60 Regional Foods You Shouldn't Eat Anywhere Else - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.204)

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 US 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 pork chop party fund. Oh, and we forgot the quarter for chitlins

Guetta 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 Year's 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 tots and half salad or as I like to call it heaven Then you can choose what to add Cheeseburger hot dog egg sausage steak pylons 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 Behind 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 US. 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, Bean Town, 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. Chowder? Is it chowder or chowder

Anyway, New England clam chowder 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, agudic

Ingredients include like fat, meat, berries, oil. In the local language Yup'ik, agudic 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 hopia a pudding made from coconut milk Speaking of dessert the date shake was invented in the 1940s by Russ Nicol 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 US, 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

And believe it or not, this isn't just a disgusting American invention, it's very similar to Balatine 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

Alright, 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 come-a-weck roll. The Speedy 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 1900 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 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

Alright, 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

Chest 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 Devil's 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 frogmoor 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 donut, 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're so popular, some people even scalp cronuts for up to $100 a piece

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