[1] General Tso’s chicken, the most popular Chinese food (photo © Spicy Southern Kitchen).

[2] Tamales are ground meat, poultry, or vegetables stuffed into masa (corn dough) and steamed in a corn husk (photo © Mackenzie Ltd).

[3] Chicken pad Thai, garnished with cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice (photo © Good Eggs).

A new study has revealed that Chinese food is the most Googled cuisine, according to Google search data.

The research, conducted by BBQ experts Food Fire Friends, analyzed Google search data related to the 40 most popular cuisines in the world, across the 50 U.S. states.

Here’s what Americans googled most. Can we assume it’s what Americans eat most? Not necessarily, but it’s food for thought!

#1: CHINESE FOOD. With an average of more than 3.35 million searches per month, Chinese is the clear winner by far. According to GrubHub, General Tso’s Chicken (photo #1) is not only the most popular Chinese dish; it’s the 4th most popular dish of all foods that are ordered through GrubHub [source]. Here are the Top 10 most popular Chinese dishes.

#2: MEXICAN FOOD. With an average of 1.22 million Google searches, Mexican food tickles the palate with hot salsas and spices that include allspice, cinnamon cloves, coriander, Mexican oregano, and thyme. Not to mention guacamole and Margaritas! The difference between authentic Mexican food and Tex-Mex.

 
#3: THAI FOOD. More than 823,000 monthly Google searches puts Thai cuisine into third place. Yes, please, we’d love some tom kha gai (chicken in coconut milk soup) and pad Thai (photo #3—stir-fried rice noodles with shrimp or chicken, peanuts, scrambled eggs, sprouts, and other vegetables). We also recommend green papaya salad

#4: INDIAN FOOD. Registering an average of 673,000 Google searches, Indian food favorites include biryani, curries, tandoori chicken, fish and shrimp, and great flatbreads.

ROUNDING OUT THE TOP 10

#5: KOREAN FOOD, with an average of 246,000 Google searches per month. Bibimbap, Korean BBQ, jjigae (Korean stew), kimchi, and Korean fried chicken are among our favorites.

#6: JAPANESE FOOD, with an average of 201,000 Google searches per month. Beyond sushi and sashimi, cooked favorites include ramen, soba, tempura, teriyaki, and yakitori.

#7: SOUL FOOD, 201,00 searches. Top ranking: collards, cornbread, fried chicken, fried pork chops, macaroni and cheese, and don’t forget the peach cobbler.

#8: GREEK FOOD, 165,000 searches. We always start with a mezze plate (assorted spreads), Greek salad, or horiatiki, followed by kabobs, moussaka, pastitsio, or souvlaki, with baklava as our dessert of choice.

#9: ITALIAN FOOD, 165,000 searches. In addition to antipasto, pasta, and pizza, we want bagna cauda, polenta, porchetta, ribollita, and a basket of focaccia with EVOO for dunking. For dessert: gelato? ricotta cheesecake? tiramisu? all of them?

#10: HAWAIIAN FOOD, 90,500 searches. One reason we feel that Google searches don’t equate to foods consumed, is that who has had Hawaii’s #1 dish, poi (steamed or baked taro root)? More Americans have had poke, a type of sashimi salad. Loco moco is a favorite comfort food, a hamburger patty topped with gravy and a fried egg, all placed atop a heaping plate of white rice. Here are more Hawaiian favorites.

Are you inspired to discover a new dish?

We’ve had lots of the first nine cuisines, but with the exception of poke, none of the tenth.

In search of Hawaiian food in New York City, we were so excited to find a restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that “manages to cram all of Hawaii’s greatest hits onto one menu” [source]. Alas, the article was from 2013; the restaurant has closed. Another, in Harlem, is still open.

Field trip!

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Our Top Pick Of The Week is something special for lovers of chicharrónes (fried pork rinds or cracklings), or for those who love a low carb chip but don’t eat pork*†.

As with chicharrónes, Flock Foods turns seasoned strips of skin and fat and fries them to a crispy, puffy state. Fly down to the next section to learn all about them.

> National Pork Rind Day, a.k.a. Pork Rind Appreciation Day, is Super Bowl Sunday, when one pigskin recognizes the other.

> July 6th is National Fried Chicken Day. That includes the skin!

> If you’re vegetarian or vegan, check out these PigOut Pigless Pork Rinds.

> The history of chicharrones is below.
 
 
FLOCK FOODS: CHICKEN CHIPS & THEN SOME

At Flock Foods, what started as a single flavor of crispy, packaged chicken skin chips has became a zero-carb line of small-batch, wok-fried, tasty snacks in:

 
The chips are all natural, made from just three ingredients: chicken skins, a proprietary seasoning blend, and oil. That’s it!

There are 13g of protein per one-ounce serving.

While we’ve only tasted the chicken chips, the line has expanded to:

 
Flock Foods has become the place to go for all the high-protein, low-carb meat snacks your crunch-loving palate desires.

The line is dairy-free, gluten-free, and keto-friendly. All products have zero sugar, and zero carbs.

The snack is also an excellent source of collagen protein, the protein found in connective tissue, skin, tendon, bone, and cartilage. Collagen provides structural support to tissues and is also involved in essential bodily processes, including tissue repair and signaling between cells. (here’s more about it).
 
 
WAYS WE USE FLOCK CHICKEN CHIPS

Add them to the plate, or incorporate them into:

 
Recipes

[1] Crispy snacking: chicken chips (all photos © Flock Foods).

[2] There are four flavors.

[3] Toss some on a salad instead of croutons.

[4] Add them to a cheese or charcuterie board.

Head to FlockFoods.com.

In addition to a supply for yourself, treat friends who are on carb-avoiding diets, and give them as party favors and stocking stuffers.

For a bigger gift, sign someone up for a subscription!
 
 
THE HISTORY OF CHICHARRONES

As with so many cooked foods, the origin of chicharrónes (the plural of chicharrón) is lost to history. Certainly, pork skins and other edible animal skins have been consumed since man discovered how to use fire. Every part of an animal that could be eaten, was.

The word entered the English lexicon in the 1940s. In the U.S., the snack crossed the border into the Southwest, and became popular with followers of the Atkins Diet in the 1970s.

It got a boost in the 1990s when President George H.W. Bush proclaimed chicharrónes to be his favorite snack.

Their compliance with gluten-free, keto, low-carb, and paleo diets helped raise awareness even more in recent years. Here’s more history of chicharrónes.
 
 
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*Chicharrones can also be made from the skin of chickens, cows, pigs, or sheep. The snack began in Spain and traveled to Latin America. Here are the regional differences.
 
 

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[1] Some people thrill to a four-layer cake, but we’re happy with just two layers. Here’s the recipe for this beauty (photo © King Arthur Baking).

[2] While there’s no evidence that red velvet cake originated in the south, you can find recipes in most southern cookbooks, like this one (photo © Chronicle Books).

[3] The toughest part of baking was to refrain from eating the bowl of icing so there’d be enough left to ice the cake (photo © McCormick).

[4] Mascarpone, rich and creamy (photo © Vermont Creamery).

[5] A top pastry chef make the beet purée from scratch, but we’re happy to purée canned beets (photo © Libby’s).

[6] Baking chocolate is unsweetened—it has no added sugar, i.e., it’s 100% cacao (photo © Scharffen Berger).

September 18th is National Red Velvet Cake Day, so what did we do? You guessed it: We baked a red velvet cake.

The recipe below, which we found in our files, is purportedly the original Red Velvet Cake recipe from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. It shows why we don’t like most red velvet recipes: not enough chocolate. Just a pretty red layer cake.

Our baker extraordinaire mom would say to this complaint: If you want a chocolate cake, bake a devil’s food cake. And experts agree that the cake is supposed to have just a hint of chocolate.

But bake the red velvet we did. We liked it, and the icing was heavenly.

But back to National Red Velvet Cake Day: Although no one can pinpoint when and where the recipe was created, “it is certain that the Waldorf-Astoria helped popularize red velvet cake in New York” [source].

Here’s the “origin story” on the hotel’s website. They call the story an urban legend.

The truth is out there!
 
 
WHAT ABOUT THE MASCARPONE?

The hotel claims to have sold the cake in the 1920s*; however, the recipe only appeared in print around the 1940s and 1950s [source].

Now here’s the rub: Few people in the U.S. at that time had ever heard of mascarpone cheese.

While the fresh, spreadable cheese was first made in Italy in the 16th or 17th century, it was very perishable and wasn’t exported at that time. In fact, it didn’t even get imported into the U.S. until the 1980s or so—and then, you had to search specialty Italian cheese stores.

It was the craze for tiramisu, “discovered” by American tourists, that brought the rich, succulent “Italian cream cheese” to New York City in the early 1980s. (Tiramisu is more than half mascarpone.)

In that culinary decade, “tiramisu became a major dessert preference in almost every Italian restaurant and bakery in New York City” [source].

We can vouch for that: We were there, eating tiramisu for dessert at every Italian restaurant meal.

Then, the rise of artisan American cheesemakers led to a delicious domestic mascarpone somewhere around the 1990s (photo #4). Vermont Creamery and Crave Brothers make such great mascarpone, that a container and a spoon is all we need to be happy.

And Crave Brothers makes chocolate mascarpone, too!

> More about mascarpone.

> The history of red velvet cake and more red velvet recipes.

> The history of tiramisu.

> Easy tiramisu recipe.
 
 
RECIPE: RED VELVET CAKE FROM THE WALDORF ASTORIA—MAYBE?

Regardless of its provenance, we enjoyed this cake very much, and are already planning to make it more “chocolatey” with the addition of chocolate chunks, next time around. And maybe we’ll add chocolate to the frosting, too.
 
Ingredients

For The Cake

 
For The Icing

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Butter and line three 9-inch round cake pans with waxed paper.

2. MIX the sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla with an electric mixer on low speed for 2 minutes.

3. SIFT together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and continue to mix on low speed until everything is incorporated.

4. MELT the chocolate in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of boiling water. Add the melted chocolate to the mixture while mixing on low speed. Add the puréed beets and food coloring. Continue to mix on low speed.

5. EVENLY DIVIDE the batter between the 3 pans and bake in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes or until the center of the cake is done. Remove from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Let cool for 10 minutes in pans, then turn the layers out onto the rack and let cool completely.

6. MAKE the icing: Pour the cream into a bowl and whip it into soft peaks. Place in the refrigerator.

8. USING a serrated knife, trim the top of each layer of cake so that it is flat. Top each slice with icing and repeat until all the layers are covered, and then ice the top and sides of the cake.
 
 
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*Along with the Waldorf-Astoria, the Adams Extract company and Eaton’s Department Store in Toronto also lay claim. Irma S. Rombauer’s “The Joy of Cooking,” originally published in 1931, allegedly had a red velvet cake recipe (we haven’t been able to find an early copy to check it out) [source].

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