Breakfast Food

• Traditional
Traditional breakfasts in the United States and Canada derive from the full English breakfast and other European breakfast traditions and feature predominantly sweet or mild-flavored foods, usually hot. Typical items include hot oatmeal porridge, grits (in the South), other hot grain, porridges, eggs, sausage, pan-fried potatoes such as hash browns or home fries, biscuits, toast, pancakes, waffles, bagels, French toast, English muffins, pastries (such as croissants, doughnuts, and muffins), and fresh or stewed fruits of various types (stone, citrus, etc.). Steak may be served with eggs on the traditional menu. Cold cereal has become nearly ubiquitous in recent decades, and yogurt is widely popular. Coffee, tea, milk and fruit juices are standard breakfast beverages.
Many regions of the United States have local breakfast specialties that are less popular nationally. In the South, homemade biscuits served with country-style gravy (also called sawmill gravy), country ham, and red eye gravy, as well as fried bologna and grits, are one traditional breakfast menu. In coastal South Carolina, mixing shrimp and grits is a common breakfast food; the Southwest has huevos rancheros and spicy breakfast burritos; scrapple is a favorite in the Mid-Atlantic states; salmon bagels are popular in the Northwest; pork roll is rarely available outside New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and New Englanders still occasionally indulge in fried salt pork and pie. Fried eggs with bacon or sausage and American cheese on a seeded kaiser roll is a popular breakfast sandwich in parts of New York. Many soul food breakfast menus across the country include fried chicken wings, catfish, pork chops and salmon croquettes. Specialty items also vary in popularity regionally, such as: linguiça sausage and Spam in Hawaii; crab cakes in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic regions; andouille sausage, chicory coffee, Chisesi ham, and beignets in Louisiana; chorizo in the Southwest; lox and smoked salmon in the Northwest; and goetta in Greater Cincinnati.
American breakfast customs derive from those of rural England in the 18th century, and some divergences probably reflect changes in the latter since that time. For example, modern English hot breakfasts commonly include lightly fried tomato slices or a sauteed whole mushroom, but neither are found in the United States. Breakfast kippers are also uncommon in the United States. On the other hand, the steak-and-eggs breakfast is rare in England and probably a recent American import. English muffins (not to be confused with the British crumpet) are commonly eaten as a breakfast food in the United States.