beforehand

Alabama: some kind of barbecue sauce I bet
Alaska: baked Alaska
Arizona: Navajo tacos
Arkansas: good question
California: Caesar salad (even though it was actually invented in Tijuana; maybe cioppino?
Colorado: Rocky Mountain oysters (bull balls)
Connecticut: apizza
Delaware: something with seafood in it, if it exists at all
Georgia: Brunswick stew (probably not that famous or iconic, but it's the first thing that popped into my mind)
Hawaii: poi (taro starch)
Idaho: potatoes
Illinois: corn
Indiana: corn
Iowa: corn
Kansas: corn
Kentucky: fried chicken
Louisiana: gumbo or jambalaya
Maine: lobster roll
Maryland: crab cakes
Massachusetts: New England-style clam chowder
Michigan: heck if I know
Minnesota: heck if I know 2
Mississippi: mud pie
Missouri: St. Louis style BBQ, but IDK if that counts; or that weird sandwich with chow mein as one of the ingredients... I think it's called the St. Joseph sandwich or something like that... or was that from Fall River MA?
Montana: bison burgers or something idk
Nebraska: corn part 2
Nevada: fried rattlesnake idk
New Hampshire: maple syrup
New Jersey: processed meat with a disputed name
New Mexico: chili stew
New York: trash plate
North Carolina: NC style BBQ, and I know there are like 3 different kinds of these
North Dakota: I doubt it's corn again, but I'm just going to put down corn again here since I don't know what else
Ohio: Cincinnati chili
Oklahoma: see Colorado above, but call them "lamb fries" (I'm pretty sure it's only one restaurant that does that)
Oregon: marijuana
Pennsylvania: cheesesteak
Rhode Island: Rhode Island-style clam chowder (clear soup)
South Carolina: does SC style BBQ exist?
South Dakota: fry bread
Tennessee: Memphis style BBQ
Texas: Texas style BBQ? Texas weiners?
Utah: either funeral potatoes or mayo mixed with ketchup
Vermont: maple syrup part 2
Virginia: probably whatever bland 1700s meat dishes they serve at those tourist trap restaurants at Williamsburg etc.
Washington: smoked salmon, even though that's not a Washington-specific export; or Mt. Rainier cherries
West Virginia: see Kentucky above
Wisconsin: cheese
Wyoming: elk burgers or something idk
Washington DC: Ethiopian food?
Puerto Rico: mofongo (plantain side dish)

Done.

Just for good measure, here are the Canadian provinces:

Alberta: poutine
British Columbia: poutine
Manitoba: poutine
Newfoundland and Labrador: poutine
Northwest Territories: poutine
Nova Scotia: poutine
Nunavut: poutine
Ontario: poutine
Quebec: poutine
Saskatchewan: poutine
Yukon: poutine

Edit: lemme do this with every country

Afghanistan: kabuli palaw
Argentina: empanadas
Australian: meat pies
Austria: schnitzel
Azerbaijan: fancy tea
Bangladesh: balti (I forget whether that was invented in Bangladesh or in the UK)
Belgium: stroopwafels
Brazil: brigadeiro
Cambodia: amok
China: dumplings
Colombia: arepas
Czech Republic: cereal soup
Egypt: foul (fava bean paste)
El Salvador: pupusas
Ethiopia: injera
France: ratatouille
Germany: bratwurst
Ghana: red red
Greece: feta cheese
Haiti: soup joumou
Iceland: hakarl (rotten shark)
India: saag (not tikka masala since that was invented in the UK)
Indonesia: rendang
Ireland: corned beef
Israel: falafel
Italy: pasta
Jamaica: jerk chicken
Japan: sushi
Lebanon: kebab
Malaysia: cendol (which IIRC is in an ownership dispute)
Malta: rabbit soup
Nepal: momos
Netherlands: hutsput
New Zealand: pavlova (which, again, IIRC is an ownership dispute)
Nigeria: jollof rice
North Korea: cold noodle soup
Pakistan: karahi
Peru: ceviche
Philippines: adobo
Poland: pierogis
Portugal: pastel da nada
Russia: borscht
Singapore: chili crab (again, ownership dispute)
South Africa: braai
South Korea: kimchi
Spain: paella
Sweden: kottbullar (Swedish meatballs... well they're really from Turkey but, well...)
Switzerland: muesli
Thailand: Massaman curry
Turkey: baklava
UK: tikka masala
Ukraine: borshch
Uzbekistan: plov
Vietnam: pho