Southern Recipes
376 recipes found
Edna Lewis’s Biscuits
Edna Lewis mastered dozens of bread and biscuit recipes over the years, and in “The Taste of Country Cooking,” she offers two for biscuits; this is the flannel-soft version. Be sure to use homemade baking powder, which you can make easily by sifting together 2 parts cream of tartar with 1 part baking soda. It leaves no chemical or metallic taste.
Sausage Gravy
It may not win any beauty contests, but white sausage gravy is glorious stuff. Ladled over a homemade biscuit, it is classic Southern breakfast fare that will sustain you well past lunchtime.
Regina’s Butter Biscuits
People travel long distances to eat Regina Charboneau’s biscuits. She built a blues club in San Francisco, called Biscuits and Blues, on their reputation. And in her hometown, Natchez, Miss., her biscuits are considered the best. She mixes traditional French culinary training with tricks passed on through generations of Southern bakers to create a layered, rich biscuit that has to be frozen to be at its flaky best. The dough will seem rough and the fat too chunky at first, but persevere. Using a tea towel as a base to move and manage the dough until it rolls out smoothly is a brilliant technique that makes the whole process easier and neater.
Chocolate Little Layer Cake
This recipe came to The New York Times in 2009 from Martha Meadows of somewhere between Slocomb and Hartford, Ala., where the worth of a cook can be measured in cake layers. In this corner of the country, everyone knows whose cakes are tender and whose consistently reach 12 thin layers or more. Ms. Meadows learned to bake 15-layer cakes from her mother, who cooked each layer one at a time in a cast-iron hoe-cake pan. The cake is frosted with warm boiled chocolate icing. Here is our tribute to that.
Lemon Cake With Coconut Icing
A version of this golden, tart-sweet confection was served at the 76th birthday of the legendary Southern chef, Edna Lewis. It is a true labor of love, so be sure to set aside a full afternoon to make it; this is not the sort of cake you want to rush.
Southern-Fried Sweet Onion Rings
Thin enough to flash-fry but thick enough to let the sweet onion flavor shine through, these onion rings work well as a side dish but also are great as a stand-alone snack. Less is more when dipping the rings in the buttermilk mixture and then the flour mixture. Be delicate in the coating process, and make sure to let as much liquid and then as much flour fall off as possible. Less breading means less grease absorption and a crisper finished product. The flour should be as fine as possible, so reserve half of the flour mixture. When the first batch starts to get wet and gummy, replace it with the remaining half. The oil temperature matters, too. Heat the oil to at least 360 degrees, and fry the rings in batches. They cook so quickly it is easy to get through the frying in 10 minutes. Keep them warm in a 200 degree oven until all the frying is done.
Sweet Potatoes With Cranberry Chutney
This is an easy and surprisingly delicious way to get a dramatic-looking sweet-potato dish on the table with little fuss. The heat of the jalapeños in the chutney, mixed with aromatic vegetables and the sweetness of the dried fruit, gives the cranberries depth. A dollop of sour cream goes on the halved sweet potato, followed by a generous spoonful of chutney. Make the chutney up to two weeks ahead and keep it in the refrigerator. It also freezes well. Assembly on Thanksgiving is an easy last-minute task.
Smoky Cheese Grits with Summer Succotash
This recipe, adapted from “Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners,” came to The Times in 2010 as part of a Pete Wells column on redefining the mise en place. Ms. Moulton uses downtime in the cooking process to an advantage: She instructs you to chop the onion and shuck the corn as the edamame cooks. The recipe comes together in about 40 minutes, making it a good one for a busy weeknight -- succotash without suffering.
Crackling Corn Bread
This recipe came to The Times in 2010, part of a Pete Wells’s Cooking With Dexter column about Laura Ingalls Wilder. “She also described cooking and eating as attentively and movingly as any author I know,” he wrote of the "Little House on the Prairie" writer. Inspired, he bought a copy of "The Little House Cookbook,” by Barbara M. Walker, whose recipe for cracklings relies on just pork fat and an optional seasoning. He incorporates cracklings into this corn bread, but cooked bacon is also a worthy substitute for that porky flavor.
Bourbon Milk Punch
With a place of honor in the New Orleans drink pantheon alongside the Sazerac and the Ramos Gin Fizz, bourbon milk punch is enjoyed morning and night in the Crescent City, but most commonly at brunch. Restaurants and bars often pride themselves on their particular rendition. This one comes from the famed French 75 Bar in Arnaud’s restaurant in the French Quarter. It is easily whipped up before or after a meal, and offers near-immediate gratification.
Fannie Lou’s Derby Pie
The Kentucky Derby is a two-minute horse race, but its cultural impacts are long-lasting, including a rich culinary tradition of mint juleps, hot browns and Derby pie. Only Kern’s Kitchen Inc. can make a true “Derby-Pie” — the creators of the dessert trademarked the term before partnering with the Kentucky Derby Festival — but while the naming practices are sticky, the concept is universal: a chocolate-chip and walnut-laden batter baked in a pie crust. This version is adapted from author ZZ Packer, who shared her great-aunt’s recipe. Many versions exist — some spike the batter with bourbon; others swap in varying nuts or crown the pie with whipped cream — but Fannie Lou’s is easy to assemble, and makes a lasting impression.
Crisp Pork Belly
Here, you'll use rosemary to brush a savory glaze onto a marinated pork belly, giving it an added layer of richness and flavor.
Too Hot to Hoot Punch
This splendidly summery concoction is proof that punch, often associated with fall and winter holidays, can be made seasonal with the delicate spring sweetness of strawberries, and summery with the tropical tang of limes. Sure, you could settle for a vodka base, but bourbon adds a marvelous backbone of vanilla richness. Or make it without alcohol and serve at a children’s party.
Stone-Ground Grits With Poached Eggs and Shaved Summer Truffle
Yellow Desert Rose
Gulf Shrimp in Exotic Spice
Pulled Pork Sandwiches
This recipe takes a good deal of time, but it yields a lot of sandwiches, more than enough for a sloppy, spicy dinner party feast. You’ll roast a dry-rubbed pork shoulder in the oven until it’s pull-apart tender, 3 or 4 hours that you can spend doing other things while your kitchen fills with the aroma of the cooking meat. Then you’ll assemble a quick slaw and simmer a tangy barbecue sauce for about 10 minutes before putting it all out on the table with soft rolls. Serve the combination warm, at any time of the year, for a weekend project well worth an afternoon’s work.
Outdoor Fried Chicken for a Crowd
Chicken thighs are cooked in two stages in this recipe, which was designed to be made outdoors on a propane burner. First, you fry the chicken to render the fat from the skin and get it beautifully browned. Then you put it in a low oven to finish cooking it all the way through. Not only does this result in more-tender chicken, but but it also makes for a much more relaxed and low-key approach.
Pork-Shoulder Steaks With Hot Pepper Dip
This is pork barbecue as you’ve probably never experienced it, with the shoulder cut crosswise into pencil-thin steaks and grilled directly over hickory embers. Note we're saying grilled, not barbecued (smoked), the way most pork shoulder is cooked in the South. But it’s not complete until it's dipped in a fiery bath of vinegar, melted lard or butter, and cayenne. And no one makes it better than Anita Hamilton Bartlett at R&S Barbecue in Tompkinsville, Ky. To be strictly authentic, you’d grill over a wood fire; barring that, add hickory or other hardwood chunks or chips to your charcoal fire, or place wood chunks under the grate and over the burners of your gas grill. An added advantage: this is “barbecue” you can cook in 15 minutes.
Spicy Red Beans with Chicken and Andouille Sausage
This recipe came to The Times in a 2012 article about cooking in a bean hole, a classic method of outdoor cooking popular in Maine. Here’s how it works: Dig a hole big enough for the pot you’re planning to cook in, then build a fire of hardwood logs in it. Drop a dozen or so rocks into the fire once it’s started. When the wood has burned down to embers, remove the rocks using barbecue gloves, put your pot of presoaked beans into the embers, drop the rocks around and on top of the pot, cover everything with dirt and walk away. Come back in about eight hours, and your beans should be ready. Not in the mood to dig a hole in your backyard? No worries. These spicy New Orleans-style red beans with chicken and andouille sausage can just as easily be made in your oven. The slightly sweet creaminess of the beans and the richness of the chicken temper the sharp heat of the andouille sausage and red pepper flakes. Serve over a pile of snowy white rice alongside an ice-cold beer.
Key Lime Poundcake
Susan Levin Turner has taught many Southerners, both professional chefs and home cooks, how to bake a proper cake. She has made cakes for politicians and celebrities, and turned out five when the chef Edna Lewis turned 76. “Cakes bring people together for celebrations and funerals and everything in between,” she said. Ms. Turner, who owns Food Glorious Food in Tallahassee, Fla., developed this recipe to combine Key limes, a flavor associated with South Florida, with poundcake, a staple in the more rural, agricultural parts of North Florida. She bakes hers in an old-fashioned large square poundcake pan, but the recipe has been adapted here for a loaf pan, which is a little easier to find and work with. She likes to coat the inside of the greased cake pan with sugar, which helps the cake slide from the pan and offers a little more crispness to the crust. This recipe uses flour instead for tenderness, but the sugar method offers a homey Southern touch. Or use a combination of both.
Brown Sugar Shortcake with Warm Bourbon Peaches
The juicier the peaches, the better this luscious summer dessert will be. Handle the dough lightly and make sure not to overbake it. Assemble the whole thing just before serving, and watch it disappear.
Balsamic-Glazed Oven-Baked Ribs
Conventional wisdom holds that pork ribs taste best when cooked outdoors on a grill or smoker. Conventional wisdom hasn’t experienced the sweet-sour balsamic-glazed St. Louis-cut spare ribs at Animal in Los Angeles. The restaurant’s chefs, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, prepare them in a way that most barbecue purists would never order, much less eat: baked in the oven. Here, their recipe has been adapted for the home cook.
Louisiana Brown Jasmine Rice and Shrimp Risotto
Donald Link, the chef and owner of the award-winning restaurants Herbsaint and Cochon in New Orleans, and his chef de cuisine, Ryan Prewitt, like to use Cajun Grain brown jasmine in a luxe shrimp risotto. “It’s really nutty and comes out a lot creamier,” Mr. Link said.