Southern Recipes
380 recipes found

Honeycrisp Apple and Parsnip Soup
Here's a creamy, savory and sweet soup that perfectly captures the flavors of fall. Amy Lawrence, and her husband, Justin Fox Burks, the authors of the Chubby Vegetarian blog, brought it to The Times in 2012.

Dora Charles’s Lost-and-Found Lemon Poundcake
The South has about as many poundcake recipes as there are grandmothers. This one produces a higher, lighter cake than many recipes. It came from Dora Charles’s aunt Laura Daniels, who got it from a nursing-home patient she was working with in the 1970s. The patient, Mary Martin, mailed it to her long after she left the nursing home, but because of a stroke, her handwriting was shaky. Ms. Charles found the recipe and deciphered it, and included it in her cookbook "A Real Southern Cook: In Her Savannah Kitchen." You can use lemon juice and zest instead of lemon flavoring, which the original recipe called for, or increase the vanilla by a teaspoon if you are leaving out the lemon altogether. The cake, which is a perfect base for peaches and whipped cream or another fruit topping, gets better after a couple of days and will be good for a week if you keep it well wrapped. It freezes well, too.

Benne Cheese Wafers

BBQ Eggs
Pickled eggs are popular bar food everywhere, but at Backyard Barbecue in Tompkinsville, Ky., they come with a fiery twist. The eggs are pickled in an incendiary amalgam of cayenne, melted butter and vinegar. This is the classic dip for Monroe County pork-shoulder steaks, repurposed to pickle eggs. The preparation is simple, but budget seven days to complete the pickling process.

Fried Chicken

Southern Whisky Cake

Southern Pecan Pie

Master Recipe for Biscuits and Scones
Southern biscuits and British scones can seem intimidating: both have the kind of mystique that can discourage home bakers. But the point of them is to be truly quick and easy — unlike yeast-raised bread and rolls, they are thrown together just before a meal and served hot, crisp on the outside and soft in the center. And what's more, they are essentially the same recipe: all that separates them is a bit of sugar and an egg. The genius of this particular recipe is not in the ingredients, but in the geometry. Slicing a rolled-out slab of dough into squares or rectangles is infinitely simpler than cutting out rounds — and there's less chance of toughening the dough by re-rolling it and adding more flour. The recipe immediately below makes biscuits, and the notes at the bottom of the recipe have instructions for altering the dough to make scones.

Mark Bittman’s Mint Julep
A classic Southern drink for sipping on a hot afternoon. Be sure to have lots and lots of mint. If it seems to be too much, it’s probably just right.

Curried Mousse

Prescription Julep
This recipe from the 19th century predates the era of the ubiquitous bourbon mint julep, instead using cognac and rye, making for a delicious throwback.

Glazed Pears With Brown-Sugar Oat Crisp and Pear-Brandy Syllabub
In the 1940s, Robert E. Rich, an independent-minded son of a successful dairyman, introduced RichWhip, the first nondairy topping, to the world. It took off. This recipe can be made using RichWhip, which is still available at many kosher supermarkets, or heavy cream.

Crook’s Corner Hoppin’ John
“Everything I do is as authentic as possible, but with my own refinements,” the chef Bill Neal of Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., told Craig Claiborne in 1985. “I try to make a personal statement.” An example was his hoppin’ John. A typical version of the time consisted basically of cooked peas — black-eyed or crowder — served on a bed of rice; the usual seasonings were only salt, pepper and perhaps a little salt pork. Mr. Neal seasoned his peas with garlic, thyme and bay leaf, and added a garnish of cubed tomatoes, chopped scallions and grated cheese.

Daube Glace

Spicy Fried Chicken Salad

Huguenot Torte
This recipe from “The First Ladies Cook Book” appeared in The Times in an article by Craig Claiborne. The original recipe said that the torte could be served warm or chilled.I like it best warm and cut into squares. The torte has so much sticky sugar in it that when it’s cold you have to do battle to cut it. Either way, I suggest adding little or no sugar to the accompanying whipped cream.In fact, I’d fold in some crème fraîche.

Sweet-Potato-Custard Pie in Orange Crust
This recipe came to The Times in 1995 in a column about the novelist and farmer Dori Sanders, who cooked it for Thanksgiving on her farm in Flibert, S.C.. It is, some say, quite the best thing to do with a sweet potato. "People tell their life stories through food," Ms. Sanders said. "They talk about how they did it then, how they do it now. The way they talk tells you who they are."

Grout
This recipe comes from Pawleys Island in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. It could have come from the pages of a Dickens tale, and it’s called grout. It is a mold made from lemon skins, port or sherry and almonds and raisins. As could be expected from the island’s leading family, Isabelle and Alberta Lachicotte provided the recipe for “Recipes From Pawleys Island,'' put out by All Saints Waccamaw Episcopal Church, one of the oldest parishes there. It has been served by Lachicottes on festive occasions for years.

Bourbon-Chocolate Pecan Pie

Cornbread with Corn and Cheese

Thin and Crispy Cornbread
The thick, golden wedges of cornbread served directly from a skillet that you see in glossy food magazines look nothing like the thin and crispy cornbread April McGreger’s Mississippi grandmother used to make. The ratio of crunch to tender middle here errs on the side of crunch, which makes it perfect for soaking up the delicious broth called potlikker, which comes from simmering smoked meat and greens, sometimes cooked with Southern field peas. This cornbread bakes up best in a well-seasoned 12-inch cast-iron skillet, though you can divide the batter between two smaller skillets or even cake pans. A scattering of dry coarse cornmeal in the hot skillet before you pour in the batter makes the cornbread extra crunchy. Flipping it onto a plate or rack also helps the crust stay crisp. Or you could make it thicker and cook it ahead of time, then split the slices and toast them before serving.

Alma Hull's Chess Pie

La Louisiana Pecan Pie

Edna Lewis’s Corn Muffins
After reading that Edna Lewis preferred extra-fine cornmeal, I adapted her recipe to use corn flour. (Be sure to get corn flour, not pure white cornstarch.) These muffins have great corn flavor, and they have a very tender, creamy texture when hot and stay moist when cool. If you’re using regular cornmeal, the muffins are still delicious, especially warm; just reduce the buttermilk to 2 cups.