Your favorite southern foods?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Okay, I’m obviously out of my element here (ps, I’m an Alaskan, not native, I’ve just been here most of my life). I was going to say fried chicken and peach cobbler. Boy am I offbase :)!!!

Okra is just …so…DISGUSTING! My grandmother made it once when I was a kid (and they’re not even from the south…um, is Missouri considered the south?). Anyway, I cannot for the life of me figure out how people could think little green rings covered with slime could be good. She fixed boiled okra, and I admit I haven’t tried them fried, but I’m thinking “little green fried rings with slime”? Ugh.

I’ve never eaten white bread, not even as a child, even way back then in the cough ahem 60s something, my mom was forward thinking and bought brown bread. We even have a saying, “the whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead” :slight_smile:

Boiled peanuts?:eek: I’ve never seen them, but I vaguely remember hearing about them somewhere.

I like squash but didn’t know it was a uniquely southern cooking favorite. So, okay, I got one!!

Is country fried steak the same as chicken fried steak? (if so, I got another one!!).

How is Tupelo honey different than regular honey?

62

I couldn’t read the thread, it was making my mouth water. :slight_smile:

My favorites have to be country fried steak and grits with gravy and mushrooms. Maybe a nice glass of iced tea on the side.

63

OOO Feel horrible I haven’t been looking at this in a bit but anyway cathead biscuits are hand made from scratch and baked all together…the ones you have to pull each biscuit apart from the other

64

no cats involved, we’re not talking chinese food here

65

Y’all have done pretty good so far. Black-eyed peas are okay but any southerner knows (or should know) that purple hulled peas are the best!

The secret to good grits is real simple…salt, butter and bacon grease w/ bits of bacon

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3015527#post3015527

It’s all good, trying to narrow it down is tough.

Although, I guess fried catfish is about as good as it gets. But only if it is done right! There’s not much worse than a bad mess of fish. Some folks just don’t have a clue.

I’m also pretty partial to chicken fried steak off the backstrap of a young deer.

Would Tex-Mex count as southern cooking? If so…damn that makes it really tough don’t it? Then there’s Bar-B-Q…ribs (mm-good) :smack: It’s 2:30 am here and y’all’ve got me hungry again.

g-nite

66

North Carolina Barbecue.
How could I forget.

CanvasShoes Fried okra isn’t slimey, give it a try sometime, and I DO like stewed okra, cook it with tomatoes (okay I give, is that the way to pluralize tomato?) and it’s great.

Hush Puppies, no one has mentioned Hush puppies!!! Had to explain them once to some Yankees, floored me, I thought everyone knew what hushpuppies were.

67

Chicken fried steak is made with a batter of eggs and milk, country fried steak is covered with flour and cornmeal.

As for tupelo honey, it’s mostly a N. Fla / L.A. (that’s Lower Alabama for y’all Northerners) treat: Ulee’s Gold Tupelo Honey

68

I can live with this distinction. And you’re free to like the inferior “country” fried steak. I’ll just snicker and look derisively down my nose at you while enjoying my Chicken Fried Steak as intended by Nature itself. :wink:

69

Nashville born and raised here. Put me down for:
[ul]
Chess Pie
Pecan Pie
Red Velvet Cake (didn’t realize that was a southern thing though)
Jalepeno cornbread
Fried pickles
Pickled onions
Hush Puppies
Baloney, Cheese, & Crackers
Fried Egg & Baloney sandwich
Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwich
Fried Chicken
Green Beans from a crockpot cooked with ham fat overnight
White Beans with onions
Green Onions
Sugar Cured Ham
Pulled BBQ
Ribs
Baked Macaroni & Cheese, burned on top
Cole Slaw
Corn on the Cob grilled in the husks, dipped in butter
Biscuits with Sausage Gravy
[/ul]

Is it any wonder I spent most of my life at over 200 lbs?

mmmmmm chess pie…

70

I had to add my 2 cents to this thread seeing as it is about my favorite subject. :wink:
I will join the Chicken Fried Steak and Biscuits and Sausage Gravy crowd. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM !!!
I might add that making good Biscuits and Gravy is a fine art.

I once had the pleasure of experiencing the best Peach Cobbler on the planet at a tiny Ma & Pa BBQ joint in Tulsa, OK. Unfortunately the place no longer exists. :frowning:

71

Pickled peaches!
No one’s mentioned pickled peaches. They’re really good served with a cured country ham (sorghum glazed of course). Spicy, sweet and salty all at once. What could be better?
Or they’re equally good made into a congealed salad-lemon gelatin, pickled peaches, pecans, miracle whip-it’s a treat.

72

Fried Squash
Fried Zucchini
Fried Eggplant
(is there anything we won’t fry??)

Hoghead cheese

Homemade Red Velvet Cake not with cream cheese forsting though, you make it with flour and milk boiled to pudding stage and add sugar, vanilla, butter and crisco (yes, it’s very southern, it’s very common down here to replace the traditional wedding cake with this delicacy, not Steel Magnolias though!!)

King Cakes

Fresh cut-off corn baked in an iron skillet

Fried Okra

Blackened Alligator

Pralines

I was born and raised 60 miles North of New Orleans and I had never heard of cat head biscuits either.

73

You guys know what is sad…I have lived in LA (Lower Alabama) all my life…my grandmas and mother are great southern cooks…can fry anything. Fried foods make me deadly sick…I love em, but I throw up for days after one peice of fried chicken. How fair is that?

74

My Dad’s family is from Tidewater VA & I’ve definitely got Southern taste buds. :stuck_out_tongue: Here are a few of my faves:

country ham - his family used to send one every Christmas (we lived in Michigan until I was 11); I’ve always loved good southern country ham! :slight_smile:

butterbeans - cooked until they’re nearly mush! So delicious though probably not nutritious. LOL

fried yellow squash - used to fry it in bacon grease, with onions. Oh boy, was that tasty! Now I use that canola oil spray…it doesn’t taste nearly the same, but still good.

My SO is from VA as well, and introduced me to something called Lemon Chess pie. It’s kind of a lemon custard pie, very delicious. I’m not sure if it’s a regional thing or not, but it’s oh so good. :slight_smile:

My dad makes something called tomato pudding – it’s got breadcrumbs and sugar in it and is baked. Very good stuff. Gotta love tomatoes, though. :smiley:

Home-made biscuits. I think you all have explained why I have so much trouble making them from scratch – the flour not being “soft” enough! I’m going to see if I can get some of this Southern flour, thanks. :slight_smile:

Home-made fried chicken. I haven’t eaten it in so long, either, but it’s sooo good.

That’s all I can think of for now. I know there’s more. :slight_smile:

75

I may be in yankee territory now, but my palate is back in Mississippi, y’all hear me?

Fried vegetables - green tomatoes, okra, pickles
Corn - fresh corn, creamed corn, cornbread, cornmeal mush (you can call it polenta, but it ain’t!)
Black eyed peas
Purple hulled peas
Biscuits, ooh, real biscuits
Grits - especially cheese grits
Sweet potatoes
Dirty Rice
Greens - collards, mustard, dandelion, chard
Potato salad
Sweet tea
Hush puppies
Fritters
Pecan pie
Rhubarb pie
Banana pudding
Real cobblers

My momma used to serve up butterbeans and corn together, that was her version of succotash because my daddy hated limas. She’d also slice up fresh tomatoes with good sweet red onions and let that set in the icebox overnight. Mmm mmm mm. That’s home for me.

I must admit that I have no clue what kreesy greens are. Clue me in, someone? And you know, I’m a vegetarian, so I can’t help y’all out with the country fried/chicked fried debate. And I’m not even thinkin’ 'bout all that fatback, ham hock, lard, hog mawl, bacon dripping cooking. I know, I know…

76

What is wrong with you people? Why is nobody posting recipes?#&!## You’re making me hungry, and I can’t do anything about it!

(Anyone have a recommendation for a cookbook for this kind of food, or is it hopeless unless you have a Southern grandma? If the latter is the case, then I’m really SOL. One grandma was raised in an orphanage in Canada and can’t cook for shit, and the other is of southern origins, but only if southern Poland counts. If you want Jewish food, I’m your gal, and I have a great Derby pie recipe, but other than that I’m lost. Please share recipes!)

77

My grandmother (from Arkansas) fished all the time–so it was fried catfish, fried okra and hushpuppies, and really really sweet iced tea. She also made banana cake. Late in life she developed diabetes and had to give herself shots–must have been the tea.

She used to make these homemade biscuits that my parents and brother loved, but my sister and I ate cereal. The biscuits were kind of sour. Yuck.

Am I the only one raised eating grits with sugar and milk? My family never served it as a side dish, but as something for breakfast. But once I had grits with cheese and shrimp at that restaurant in Chapel Hill with the pig on the roof. It was really good.

Maybe we were just poor–we ate toast covered with syrup. Sounds weird now.

Fried pies! Yum!

Hey, I am going to Arkansas in about three weeks for my parents’ 50th anniversary party. I’m hungry already!

78

Eva,
You might be interested in James Villas’ cookbook “My Mother’s Southern Kitchen”. I think www.ecookbooks.com has it. I borrow my brother’s copy from time to time. The recipes are great and just reading the book, with the author’s musings on his mother, is a treat.

79

Ohh, a subject I just can’t not post to! (wow, that was so gramatically incorrect)

Fried Okra…wouldn’t touch it boiled myself, but if you’ve never had it, you really are missing something.

Fried Chicken (duh)

Fried Catfish (sensing a trend here?)

Low Country Boil! (Wewt to Bruce_Daddy…you left something out though, we put snow crab legs, and red potatoes in ours!)

Grits…wonderful lovely cream, white grits. What are you Yankees thinking? Cream of Wheat? EWWWWWWWWW

Buttermilk biscuits. There IS a God and he gave my Nanny the best recipe ever.

Plum jelly.

Crowder peas, followed closely by field peas and snaps, and purple hulled peas. (with hamhocks of course)

Sweet potato souffle.

PECAN PIE!!

(Lillith, a lot of people put sugar and milk on rice, probably where your family got that idea)

Boiled peanuts. (My god, I should weigh 1000 pounds!)

Chicken and dumplings (get those frozen dumplings away from me!) Alternatively, since my grandma never got to teach me Chicken and Dumplings, Chicken and Rice.

(Mustang, NEVER heard of cathead biscuits…6th generation {at least}southerner…)

Divinity and peanut brittle

Sweet tea
Eva, there is only one sacred recipe in my family, and I didn’t list it because it’s not well known. Email me if you want recipes for anything I’ve named. (warning, southern cooking often doesn’t follow a set rule though)

~J

80

I make catheads bisquits… My daddy says one of my bisquits makes a meals…I guess that’s why he eats two or three :)…to make homemade dumplings (assuming you know how to make bisquits) all you do is mix martha white flour (gots to have martha white) and criso shortening like you would for bisquits…then don’t put as much milk in the dumplings as you would bisquits. Roll them out really flat and them boil your chicken pieces and add the dumplings after the chicken is done. I add cream of chicken soup to mine (after everything else is done…careful, it sticks bad to the bottom), and it really adds something I think. Hope this helped!