Sunday, January 15, 2012

Southern Cooking Secrets

Southern cooking is known to be nutritious, fun and delicious. There are a lot of different countries that have influenced what we now classify as southern cooking from America to France to Spain. Several examples of this form of cooking include Creole a mix between 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. Some of the foods that the people here eat include grits and tomatoes. They particularly enjoy deep pit barbecue, which was a practice inherited from American Indians from the southwest, specifically Native Americans that belonged to the Seminole, Caddo and Choctaw tribes.

From flour to sugar, baking ingredients are popular in the south as well. When it comes to this, Europe influenced the trend. The South loves to have full breakfast in the morning, which is why baked products and dairy products such as bread and cheese are well received.

A typical Southern meal includes pan-fried chicken, side bread, peas, plenty of greens, and mashed potato. A southerner's meal comes with pie or cobbler as well. The south is where American soups like chicken noodle, lentil, and split pea came from.

Most of the time, southerners make and eat pies with pecan or apple fillings while the vegetables that they love include everything from okra to squash. Simple salads are usually prepared and there is always a siding of bread may it be corn bread or biscuits. They also love their tables always set properly and in order; the food just seems to be more delicious that way.

A southerner will not be happy if no corn bread is served. There is always hot bread in a southerner's oven because the people in the south simply love corn bread. If there are no biscuits, corn bread, or rolls, you are not eating a southern meal.

If you plan on making corn bread, you need ingredients like flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to start you off. After mixing these powdery substances, you have to add in some milk, eggs, and shortening. Some add sugar while some do not.

You will need about a cup and a half of flour to start you off then you have to combine this with some milk, eggs, and shortening. Combine everything. Pour the mixture into a greased skillet or muffin tins to make 12 cornbread muffins.

All breads in the south are served fresh from the oven. When it comes to this, the oven is set at a high temperature. Before the corn bread is cooked, the skillet is sprinkled with cornmeal and every now and then, the bread is turned in the pan.

As much as possible, you should keep your dough thin to get excellent quality bread. Southern cooking has many secrets and this is one of them. 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.