Sunday, January 15, 2012

Why Choose Southern Cooking?

Great food and good preparations make what people know as southern cooking. Food cooked through the southern method comes with a mix of influences from the Irish to the French and even the African Americans. Cajun, Creole, and the fusion style Floribbean are some common examples of ways to prepare southern food.

For areas in the south of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Texas, and Oklahoma, their lively culture is well represented when it comes to the food that they cook. Extensively popular in these places are squash and tomatoes to name a few things. 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.

Southerners also love a lot of sugar, flour, milk, and eggs. When it comes to this, Europe influenced the trend. Because of their love for breakfast, southerners use a lot of these baking ingredients complemented by dairy items like milk and cheese.

Bread and chicken are staples in southerners' regular meals and collard greens plus grits add to the whole experience. Here is where cobbler or pie is the conventional dessert option. A number of traditional American soups, such as chicken noodle soup, lentil, and even split pea, actually originated from the South.

From green beans to okra, there are tons of veggies that southern folk adore and for their pies, nothing beats pecan and apple. Corn bread and biscuits are preferred by southern folk and they also love basic salads made out of veggies or fruit. Food seems to taste better when the table has been set just right and so this is another thing that southerners attend to.

Southerners cannot live without corn bread. It will not be a meal without corn bread and so you can always expect free flowing bread in southern kitchens. Without any biscuits, corn bread, or rolls, a southern meal will not be complete.

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. It is up to you if sugar will be added.

Aside from a couple of cups of flour and milk, you need a couple of eggs pus the shortening to make your corn bread. Mix well and do not forget it. Use grease on the muffin tins that you will pour the mixture into.

Hot bread is what you can always expect in the south. They normally set oven temperatures beyond 400 degrees. 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.

See to it that you have dough that is not thick at all as this is not a good sign. This is one of the tips you can use for 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.