Ranch Dressing? Really?

~ Laura

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Fast Company has a great interactive map (oh, how I love interactive maps) of the most distinctive foods by state. Ranch dressing is very popular in some places. Thank God, New Jersey has its eggplant parmigiana and its pasta with vodka sauce.

Published by Laura

8 thoughts on “Ranch Dressing? Really?”

  1. My sister uses ranch dressing to get her kids to eat veggies. She calls it “white dippy”. There’s also red dippy (ketchup). My attempts to get her to call them Nationalist and Communist haven’t worked.

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  4. Uh, I’m not so sure about this list. Banana peppers in Ohio? And I’ve spent plenty of time in Michigan and never seen a green bell pepper on the table; even in Chicago the green bell peppers are not that commonly used.

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    1. Jen, apparently you are not hanging out at the right taverns in Illinois. Peppers and onions are definitely A Thing here. Probably not as much as cheddar cheese is in Wisconsin, but….every cookout event, outdoor concert, fundraiser, booster-club, union hall crowd, political event, you-name-it has sausage and peppers involved. Everybody with a garden seems to grow ’em—-anyone with any outdoor access will have a tomato plant and a pepper plant, even if they don’t grow anything else.

      With that said, tomatoes, pizza, italian beef, polish sausage, and gyros would have made the list if everyone else wasn’t eating ’em too.

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  5. Chicken tenders? CHICKEN TENDERS? I’ve only ever seen them on kids menus. Gross.

    I’m not so sure about this list either.

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    1. Fully agree. Chicken tenders are children’s fare.

      I would have believed clam rolls, lobster rolls, chourico, scrod, raspberry lime rickeys. Chicken tenders? Get outta here.

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  6. “What you’re looking at isn’t the most popular food by state. It’s the food that most distinguishes them from the rest of the pack.”

    From the article.

    I find these articles interesting, too, but they have to be read carefully. The map is a “relative popularity” chart (I’ve seen them based on google searches, but this one is based on menus). So, low frequency items might appear on the list, because they are relatively higher frequency in the state than elsewhere (though that doesn’t really explain chicken tenders, which I presume are frequent everywhere, if only on children’s menus).

    But, at least the data seems to show the frequencies, too (and not just the relative frequency). I hate it when people show ratios without showing the underlying data (especially in the age of digital data and interactive charts, where it’s there, and doesn’t cost trees to show).

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