Hi I’m John Green.
Welcome to my salon.
Hey there, fake fireplace.
This is Mental Floss on YouTube.
I’m from Alabama, so I know that chitlins are a very common food in the southern United
States.
But you might not!
Also known as chitterlings, chitlins are the small intestines of (usually) a pig.
Intestines are actually pretty ordinary cuisine around the world, but in the U.S., we mostly
see them eaten in the south.
Anyway, that’s the first of many regional foods I’m going to tell you about today.
And I’M SORRY, viewers from countries that aren’t the United States.
But I’m still going to mention you occasionally...Because we steal a lot of dishes from you guys.
Kentucky is well-known for Burgoo, which is a kind of stew.
It used to contain meat from animals like raccoons or possums or squirrels.
These days, sadly, it’s more likely chicken or pork.
Let’s talk about pie for a second.
Avocado Pie from California is said to have originated in the 1950s.
You should only really eat Marionberry pie in Oregon because marionberries are a kind
of blackberry that were invented at Oregon State University.
Shoofly Pie is a kind of molasses pie brought to the United States by the Pennsylvania Dutch.
And speaking of Pennsylvania, we can thank the Amish for Whoopie Pie.
Which is not what you think it is.
Also from Pennsylvania: Of course cheesesteak - a steak sandwich with cheese.
And scrapple, which is all the parts of the pig that you usually don’t eat like heart,
head, etc.
broiled then mushed up then made into a loaf with cornmeal.
It’s like meatloaf, except disgusting.
Did I just say pig?
Time to put a quarter in the staff porkchop party fund.
Oh, and we forgot the quarter for chitlins!
Goetta is a popular sausage in Cincinnati, which they probably took from the Germans,
you know, because it’s sausage.
It’s like scrapple, but with oats instead of cornmeal.
And you know, turned into sausage instead of a loaf.
The town’s also known for Cincinnati chili, which sometimes contains chocolate or cinnamon.
On New Years Day in the South, it’s considered good luck to eat black-eyed peas.
Especially in the form of Hoppin’ John.
That dish contains black-eyed peas, white rice, ham, and onions.
It’s also delicious.
Rochester, New York is home to the garbage plate, a dish of half-tater-tots and half-macaroni-salad,
or as I like to call it - heaven.
Then you can choose what to add: cheeseburger, hot dog, egg, sausage, steak.
Pile on some mustard and/or onions and you have yourself a garbage plate.
The garbage plate is of course famous for being mentioned in the Bradley Cooper and
Ryan Gosling film, The Place Beyond the Pines, which admittedly, no one saw.
But I enjoyed it because those are two handsome lads.
And then there’s Frito pie, a dish that you can find in Texas containing chili, cheese,
and Fritos.
And also my vomit after I eat it.
Frito pie is rumored to have been invented by Daisy Doolin, mother of Frito-Lay founder,
Elmer Doolin.
The Norwegian dish, Lutefisk is white fish soaked in lye for days until it has, like,
a jelly-like consistency and Madison, Minnesota calls itself the “lutefisk capital of the
U.S.” Minnesota stole a lot of food traditions from the Norwegians, including lefse, which
is a flatbread for special occasions.
One food we didn’t steal from Europe: the Boston Cream Pie, invented in Boston in the
1850s.
Boston’s nickname, Beantown, came from Boston Baked Beans, made from beans and molasses.
And while we’re talking about Massachusetts, let’s discuss chowder.
New England Clam Chowder…
chowdah.
Is it chowdah or chowder?
Anyway, New England Clam Chowdah is cream-based and most other clam chowders contain tomatoes,
but of course, that doesn’t fly in New England.
In fact, in 1939, Maine tried to make it illegal to put tomatoes in chowder.
Manhattan clam chowder is brothier and has tomatoes.
Rhode Island clam chowder is very similar but without vegetable chunks.
Alaskans love their reindeer, specifically, eating them.
They eat reindeer hot dogs and reindeer steak.
They’ve also been known to eat sourdough pancakes, which sound delicious.
And Alaska has its own kind of ice cream: akutaq.
Ingredients include, like, fat, meat, berries, oil.
In the local language, Yupik, akutaq means “something mixed.”
Sometimes it’s made primarily out of Crisco and I can tell you from experience that it’s
disgusting.
From the 49th to the 50th state...Hawaii has a lot of regional dishes, like Loco Moco,
a breakfast with white rice, a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and gravy.
They also have a bunch of dishes made with Spam, like Spam musubi, which is fried Spam
on rice and wrapped up with seaweed like sushi.
And poke is Hawaiian for “to slice,” which explains why the dish is a salad made up of
sliced raw tuna, seaweed, and vegetables.
But if raw fish and Spam are too daring for you, Hawaii also has its own regional desserts,
like Guava Chiffon Cake (distinct for its orange color and guava flavor) and Haupia
(a pudding made from coconut milk).
Speaking of dessert, the date shake was invented in the 1940s by Russ Nichol, who ran a date
shop in California and to be clear, date shakes are not things that you drink on a date, they’re
like shakes made of dates, which is to say that you should never try them on a date.
If you order Rocky Mountain oysters in the western U.S., you should know in advance that
you are about to eat bull testicles.
Probably deep-fried.
And if you’re into exotic meats, you might also want to try alligator sausage in Louisiana.
Or geoduck in the Pacific Northwest, which is like a large clam thing.
And you can always head down to Texas to try some diamondback rattlesnake.
More like rattleSNACK.
Am I right, Texas?
Meredith.
What’d I say about puns?
No puns!
For less exotic meats, go for finger steaks in Idaho, which is just deep-fried steak.
And then of course there’s Turducken - turkey stuffed with duck that’s stuffed with chicken.
Believe it or not, this isn’t just a disgusting American invention.
It’s very similar to ballotine in the UK.
But anyway, it’s best known here for its Louisiana roots.
Rubber ducky, I’ve got good news and bad news, and the good news is that you’re about
to have a chicken inside of you.
The state pastry of Wisconsin is kringle.
It’s a flaky and doughy dessert filled with nuts or fruit.
And it’s technically Danish.
But it’s not a Danish, just to be clear.
Anyway, Wisconsin is known for its kringle, not its originality.
But they’re also famous for chicken booyah (a chicken and vegetable stew) and Limburger
cheese, which of course is famous for its strong smell.
All right, let’s talk sandwiches for a minute.
Beef on weck is a popular dish in Buffalo, New York.
It’s basically just a roast beef sandwich on kummelweck roll.
The spiedie (SPEE-dee) sandwich, which is like a regular sub sandwich with cubes of
marinated meat, also comes from New York.
In Illinois, a Horseshoe sandwich is an open-faced sandwich with fries, meat, and cheese sauce
on it.
A typical horseshoe sandwich has around 1,900 calories, or enough to last you for a day.
The Po’ Boy is from Louisiana.
It’s made of baguette, fried shrimp or other meats, and gravy.
The sandwich used to be called a “peacemaker” because it’s so good you don’t even want
to fight anymore.
Other food you should eat in Louisiana: King cake on Mardi Gras (if you can’t make it
to France) and Gumbo.
King cake is a delicious pastry cake and if you find a little plastic baby in your piece
then you’re special, which is one of the main ways that King cake is different from
all other foods because if you find a little plastic baby in any of them, it’s terrible
news!
And gumbo is a famous soup that was invented in Louisiana.
Okra is one of its main ingredients.
In fact, the word “gumbo” probably came from a Bantu word meaning “okra.”
All right, I gotta speed up, let’s talk about the South quickly!
Grits are porridge made from corn.
We borrowed this one from the Native Americans.
Add shrimp and you have Shrimp and Grits.
Chicken fried steak is just a steak prepared exactly like fried chicken.
Coca cola cake is a regular chocolate cake with Coke as a primary ingredient and it’s
great.
Chess pie was probably stolen from England.
It’s a pretty standard pie, but it contains cornmeal.
And Watergate Salad is a delightful-looking green goo made from pistachio pudding, Cool
Whip, pineapples, and marshmallows.
Baked deviled crab is crab that’s deviled like eggs, and then baked.
She-crab soup was probably Scottish before it was a favorite in the Carolinas.
It’s a chowder made with crab eggs, which is why it’s named after the female crab.
And the south is also known for conch chowder and frogmore stew (which has shrimp, corn,
potatoes, and sausage).
Then we have some things that are exactly what they sound like: sweet potato biscuits,
pickled pig’s feet, boiled peanuts, and fried green tomatoes.
And finally I return to my salon to tell you about one of Time Magazine’s top 25 inventions
of 2013: the cronut.
We may have only recently invented the half-doughnut-half-croissant, but already it’s a staple in New York City.
Only 300 are made every day at Dominique Ansel Bakery, and they sell out every single day.
In fact because they are so popular, some people even scalp cronuts...for up to $100
a piece.
Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these
nice people.
Every week we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions.
This week’s question is from RayIonomi8 who asks, “Is it true that it takes more
muscles to frown than it does to smile?”
Well, we don’t actually know.
That expression is as old as time, but there are a lot of muscles involved in both and
it depends on how you’re smiling and how you’re frowning.
Anyway, thus far scientists have not been able to prove whether one involves significantly
more muscles than the other, you know, it’s a fertile area for research, though.
If you have a mind-blowing question, please leave it below in comments.
We’ll endeavor to answer as many as we can.
Thanks again for watching Mental Floss, and as we say in my hometown - don’t forget
to be awesome.