Regional Favorites for U.P. Michigan Fruit pies, especially blueberry and raspberry, cherry, and rhubarb, but includes apple (transparent apples), pumpkin, Pecan pie made with maple syrup instead of corn syrup, cream pies of all types, pudding pies, etc.
Boiled dinner made with meat, potatoes, carrots, onion, celery, and cabbage is a favorite. Meats for this dish include a choice of ham, venison, ham hocks, corned beef, chuck roast, or ground beef. The traditional pasty is made with a
3-2-1 pastry dough, and filled with ground beef, diced rutabaga, diced potato, chopped onion, and seasoned simply with garlic, salt, and pepper. The filling is placed in the center of an 8 inch round of rolled dough which is folded from one side to the other, making a half-moon shape. The pasty is usually served with gravy or ketchup. Some pasty makers (a few of us anyway) like to place a dough divider in the pasty and place the above filling on one side, and a fruit filling on the other, providing both the savory main course, and the desert in one wonderful pasty. Enough dough must be left on the pinched edge to roll toward the center to make a handle by which the pasty is picked up and eaten.
Pizza pasties are a local favorite. The household I grew up in was not typical. We ate a lot of spaghetti, goulash (macaroni with ground beef , bell pepper, onion, and herbs), pot roast, beef stew, meat pies, fried, roasted, or grilled chicken, rabbit, fresh brook trout, fresh Rainbow trout, yellow perch, venison, lots of root veggies, pancakes and waffles, eggs and bacon, breakfast sausage, wonderful baked beans, wonderful chili with lots of kidney beans, onions, celery, chili powder, and ground beef, in a tomato base.
Regional sandwiches include bacon-lettuce & tomato, liverwurst, open faced roast beef, open faced pork, and open faced turkey each with appropriate gravy. Americans everywhere love peanut butter and jelly (provided there are no peanut allergies).
Corn on the cob with hamburgers are common. Local favorites are the Paul Bunyan and Big C hamburgers, both exceeding 1/2 lb. in weight. Most people prefer their fish dipped in beer batter and deep-fried. I like mine dredged in flour and pan-fried. Smoked fish of all kinds are common to this area, smoked with maple or alder wood.
Pulled pork isn't common except at my house.
Pork ribs are a favorite. However, most folks around here overcook them, and cook them with
a sugary barbecue sauce, that usually is burnt by the time the ribs are removed from the grill. They also grill them over heat with no lid, or cook them in a slow cooker, heavy sigh.
Our restaurants are nothing to brag about. But there are a few great cooks around these parts, especially with game or fish. None of them cook professionally. Well, that's all I can think of for now.
Seeeeeya; Goodweed of the North
P.S. West Pier has the best burgers and fries in town.