We all face the same question every day: What’s for dinner? Whether you’re cooking for just yourself or a family of four, figuring out what to make can be a task in itself. Naturally, we were curious what people across the country were cooking. Based on where you live, what time of year it is, and what the weather is like, the answer may be different. So we pulled data on the most searched dinner recipes per state within the last 30 days. If the most popular recipe from the last 30 days wasn’t a dinner recipe (say dessert for example), we slotted in the most popular answer from the last 90 days.
We then broke down our findings into six categories: soups & stews, beef, chicken, pasta & noodles, chili, and casseroles. The data was fascinating and seriously surprised us — and we saw some clear trends. Here are the most popular dinners in each state.
In a sweeping majority, the most popular dinner was butternut squash soup, leading the charge in nine states: California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah. Squash is in season, and more people are craving comforting, warm dishes like soups and stews during fall, so this wasn’t particularly surprising.
The second most popular dinner was pozole, across three states: Idaho, Kansas, and Kentucky. There was a four-way tie for third most popular dinner: beef bourguignon in New Jersey and Washington; cheeseburger soup in Nebraska and South Carolina; chicken cacciatore in Georgia and Maryland; chicken marsala in Alabama and Delaware.
The remaining dishes fell across the various categories, with soups & stews being the most popular category by a landslide. They included beef stew in Wyoming, beef vegetable soup in West Virginia, broccoli cheddar soup in Virginia, cabbage soup in Nevada, chicken gnocchi soup in Minnesota, clam chowder in Ohio, lasagna soup in Florida, potato leek soup in Colorado, potato soup in New Hampshire, pumpkin soup in Arizona, swamp soup in Tennessee, zuppa toscana in Rhode Island, and chicken stew in Maine.
The pasta/noodles category took the lead for three states, mostly in the Midwest, with baked spaghetti in Oklahoma, spaetzle in Illinois, and vodka pasta in Michigan. Mississippi stood on its own with hashbrown casserole in the top spot as the wild card of the entire group.
Note: While some of the dishes fall across multiple categories (i.e. chicken chili could be both chicken and chili), we chose which one felt the closest to us.
Was your favorite dinner listed in your state? Let us know in the comments.