You know how a lot of food we have is named after cities or countries, most likely because they originated from those places? Well–a lot of famous foods were invented here in America too, and to celebrate our 250th birthday, we’re gonna tour some of the best ones we have from city to city.
Boston Cream Pie
Life is short…eat dessert first! Originally from Boston of course, this custardy, chocolatey, creamy rich creation is credited to a French chef who made it for the Parker House Hotel when it first opened in 1856.
We took parts of our recipe from the King Arthur baking company, which we short-cutted by using box cake mix. A toaster oven like the one we have from Zojirushi is always useful when all you’re doing is baking a couple of 8-inch cakes.
We made the custard filling and the chocolate glaze from scratch though!
This is such a patriotic dessert, don’t you think? I love custard pudding anyway, so combining it with a moist yellow cake and thick chocolate makes it an epic treat. By the way, why is it called a pie in the first place? It’s clearly a cake.
The simple answer seems to be that back then, the same type of round pie pans were used to bake both pies and cakes, so the names were used interchangeably. So there you go, Boston Cream Pie.
Buffalo Wings
An American bar food staple, Buffalo Wings are mostly credited to the owner of the Anchor Bar in the 1960s, who decided to deep fry some chicken wings and toss them in a mixture of hot sauce and butter as a midnight snack. We can never know when they were really invented, but the city of Buffalo has successfully claimed them as theirs, and so it is.
If you want a healthier version of chicken wings, bake them instead of frying. The secret is to coat them with baking powder to make them crispier.
If you only need a small portion of wings, your trusty toaster oven will do fine.
Pour your favorite spicy sauce on them and you’re pretty much done. Traditionally a cayenne pepper based hot sauce is used, but you can make your own or just get it from a bottle.
You can’t have Buffalo Wings without the sliced carrots and celery on the side, so don’t forget those with the ranch dressing dip. The creamy ranch helps neutralize the tangy hot sauce, believe me. Plus, that’s how you get your veggies.
This is also important: people love wings and these get messy. They lick their fingers all the time, so make sure they’re not reaching back in to get another piece after licking them. Ewww! Just take some for yourself on a serving plate please!
Philly Cheesesteak
This hefty creation was started by a couple of Philadelphia brothers who decided to do something different one day at their hot dog stand in the 1930s. They decided to make a sandwich with chopped steak and grilled onions on an Italian roll to add to their hot dogs. The cheese came later apparently, like it seems like it inevitably does to any American food.
Get some thinly sliced rib-eye meat (if you live near an Asian market, sukiyaki meat is perfect for this), and your electric griddle. We’ve found our Zojirushi griddle always has enough space to fry everything all at once.
Add the cheese—provolone and American cheese. A lot of people like to use Cheese Whiz® from jars, but since we didn’t have any we just used American slices.
Another cool thing about this griddle is the cover—it helps melt the cheese better. And I never have to worry about the cheese sticking to the surface.
Fun Fact; Pat’s King of Steaks, the restaurant owned by one of the brothers that started it all, has been in business since 1930 in Philadelphia. It gets so busy that you have to know how to order your cheesesteak like a local before it gets to your turn. And they like cash, so have it ready!
- Specify if you want your steak “wit” or “wit-out” onions
- Specify plain (no cheese), cheeze whiz, provolone, American, or pizza steak style (topped with pizza sauce and mozzarella)
In case you wanted to know, cheeze whiz is the runaway favorite, outselling American 10 to 1.
Philly Cheesesteaks are so satisfying and smell so good when they’re hot off the griddle.
Denver Scramble
Yes, yes. It should be a Denver Omelet I know, but we wanted to cook everything on the griddle to make breakfast for the whole family, so it became a scramble. Besides, this dish is so basic it can be prepared any which way, as long as it has the traditional ingredients.
It’s always a crack-up to me when I read about the origins of foods because they’re so unprovable and all over the place. I guess the Denver omelet started out as more of an egg sandwich, which historians say was either created by 19th Century cattle drivers in the American West or by the Chinese cooks who built our railroads. The Chinese made a version of their own classic egg foo young and stuck it between slices of bread for easy eating, inventing the Western style egg dish. I like that version than the other one, where some pioneer woman used onions to cover up the smell of her less-than-fresh eggs and concocted the dish for her ranchers. That one smells fishy.
Sometimes I feel like a rock star cook at a diner when I use our big Zojirushi griddle.
Don’t forget the cheese. Scrambled eggs don’t stick to this griddle either, by the way.
That’s looking good. Hash browns are the standard side dish for a Denver scramble.
Time for breakfast. Those pioneers ate simple, but they ate good.
And that’s the end of our American cities food tour. There’s more, I know. Cincinnati Spaghetti, Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, Manhattan Clam Chowder, Kona Coffee; I’ll have to do a sequel post someday.
Happy Birthday America!
Products used in this post: Micom Toaster Oven ET-ZLC30, Gourmet Sizzler® Electric Griddle EA-DCC10
Please note that these recipes were not tested by Zojirushi America
All images by Bert Tanimoto ©2026
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