When in doubt in the kitchen, who doesn’t turn to the grand oracle of Google? Yeah, I see all of those raised hands back there! Well, the yearly statistics of top 10 2017 Google food searches shows us what’s popular in US kitchens and beyond!
To be quite frank, I can’t exactly remember how it was before we could post, read, and follow recipes off the internet. I mean, yes, we all had cookbooks, but I love comparing and contrasting ideas so much, and it was way harder when we had to open those brick-heavy tomes, flipping pages, and occupying about one quarter of the table.
Googling all your kitchen needs is simple, quick, and it has visual aids – I love food YouTube. But these top 10s that Google released are even more interesting because they speak to trends. What were a lot of us cooking the past (difficult) year? What did we want to learn? Well, for the United States, the answer was simple: comfort food.
2017 Google food searches in America
The other top searches just reminded us that 2017 wasn’t the best of years. With Americans searching things like Hurricane Irma, Matt Lauer, and Las Vegas shooting, it’s clear that emotional balance needed to be restored. People gathered around the dinner table and cooked delicious food for loved ones, sheltering from the storms. And hurricanes.
But what did they try (and hopefully succeed) to cook? The Russian dish beef stroganoff, with sauteed pieces of meat, served in a sauce, was the most popular recipe on Google this year. The second most popular recipe was apple crisp, the dessert consisting of baked chopped apples, topped with a crisp streusel crust. Rounding out the top 3? Surprisingly, it was the recipe for corn casserole, an old favorite apparently making a comeback.
People also really wanted to learn how to brine turkey, ways to cook zucchini, yams, and pork chops, that classic recipe for chicken parmesan, and a hashbrown casserole. Also very popular and still somewhat a mystery? How to make a hard-boiled egg, that deceptively simple task!
Google calorie count for foods
But other than cooking, people also interested to find out how caloric were some of the foods they ate. Spoiler alert! They were never very healthy. Unicorn Frappuccino was all the rage this year, and people really wanted to know how fattening it was – thus, it sits at number one in the calories top 10 searches. It’s followed by Grand Mac calories, Naked Chicken Chalupa calories, Mac Jr calories and Cascara Latte calories. People were in love with all kinds of rich lattes and wanted to find out how much a Coconut milk mocha macchiato was setting them back calorie-wise. The one healthier item on this calorie list was the poke bowl. We cooked some of these, too, this year.
In the How-to category, only one food search made its way: How to cook a turkey in the oven. That probably happened during Thanksgiving. That’s because everybody was busy finding out how to make eclipse glasses and how to make a fidget spinner.
Google food searches for the rest of the world
On a global scale, citizens of Earth wanted first and foremost to find a chicken breast recipe through their Google food searches. We have plenty of those. Next up, ground beef was second in popularity for recipes, while Poğaça tarifi, a Turkish bread recipe, was actually the third one in searches.
Coming in at number 4, French toast was the most searched breakfast food all over the world. And at number 5, searchers looked for kek tarifi or cake recipes. Pork chops were also popular with humans of the Earth, just like they were in the United States. What else did people try to cook all over the world? Spaghetti squash was the most popular pasta recipe. Coleslaw was the most searched for side dish, while pesto was the most winning sauce. In final, 10th, position we find the search for dumpling recipes.
In the global how to category, only one out of 10 most popular searches related to health and the body: how to lose belly fat fast – that old pickle matters to everyone.
