The 10 Most-Searched Meals in America, Ranked

Ask Americans about their favorite foods and you are going to get plenty of arguments. Search data offers a slightly different way to look at the question. Pizza, sushi, chili, tacos, and several unmistakably American comfort foods generated millions of Google searches during a 12-month period, with one dish finishing miles ahead of everything else.

The list also says something about how Americans eat. Some of these dishes developed in the United States, while others have roots in Mexico, Japan, Europe, or elsewhere before becoming fixtures on American menus. In several cases, the versions familiar to Americans today evolved considerably along the way.

To create this ranking, 24/7 Tempo used data collected by The Cookie Rookie. The site used Google Ads Keyword Planner to measure searches nationally and by state from April 2023 through March 2024. That makes this a ranking of the most-searched meals in that dataset, rather than a survey of what Americans actually eat most often. The 10 meals are listed below in descending order.

• Annual Google Searches: 4.4 million

The exact origin of the modern burrito is murky. People in Mesoamerica were wrapping food in tortillas long before anyone used the word “burrito,” but drawing a straight line from ancient Maya food to the oversized burritos sold today goes too far. Historical references to burritos appear in Mexico by the late 19th century, and the dish became closely associated with northern Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. American versions eventually grew larger and picked up an almost unlimited range of fillings.

• Annual Google Searches: 4.5 million

Despite the name, a hamburger has nothing to do with ham. The modern sandwich evolved from dishes known as Hamburg steak, although food historians still debate exactly who first put a ground-beef patty between bread and created the hamburger we recognize today. What is clearer is how thoroughly America embraced it. White Castle, founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921, helped standardize and popularize the fast-food hamburger, and chains including McDonald's later carried the idea around the world.

• Annual Google Searches: 4.7 million

Frying chicken is much older than the fast-food industry. In the United States, the dish became deeply associated with Southern cooking, and the Smithsonian credits enslaved African cooks and their descendants with playing a major role in shaping the fried chicken traditions that developed in the South. The dish eventually went national. Harland Sanders began franchising his Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe, and the first KFC franchise opened near Salt Lake City in 1952.

• Annual Google Searches: 4.9 million

Hot dogs have obvious roots in the sausage-making traditions brought to the United States by European immigrants, particularly Germans, but the history of who first put one in a bun is considerably fuzzier. Charles Feltman is widely credited with popularizing sausages served in rolls at Coney Island beginning in the 1860s. The term “hot dog” was in print by the 1890s. From ballparks and backyard cookouts to street carts, it eventually became about as American as an imported food idea can get.

• Annual Google Searches: 5.8 million

Green bean casserole may feel like a recipe that has been hanging around forever, but its origin is unusually well documented. Campbell's test-kitchen supervisor Dorcas Reilly and her team developed the dish in 1955 while working on a recipe for an Associated Press feature. Originally called “Green Bean Bake,” the six-ingredient recipe combined green beans, cream of mushroom soup, milk, soy sauce, black pepper, and fried onions. It eventually became a Thanksgiving fixture.

• Annual Google Searches: 5.9 million

Americans were eating beef long before the steakhouse became an institution, but the country's restaurant culture helped turn steak into a meal associated with dining out and special occasions. Delmonico's in New York became one of the most influential names in that history. The Delmonico family opened its celebrated fine-dining restaurant on South William and Beaver streets in 1837, and the restaurant later became famous for the Delmonico Steak. Claims that it was definitively America's first steakhouse are harder to establish, but its place in the history of American fine dining is not.

• Annual Google Searches: 20.4 million

The taco is Mexican, but pinning down exactly when it emerged is surprisingly difficult. Food historian Jeffrey Pilcher has traced the term to Mexican silver-mining culture in the 18th century, while written references to tacos as food became more common later. Pilcher found one of the earliest U.S. newspaper references in 1905, when Mexican migrants were increasingly working in mines, on railroads, and in other industries north of the border. Mexican American cooks later adapted tacos in countless ways, while fast-food chains helped turn the crunchy, ground-beef-filled version into a mainstream American staple.

• Annual Google Searches: 27.9 million

Few dishes invite an argument over the “right” recipe quite like chili. Its American history is closely tied to Texas and especially San Antonio, where the city's famous Chili Queens were selling bowls of chili and other foods in public plazas by the late 19th century. From there, regional variations multiplied, with disagreements over beans, meat, peppers, and practically everything else in the pot.

In The Cookie Rookie's state-level search data, chili ranked as the most-searched meal in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. Those six states were the exceptions to pizza's otherwise overwhelming lead.

• Annual Google Searches: 33.2 million

Sushi has Japanese roots, but its rise in the United States produced distinctly American variations. Sushi began attracting a wider American audience in Los Angeles during the mid-20th century, and chefs in the city's Little Tokyo neighborhood helped develop the California roll in the 1960s. Using ingredients such as avocado and placing the seaweed inside the roll made sushi more approachable to diners unfamiliar with traditional versions. By the late 20th century, sushi restaurants had spread far beyond the West Coast, and packaged sushi eventually became common in American supermarkets.

• Annual Google Searches: 69.2 million

Nothing else in the dataset came particularly close to pizza. It generated 69.2 million searches nationally, more than twice sushi's second-place total, and ranked first in 44 states. Modern pizza developed in Naples before Italian immigrants helped establish it in the United States around the turn of the 20th century. American cooks then ran with the idea, giving us everything from New York-style slices to Chicago deep dish and countless regional variations.

And if you are wondering what Americans put on all of that pizza, pepperoni remains difficult to beat. Recent consumer research from Mintel found that 65% of U.S. consumers surveyed said they usually order pepperoni, the highest share for any topping in the survey. (Don't miss The Favorite Foods of America's Early Presidents.)