We asked on Facebook: What’s the ultimate Texas dish?

Photo by Jennifer Reynolds
Chicken-fried steak with gravy and mashed potatoes!
– Kimberly Nitzschke
Torn between a 36-ounce tomahawk ribeye or a trashcan-lid-sized chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and cream gravy. Then there’s brisket. Oh, and chili — without beans!
– Don Walker
Chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, yeast rolls and cream gravy.
– Janice Stohlman
Frito pie with a Lone Star or Dr Pepper.
– Paula Murphy
Homemade kolaches. Best fresh out of my Momma’s oven! Long ago.
– Helen Pausewang
It has got to be chili and tamales. Can’t have one without the other.
– Brian Maxwell
Chili with no beans, Frito chili pie, guacamole … barbecue done right, sweet corn right out of the field, fresh-picked okra fried in cornmeal and bacon grease.
– Johnna Rosenthal
Queso! Not sure if it’s a “dish,” but I can eat it with a spoon.
– Heidi Hansen Seigel
Chicken-fried venison.
– Casey Miller
Brisket, ranch beans, with a Shiner.
– Norman D. Pappous
A lot of transplants think barbecue is synonymous with grilling. Not true. Barbecue brisket is low and slow with an offset firebox. Texas barbecue sauce is a ketchup-based sauce, unlike the mustard-based sauces on the East Coast.
– Clyde Wood
A Reuben. Just kidding. Some good barbecue brisket.
– Ziggy Gruber (owner of Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant in Houston)
Once you cross the Red River, you can’t get Mexican food worth anything. Texas-fried steak with white gravy, chili — no beans, or brisket without that sloppy sauce. Every time I head north, I count the days till I can return to the land of real, clean food and a cold Shiner! Plus, I hear they’re getting $8 for an avocado in New York City.
– Kathy Moore Gottlieb
Maybe black-eyed peas, okra, corn bread. Served my daughter-in-law from way up north these things and she had never eaten any of them, or heard of putting turkey necks in beans to meat them up — most tender part of the turkey.
– Becky Dundee
A Whataburger.
– John Clark
Fried okra battered with cornmeal, buttermilk and salt and pepper. That’s what Texas is all about, y’all!
– Jeff Mixon
My mom’s stuffed flounder. Fresh flounder stuffed with fresh crabmeat — both from Galveston Bay.
– Stacy Newkirk Kaiser
Whataburger No. 1 with cheese.
– Katherine Becker
Steak, beans and homemade biscuits.
– Tuggy Hamzy
King Ranch chicken.
– Kimbra Stokley
Prasek’s sausage.
– Jeffrey Kunz
Barbecue sausage from the Hill Country.
– Robert Taylor
T-Bone.
– Andrew Malcolm Shelton
Blue Bell Ice Cream, y’all! Hands down.
– Kevin Moran
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