19 Midwestern Comfort Foods to Cozy Up With Tonight

The origins of Nebraska meat pies, if you’ve heard of them, should be obvious, and that goes for Cincinnati-style chili, too. But did you know that the flavor of Cookies ‘N’ Cream originated in the Dakotas? The truth is, you’ve got a lot of cold weather in the Midwest, which means that you’ll encounter a plethora of divine, stick-to-your-ribs dishes that come in handy when you need some love in the form of a meal. Look beyond the hotdish, because there’s so much here to recommend. If you don’t live in the Midwest and can’t plan a trip there, cooking with some Midwestern flair might be the next best thing.

Hail Molly Yeh, Food Network’s reigning queen of the Midwest! She knows that a huge part of the appeal of hotdish, the local parlance for casserole, is an irresistible topping. Here, it’s a gorgeous grid of potato tots, that get crispy in the oven and a little melting where they make contact with the very classic chicken filling beneath.

Some call this buttery, gooey-interior cake “St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake,” which gives you a clue to its provenance. In addition, it comes with a good bit of lore about its invention, supposedly in the 1930s, when a Missourian baker mistakenly added too much butter to a coffee cake, resulting in this happy accident. The crisp edges and soft middle are the key to its charm.

Cincinnati chili even looks iconic, served over a bed of spaghetti. It tends to be a bit sweeter than standard chili, but sprinkled with Cheddar, what can we say? It just works. The recipe descends from two Macedonian brothers Tom and John Kiradjieff who settled in the area in the 1920s, who added cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg to the chili that they were topping hot dogs with at their restaurant, Empress Chili Parlor. Pairing spaghetti with chili was already a common practice in the area at the time, and once the brothers followed suit, this combination all added up to something uniquely Cincinnatian.

The great food writer Michael Stern once wrote about Nebraska meat pies, the legacy of “Russians of German ancestry” that emigrated to the state, “A bun of soft bread dough is baked with a stuffing of ground beef and cabbage, as well as enough spice to give it pizzazz, but not so much that it is anything but comfort food.” They are sometimes referred to as “runza,” and self-contained, they really do travel well. Tuck them into a lunchbox or take them to a game-day potluck, where they will delight.

No one can definitively agree whether these potatoes got their name from being served to the infirm or from being served at funerals, although the latter is for certain in Utah, where they come from. And lots of other occasions, too. In essence, it’s a cheesy potatoey gratin, topped with something that makes it crunchy. Often that topping is made from cornflakes, but here, Ree Drummond tops hers with kettle cooked potato chips, and they sure do the trick.

South Dakota State University claims this iconic ice cream flavor as its invention in 1979, as if we really needed an excuse to celebrate it on this or any list. Sure, you could scoop some ice cream, but if you want to really pay tribute to this flavor, we love the zillions of baked goods inspired by it, including this one from Ree Drummond. These come together pretty easily, with sandwich cookie crusts and cookie ice cream frozen right into the centers.

There might be a picture of knoephla soup, from North Dakota, next to the dictionary definition of “comfort.” Knoephla are little dumplings in a cream-spiked soup (the word means “little button” in German) and they might be as satisfying to make as they are to eat. They have just a little more chew than what you might find in chicken and dumplings, but they are way more yielding than pasta.

Yes Chef! If you want to try what Carmy’s been slinging, only with a lot less angst, here’s the sandwich that made the restaurant famous on The Bear. It’s a true Chicago classic, their answer to a cheesesteak, basically juicy slabs of pot roast on a bun with cooked bell peppers and lots of bright giardiniera.

Another hotdish? Can you ever have too many? This one is based on ground beef and corn, gets a nice blanket of Swiss cheese, plus a crown of curly fries. It’s a serious dose of warming comfort.

These no-bake bars from Iowa throw the whole kitchen sink in there. You’ve got butterscotch, peanut butter, chocolate and cereal, all mingling and layered to add up to a deliciousness that you’ll chip away at bar by bar over the course of a day (you’ve been warned). It’s unclear where the name comes from, although it at least in part refers to the butterscotch.

Though several states claim brisket as their barbecued item of choice, it was Kansas City, Missouri that started the craze for “burnt ends.” Prior to that, these were the ends of the brisket that didn’t contain the prized pink smoke ring effect, that might be thrown away rather than being sold in restaurants. But some loved these ends most of all, in all their sticky, meaty glory, and to some, are the whole point of the barbecued brisket.

Lots of geniuses through time have come up with strategies to prevent the overcooking of a hamburger patty; James Beard famously filled his with seasoned compound butter that would melt and keep the centers moist. But two bars in Minneapolis claim to have invented a burger stuffed with cheese that would ooze out upon eating, called the “juicy lucy” (some even spell the former word without an “i” to mimic the latter). Thankfully, there’s no Lucy that this is named for. An early eater was reported to have taken a bite and exclaimed, “That’s one juicy lucy!” Could it be a cousin to the region’s loose meat sandwich, a sort of sauceless sloppy joe, and maybe that eater was thinking of the “loosey?” We can only speculate.

If you want to eat some good cherry pie, head to Michigan, where they’re super serious about it. (This reporter once dined on what was proudly advertised as “the second-best cherry pie in Traverse City,” in the self-proclaimed “cherry capital of the world.” Reader, it was sublime.) This is a pie you can make any time of year, since it starts with frozen sour cherries, a double-hack; one, because sour cherries are the superior pie cherry, that if not frozen, are only available for about two weeks a year, and two, because it eliminates the most labor-intensive aspect of making cherry pie: pitting them!

For those of us who love chicken wild rice soup, we really love chicken wild rice soup. Though the legendary Tavern on Grand (R.I.P.) in St. Paul, Minnesota, was known for its walleye sandwiches, some of us really went for the wild rice soup, and also order it all over the state whenever we see it on the menu, which thankfully, here, is everywhere. Wild rice is technically not quite a rice but a wild grass that is native to the area and was long cultivated by Native Americans. It is the pride of the Midwest and really magical in any dish you put it in, at once earthy, toothsome and visually gorgeous.

But what if I’m in Chicago and don’t want a beef sandwich, you ask? Maybe you should try this, the only pizza where one slice can add up to a whole dinner. A deep-dish pizza is thick and rich, and absolutely worth the effort of making it.

The butter burger hails from Wisconsin, a place where no one shies away from extra dairy on anything. It is exactly what it sounds like: a burger with a dollop of butter spread atop its patty. Due to the heat of the patty, it then pools beneath the burger on the plate. So get a knife and fork ready if you’re with mixed company, or gather your true loved ones and a serious stack of napkins and just go for it.

St. Louis is the home of toasted ravioli, a “how didn’t we think of it?” kind of delicacy. Instead of cooking your ravioli like pasta, you bread it up like a chicken cutlet and deep-fry it. It’s maybe our favorite low-highbrow combo with a martini, but it also goes great with beer or on an antipasto table, where it might be the only possible thing that could overshadow a burrata or some cured meats.

All over the Midwest you’ll find beer-cheese soup, which at its purest form only contains those two ingredients plus some broth. More often, though, there’s a roux involved to stabilize the melted cheese. Here, Jeff Mauro adds another decidedly Midwestern touch, cooking kielbasa until crisp and then floating these “croutons” in the soup.