15 American Foods That Are as Weird to Foreigners as Poisonous Blowfish Is to Us

[Fartacus]

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating...hat_are_as.php

Examples:






Had some biscuits and gravy for dinner last night. USA!! USA!!! USA!!!

[ukmum]

Yep defo very odd!

[flowerchild]

I can't imagine serving someone just plain pasta and broccoli. Cheese is on the list? I don't think it belongs there. Frito pie, had it once, that was more than enough.

[Cactus Az]

Frito Pies were long a staple of camping for my kids. Just cut a hole into a small bag of Fritos, ladel on the chili,add cheese, and lunch was done, and except for the fork, no dishes to wash.

[Pablo Escobar]

Pretty lame list. Some of them weren't even foods!

Add hushpuppies!

the Cheese is because cheese didn't exist in Asian cultures, and therefore cuisines, due to lactose intolerance, see prior thread here.

http://thisbluemarble.com/showthread.php?t=43440

[Feather]

My Dad liked grits but I don't like the texture of them loose. I like cornmeal mush sliced thin and fried and dipped in maple syrup.

[drummagick]

I still like Frito pie!

Guest at hotel where I work - "What is that in this pot?"

Me - "Gravy for the biscuits!"

Guest - "Um....no thank you"

Me - "Are you from Canada?"

Guest - "Yes! How did you know?"

[flourbug]

Jason loves biscuits and gravy. I never even heard of it. His mother had to explain how to make his favorite dish. A multilingual Singaporean beauty queen taught a Daughter of the American Republic from the North East how to make Southern Chipped Beef Cream Gravy.

[blue gecko]

Southern Chipped Beef Cream Gravy

Actually, we call that ^^^ something else (on a shingle)

Chocolate gravy is another southern favorite with biscuits. There's the sweet kind that reminds me of unset instant pudding lol, and there's the less sweet kind thats more like a gravy. I don't make it either one. BUT I DO make some mighty mean Biscuits and Sausage Gravy.

[flourbug]

On my way out but this I need to know. I was told breakfast gravy has teeny tiny pieces of what looks like flat corned beef... you buy the meat in a little bag in the supermarket. My mom made SOS - that had postage stamp sized pieces of beef in it.

Will check in when I get back. Full day of Dr and Dentist appts for the boys.

[Feather]

My MIL made biscuits and gravy for her family when DH was growing up. I made bacon gravy for him once because we were out of sausage. Freaked him out, he'd never heard of bacon gravy. Dad used to make it, plus his mother and grandmother made it. I figured it's a northern MO thing.

[rb.]

I don't understand how Canadians can think biscuits and gravy is weird. It was common on both the Brit and French sides of my family to eat any gravy left at the end of a meal by slapping at least one slice of bread on your plate, and smothering it in gravy. Many of us preferred it to dessert. Still do.

[flourbug]

rb., the "gravy" in biscuits and gravy is more like a thick and savory cream soup. Some people put the biscuits in a bowl, then pour the gravy on top. Some use the biscuits as a mop. It is a very heavy meal. I'm surprised it is more a southern thing because I can see the advantages to such a breakfast on a cold winter morning.

[Catbird]

In the South, biscuits and gravy started out being made without meat. It was essentially sawmill gravy, which is a semi-white, cream gravy made of flour, fat and milk (or water if times are bad), with a liberal dose of pepper. It can also be made with rice or corn flour, although it isn't as good. It can be served over just about anything - biscuits, cornbread, potatoes, grits, rice, or meat, if there was any meat.

Because of the heat in the south, meat preservation was iffy and not everyone had a way to keep it year round. The same was true for butter. Lard was the most common fat used. So meat was pretty precious and one way to get every last bit of it was to make sawmill gravy in the same skillet that you fried some meat in. That fat, and the drippings, takes the place of butter in making the roux that is the base of the gravy. It was also handy because a lot of people had only a few pots and pans, so the gravy could give you 2 food items from the same pan - the meat that was fried, if you had it, and the gravy.

The most common meat in the south was pork. Most people could raise a few hogs because they can forage for themselves. Unlike cows, hogs didn't need pasture land, or to have hay cut and stored for winter feed. Beef doesn't keep as well as pork, so unless someone had just slaughtered a cow, beef was bought either dried and salted, or corned. But it was far more expensive than pork. So when there was meat, it was most likely to be pork and that was the fat that flavored the gravy. In good times, it was a logical progression to put some sausage in the gravy. It was a good way to stretch a little bit of sausage to feed a whole passle of hungry kids.

Wheat wasn't widely grown in the South and what was grown was a soft wheat. Bread made from soft wheat isn't as good as what is made from the northern hard wheat. Because of the heat, it was also harder to keep yeast to make light (risen) bread. So biscuits were the South's alternative. Making biscuits also stretches the wheat farther. You can make a few biscuits with a cup of flour - you don't get much bread for that amount.

So necessity met invention and voila - you've got biscuits and gravy.

My FIL, born in the TN hills in the 30's, grew up eating gravy over grits or corn pone. What he calls light bread, which is anything made with white flour, whether it's biscuits or bread, was only served once a week or so, if they were lucky. It wasn't really until after WWII that flour became an affordable, easily available staple for most people. To this day, he enjoys having light bread with every meal, whether there is gravy to sop up or not. For him, it's to make up for all that pone he had to eat as a kid.

bg, I've seen chocolate gravy as well. I've also made tomato gravy, where you use the leftover juice from a can of tomatoes in place of the usual milk. It's actually not bad, especially if it's made with meat drippings instead of butter and it's pretty good over cornbread.

[Potemkin]

Mayonnaise on French fries is a German and Dutch thing.

[dyrt]

Great post Catbird.

I have had lots of biscuits and gravy in my life. In the early years most of it was made from a little of the left over pork lard from frying meat with added flour and milk, like you mentioned. Crisco became the oil of choice over time. It was convenient and cheap. All bacon, pork or whatever oils were always strained and saved. On Sunday, my mother would make extra plates of food and would take them along with a pint jar of left over oils to the very poor people next door. We called it grease . . . of course. I guess that is not PC anymore.

[Ought Six]

Originally Posted by Pablo Escobar

Add hushpuppies!

Hushpuppies are the farthest thing from 'weird'. They are small deep-fried spicy corn fritters. I doubt that there is any culture on the planet that does not have some form of deep-fried fritter.

[Catbird]

Originally Posted by dyrt

Great post Catbird.

I have had lots of biscuits and gravy in my life. In the early years most of it was made from a little of the left over pork lard from frying meat with added flour and milk, like you mentioned. Crisco became the oil of choice over time. It was convenient and cheap. All bacon, pork or whatever oils were always strained and saved. On Sunday, my mother would make extra plates of food and would take them along with a pint jar of left over oils to the very poor people next door. We called it grease . . . of course. I guess that is not PC anymore.

Thanks.

My Daddy grew up in TN and my mother in Ohio. It was fun to watch them try to come to a meeting of the minds when it came to the important things in life, like gravy!

I still keep bacon grease, and even call it that. We don't often actually eat bacon and I end up buying the "ends and pieces" box at the store just to have some to render down into grease. It's a pretty essential part of my cooking style. Over the years, my son would occasionally tease me about it, "Are you still keeping bacon fat? Ewww...".

Now that he's in culinary school, he's suddenly discovered one of life's great truths - pork fat rules!!!

[Twoolf]

When the kids assemble for a visit, they demand I make biscuits and gravy. It took years of experimentation to come up with the perfect biscuit. They have to have frozen, grated butter, very little mixing, and a slightly wet mix. Very hot oven, and baked in a cast iron pan, and the perfect biscuit awaits. The gravy is the easy part. Lots of pepper.

[flowerchild]

Back when I was in college, I would often grab sausage gravy and biscuits from Hardees. No one else in my family liked it, so I didn't bother to make it at home. Now I make it every once in a great while. I still really like it. I found a antique sour cream biscuit recipe that is very good with it.
I remember my mother making what she called chipped beef on toast. The way she made it, it would have stuck wallpaper on the wall. God it was awful. s^^t on a shingle was a very accurate description of it.

[ukmum]

Originally Posted by Ought Six

Hushpuppies are the farthest thing from 'weird'. They are small deep-fried spicy corn fritters. I doubt that there is any culture on the planet that does not have some form of deep-fried fritter.

Hushpuppies are a brand of shoe here.

[D. Gale]

Growing up in Chicago, I never had biscuits and gravy. It's one of DH's favorites and now thanks to him, one of mine too. We had it for dinner the night before Fart did!

DH uses bulk pork sausage in his -- he browns it in a skillet like you would ground beef for sloppy joes, then drains it, makes the roux and the gravy, then adds the sausage back in. We actually like it over the Grands biscuits better than homemade, but I think that's most because we're lazy cooks.

[Twoolf]

Time saving tip: You don't need to make a roux, just add 2 tablespoons of flour directly to the meat and stir well. The flour gets coated in the fat, and evenly distributed, then add your milk or 1/2 and 1/2.

[drummagick]

It's gotta be Jimmy Dean sausage

[Twoolf]

Concur.