Southern (USA) Cuisine

What we now know as Southern (USA) Cuisine, started when Native Peoples, enslaved Africans, and European Colonists “met up” (or clashed?) in the American South. Native Peoples occupied the land when European Colonists arrived in 1607 (1), along with enslaved Africans in 1619 (2). Each group brought their food history, recipes, flavors, cooking and storage techniques. So lets explore a unique cuisine, a mishmash of global influences.

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Politics of Southern Cuisine

Southern Food has several political issues that are hard to talk about fully in one post, so let me just introduce them at this point:

• Is southern cuisine considered food created by the white colonialists or by the enslaved Africans? Or is it a food representing poor farmers or serfs.
• Another aspect of that question is asking the difference between southern cuisine and “soul food”?
• What role did Native People’s have in the creation of this cuisine? Why are they forgotten when the stories of the cuisine is told?
• Is southern cuisine a singularly unhealthy diet?

Southern Cuisine: Race or Economics

• NYT wrote in 2018 that many of the cooking traditions and techniques that define Southern food were invented and executed by African-Americans, whether they were cooking for their own families or for white families that enslaved or employed them.

So one of the big political questions: is there a clear line between so called Southern “white food” and “black food?” The quick answer is that it is a combination of both European colonial and African foods, along with the influence of Native Peoples.

Some Chefs believe that what should be asked is more about class and place, not about race specifically. Mr. Miller, an author referenced in the NYT article, stated that while white and black people were not eating together, they were essentially eating versions of the same thing. I believe what he means is:

• Richer people may have eaten chicken backs and thighs.
• The poorer people (which included African slaves) ate the “throw-away” portions of wings, offal, skins, and necks.
• But both groups were eating chicken.

Southern Cuisine = Soul Food?

Chef Millie Peartree wrote that the term “soul food” originated in mid-1960s, when “soul” was a common word used to describe African-American culture. At its core, soul food is basic, down-home cooking that’s been passed down through many generations, with its roots in the rural South. Chef Peartree continued: …the term “soul food” came to represent the food of black Southerners, and “Southern” or “country” the food of white Southerners — even when the dishes were exactly the same.

I think that for this post I will stick with what Delish wrote: While not all Southern food is considered soul food, all soul food is definitely Southern.

Native People’s Role in Southern Cuisine

Many writers focus mainly on the roles of white colonialists and African slaves, but do not discuss the role of Native Peoples in the creation of this cuisine. The reason is that old saying, “winners write the history”. So let’s be clear about the importance of Native Peoples in the creation of southern cuisine.

In 1620 Europeans arrived in the USA to colonize the land. The Native Peoples who had lived on the land for eons, had all the knowledge on how to live off the land, while the newly arrived people only had what they brought and knew from their lands of origin.

Within a short time, the influence of Native Peoples became critical as the colonists started to experience food shortages. In fact, CTExplored writes: The 101 souls of Plymouth Plantation would have died out that first winter had it not been for Wampanoag leader Massasoit and his people.

What the Native Peoples shared were foraged and farmed foods native to America, identification of other meats and fish that could be caught, spices and herbs that could be foraged, and preservation techniques.

Southern Cuisine is Unhealthy?

Another topic is related to the generalization that Southern Cuisine is unhealthy.

• The cuisine contains foods that are unhealthy; featuring lots of fatty meat (like bacon), lots of butter, sugar, mayo, etc.
• The cooking techniques used mainly utilize oil, butter, or lard-based frying.
• The food is meat focused.
• And the tradition of eating heavy and large amounts of high-caloric foods at one sitting.

It is true that studies clearly show that Southern Cuisine is, as a whole, considered an unhealthy diet (3).

• EatThis writes: Some of the best food in the South—chicken, potatoes, beignets—are fried, meaning they’re full of fat and calories. Many traditional southern meals are cooked in high-fat, high-calorie lard and oils, making it pretty unfriendly to your heart. That’s not good, especially since southern states also top the list of states with the most heart disease, according to CDC data.

Southern Cuisine Constraints

Techniques for Preservatives

After reading a number of articles written about Chef Todd Richards and Southern cuisine, I am convinced that some of what makes Southern food so interesting is not only its very unique history of the peoples that created it, but that it was originally created based primarily on the need to preserve food in a hot, often muggy environment, in a time before refrigeration.

Storage

Europeans brought the idea of storing foods in cold pantries and cellars, and in some cases built cold pantries next to their wells. Native Peoples introduced how they preserved native food to last over American winters.

• Tubers like potatoes (introduced in 1621 by Europeans, 4); sweet potatoes, pumpkins, yams (native in the USA); and onions were grown and stored in underground cellars to keep them usable as long as possible.
• Corn and other seeds were dried.
• Meats, fowl, and fish were smoked, salted, or dried.
• Herbs and spices were processed and dried.

Cooking Techniques

Food had to be processed to extend its “shelf life.” Native Peoples had learned to use salting, frying, drying, fermenting, and making jerky to preserve food, and shared with those European and Africans who arrived on their shores. Europeans provided the cooking techniques of frying, simmering, roasting, boiling, and canning. They also introduced using ceramic containers for fermented food storage.

• Corn was dried on the cob for long term storage.
  • Processed and ground as needed for cornmeal.
  • But to make cornmeal more palatable and filled with more energy, it was often sweetened and lard or butter added.
• Beans, peas, pumpkins, apples were dried and stored.
  • Beans and peas led to soups and stews.
  • Apples and pumpkins used in stews, breads, porridge, and pies.
• Europeans took the native crab apples and made fermented cider.
• Native Peoples introduced herbed teas from dried leaves.

So southern cuisine continues to focus on these foods and cooking techniques.

Available Ingredients

The issue here is that African Slaves were not always given or allowed to use the best foods, so they had to make due with what they were given, what they could hunt or fish, and what they could grow or forage.

• If you get the pig’s skin to eat, you fry it to make cracklings.
• If you only get the pig’s feet, you pickle them.

African Slaves did not work 8-hour days with two 15-minute breaks and a lunch break. They cooked and ate in the fields, and needed to keep up their own nutritional needs while working from light of day to dark of night.

• Eating growing watermelon, for instance, is one way to have nourishing liquid when out in the hot fields working.

So southern cuisine focused on food that grew natively in the area they lived. This focus on fresh, local ingredients continues to this day.

Eating Large Meals for Agrarian Lifestyles

This cuisine was created during a time of heavy agrarian work, from farming to fishing to gardening or foraging, people worked hard for their food. And whenever people have to work hard, they need to eat enough to have the energy to do the work.

Historically, we all can envision the family farm (or fishing families) from bygone days, geared critically around the various seasons, especially harvest times. The father and brothers (low waged farm workers or slaves) worked in the fields, while women (low waged house keepers and cooks, or slaves) served breakfast, lunch, and dinner and had to preserve foods. All the men, women and children worked hard every day, so think about the energy needs of these workers.

The agrarian way of eating is to feed farm workers and fisher people based on their plant growing, animal tending, and harvest schedules. Breakfast and diner were carb, fat, and protein heavy so the workers had the energy and stamina to work hard in often terrible conditions. Lunches were light, yet still loaded with carbs and protein (think fried chicken and corn on the cob), so as not to take too much time away from their working task. Dinner was heavy, to replenish the energy used up during the day, and to keep bellies full so they could sleep at night.

The problem is if you keep that diet when you no longer that work hard. I know from the farmers I have lived around who retired, often turning the farm over to their kids, only to keep up their food habits and to experience a heart attack a few years later.

Global + Native Influences

Native Peoples

While the colonists recognized game (deer, turkey, fish, clams) they did not know much about the new plants and food bearing trees. Some of the ingredients they shared with colonists included:

• Corn, cattails, and amaranth flours
• Chestnuts, acorns, pecans, etc.
• Various squash including pumpkin
• Tomatoes
• Shrimp, crabs, turkey, clams, salmon, seals, elk, buffalo
• Fruit like strawberries, wild muscadine grapes, blackberries
• Maple sugar and syrup
• Greens like watercress, Jerusalem artichokes, and various shoots and roots
• Herbs and spices 

The cooking techniques Native Peoples used and shared were:

• Deep-pit barbecuing
• Making jerky
• Frying foods
• Smoking meats
• Drying squash, pumpkin, corn, cranberries, beans, and mushrooms
• Many foods were wrapped in bark or skin and buried (like a cellar, fermented foods)

And they also shared recipes:

• Making corn breads, pancakes, and porridge
• Dishes that we now know as “Boston baked beans” and ”New England clam chowder”
• Succotash
• Making teas from sassafras, birch, maple, mints, reships, bee balm, and elderberry
• Seasonings and spices from natural sources

From all indications, the meals eaten were very heavily, meat oriented (4)

Black Africans

The DeepSouthMag is a place I go to for references on Southern food and history. They write that the start of Southern Cuisine was when European Slave Traders (or owners) brought African slaves to the Americas. Those African people were tasked with providing meals for the Europeans, but also had to feed themselves from food they hunted, grew, or foraged.

But the Africans did not come to this land without their own foods and cooking techniques! For instance, they introduced black-eyed peas (5), peanuts (6), okra (7), rice, yams, watermelons, and various stewing techniques (like Gumbo)..

RiceDiversity writes: Slave ship cargoes brought crops directly from Africa to North America for enslaved Africans to consume during their passage to the New World under the transatlantic slave trade. These crops included several basic starches central to the African diet, for instance rice, okra, tania, black-eyed peas, cassava, yams, and kidney and lima beans.

The writer continues, other crops brought from Africa included peanuts (originally from South America), millet, sorghum, guinea melon, liquorice, watermelon, and sesame (benne). Over time, these foods found their way into American footways and became a basic component of southern cuisine.

Global Influences

Later, immigrants from all over brought their foods and cooking styles to further influence southern cuisine.

• Europeans brought pigs as a major farm animal.
• Louisiana’s Creole Cuisine had French, West African, Spanish and Portuguese influences.
• ”Floribbean” cuisine is Spanish-based with Caribbean influences.
• Central and South American influences in Texas (see Tex-Mex Cuisine).
• Spanish rice-based paella evolved into jambalaya.
• France’s bouillabaisse was transformed into Cajun gumbo.
• German potato salad is now everywhere (8).
• Appalachia has Scottish influences, although pork wound up taking the place of mutton, and oatmeal was replaced by grits (9).
• The West Indies provided molasses, sugar, pepper, spices, and rum for those who could afford them.
• etc.

Specific Southern Dishes

I am going to highlight just a few of the Southern Cuisine dishes that everyone in the USA will likely recognize.

Biscuits + Gravy

Biscuits + gravy are a very traditional southern dish coming from the Civil War. There are varieties of the gravy, from Appalachia meat-focused gravies, or Southern ocean states that add seafood to gravy, and modern cooking that includes veggie gravy (10). This was easy to carry, easy to make, and filled the bellies of hungry soldiers.

Collard Greens

Collard greens are a Mediterranean food that dates back to prehistoric times, in terms of humans eating the greens. LatibahMuseum writes that these greens were one of the few that White Americans allowed African slaves to grow and eat.

The link above is to my Southern collard greens recipe. I cooked the leaves with bacon grease in the skillet when I cook the greens. (If too bitter for your tastes, soak in water for ~10 minutes, and mix in some salt or citrus to temper it a bit.) My dish tasted great with the baked potato and chicken I fried.

You can cook the stems, but they are fibrous, and may need additional time to soften.

Collard greens are members of the cabbage family. You eat the leaves and cut away the stems. They are also very nutritious, with vitamins A, C, K, B6, and calcium, iron, magnesium, thiamin, niacin, pantothenic acid, and choline.

Cornbread

JamesTown writes that cornbread was a traditional and very common food among all Native Americans. They used corn batter to make flat breads, tortillas or thicker breads and pancakes. But the CharlotteObserver note that What we call cornbread today, puffy and leavened with egg, was corn pone. It originated with British colonists who adapted their baking to meal ground from white corn. But it wasn’t sweet. Most people in the South, from white farmers to slaves, made multiple forms of cornmeal breads. The basic difference between all the variations of corn-based breads I can find today are whether sugar is added or not.

I love cornbread, some are sweet, some more savory, some hot with jalapeño, some are cheesy, or cake-like, or dense. All variations are region-specific. Often I have seen this cooked in a cast iron skillet, but they can be baked as muffins or loafs. I cook a neutral cornbread so I can mix up its flavor depending upon what I want to make for dinner, and my recipe is gluten free.

Louisiana pastry chef Simone Faure writes that Southern cornbread is sweet and buttery, made from white or yellow cornmeal, and has lots of eggs to make a cake-like texture. Whereas Northern cornbread is not as sweet, has fewer eggs, and uses only yellow cornmeal.

Many folks I know use the cheap $0.99 USD box of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix for a quick cornbread. It is sweet, cake-like, and quick to make. But it contains wheat and partially hydrogenated lard, and some funny ingredients you may not want to eat. But I do have to admit I keep a few boxes in my pantry for those last minute emergencies.

Fried Chicken

Fried chicken did not originate in the USA, but certainly we have exploded its use and cooking. Wikipedia: The American English expression “fried chicken” is first recorded in the 1830s … The origin of fried chicken in the southern states of America has been traced to precedents in Scottish and West African cuisine.

Next to bacon, fried chicken is something that is hard for me to give up. It is tasty, a quick source of protein, and easy to add to nearly any side dish or salad to may everyone who eats meat happy. Plus there is a long tradition of this food throughout the South and now world wide with the explosion of Korean BBQ chicken. Below are some little facts that I found interesting about this Southern dish.

• According to this statistic, 178.98 million Americans consumed frozen fried chicken in 2020. This figure is projected to increase to 184.02 million in 2024 (11).
• After gathering data from 1,000 Americans, the survey found that the majority — 95 percent, to be exact — like fried chicken, and 16 percent said they would marry fried chicken if they could (12).
• One serving of fried chicken a day linked to 13% higher risk of death, study finds (13).
• After 1863, newly freed black women used their cooking skills to sell their fried chicken to markets and at train stations (selling to travelers). They sold chicken to support themselves and their families, because that was the work that was available to them (14).

Grits

Grits in general are a consistent southern porridge that also fits with regional variations. The ocean Southern states add shrimp, first created in South Carolina Low Country. I have already written a post on Indigenous Grits so will not explore the food here.

• Wikipedia write that this dish came from a Native American Muskogee tribe’s recipe in the 16th century, of Indian corn similar to hominy or maize.

Okra

Fried Okra is synonymous with Southern Cuisine. This dish, like many Southern dishes, originally came from Africa. This is one of the dishes I actually do not like, but I know people who are the exact opposite of me and love this veggie.

TravelPhoto writes, Enslaved Africans brought it to the colonies in the West Indies and eventually the plant was brought to America. Okra is an important part of Cajun food and is the thickening agent and key ingredient in gumbo. However, the fried version is a popular side dish.

Pimento Cheese

SouthernLiving writes that the pimento in pimento cheese originally came from Spain. The concept of pimento cheese however, was invented in New York ~1900’s and consisted Neufchâtel cheese and diced pimento peppers. The dip was sold all over the country. In 1916 Georgia farmers started to grow pimentos. So then people started to mix a cheddar cheese style cheese with the pimento and mayo. From there each family created it own version, some add onions, some cream cheese, pickled jalapeño, etc.

I was introduced to pimento cheese sandwiches when Kay, a friend from North Carolina, had me grate 2C cheddar cheese. She had a small jar of red pimentos, and chopped them up. Then she placed both ingredients in a bowl and added mayo, salt and pepper. I toasted my bread, she did not, and a rather large amount of the mix was dumped on the bread as our lunch. I have to admit, it was high caloric, but had a very creamy texture and tangy taste.

Ham

The non-game meat consumed in this cuisine, historically, were chicken and pig. Lots of the ham is served smoked, BBQ’d, sliced, or used in soups. All aspects of the pig is eaten, including pickled pigs feet, and chitlins (fried skin). Pig fat, generally in the form of bacon, was used to cook or fry food.

My Story

I have lived in several southern states: Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana for short period of times; and have visited for weeklong stays at Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and Texas. So I can say that I have eaten various versions of Southern cuisine.

• Wikipedia writes that some of these variations have names such as: American South, Tidewater, Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, Lowcountry, and Floribbean. 

I do find many Southern Cuisine dishes to be good, comforting foods when eaten in moderation. I have to admit, however, I still do not like lima beans or okra.

— Patty

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