There are a lot of great things that can be said about southern cooking. The southern cuisine is greatly influenced by the Scottish, Irish, French, Spanish, English, Native American and African American ways of cooking. The best examples of southern cooking are Creole, Cajun and Floribbean (Florida and the Caribbean).
For their style of cooking, you can really see how culture plays an important role in southern locations like Delaware, Maryland, Ohio River, and Oklahoma. Aside from squash, corn is another famous ingredient in these parts. American Indians back in the day used to prepare their food through pit roasting and the practice continued to the day and these days, one kind of southern cooking involves the use of a deep pit barbecue.
A part of every southerner's diet includes sugar, milk, flour, and eggs. This influence came from Europe. When it comes to meals, breakfast is the most popular meal in the south and everything from large quantities of breads to cheese are served.
Bread and chicken are staples in southerners' regular meals and collard greens plus grits add to the whole experience. A southerner's meal comes with pie or cobbler as well. When it comes to good old American soups like lentil or split pea, these are actually southern style soups.
To be more specific, for their pie, southerners love pecan, pumpkin or apple, while the preferred vegetables are green beans, squash or okra. Aside from corn bread, biscuits are also preferred by southern folk and for salads, fruits or garden salads are popular. They also love their tables always set properly and in order; the food just seems to be more delicious that way.
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. When it comes to a southern meal, one of these three, biscuits, corn bread, or rolls, should be present.
If you plan on making corn bread, you need ingredients like flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to start you off. To the dry ingredients, you have to put in some milk, eggs, and shortening. In some cases, the cook adds a dash of sugar.
The ingredients include 1 ½ cups of self-rising flour, 2 eggs, 1 cup of buttermilk, liquid shortening (olive oil), all-purpose flour, a tablespoon of liquid shortening (oil for the skillet), and ¼ cup of sugar, if desired. All ingredients should be mixed. Use grease on the muffin tins that you will pour the mixture into.
All breads in the south are served fresh from the oven. To do this, the oven is usually fired up to 450 degrees. Aside from not using plain old flour in their corn bread, southerners also use cornmeal when the dough is placed on the skillet for cooking.
A thick dough will not result in great bread so be careful when preparing it. Here is a tip for southern cooking that you can enjoy. There are many other tips for this kind of cooking that applies to other southern fares.
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