Sunday, January 15, 2012

Spectacular Southern Cooking

There are a lot of great things that can be said about southern cooking. Apart from Ireland and Spain, Scotland, America, and England are other countries that southern cuisine can be attributed to. Cajun, Creole, and the fusion style Floribbean are some common examples of ways to prepare southern food.

The great traditions of the south are seen in areas to the south of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio River, Missouri, Texas, and Oklahoma. Americans residing in these areas love squash, tomatoes, grits, and corn. There are different styles of cooking that southerners like to engage in and one of them is the deep pit barbecue which was influenced by Native Americans that were part of tribes like the Seminole and Caddo.

Almost all southerners are fans of milk and eggs when it comes to cooking. This is something that came about thanks to Europe. Every day, people from the south enjoy a hearty breakfast complete with doughy creations and dairy that usually fills them up quite well.

A typical Southern meal includes pan-fried chicken, side bread, peas, plenty of greens, and mashed potato. Usually, a pie is served during dessert if the person can still eat. The south is where American soups like chicken noodle, lentil, and split pea came from.

To be more specific, for their pie, southerners love pecan, pumpkin or apple, while the preferred vegetables are green beans, squash or okra. Garden salads or fruit salads are eaten by southerners regularly and when it comes to breads, rolls and biscuits are conventional. Food seems to taste better when the table has been set just right and so this is another thing that southerners attend to.

Cornbread is a staple. Because of this need for corn bread, you can always expect a southern kitchen to have fresh bread. For breakfast, lunch or dinner, one of the “southern trinity” members must be present – biscuits, cornbread or rolls.

When it comes to making corn bread, you need the basics which are flour and baking soda, baking powder, and salt. To this you will add wet ingredients including milk, eggs, and shortening. In some cases, the cook adds a dash of sugar.

Basically, corn bread is made using more than a cup of flour, several eggs, some milk, shortening, and sugar as preferred. Combine everything. Use muffin tins that have been greased when you bake the bread.

When it comes to the south, no corn bread is served cold. The oven is fired up to see to it that the bread is always hot. When it comes to corn bread, cornmeal is always used to line the skillet used to cook the bread in and the bread is turned every so often.

See to it that you have dough that is not thick at all as this is not a good sign. What you have here is an example of southern cooking. There are other southern techniques in making apple pie, buttermilk biscuits, green salad, squash casserole and other southern kitchen staples.

Are you interested to learn more about southern cooking? If so, hitting the link will help a lot.