This came in my email today, via Southern Living, about 35 Southern Dishes Everyone Should Know How To Make. I was curious, to say the least, so let's have a look at these 35 Southern foods. I'll admit that I'm very good at being a Southerner. I know the principles behind food things, but it doesn't mean I implement them. Like Southerners are "supposed" to garden. That's my dad's tomatoes up there that I took a photo of. I don't garden. We're also supposed to "can" and "put up" various things that we've grown. I only canned for the first time on Monday and I'm almost forty. I fell like The South will revoke my card any day now. Perhaps they won't, and it's probably because I know enough to get by. There are things on this list that I can tell you are very Southern, but I've never made; or are else fancified Southern food and you can just make the staple - or even the alternate, non-Southern version of what I make. I know, *gasp*!, right? But I did grow up with a Yankee grandmother, so I can't be all Southern, I suppose. 01. Squash Casserole: We've never really made this. Dad and The Sister have grown squash in their gardens, we eat squash, but usually dad makes the very Southern boiled squash and onions and The sister would sautée slices in cajun spices and butter; Yankee and Southern together. My dad's mother would make squash casserole, though I don't know if I ever tried it. We inherited several of her cookbooks, and lots of squash casserole recipes were bookmarked. 02. Fried Green Tomatoes: This is a thing that dad, The Sister, & I all know how to prepare. It's basically the same recipe they have listed with corneal & flour & a buttermilk/egg wash. These are so delicious, but only when hot. I mean they're OK cold, just soggy which isn't ideal. 03: Buttermilk Biscuits: Everyone loves buttermilk biscuits, but not everyone makes them. My entire family knows how, but mom would always go for this bagged mix you just add water to or Bisquick biscuits; dad would go for those cans of pop biscuits and lament if the store didn't have them in the buttermilk variety. However, making biscuits from scratch is actually really easy. OK, so I'm not good with the whole rolling things out bit, but drop biscuits are just fine. We put them in a cast iron skillet to cook them in the oven because that's what the grandmothers did. I've tried several recipes and this, so far, is the best one (I've even tried Natchez's famous buttermilk biscuits recipe from some southern magazine, and still the recipe I'm linking was far better.). *Note*: They slide show states: "When in doubt, whip up a batch of classic buttermilk biscuits. They’re perfect perched on the edge of your dinner plate or served for dessert alongside a warm cobbler or a scoop of jam." I'm wondering about their Southern Cred here. Cobbler is just baked fruit and dough & served with a side of ice cream (NOT buttermilk biscuits) and while I call it jam, most southerners call them spreads, preserves, or jellies (I know there's a difference to all of them, but most people here don't call all those things just jam like I do.) 04. Sweet Tea: Yes, this a very (VERY) Southern thing, but everyone in my family detests it. Tea wasn't served at my paternal grandparents' house. It was either water, coffee, or soda (no one calls it soda down here but me, it's all called Coke). My Yankee grandmother would prefer high tea with hot tea in tea cups to sweet tea, but apparently she drank iced tea (non sweet, with lemon). Which is probably how The Sister & I learned to take our tea unsweetened with lemon, from our mom, via our maternal grandmother. The only sweet iced tea we'll drink is Lebanese tea with rosewater and pine nuts and Moroccan mint tea. 05. Deviled Eggs: ...Are disgusting. My parents love them and have their basic recipe of yolks whipped with mustard and mayonnaise, shoved back into the white halves and topped with paprika. But, I think these smell like dog farts, for lack of a more polite term that eludes me. I can't handle the stench of hard-boiled eggs. 06. Shrimp & Grits: Don't be fooled, these aren't wide-spread Southern as the dish is originally from very small pockets of Southern coastal regions (New Orleans? Mobile? Charleston?) and are only just recently an entire "Southern thing". I love grits and I love shrimp, but I am not a fan, at all, of shrimp and grits. No one in my family is a fan. 07. Hush Puppies: They don't have to be fancy with cajun sausage like what is being featured. But Southerners love a good fish fry and that generally includes hush puppies in the mix. Basic is good, cornmeal and onion with a dash of sugar. Don't get me started about this hate for sugar in cornmeal, I'll come to that in a minute. 08. Ham Salad: Gross. I think dad digs this stuff, but he never makes it and we never have it. 09. Mint Julep: This is the type of thing where The Sister & I make fun of fake or overly dramatic Southern accents. Oh the person in the film may really be a Southerner, but the director wanted a "better" Southern accent than their own. "Oh lawd, we sippin' mint juLIPS on the pawch 'cawse it's so hawt, lawdy I do declare!" Ya know like 1940s films about Southerners. Anyway, I don't drink alcohol, but a mint julep does sound nice... if I liked bourbon that is. 10. Banana Pudding: That is the correct recipe supplied, ya know except if you're gonna make it, go all fat, or else why make it in the first place? You might as well do the other southern version of instant banana pudding and Cool Whip. Real, full-fat, from scratch banana pudding can't be beat. This is also a thing I'm great at making. Real vanilla custard, real meringue. You'll be told to use old banana's (like by old southern women and grandma's, etc), but I find that just barely ripe banana's have upped my banana pudding game ten-fold. 11. Skillet Cornbread: Or ya know, just Cornbread as most Southerners call it. The only thing we make in a sheet pan is Cornbread Dressing. The recipe supplied is spot on, however, you'll hear many a Southerner scream about the indecency of sugar in cornbread. It's sacreligious. It's... unholy. It just isn't done. My paternal grandmother, from Arkansas, always put about 2 Tablespoons of sugar in her cornbread which was always cooked in a skillet. But you put bacon grease in that skillet instead of butter. Trust me, you'll want to do this.
So, this is how I learned to make cornbread, and anyone who ever tries my cornbread raves about it. Even though the whole sugar thing is a no no, apparently. I get no sugar in grits or even no cups of sugar in cornbread, but "those" Southerners don't care whether it's a tablespoon, a cup, or even a mere speck. They don't understand what they're talking about. 12. Chicken Pot Pie: I've never made this, dad has recipes printed out for making it, & it's good (minus the peas, in my opinion). Someday I'm sure I'll get around to making it. I made Chicken Pudding once. Some old Colonial recipe that was basically one crust Chicken Pot Pie without any seasoning or vegetables. It was pretty gross, but you could see how it could be good. Don't judge, I like making really old recipes from time to time. Just for the experience. 13. Caramel Cake: The first time I had caramel cake (& the only time) was the miniature one I purchased at the farmer's market a few years ago. I had to ask what it was. The older black guy sitting on the bench beside the booth thought I was crazy. "It's just caramel cake. Caramel cake!" like it was no big deal and I could just leave it. It was pretty good, but then I hadn't had a million times like that guy. While I love to bake, and there are things I bake well from scratch, cakes aren't one of them. I'm still learning on that front. However, we have that Southern funeral book and what I call The Lady Abby Babbington's Sheet Cake (I think she's just Miss) I can make from scratch. I generally like double layer round cakes, but this one's a sheet cake. It actually seems like a Texas Sheet Cake after looking online. It's damn good too. So that's my go-to old fashioned from scratch cake. 14. Peach Cobbler: This is Southern, but I find it's mostly further up Southerners like Georgia (probably all of it), Tennessee, and Kentucky. Down here in south Mississippi it's Blackberry Cobbler you'll find most places or what people are making in their homes. We only make peach, because our Kentucky friends were always making peach. No one I know makes actual biscuits to put on top, but it is like a sweet, crumbled biscuit dough that's on top (so not a Yankee oat crumble, though we do that for Apple Pies - we as in just my family; not Southerners). Basically the entire top is covered in a flaky, non gooey dough that will set once cooked. And it looks nothing like this sparse half biscuits. I don't know who these people are!? 15. Chicken & Dumplins: This is a staple food around here, though it's my dad's recipe and sort of bland to be honest, but you have to let him cook his food his way or he gets his feelings hurt. Also yes it is Dumplin' and not Dumpling. I would totally eat what they're showing me in the photo, but it looks more like homemade chicken soup. Dumplins are halfway between soup and stew. Not too runny and not too thick. Dad uses the carrots and celery only to boil with the chicken for flavour, never as an addition to the finished product. He'll also put weird flibberty gibbet pieces in there and whole, boiled chicken legs, which is as unappetizing as it sounds. His grandmother made dumplins from scratch, rolled them out thin and cut them into strips, he just buys frozen dumplins and cuts them so they're not so long and meticulously stirs with a knife so they don't stick together. It's basically chicken broth flavoured dough with some chicken bits, but people love it. The sister made this recipe once, using our great grandmothers recipe, but the dumplins puffed up too much and she flavoured it so dad hated it. They were the best Chicken & Dumplins I've ever had in my entire life... but were they really considered dumplins? 16. Mama's Fried Chicken: So I usually just put the easy title, if you've been noticing, but I included the mama because well... my mama doesn't fry chicken. When she did, it was Northern Fried Chicken (I kid you not, that's what it was named). I don't know how it was northern (as in Yankee) simply because it wasn't deep fried (but instead cooked in a cast iron skillet). We, as white people in America, get frying from African people. The story is that the plantation owners here, wanted the enslaved to cook their foods for them, where the Yankees didn't. It's not even a Southern faerie tale story that gets spread around. If you look it up online (though that doesn't make it true) as to why Southerners fry things, that's the answer you'll get. We had a priest from Africa at my childhood church and he would deep fry things, but it was in small pots and not this mega thing Southerners do. Also, you'll hear tales from people about black people frying up chicken in cast iron skillets back in the day (much like Octavia Spencer's character in The Help); but black people are not against frying up chicken in a deep fryer either. However, I've only fried chicken twice in my life. One recipe was from a Southern black lady and this was her family recipe and she fried it in a cast iron skillet. The other was an English recipe from 1736, so it was just called 1736 Fried Chicken. It was deep fried. The cast iron skillet recipe was really good, but actually my favourite was the 1736 Fried Chicken which I got from this guy. 17. Bloody Mary: I don't know many people who drink these actually. I think it's probably a port town drink, as in not a town that enjoys port, but a town with an ocean port. They're probably served in Savannah and Charleston, but I know they are served in New Orleans. My maternal aunt and The Sister are the only two people I've ever met who greatly enjoy Bloody Mary's & it's because they had them in New Orleans, and those are SPICY. With spicy green beans or spicy okra and lots of spices in the juice. You would think that goes without saying, but The Sister ordered a Bloody Mary somewhere else in the south (not an ocean port city) and it was just bland tomato juice with vodka in it. 18. Mac & Cheese: I've had this served at Southern functions (church things and funerals), and it was good, but it's not something either side of my family was into making. Mom and dad always preferred boxed mac & cheese (so absolutely no homemade - I know, they're weird) and The Sister hates macaroni noodles, so isn't a fan. I did make this once from a good recipe I found online. Either cream or half & half (instead of just milk) and it was wonderful, creamy, cheesy, comfort food. No one else was impressed, but as I've stated above, you can see why. 19. Pound Cake: ... is gross. My dad adores it, as do most Southerners I've encountered, but it's just a bland, sorta vanilla tasting, dense brick of cake. It's not good. I suppose if you took the very Yankee Cream of Wheat (that mom loves) and made that into a cake, you'd have a traditional taste of pound cake. More Southerners should seriously eat Cream of Wheat then. Made a cake recently (for a baking challenge). Dad said it was the best pound cake he'd ever eaten, it tasted like every other pound cake, and therefor Cream of Wheat. I've made other cakes, but Bundt, I suppose (though there isn't much of a difference in texture and density). They were good only because I used those SOLO baking pastes and their cake recipes were of the Bundt variety. I've made poppy seed and also almond. And mom's got a gorgeous Bundt pan, but still. I don't like these cakes. 20. Mashed Potatoes: This is about how I make mashed potatoes, which isn't how my mom or dad make them. They just use a little milk and salt and butter. I like to use half & half or cream if we have it & sour cream. Mostly it's just milk and sour cream, which is just as good. One time I made them with homemade crème fraîche, but it wasn't more glorious than sour cream (which is what I was expecting). And of course salt and butter (I would add pepper, but mom doesn't like it). I actually can't handle gravies that well anymore (though sometimes I do enjoy biscuits and gravy - that's milk gravy) & am perfectly fine with non-Southern, non-gravified mashed potatoes... but dad isn't and really he don't want it fancy because it's just going to be slathered in bucket of his gravy anyways. 21. Shrimp & Okra Gumbo: I would have said that no one in the South would say this, but unless you live in a region very close to New Orleans, I've found that one has no clue about Gumbo. Gumbo should always have Okra as that's what Gumbo means, from the African Goomba for Okra. It's also not heavily tomatoed in anyway. There are tomatoes (but they're not the main players by a long shot!), but if you've got paste, sautéed, puréed, sauced, and chopped - it's Yankeefied Gumbo. Also Gumbo is mainly of the seafood variety (even if it's just shrimp, it still has a seafood base - which this recipe does not, so is it even shrimp Gumbo with a chicken base?), so if it's seafood of any kind, it's just Gumbo and you don't say what it has in it. You only do that for the other kinds of Gumbo (poultry) like Duck & Andouille or Chicken & Sausage (which you use a poultry stock base and not seafood). Also the only reason to use Filé is because you aren't using Okra. Okra is a thickener, so makes the Gumbo not so watery (not thick, just not watery - or so it's said, I think it helps, but the roux also make it not so watery), filé is a thickener used solely for if you don't have okra. Adding both is just ridiculous. And pretty much everyone adds okra, whether fresh or frozen, because they like it in Gumbo & because it is Gumbo. If you don't want it, use only the filé, but really why are you even eating Gumbo in the first place? Plus, I don't know how much good double thickeners are actually doing them, because that Gumbo pictured is too watery. I wouldn't eat that. It doesn't look good at all. It's probably because they missed a key step here; making the roux. The roux is extremely important. I've eaten more Gumbo than you can possibly imagine in my life, all in New Orleans where this is their recipe, so they know what they're doing. We've even made A LOT of Gumbo because we had a New Orleans cookbook. Not a touristy New Orleans cookbook (not sure if that makes a difference), but a real neighbourhood one from the 1960s. In fact, this Gumbo bit here is making me so upset, I'm going to make a post next about our Gumbo recipe (& it's variations). Then I'll do one on Étouffée because no one knows how to prepare that either. 22. Corn Pudding: I've had this once at a potluck. It was gross. Probably because I didn't grow up with it. I have no plans on making this ever. 23. Collard Greens: I'm not a fan of any boiled greens be they collard, mustard, or turnip. I also don't really know how one goes about making them. My family loves them, all my immediate and paternal side. I know you use pig parts (like salt pork or back fat or something weird, maybe just ham hocks; perhaps hog jowls? I don't know, dad will have weird pig parts around and sometimes also make greens. But something piggy for flavour. You also use bacon grease possibly and ham pieces, but I'm pretty sure there's some fat in there somewhere. You can't make nothing Southern without fat. And one of the greens can be a little bitter so you have to do something special (triple wash? pinch of sugar? half boil? I don't know). 24. Baked Potato Soup: I wouldn't have said this was strictly Southern. It's good. I've not made it before, but The Sister has, and dad has also made ham and potato soup. 25. BBQ Ribs: I also don't BBQ. I barely grill. Dad & The Sister are the big meat people. They've done both. Dad's always making ribs. We love Leatha's, which is a wet BBQ (sauced) and that's pretty much what people have this far down, but the family fell in love with The Rib Rack when it was open here and they did a dry rub which is Memphis Style. Though Strick's is also Memphis Style, it's just smoked, it's not the same. So dad is forever trying new rubs to gain that Rib Rack Taste. He's made some damn good ribs, but he still hasn't mastered their recipe. 26. Potato Salad: Not a fan of potato salad. Mom and dad love it and the traditional way of mayonnaise and mustard and sweet pickle relish. Bleh. The only potato salad I had that I liked was skin on new potatoes with sour cream, bacon, cheese, and green onions. The Sister & I had that somewhere, replicated it once, the parents scorned, we never made it again. 27. Key Lime Pie: I've never made this because Key Limes are expensive. Besides the big thing growing up was Lemon Meringue Pie, which my grandmother always made because that's what mom loved. We'd have Lemon Icebox Pies at eateries, The Sister & I, and that's what we want over either Key Lime or Lemon Meringue. I've made both lemon varieties on several occasions. Really Key Lime Pie is a Floridian thing, so not an all of the South kind of thing. Not that people can't make it, it's just not an all over recipe. 28. Chicken & Biscuit Cobbler: I've never heard of this, and no one I know uses biscuits for Cobbler; which is only ever sweet and not savoury. Looks good though. I'd eat it. The Cobbler bit is off-putting though, it's just too wrong of a term for me to call it that if I made it. I'd name it in true Southern fashion as Chicken & Biscuits. Period. The End. 29. Pecan Pie: We always make this. My paternal grandparents were big into pecans. If a recipe had that nut in it, my grandmother was going to make it. If a recipe didn't call for it (but could stand it), she'd add them in. So, we grew up as big pecan lovers. We just do the basic recipe (like what you'd find on the back of the Karo bottle). Trie to make Chocolate Pecan Pie once. Not good. I'm not against Corn Syrup as in here is a bottle of it and use it to make divinity or pecan pie), but I like that this one is using brown sugar and butter. I'd just use vanilla instead of bourbon (because I don't like boozy things). I think I will make this one for Thanksgiving this year. 30. Cheese Grits & Roasted Tomatoes: This is not a Southern thing. It might be now, but it's not a thing your grandmama was doing. Southerners love cheese, so cheesy grits caught on real quick down here in the south, and while they're OK sometimes (I prefer gouda), it's just not my thing. Southerners LOVE tomatoes, but aren't huge fans of roasting them. Nor grilling them, nor anything that looks tantamount to part of a traditional English breakfast. That's just not how most Southerners roll. They like salsa's and tomato relish and tomato sandwiches and tomato gravy and tomato sauce, but they're also not big on roasting anything. Everything, for the most part, down here is boiled - vegetable (or fruit) wise. 31. Okra: They've fancied this up and that's fine, but we'll stick to okra. Most Southerners either boil their okra to death or else fry it in a batter of flour and cornmeal. If you live near New Orleans, you'll also put it in Gumbo. I don't know anyone who is grilling it. Some people are roasting okra (I'm a fan of roasted versus boiled veggies) and roasted okra is insanely delicious. Grilling though? I don't know of anyone whose doing that in any form or fashion. I think the most people do is grilled corn and sometimes squash (yellow) or zucchini. 32. Pimento Cheese: I'll agree (as I rarely have on this list) that this is extremely southern. I detest it, but I hate pimento. But you'll find this everywhere; in little cafe's, in grocery stores, everyone's got recipe for it, or at least their mama or grandmama does. Dad makes this on occasion. 33. Chicken Salad: This is also very southern. This version looks good, but I'd leave out the celery. The most traditional, Southern, chicken salad I've seen is just mayonnaise, chicken and celery. It's gross. The Sister & I make it with chicken breast meat only, sour cream, mayonnaise, halved grapes (red or white), pecans, poppy seeds, salt and peppery and lemon juice to taste. 34. Chocolate Chip Cookies: My maternal grandmother is who always make chocolate chip cookies. She said she just followed the recipe on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse Semi-Sweet Morsels bag. I tried everything to replicate the way her cookies tasted and I even tried other recipes, some basic, and some fancy (like salted or with bacon); even fancy dark chocolate chips or milk chocolate. Turns out that a stand mixer is a whole different game from hand mixed, which is how mom always baked, so I just used wooden spoons too. The recipe says mix it in a stand mixer. I did that and the taste after baking was exponentially different. They finally tasted like my grandmothers cookies. I ended up adding pecans. At first tiny chopped because I was using our ancient nut chopper. They were better (because we love pecans), but not as good as I'd hoped (I mean they were great because I'd finally mastered the taste, but the pecans weren't epic). Then I started sticking the pecans in a Ziplock bag and hitting them with a wooden mallet. Chunkier pieces. Now they are perfection. I even buy the store brand chocolate chips now (always semi-sweet - that's the key) & I just follow the Nestle Tollhouse recipe that I clipped and saved. The ingredients are usually always the same, but slightly different measurements. I've followed the recipes on various (fancy brand and off brands) bags and none of them were epic. Everyone who eats my chocolate chip cookies raves about them and thinks I have this fancy Pinterest recipe or something. No, I just figured out that other recipes, though similar, are just off. Hand mixing will never get the batter fluffy enough and thus good tasting enough like a stand (or electric hand mixer). Any brand chocolate will do, but it has to be semi-sweet. Also pecans are option, but totally up the game (chunkier bits are far better than tiny pieces). And voila! You've got the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Trust me, I've been perfecting my chocolate chip cookie game for the last 19 years. I've had time. I've tried it all. 35. Hummingbird Cake: I hear about this, but I've never tried it, nor has anyone I know. I like pineapple, but I detest crushed pineapple (probably because I was always stuck making dad's congealed salad as a kid, because it was easy), plus I don't like pineapple in cake. Not that this has coconut, but I've seen Hummingbird Cake recipes with that in it too. I like the taste of coconut cake, but I don't like flaked coconut - it's the texture in my mouth - except when it comes to Girl Scout Samoa's, as those are some damn good cookies.
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