Google's Most-Searched Recipes Of 2017 Show A Frantic Nation Looking For Comfort Food
Google released its Top 10 list of most-searched items in 2017 this week, and frankly, the overall list was a bit underwhelming, as people demanded more information about Hurricane Irma, Matt Lauer, and fidget spinners. Getting more granular, though, when we dive into the most-searched recipes in the U.S., the results are somewhat more surprising.
In a tumultuous year, the nation searched frantically for heavy comfort food, with beef stroganoff topping the list, followed by apple crisp. Number three is a bit of a head-scratcher: Corn casserole is jumping on that starchy beige-food bandwagon to make a comeback. Brining turkey probably made its inroads into becoming the number four most-searched term during Thanksgiving week, followed by the first straight-up vegetable on the list (we're not counting you, corn): zucchini at number five.
Six and seven are made up of the dinner staples chicken parmesan and pork chops, but number eight is a search we on The Takeout staff have conducted about a million times: How to hard-boil an egg. The Thanksgiving sweep likely ushered in yams at number nine. Rounding off the list is an item that may kick french-toast casserole off of our Christmas breakfast table this year: Hash-brown casserole at number 10.
The difficulty of remembering how to boil a goddamn egg led to a safe space of sorts for our staff, where we all opened up about other food-related Google searches we likely performed more than once over the course of this year:
- How to cook rice
- How do you know when ground beef goes bad
- How to defrost chicken fast
- How to chop an onion
- How to poach eggs
- What's a substitute for eggs in a baking recipe
- How to ripen an avocado faster
- How to open a champagne bottle
- How to open a wine bottle without an opener
- How to clean mushrooms
- How to clean cast iron skillet
- How to make salad dressing
And, the perennial favorite: "How many cups in one quart," which our colleague Kevin Pang now informs us is four. There are two cups in a pint. We're hoping this will finally sink in so that with any luck, we don't have to look this up again in 2018.