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Southern
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The cuisine of the Southern United States encompasses diverse food traditions of several regions, including Tidewater, Appalachian, Lowcountry, Cajun, Creole, and Floribbean cuisine. In recent history, elements of Southern cuisine have spread to other parts the United States, influencing other types of American cuisine.
Tidewater: Tidewater region usually refers to the low-lying plains of southeast Virginia, northeastern North Carolina, southern Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay. Some popular ingredients of the tidewater region is scallops, muscles, blue crabs, oysters, clams, old bay seasoning,
Appalachian: Southern Appalachian cooking refers to the central part of the Appalachian mountains, which spans several Southern states. This cuisine is authentic farm-to-table, hearty and homegrown. The mountains provide ample foraging and wild game like rabbits, wild turkeys, and venison, along with herbs, berries, ramps, sumac, and sorghum. Popular Appalachian recipes use home-canned ingredients preserved during their peak season. Chili beans, chow chow, berry cobblers, biscuits & gravy, and chicken and dumplings are all said to originate from Appalachia.
Low Country: Venture to the South Carolina coast, and you’ll discover the best authentic low country cuisine. Low country cooking takes advantage of the coastline to create savory seafood dishes that resemble Creole and Cajun meals. Rice is prevalent in Low country cooking. Popular dishes are shrimp and grits, okra soup, Hoppin’ John, and rice puddings.
Cajun: Jambalaya, dirty rice, and frog legs are popular Cajun dishes in the South. Cajun cooking originated when the French Canadians migrated to Southern Louisiana in the mid-1700s. The swampland provided plenty of alligators, crawfish, and frogs for eating.
Creole: Bring on the bread pudding, crawfish etouffee, and gumbo! Creole cooking originated in New Orleans, LA and utilizes cooking techniques from France and Spain. This cuisine uses spicy seasoning combinations passed down from Native American and African cultures to create savory meals. The “holy trinity” (onions, celery, and bell peppers) makes an appearance in many flavorful Creole dishes.
Floribbean: Floribbean cooking is a combination of Floridian and Caribbean cuisines. This style of cooking is found throughout Florida, but mainly on the Southern tip of Florida. Floribbean cooking combines influences from the Caribbean, Hispanic and Asian immigrants who settled in Florida. It’s known for its healthier, lighter approach that consists of fresh, often organic ingredients like fish, lemongrass, key limes, coconut, mango, papaya, rum, and honey. Popular Floribbean dishes are stone crab, red conch chowder, and the famous key lime pie birthed in the Florida Keys.
Many elements of Southern cooking—tomatoes, squash, corn (and its derivatives, such as hominy and grits), and deep-pit barbecuing—are borrowings from indigenous peoples of the region (e.g. Cherokee, Caddo, Choctaw, and Seminole).
From the Old World, European colonists introduced sugar, flour, milk, eggs, and livestock, along with a number of vegetables; meanwhile, enslaved West Africans introduced black-eyed peas, okra, rice, eggplant, sesame, sorghum, melons, and various spices.
Many Southern foodways are local adaptations of Old World traditions. In Appalachia, many Southern dishes are Scottish or British Border in origin. For instance, the South's fondness for a full breakfast derives from the British full breakfast or fry-up. Pork, once considered informally taboo in Scotland, has taken the place of lamb and mutton. Instead of chopped oats, Southerners have traditionally eaten grits, a porridge normally made from coarsely ground maize.
Certain regions have been infused with different Old World traditions. Louisiana Creole cuisine draws upon vernacular French cuisine, West African cuisine and Spanish cuisine; Floribbean cuisine is Spanish-based with obvious Caribbean influences; and Tex-Mex has considerable Mexican and Native American influences with its abundant use of New World vegetables (e.g. corn, tomatoes, squash, and peppers) and barbecued meat. In Southern Louisiana, West African influences have persisted in dishes such as gumbo, jambalaya, and red beans and rice.
Traditional Southern dishes
A traditional Southern meal is pan-fried chicken, field peas (such as black-eyed peas), greens (such as collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, or poke sallet), mashed potatoes, cornbread or corn pone, sweet tea, and dessert—typically a pie (sweet potato, chess, shoofly, pecan, and peach are the most common), or a cobbler (peach, blackberry, sometimes apple in Kentucky or Appalachia).
Other Southern foods include grits, country ham, hushpuppies, beignets (in the Gulf South), Southern styles of succotash, brisket, meatloaf, chicken fried steak, buttermilk biscuits (may be served with butter, jelly, fruit preserves, honey, gravy or sorghum molasses), pimento cheese, boiled or baked sweet potatoes, pit barbecue, fried catfish, fried green tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, bread pudding, okra (principally dredged in cornmeal and fried, but also steamed, stewed, sauteed, or pickled), butter beans, and pinto beans.
Barbecue
Preparing meat, such as beef, pork, or chicken by seasoning, as with a marinade, a barbecue sauce, or a rub, and cooking usually slowly with exposure to low heat and smoke is called barbecuing.
"White barbecue sauce" made with mayonnaise, pepper and vinegar is a Northern Alabama specialty usually served with smoked barbecue chicken.
"Yellow barbecue sauce" Traditionally made with a mustard base, is unique to South Carolina and has roots in mass immigration of Germans to the area in the mid 1700s.
Fried chicken
Fried chicken is among the region's best-known exports. It is believed that the Scots, and later Scottish immigrants to many southern states had a tradition of deep frying chicken in fat, unlike their English counterparts who baked or boiled chicken. However, some sources trace the origin of fried chicken to Southern and Western England where most of the Early settlers to the South came from. They conclude that Southern and Western England had a strong tradition of frying, simmering, and sautéing meats in a skillet as opposed to East Anglia which favored baking and boiling meats.
Fried chicken is a capstone of both southern cuisine and history, since it is interwoven into certain people's culture and heritage, particularly the African-American people of the South. The origin of fried chicken's importance to African-American food culture goes back to ancient Egypt, when the first method of frying was created around 2500 BC. A kitchen in Egypt showed results of fried foods. Over time just about every culture adopted the method of frying food.
Coming from Africa, African Americans also brought their methods of frying foods with them. During slavery in the 1800s, as the only animals slaves were allowed to own were yard chickens, African Americans began frying their chicken using the same methods they used to fry other foods. Later in the 1800s, before the Civil War, fried chicken could also be sold by enslaved people to raise money to buy their freedom. Soon, this led to the association of African-Americans in the South and fried chicken.
Fried chicken was popularized by African Americans and this helped it become one of the most popular and important southern cuisines in the United States. The importance of fried chicken to southern cuisine is apparent through the multiple traditions and different adaptations of fried chicken, such as KFC; Nashville's Prince's Hot Chicken Shack; or the Cajun-inspired Bojangles' Famous Chicken 'n Biscuits and Popeyes Chicken.
Pork and ham
Pork is an integral part of the cuisine. Stuffed ham is served in Southern Maryland. A traditional holiday get-together featuring whole hog barbecue is known in Virginia and the Carolinas as a "pig pickin'".
Green beans are often flavored with bacon and salt pork, turnip greens are stewed with pork and served with vinegar, ham biscuits (biscuits cut in half with slices of salt ham served between the halves) often accompany breakfast, and ham with red-eye gravy or country gravy is a common dinner dish.
Country ham, a heavily salt-cured ham, is common across the Southern United States, with the most well known being the Virginia-originating Smithfield ham.
Vegetables
Southern meals sometimes consist only of vegetables, with a little meat (especially salt pork) used in cooking but with no meat dish served. "Beans and greens"—white or brown beans served alongside a "mess" of greens stewed with a little bacon—is a traditional meal in many parts of the South. (Turnip greens are the typical greens for such a meal; they're cooked with some diced turnip and a piece of fatback.)
Other low-meat Southern meals include beans and cornbread—the beans being pinto beans stewed with ham or bacon—and Hoppin' John (black-eyed peas, rice, onions, red or green pepper, and bacon).
Cabbage is largely used as the basis of coleslaw, both as a side dish and on a variety of barbecued and fried meats. Sauteéd red cabbage, flavored with vinegar and sugar, is popular in German-influenced areas of the South such as central Texas.
Butternut squash is common in winter, often prepared as a roasted casserole with butter and honey. Other typical vegetable sides include collard greens and congealed salads. Double stuffed potatoes with barbecue pork, cheddar cheese, cream cheese, mayonnaise and chives are served at barbecue restaurants throughout the South.
Rice
Country Captain is a regional dish of curry chicken and rice that dates back to at least the 1920s. It became well known after a Columbus, Georgia cook served the dish to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. George Patton once said "If you can't give me a party and have Country Captain, meet me at the train with a bucket of it."
Sweets and pastries
Georgia is known for peach cultivation and variations of Peach melba are commonly served as desserts. Chess pie is a traditional pastry made with eggs, butter and sugar or molasses. Bananas foster is a specialty of New Orleans.
Seafood
Gulf seafood like black grouper, shrimp and swordfish can be found, and "channel catfish" (Ictalurus punctatus) farmed locally in the Mississippi Delta region is especially popular in Oxford, Mississippi. Fried catfish battered in cornmeal is commonly served at local establishments with hot sauce and a side of fries and coleslaw. Oysters Rockefeller is a New Orleans specialty, believed to have originated in the state. Creole dishes like gumbo and jambalaya often feature crawfish, oysters, blue crab and shrimp.
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