Well, hello, and welcome to the Learn Every Day English podcast, your roadway to English proficiency.
Hey, you've come to the right place to improve your listening comprehension skills and mastery of the English language.
My name is Gary and I will be your host today.
I'm a native English speaker born and raised in the United States and a retired engineer living in a small Texas town, about one hour north of Houston.
I'm also a language learner like you studying Spanish, so I know what it is like to learn a new and different language.
So now, let's jump right in to today's episode.
Hey again, howdy, listeners!
Hey, welcome to this episode of the Learn Every Day English podcast.
Glad to have you with me today.
And again, my name is Gary.
In this episode, we're going to be talking about something I think is going to be pretty cool and pretty interesting.
It's going to be talking about well -known foods that we eat here in Texas, in the state of Texas, or in the south, as you might hear said sometimes.
But before we get started, I want to remind you, you can follow me at my webpage.
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Hey, so without further ado, let's jump right in to today's episode.
So in today's episode we're going to be talking about the best -known or well -known foods that you can find here in Texas or that a lot of people eat or even say most people eat here in Texas and food that Texas is famous for or well -known for.
And the first thing I'm going to talk about is probably one of the most popular foods here in Texas is barbecue.
Or sometimes it's abbreviated with the initials BBQ, which stands for barbecue.
And you can find or buy barbecue at a barbecue joint, a barbecue joint.
And here joint just means like a type of restaurant.
Usually it's a small restaurant.
So you go to your favorite barbecue joint and get you some barbecue.
So Texas barbecue has a tradition that dates back to the German and Czech immigrants who came to Texas and they brought with them their tradition of smoking meat when they came across the Atlantic.
So smoking meat, they usually have some type of wood that they burn and they put the meat on top of a grill or in a type of oven or smoker and the meat is smoked and it's cooked.
When you go to a barbecue restaurant or barbecue joint, you order a platter.
Sometimes you'll hear that word a lot.
But instead of saying a plate, you order a platter and typically barbecue comes on a platter with white bread, pickles, raw onions and barbecue sauce.
But of course the main feature and the main thing about Texas barbecue has to do with the meat and that's the most important thing.
Beef brisket is very, very popular, one of the most popular types of barbecue.
There are also ribs, pork ribs are especially popular and there are also beef ribs.
You can also get sausage and chicken barbecue.
Barbecue usually is a long smoking process that usually takes anywhere from 6 to 12 hours.
But it gives the meat a delicate tenderness or the meat is very tender or kind of soft.
It's not very tough or hard and it's balanced perfectly with the savory sauce or spices.
But a lot of times in Texas, they don't even use sauce on barbecue.
Some people say that messes it up as we can say in English or it takes away from the real flavor of the meat so a lot of people may not use barbecue sauce.
And typically you can order side orders or side dishes and that's just additional food that you can get with your barbecue.
And typical side dishes include potato salad, green beans, maybe some type of pinto beans, mashed potatoes and maybe even fried okra.
Another very popular food is Tex -Mex food and Tex -Mex is just a combination of food from Mexican and Texas cultures.
So that's why the two words Texas and Mexico are combined and put together to form the word Tex -Mex.
And so Texas and Mexico, the foods of each country have influenced the other and have become a combination.
Tex -Mex is its own category of food and it's characterized or made up by a lot of flour tortillas or tortillas as they may say in Mexico or also corn tortillas and also there's a lot of cheese or queso as you say in Spanish and much more queso than you might find in most typical Mexican foods and other
common foods in Tex -Mex food or items are beans.
They can be refried beans or charro beans, Spanish rice, peppers and of course a lot of meat.
And also if you come to the United States there are some Tex -Mex food chains or restaurants.
A chain is like a specific mark or type of restaurant that you'll find all over the United States and two are called two restaurants that are Tex -Mex food chains are Taco Bell and Chipotle and these maybe they differ from typical Mexican restaurants as they are more of fast food type of establishments
or restaurant rather than what we would call a sit -down restaurant.
Also when you get Tex -Mex food you got to get chili con queso and that's just melted cheese and you also have what we call tortilla chips and you take the chip and you dip it in the cheese and eat it or sometimes a lot of times it'll be salsa that you take your chip and dip it in salsa which is a tomato
base type of sauce that may have onions and some jalapeno peppers in it so that's called chips and salsa or chili con queso and finally another thing that you'll find in Tex -Mex food are something called fajitas which are a type of meat product usually made from skirt steak and also chicken though that's
less traditional and fajitas are usually served on a cast iron skillet that is still sizzling hot mixed together with grilled bell peppers and onions and the fixings or fixings as we say in English which is the type of food that comes along with fajitas are usually rice, beans, salsa, flour, tortillas,
shredded cheese and sour cream and these are usually served on the side as we say in English or in like separate dishes and you can make them the fajita we call fajita tacos so you put the meat inside the tortilla and add the fixings or the sides or the sides kind of and custom make it like you want
another type of food that's very common here in Texas is just steak and potatoes, steak and potatoes a very popular type of steak is a ribeye steak and you usually get a baked potato which is very common and you might hear the expression a loaded baked potato and what is a loaded baked potato that means
it's a potato that is baked you cut it open and then you add things to it usually butter, sour cream, chives which is a type of onion you could say and bacon bits or little pieces of bacon also another common food in here in Texas and you might find this more at say a state fair or a festival or a carnival
is something called a frito pie and frito pie is delicious and it's basically made by pouring chili on top of fritos and fritos are a type of corn chip it's very popular here and it goes by the name of fritos and it also be topped with or have on top of it maybe chopped onions and shredded cheese and what makes
this even more interesting the frito chips come in a bag just like you know potato chips come in a bag so a lot of times they'll just open the bag they won't put the chips on a plate they just open the bag and pour the chili and onions and cheese just on top of the chips inside the bag so you can take
the bag with you and go and eat it as you walk around another type of food that's very common here in Texas are called breakfast tacos and this also is something that has come from the influence of Mexico and these are tacos usually made of meat served in warm flour tortillas but they're very common for people
to eat for breakfast and they can be stuffed with a large variety of different types of food a classic type of breakfast taco is a bacon and egg taco or you can even get a bean and cheese taco and the taco can come with a brisket like we talked about barbecue type of beef can have smoked sausage or even
chicken and then you can also add salsa to your breakfast taco if you like and remember salsa is a type of tomato based sauce made of tomatoes of course onions jalapeno peppers and maybe some other spices another thing you might hear in Texas is called texas toast texas toast and you might ask hey what exactly
is texas toast it's actually a soft white bread that is coated in butter and sometimes garlic then it is grilled or toasted until it's out the outside of it is golden brown and crispy but the thing that makes texas toast distinct we could say or different is that it's very thick it's much thicker than your
regular slice of bread usually about twice as thick as the average slice of sandwich bread so it makes it good if you have some type of sauce on your plate you can use a texas toast to soak up the sauce that's left on your plate and eat that along with your texas toast another food product that you
gotta talk about or know about in texas is chili or texas chili and texas chili is unique from other types of chili in that it usually does not contain beans or tomato sauce or any type of tomato product and it is made primarily of meat and ground beef and a thick it's thick and as a flavor composed
of a chili paste made from dried peppers so it's more like a thick and hearty we could say beef stew and it focuses on the flavor but again it's does not contain like beans or tomatoes or tomato based products and when you talk about food items from texas you gotta talk about bluebell ice cream everybody
in texas knows about bluebell ice cream it's very famous and very popular ice cream and it's made by a company in texas so the company has its roots in the brinham creamery company and brinham is a city in texas and the brinham creamery company opened in 1907 which is a long time ago and it was open
to purchase excess cream that came from local dairy farms and dairy farms are farms where they have cows and they milk the cows for milk and cream and so they purchased excess cream from local dairy farmers and to sell butter to people in brinham texas and brinham is a town located about 70 miles northwest
of houston texas and in 1911 the creamery began to produce small quantities of ice cream but in the mid 20th century it abandoned butter production and expanded to the entire state of and soon much of the southern part portion of the united states and the company was renamed bluebell creameries in 1930
after the texas bluebell which is a wildflower that is native to texas or that means that you can find here a lot in texas so as of 2015 bluebell ice cream is number three selling ice cream manufacturer in the united states so you can see it is very popular bluebell produces over 250 different frozen
products and out of these 66 are flavors of ice cream so in addition to ice cream the company also produces frozen yogurt sherbert in an array or a variety of frozen treats on a stick so some of you that like beer you might be saying oh what about texas beer where there are two very well known types
of beer from texas one is lone star beer and it comes from the lone star brewery and a brewery is just a facility or manufacturing plant or that produces beer and the lone star brewery was built in 1884 and it was the first largest mechanized brewery in texas and the beer is still marketed as the national
beer of texas the second beer in texas is called shiner bok beer and it is a classic texas favorite beer it's a homegrown beer that means it's homegrown here in texas and it comes from the small town of shiner texas with the population of just over 2000 people and it has been around since 1909 and actually
it started as a and a brewery called the spotzel brewery in 1909 and it was originally named the shiner brewing association and was founded by german and check immigrants who settled around the texas town of shiner they were unable to find the type of beer that they used to like to drink in their home
countries of germany and czechoslovakia so they decided to do what a lot of people do they decided to brew or to make their own beer and shiner bok is the oldest independent brewery in texas and one of the oldest independent breweries in the united states as of 2012 it is or was the fourth largest craft
brewery in the united states another very popular food item in texas are called kalaches around 1850s the check immigrants or the people from czechoslovakia immigrated to the u .s brought these types of we called iconic pastries to texas they are made of soft kalachi dough wrapped around meat usually
sausage but ham is also fairly common and a clobasnik bears a striking resemblance to a sausage roll so this is a different type of product like a kalachi sausage rolls don't usually also come with jalapenos and cheese inside though that's all texas the most traditional form consists of a sweet pillowy
touch encompassing a thick filling of fruit seeds or cream cheese and nowadays the most popular version is the same semi -sweet dough filled with sausage and cheese which makes for the best breakfast on a busy morning and we can't talk about texas food without talking about whataburger and whataburger
is a fast food chain you could say it's similar to like a burger king or mcdonald's but it is found in certain states it's not over uh throughout the whole united states but it's very common here and very very popular maybe more popular than mcdonald's here in texas and again it's called whataburger
and you can get a variety of different types of burgers and drinks and french fries so it's very popular fast food restaurant here in texas finally i want to close with um in texas fried food is very common or very popular and there are a lot of fairs state fairs and carnivals that you can go to in cities
and small towns all across the state of texas and actually the texas state fair is the largest state fair in the country and you can find a lot of different types of food that are fried that means they are battered with some type of flour or we say batter and they are deep fried in oil and certain things
that you can find that are fried are bubblegum flavored marshmallows they are battered and deep fried and spank sprinkled with chiclets and chiclets is just a type of gum or chewing gum for years county fairs have been at the forefront or the beginning of deep frying science splicing and creating mutant
foods that are all at once monstrous that's fair it means very big and wondrous or like wonderful the texas state fair which is like i said the largest state fair in the country holds a yearly competition for the most innovative deep fried foods and they have like 25 different types of very interesting
and unique fried foods um they also have frozen balls of butter battered and fried and served with four different types of sauces they have beer that is battered and fried and don't ask me how they do that well they say the beer is poured into little ravioli pockets and ravioli is a type of pasta and they
burst with scalding suds of beer once you bite into them they also have fried peanut butter and banana cheeseburgers and also fried coke or fried coca -cola they also have chicken fried bacon you know bacon is delicious enough on its own but to fry bacon i guess would make it even more delicious they
have jelly belly jelly beans so they batter the jelly belly jelly beans and fry them they also have fried pizza which is an actual slice of pizza that's breaded and fried they have french fried coated hot dogs fried pecan pie fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches fried pop tarts and even fried oreos
so i hope you found that episode interesting and you learned something about common and very popular foods and food items here in the state of texas hey i'd love to hear what you thought of the program uh this episode if you have any questions for me any topics you'd like me to talk about and discuss
on this program you just go to the learn everyday english web page on the home page at the very bottom there's a contact form just fill that out hey let me know send me a message drop me a line and i'll read your message and get back with you well that's it for now i think just be on the lookout watch
out look out for our upcoming episodes i think we'll have some interesting uh stuff coming to you in the near future and till next time hey thanks for listening to this episode of the learn everyday english podcast and have a good week day and wherever you're at uh until next time talk to you later
hey goodbye
