The International Cooking Challenge

I’ve always been interested in what people in other parts of the world eat. I’ve seen a lot of people doing cooking challenges where they create a dish or two from another country with the intention of doing so for every country in the world. Many never finish, and I don’t really blame them as there are 195 countries to get through. I’ve always found myself wanting to know more about the dishes created, and I decided to just do my own version of this challenge.

The Rules

I plan on making food from a different country every week, going in alphabetical order, though I do anticipate taking a week off here and there since this is going to take me the better part of 4 years. I don’t want to just make one dish, as I don’t feel that’s enough to fully capture the cuisine of a country, so I’m going to make as many dishes from that country as I feel is feasible during the week. Where possible I’ll include whatever is considered the national dish. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, so you can expect that to feature heavily, as well as anything involving eggs. I also love street food, though some of that may be more difficult to recreate at home.

I foresee procurement of some ingredients being a problem, in which case I will substitute the best I can, though I’d like to try and keep the dishes as authentic as possible.

The United States

I plan on doing a version of this challenge where I cook food from every state in the United States, so I will be skipping this country. I don’t expect to have time to do this while doing my international challenge, so stay tuned in four years for the US state cooking challenge!

You may be asking why I have singled out the US for this, as I’m sure there are many other countries with different kinds of food depending on what region you’re in. I just happen to live in the US and I’ve noticed there’s a great variety of foods here which I would like to explore.

Start Date

I will post the results of my first week next Monday, starting with Afghanistan. I’m super excited to get started!

Photo by NastyaSensei from Pexels