Most Popular Super Bowl Food Might Not Be What You Think
Super Bowl LIX is around the corner (for you non-roman numeral people, that’s 59). Time to start planning the menu of the best bad foods ever for the big game.
Mental Floss put together a list of the most popular Super Bowl foods, by state. Some of them are not AT ALL what you might expect. And some of them you might not have ever had – or heard of.
Most Popular Super Bowl Food By State
The Super Bowl matchup is set. Red against green, Kansas City against Philly, Mahomes against Hurts. Definitely time to start making a list of the things you’ll need for your big game party.
The top Super Bowl foods include Buffalo chicken dip, hot dogs, baked potatoes, and – knoephla soup. Huh??
The Mental Floss people analyzed internet “search volume data” in the weeks surrounding last year’s Super Bowl. Then they went through some kind of process to figure out which food items were particularly popular in each state.
I think something might have been a little funky with their analysis, because despite 1,300 possibilities, every state had one of 14 foods as their #1. And pizza and burgers weren’t the top food anywhere. But knoephla soup was.
Knoephla is a German soup, that has dumplings, potatoes, chicken, vegetables, and cream. It’s popular in the North Central part of the country, but not pizza-level popular.
Favorite Super Bowl Foods Are Very Interesting
Buffalo chicken dip is America’s favorite Super Bowl food by a landslide. Even that seems a little odd. I would think actual Buffalo chicken WINGS might be the thing, but nope. Buffalo chicken dip is the top-searched dish in 29 states in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast.
Baked potatoes. Yes – baked potatoes – are #1 in the second-most states, with five states: California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and right here in Nevada. But not Idaho.
Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi want fried green tomatoes for the Super Bowl. Some other favorites on the map include: Funeral potatoes, or cheesy potatoes, poke bowl, deviled eggs, hot dogs, baked ziti, garlic knots and – shakshuka.
Shakshuka is a North African dish with poached eggs in a spicy tomato sauce, with onions, bell peppers, garlic, cumin, paprika, and other spices. Usually served with bread to soak up the sauce. Sounds good – but Super Bowl? Interesting.
And then there’s the Spanish pastry, sopapillas. They are the # 1 Super Bowl food in New Mexico. Crawfish étouffée is #1 in Louisiana, and here’s the big finish – knoephla soup, is #1 in North Dakota.
By the way – what about beer? Just plain, old fashioned BEER. I think it would go with everything on this list nicely!