What is Pennsylvania Dutch anyway? You’ve heard the term before but most people don’t truly know what it means. Pennsylvania Dutch are composed of German and Swiss (not Amish as most folks perceive) settlers in the 17th and 18th century who are mostly farmers and formed communities in the rich farmlands of south central and eastern PA. As you can imagine, with their arrival came a vast mixture of culinary traditions mostly rooted in their farming origins. Their cuisine was very frugal, meaning they used every part of the animals they butchered…ate what was fresh out of the garden when they had it available and preserved any excess bounty mostly by pickling or fermenting. Most of the dishes that are popular are very rich, fatty, hearty and filling foods and not very refined. That is due to their culture of working the land, they were more focused on that than being culinarians. Popular meat dishes often contain underutilized cuts, sausages or loafs and the starches that were eaten the most were potato based or noodles (the PA Dutch popularized the wide egg noodle, which is a hearty thick noodle that shows up in a lot of dishes). Although it has very humble beginnings and to this day remains out of the national culinary spotlight, PA Dutch cuisine has a few dishes that helped shape our culinary landscape as a country such as chicken noodle soup, pretzels and gingerbread to name a few.

Wednesday, April 20, Part 1: Pork

Wednesday, April 27, part 2: Chicken

Wednesday, May 4, Part 3: Sweets an Sours