In a region known for pot roasts and Jell-O salads, Native traditions and waves of immigration prove that Midwest food is anything but a monolith.
Growing up in rural northwesterly Minnesota , I ate my fair percentage of stereotypic Midwestern meals : Friday Pisces the Fishes Fry , Christmas lefse , church cellar bars , cookie salad , and blistering dish aplenty . I also spent much of my spring chicken hunting , sportfishing , foraging for wild foods , harvest home vegetable , pickle nimiety produce for wintertime , and witnessing crops undulate out in every focussing from our state home .
It was n’t until maturity , when I begin traveling more wide , that I take in just how rare these childhood experiences were — and how rarely they are depict to the balance of the state . Typically , Midwestern culinary art is categorize as dull and bland , and while I ’ve exhaust a little lutfisk and some Jell - O salad in my twenty-four hour period , that ’s not all there is to this foodway . From the Coen brother ’ black comedyFargotoTikTok ’s That Midwestern Mom , Midwestern intellectual nourishment has come to be the butt of the jest . But local chef and Fannie Farmer are cultivate to change that perceptual experience .
TheMidwest regioncomprises 12 state of matter and describe formore than 20%of the land ’s population , nearly 69 million people . Despite that geographic and demographic variety , the part is often characterized the same way : hard - working , self - effacing , ego - sufficient , nice , average , and white . Many of these perception of so - calledflyover countryhave been lumped into its food for thought , too .
Bison Steak at Owamni|Photo by Scott Streble
“ One of the expectant myths about Midwestern cuisine is that it ’s massive , ” enjoin MinnesotanAmy Thielen , the James Beard Award - winning source of seminal cookbookThe New Midwestern Tableand forthcomingCompany . “ In realness , it ’s a bunch of regional pocket cuisines that developed from a combining of the Native American tribes who originally lived there , plus the first wave of European in-migration , then the second moving ridge of immigration , and today . So the character has changed due to patterns of movement and population . ”
This estimation of uniformness , genuine or not , characterizes our res publica ’s food as a whole . Plus , the region ’s proportional historic period also plays a function in its enactment .
“ Europeans came a lot later to the Midwest than other share of the country , with some orbit not being settled until the mid to late 19th one C , ” excuse food historiographer and North Dakota nativeSarah Wassberg Johnson . “ These immigrants from Germany , Poland , Russia , and Norse rural area had less time to get centuries - retentive foodways establish , like in the Northeast or South , so they hang on to a slew of their traditions . ”
Tepary Bean with Whitefish at Owamni|Photo by Scott Streble
This historic timeline also excuse why Indigenous culinary traditions — hunt bison and elk , harvesting wild rice and chokecherries — have survive in the Midwest . These precolonial usage are being revitalized by modification Jehovah like Oglala Lakota chefSean Sherman , who grew up on South Dakota’sPine Ridge Reservationand is helping force the modern Native American food motion from his acclaimed Minneapolis restaurant , Owamni . Sherman uses element from Indigenous producers to make dishes like Elk Short Ribs , Bison Steak , Duck Fat Squash , and Wild Mushroom Tartare — offer up a regional culinary identity all its own .
Midwestern culinary art is also shaped by factors like seasonality and isolation , something Thielen experiences from her home near Park Rapids , Minnesota ( population 4,122 ) . “ My closest neighbour is two miles away , ” she suppose . “ In these rural billet in the Midwest where you have that kind of closing off , you ’re in general going to see sr. food custom being keep . ”
She receive countless love letter afterThe New Midwestern Tabledebuted in 2013 , thanking her for depicting these oft - maligned technique and recipes in a venerating way . “ There ’s a lot of acquisition and noesis to these rural traditions , ” Thielen says . “ If you ’re driving 30 minutes to get the best crybaby or planning an entire weekend to go piece blueberries in the woods , you clearly care about food a hatful . I intend my workplace serve well to keep that and remind mass they are working as intemperately as any New York chef . ”
A bountiful spread from “The New Midwestern Table.”|Photo by Jennifer May
So why are sure foodways , say Southern culinary art , venerate by some while others , like Midwestern , are rejected ? As Wassberg Johnson say , it ’s complicated . “ One of the chief reason Southern cuisine is so revere is because it was a cornerstone of theLost Cause , ” she explains . “ After the Civil War , there was a proliferation of southerly cookbooks as a style to transform cultural computer memory about the South . Other cuisines like Midwestern , Rocky Mountain , and Pacific Northwest are less well - defined because there ’s been no political impetus to popularize them . ”
Thielen resound this theme in her theory that Minnesota ’s big intellectual nourishment industriousness , drive by the area ’s agrarian roots , helped shape our corporate sympathy . “ This vision of Americana and Midwestern food for thought came out of theBetty Crocker test kitchen , ” she posits . “ After World War II , a lot of companies were put ‘ American ’ products out into the world , and these home economic expert were essentially lay down a canon of what was American enough . ”
We self - deprecating Midwesterners have n’t serve matters , either . “ There ’s this trope in immigrant communities that the first generation tries to assimilate , the 2d generation is ashamed of where they came from , and the third generation examine to save those tradition before they die out , ” Wassberg Johnson suppose . “ I think that ’s true for Midwestern culinary art . There ’s this ethnic disdain for flyover body politic , and we Midwesterners have reject our own foodways and finally fed into the stereotype . ”
But Midwestern food is n’t just destined to stay stuck in the yesteryear . counselor likeGirl Meets FarmstarMolly Yeh — a Brooklyn transplant who moved to her husband ’s 5th - generation Minnesota sugar Beta vulgaris farm — are regulate the cuisine ’s next chapter . Her Jewish - Chinese heritage inform her unique takes on classics like hot peach and cookie salad , and the popularity of her new eating place , Bernie ’s , signals that the future of Midwestern cuisine is bright .
Indeed , Thielen points out how more late immigrant wafture from Africa and South America are shaping the intellectual nourishment scenes in position likeFargo , North Dakota . “ Fargo has a lot of newfangled Americans who are influencing the food community in ways you could see , ” she explain . “ For example , I now grow an African eggplant from seeds from a Congo immigrant namedSimeon Bakunda , who know in Fargo . I love that . ”
In many ways , Midwestern culinary art is so misunderstood because it resists definition . It is settle in many histories yet is ever evolve to reflect the concourse of those who have come before and those who will add up next .
“ The New Midwestern Table ” Copyright © 2013 by Amy Thielen . Photographs copyright © 2013 byJennifer May with the elision of page 47 , courtesy of Margaret Annexstad , page 102 , courtesy ofIrene Kulig , and page 289 , courtesy of Joan Dion . Illustrations Copyright © 2013 by Amber Fletschock . bring out by Clarkson Potter , an imprint of Random House . ”
