American chop suey is an American pasta dish popular in New England. It is related to other popular and similarly regional pasta dishes, like chili mac. Despite its name, it has only a very distant relation to Chinese and American Chinese cuisine.
Standard American chop suey consists of elbow macaroni and bits of cooked ground beef with sautéed onions and green peppers in a thick tomato-based sauce. The dish is typically cooked in a frying or sauté pan, as opposed to being baked in an oven like a casserole. Though this comfort food is influenced by Italian-American cuisine as well as older New England quick and practical meals like the "potato bargain" and "necessity mess," it is known as "American chop suey" both because it is a sometimes-haphazard hodgepodge of meat, vegetables and Italian seasonings, and because it once used rice, a base ingredient in Chinese cuisine, instead of pasta.
The recipe is quite adaptable to taste and available ingredients. Elbow macaroni is the standard but can be substituted with pasta of similar size, such as ziti, farfalle, or rotelle. The onions or green peppers may be omitted, or replaced with mushrooms. Whole, diced, or crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste are typical sauce bases for this dish. Black pepper, herbs and Worcestershire sauce are sometimes used in preparation.
American chop suey is served on a plate or in a bowl, usually accompanied by bread and often Worcestershire sauce. Sometimes grated Parmesan cheese is added after cooking.
See also
- Chili mac
- Chop suey
- American goulash
- List of pasta dishes
- List of regional dishes of the United States
- Food portal