Your country, and YOUR favorite national dish

American here.

I live in the state of Minnesota. Minnesota is an interesting place culturally since it has always been a hotspot for immigration - both due to our accepting nature and abundance of job opportunities. In fact it has the biggest Somali population in the world, outside of Somalia. We also have a large amount of Mexican and Hmong people, and various European nations, and more recently a growing Middle Eastern population. This influences a lot of our food choices, since most of these immigrants bring their national dishes with them. This is mostly concentrated in the cities (where I live).

However the more “traditional” Minnesota foods take a lot of influence from Scandinavian countries, since a lot of the Immigrants from generations past who moved into Northern Minnesota were Scandinavian. So the typical Minnesota dishes are thought of as lutefisk, blood sausage, etc. But as far as I know that’s more of a Northern Minnesota thing - the cities have so many different influences in our food that it’s impossible to name a “national dish” for Minnesota.

I personally eat a lot of stir fry (a bunch of vegetables and mixed together, pretty simple) since it’s so cheap and easy to make. During the summer you can go to a farmer’s market anywhere and get armfuls of produce for two hour’s pay. We also have a lot of Hmong farmers, so some of the produce tends to be from those parts of the world. Bok choy, daikon radishes, etc.

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