New Hampshire Food & Traditional Cuisine

New Hampshire food is New England food: chowders, seafood on the short coast, and a plain inland kitchen built around what keeps through a winter.

Maple is the state's signature crop, tapped in late winter and boiled in sugarhouses that open to visitors in March. The distinction between syrup grades is about colour and strength of flavour rather than quality, and locals have preferences.

Apple orchards through the southern half supply cider and the cider doughnuts that go with foliage season as reliably as the leaves do.

Maple syrup, and everything made with it — the state produces a small but serious quantity and sugarhouse season is a genuine event.

Apple cider doughnuts, fried at orchards through September and October.

New England clam chowder, cream-based, and fried clams and lobster rolls along the short coastal strip.

Boiled dinner and baked beans, the old inland cooking, still on diner menus.

Moxie has a following here as in Maine, and the state's craft breweries have multiplied over the last decade.

Sugarhouses are the seasonal institution: working operations that open their doors in March, boil sap while visitors watch, and sell syrup at the door. Maple Weekend in late March is the organised version.

Orchards through the southern half run pick-your-own from late August, and the doughnut queue at the good ones is part of the experience.

Farmers' markets run through summer in most towns, and the state has a long tradition of roadside stands operating on an honesty box.

The climate is too cold for serious viticulture, and what wine is made here comes mostly from fruit — apple and berry wines that are a genuine regional tradition rather than a tourist product. A handful of vineyards work with cold-hardy hybrids in the south.

What the state does well is cider, both sweet and hard, on the back of a long apple-growing history.

Spirits and wine are sold through state-run liquor stores, several sited directly on the interstates and untaxed — an arrangement that makes them a destination for drivers from neighbouring states.