Cuisine of the United States

The cuisine of the United States is a style of food preparation derived from the United States. The cuisine has a history dating back before the colonial period when the Native Americans had a rich and diverse cooking style for an equally diverse amount of ingredients. With European colonization, the style of cookery changed vastly, with numerous ingredients introduced from Europe, as well as cooking styles and modern cookbooks. The style of cookery continued to expand into the 19th and 20th centuries with the influx of immigrants from various nations across the world. This influx has created a rich diversity and a unique regional character throughout the country. In addition to cookery, cheese and wine play an important role in the cuisine. The wine industry is regulated by American Viticultural Areas (AVA) (regulated appellation), similar to those laws found in countries such as France and Italy.

History (Pre-1492)
Before the European colonists came to America, the Native Americans had an established cookery style that varied greatly from group to group. The vast variety of ingredients and cookery styles were never found in the same locality; any one group had a much more limited diet. Nutrition was an issue for most hunting and gathering societies that wandered widely in search of game and who might encounter serious shortages in wintertime.

Common ingredients

Plant foods

Sweet potato, an indigenous tuber found in Native American cookery
Maize, the indigenous grain to America found in Native American cookery

The Native Americans had at least 2,000 separate plant foods which contributed to their cooking. Numerous root vegetables were indigenous to America. Root vegetables were numerous in the diet including camas bulb, arrowhead, blue lapine, bitterroot, biscuit root, breadroot, prairie turnip, sedge tubers, and whitestar potatoes (Ipomoea lacunosa) along with the sweet potato and white potato. Greens included salmonberry shoots and stalks, coltsfoot, fiddlehead fern, milkweed, wild celery, wood sorrel, purslane, and wild nasturtium. Other vegetables include century plant crowns and flower shoots, yucca blossoms, tule rootstocks, amole stalks, bear grass stalks, cattail rootstocks, narrowleaf yucca stalks, and sotol crowns. Fruits included strawberries which Europeans named the Virginia strawberry due to being larger than the European dwarf mountain strawberry. Additional fruits included huckleberries, blueberries, cherries, currants, gooseberries, plums, crab apples, raspberries, sumac berries, juniper berries, hackberries, elderberries, hawthorne fruit, pitaya, white evening primrose fruit, and yucca fruit (of various species, such as Spanish bayonet, banana yucca). Some fruits which were found only in North America at the time were the fruit of various species of cactus (e.g., cholla, saguaro, nipple cactus, prickly pear, etc.), agarita berries, chokecherries, American persimmons, and the wild beach plum.

Nuts proliferated in the diet as well, including pecans, hickory nuts, beechnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, chinquapins, black walnuts, and butternuts. Acorns were also popularly used to produce oil for seasoning, and pounded into a flour to mix with cornmeal to thicken soups and fried into cakes and breads. Legumes included peanuts, screwbeans, honey locust beans, and mesquite beans. The grain used in most of Native American cooking was maize, while wild rice (not a true grain) was found in certain southern regions.[8] The seeds from various plants were also commonly utilized: pine nuts (western white pine, western yellow pine, pinyon pine), anglepod, dropseed, pigweed, spurge, sunflower seeds, tumbleweed, unicorn plant.

Land animal foods
The largest amount of animal protein came from game meats. Large game included bison, deer, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and bear, mountain lion, along with goat and pronghorn being found in the Rocky Mountains. The small game cooked included rabbit, raccoon, opossum, squirrel, wood rat, chipmunk, ground hog, peccary, prairie dog, skunk, badger, beaver, and porcupine. Game birds included turkey, partridge, quail, pigeon, plover, lark and osprey. Water fowl was quite abundant and varied, particularly on the coasts such as ducks, geese, swan, crane and sea crane. Other amphibious proteins included alligators and frogs, which the legs were enjoyed from, especially bullfrogs. Snail meat was also enjoyed, along with various turtles such as the painted turtle, wood turtle, and snapping turtle along with their eggs. In addition the sea turtle and green turtle, endangered today were considered an important spiritual protein by the Native Americans.

Seafood

Blue crab was cooked by Native Americans on the east coast of America.
Saltwater fish eaten by the Native Americans were cod, lemon sole, flounder, herring, halibut, sturgeon, smelt, drum on the East Coast, and olachen on the West Coast. Whale was hunted by Native Americans off the Northwest coast, especially by the Makah, and used for their meat and oil. Seal and walrus were also utilized. Eel from New York's Finger Lakes region were eaten. Catfish seemed to be favored by tribes, including the Modocs. Crustacean included shrimp, lobster, crayfish, and giant crabs in the Northwest and blue crabs in the East. Other shellfish include abalone and geoduck on the California coast, while on the East Coast the surf clam, quahog, and the soft-shell clam. Oysters were eaten on both shores, as were mussels and periwinkles.

Cooking methods
Native Americans utilized a number of cooking methods. Grilling meats was common. Spit roasting over a pit fire was common as well. Vegetables, especially root vegetables were often cooked directly in the ashes of the fire. As early Native Americans lacked the proper pottery that could be used directly over a fire, they developed a technique which has caused many anthropologists to call them "Stone Boilers." The Native Americans would heat rocks directly in a fire and then add the bricks to a pot filled with water until it came to a boil so that it would cook the meat or vegetables in the boiling water. Another method was to use an empty bison stomach filled with desired ingredients and suspended over a low fire. The fire would have been insufficient to completely cook the food contained in the stomach however, as the flesh would burn so heated rocks would be added to the food as well. Some Native Americans would also use the leather of a bison hide in the same manner.

The Native Americans are credited as the first in America to create fire-proof pottery to place in direct flame. In what is now the Southwestern United States, Native Americans also created ovens made of adobe called hornos in which to bake items such as breads made from cornmeal. Native Americans in other parts of America made ovens out of dug pits. These pits were also used to steam foods by adding heated rocks or embers and then seaweed or corn husks (or other coverings) placed on top to steam fish and shellfish as well as vegetables; potatoes would be added while still in-skin and corn while in-husk, this would later be referred to as a clambake by the colonists. The hole was also a location for producing what has become Boston baked beans made from beans, maple sugar and a piece of bear fat.