What, Not Bacon?
By Chuck Sudo in Food on Mar 12, 2014 4:40PM
The United States is by and large a carnivorous nation. America eats more red meat than any other nation on the planet. And it shows except in the official foods claimed by the states in the union. According to Slate food and drink editor L.V. Anderson, only four states claim meaty dishes among their state foods. Illinois has two official state foods; popcorn for official state food and the Gold Rush apple as the official state fruit.
Anderson decided to assign each state an official meat. She stuck mainly with red meats and the list (and corresponding map) she created traffics on equal parts history and cliche. According to Anderson, Illinois' official state meat should be the porterhouse steak, a nod to the Union Stockyards and Chicago's onetime claim to be "hog butcher for the world."
(T)oday it’s still hard to walk through the city without tripping over a steakhouse. And the quintessential steakhouse steak—and by “quintessential,” I mean “biggest and most expensive”—is the porterhouse. At Gibsons, “the Chicago Steakhouse,” a 48-ounce porterhouse will set you back $99 and presumably obviate the need to eat again for several days. (Illinois is kind of shaped like a porterhouse, too, if you squint at it!)
We could make a case that bacon would be Illinois' state meat, given the collective Pavlovian response of Chicagoans, at least, when the word is mentioned. We think Indiana received a better cut of meat with pork tenderloin while Wisconsin predictably was assigned the bratwurst by Anderson.