![]() Perhaps more Italian than Chinese, American chop suey is a fried or sauteed dish of macaroni, ground beef, tomato sauce, and vegetables such as green peppers and onions. The chop suey variationsĭepending on where you live, you might encounter different varieties of chop suey. Chop suey isn’t a Chinese dish invented by Americans but, like fortune cookies, a uniquely Chinese American one invented by Chinese immigrants who had settled in America. As for the trickster cook, it's a good story but one with little real evidence to support it.Įither way "Flower Drum Song" got it wrong. Some anthropologists trace the dish back to a similar one in Taishan county of Guangzhou province. since at least the 1880s, namely “from the woks of early Cantonese American immigrants,” says the Smithsonian. Historian Andrew Coe says the Li Hongzhang story is most likely a myth since chop suey had begun to appear in the U.S. Perhaps with nothing at his disposal except odds and ends, Li’s chef inadvertently created the famous mixed dish. Legend says that on this very day in 1896, he rejected the food served to him at a banquet and asked his personal chef to whip him something up instead. The more popular theory attributes the dish to a visiting Chinese statesmen named Li Hongzhang. But we're not sure who the joke was on: the miners loved it and the dish became a hit. He threw together a “garbage” dish of random leftovers and sauce for some American miners who had rudely barged into his about-to-close restaurant. One says it was a wily Chinese cook in 19th-century San Francisco. While chop suey might be served with rice or noodles, chow mein is a fried noodle-based dish with a thinner sauce, meat or seafood, and various vegetables. ![]() The name - shap suì in Cantonese and zá suì in Mandarin - translates literally as “broken miscellany.”Ĭhop suey shouldn't be confused with chow mein. ![]() Like "Flower Drum Song" says, chop suey has everything in it “all mixed up.” The dish is basically a stir-fry of meat, egg, and vegetables in a corn-starch-thickened sauce. 29, we bring you the answers to these questions and more. You’ve probably heard of chop suey (or at least the ditty ), but do you know where it comes from and who invented it? Or, for that matter, what in the world it is? On this National Chop Suey Day on Aug. “You are like the Chinese dish the Americans invented. “I am happy to be both Chinese and American.”
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