Sunday, January 15, 2012

People and Southern Cooking

Great food and good preparations make what people know as southern cooking. The southern cuisine is greatly influenced by the Scottish, Irish, French, Spanish, English, Native American and African American ways of cooking. Apart from the Cajun style of cooking southern food, there is also the Creole method that people like.

Culture is part of everything in most areas of the south including food especially in places like Maryland, Ohio River, Missouri, Texas, and Oklahoma. Americans residing in these areas love squash, tomatoes, grits, and corn. Aside from their Choctaw brethren, other Native Americans like the Seminoles influenced the use of the deep pit barbecue for food preparation and this is something that is highly popular in the south.

From flour to sugar, baking ingredients are popular in the south as well. What you have here is an influence straight from Europe. Because of their love for breakfast, southerners use a lot of these baking ingredients complemented by dairy items like milk and cheese.

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.

Pies in the south usually contain apples or pecans while the kinds of vegetables that they eat include squash and okra. Garden salads or fruit salads are eaten by southerners regularly and when it comes to breads, rolls and biscuits are conventional. Southerners are also particular when it comes to table settings as eating on a nice table makes the experience more pleasing.

Corn bread is always part of the southern meal. Because of this need for corn bread, you can always expect a southern kitchen to have fresh bread. It is important for a southern meal to include biscuits, corn bread, or rolls.

If you plan on making corn bread, you need ingredients like flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to start you off. It is important for milk, eggs, and shortening to be added to these basic ingredients. In some cases, the cook adds a dash of sugar.

A dash of sugar can be added in the end when you have combined flour, eggs, milk, and shortening to create your corn bread mix. All ingredients should be mixed. Use muffin tins that have been greased when you bake the bread.

Southern cornbread is distinctly hot when served, as are southern biscuits. When it comes to this, the oven is set at a high temperature. The real secrets here are to sprinkle some cornmeal in the skillet just before adding the dough, don’t use flour when making pure cornbread, and after cooking, turn the cornbread upside down in the skillet to keep warm.

The dough must not be thick at all, and this is possible upon mixing the ingredients very well. Here is a tip for southern cooking that you can enjoy. Depending on what you are cooking, there are several tips that you can use for southern food.

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