100 Most Popular American Dishes, by Category
Most “most popular American dishes” lists are just someone’s opinion dressed up as a ranking. This one starts somewhere more solid: YouGov actually surveys Americans on which dishes they recognize and love, and the top of that list is where this article begins. From there, it expands into the other 80 or so dishes that show up again and again on regional menus, holiday tables, and weeknight dinners across the country, organized by category instead of dumped into one long, arbitrary countdown.
The Top 20, by Actual Survey Data
According to YouGov’s ongoing survey of American dishes, these are the dishes with the highest combined fame and popularity scores among U.S. adults. A score in the high 90s means the dish is both something almost everyone recognizes and something most people who’ve tried it actually like.
- Fried Chicken
- Hot Dogs
- Mashed Potatoes
- Chicken Nuggets
- French Fries
- Cheeseburger
- Steak and Fries
- Turkey Sandwich
- Hamburgers
- Hash Browns
- Tater Tots
- Apple Pie
- BBQ Ribs
- Grilled Cheese
- Southern-Style Fried Chicken
- Corn on the Cob
- Chicken Wings
- Chicken Pot Pie
- Philly Cheesesteak
- Steak and Baked Potato
Worth noting: this is a fame-and-affection score, not a “what did people eat most this week” ranking, which is why fast-food staples like nuggets and fries sit right next to a Sunday dinner dish like chicken pot pie. It measures what Americans feel the most warmly about, not what’s on the most plates tonight.
Sandwiches and Handhelds
Beyond the Philly cheesesteak and grilled cheese already in the top 20: the club sandwich, BLT, Reuben, po’ boy, Italian beef (Chicago), French dip, pulled pork sandwich, sloppy joe, meatball sub, chicken salad sandwich, lobster roll (New England), and the Cuban sandwich (Florida). If you want the fifteen-minute version of a sloppy joe rather than the sandwich-shop kind, it’s on this site already.
Breakfast Classics
Pancakes, waffles, French toast, biscuits and gravy, eggs Benedict, bacon and eggs, breakfast burrito, cinnamon rolls, grits, and oatmeal round out the morning side of American food, alongside hash browns from the list above.
Comfort Food Dinners
This is the category most weeknight American cooking actually falls into: meatloaf, pot roast, chili, mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, Salisbury steak, fried pork chops, chicken and rice casserole, tuna casserole, and Shepherd’s pie‘s American cousin, cottage pie made with beef. Several of these already have full costed recipes on this site, including meatloaf and chili and the stovetop mac and cheese.
BBQ and Southern Cooking
Beyond ribs and Southern fried chicken: pulled pork, brisket (Texas-style), Nashville hot chicken, fried catfish, collard greens, black-eyed peas, cornbread, jambalaya, gumbo, red beans and rice, and shrimp and grits.
Tex-Mex and Southwestern
Tacos, burritos, enchiladas, chili con carne, fajitas, nachos, chile relleno, and queso dip are as much a part of everyday American eating as anything on the YouGov list, even if the survey groups them separately from “traditional” dishes. Ground beef tacos in under 15 minutes are already covered on this site.
Soups, Stews, and Salads
Clam chowder (New England and Manhattan style), chicken noodle soup, Brunswick stew, cobb salad, Caesar salad (Mexican-American in origin, now a U.S. staple), potato salad, coleslaw, and macaroni salad.
Seafood
Fried shrimp, crab cakes (Maryland), lobster (Maine-style, steamed or in a roll), fish and chips, blackened redfish, and oysters on the half shell.
Regional Specialties
Chicago deep-dish pizza, New York-style pizza, New York bagels with lox, Cincinnati chili, Kansas City burnt ends, St. Louis toasted ravioli, Buffalo wings (their true point of origin), Hawaiian poke, and Louisiana crawfish boil.
Holiday and Special Occasion
Roast turkey, honey-baked ham, stuffing, candied yams, green bean casserole, and deviled eggs show up disproportionately at Thanksgiving and Christmas but stay in year-round rotation in a lot of households.
Desserts
Beyond apple pie: pumpkin pie, pecan pie, key lime pie, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, cheesecake (New York-style), banana pudding, peach cobbler, s’mores, and red velvet cake.
The full count
Twenty from YouGov’s actual survey data, plus roughly eighty more across sandwiches, breakfast, comfort food, barbecue, Tex-Mex, soups and salads, seafood, regional specialties, holiday dishes, and dessert. That’s the real shape of American food: less a single ranked list than a set of categories that barely overlap, which is why almost nobody can agree on a single “best” American dish. They’re usually not even talking about the same category.
If you’re looking for what to actually cook this week rather than what to admire on a list, the comfort food and Tex-Mex sections above link to full costed recipes already on this site. Let us know in the comments which dish you think is missing.
