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Southern Soul Food
“All soul food is southern food, but not all southern food is soul food.” ― Cassandra Harrell, Soul Food Lovers’ Cookbook
As I’ve mentioned on here before, my family loves to cook. I’m about to head back down to Arkansas for Thanksgiving with husband and cat in tow. Already my mother has a group message on Facebook, planning out the menu and it’s getting pretty elaborate. I’m going to contribute bacon and Brussels sprouts, a big chocolate cake, a couple jars of pickles that I made this summer, and a 1-lb. bag of the best caramels Montana has to offer for our glorious feast.
There will be turkey, ham, fried chicken, dressing, several casseroles, fresh veggie sides aplenty, and a full dessert bar. With seven women cooking, we’d be able to feed 100 people easily.
Nothing warms my soul more than being around my family for a big holiday dinner. The warmth of love fills the entire house and we end up with enough food for everyone to take home leftovers. I would say that all of the food that goes into one of our big family dinners is 100 percent soul food. You can taste the love that went into every bite. I’m really looking forward to heading back home.
I hope y’all have as happy of a Thanksgiving as I’m about to have!
What are the white and brown things in the first picture?
Homemade peanut butter truffles! They’re delicious! :)
My, my, my. Nothing like that Southern cooking. We haven’t yet worked out whether we are going down to my mother’s place for Thanksgiving. But you are certainly swaying me in that direction.
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Dibs.
I am drooling all over my keyboard.
I am also hoping to steal your ideas. I can’t bring the jars of pickles I didn’t make (it’s been a couple of years on I can’t grow cukes, I’ve had trouble with rot infecting my tomatoes and cukes and melons — my land is too chilly without much afternoon sun) but the bacon sprouts thing sounds bodacious.
Can you share a recipe? Pretty please?
I hope you have a wonderful time in Arkansas. Sounds like it would be hard not to.
I grew up in the south but the good cooks (who also grew up in the south) in my family are of Pennsylvania Dutch/Quaker background and that is the cooking style. Lots of apple dishes (my favorites). Sweet potato dishes too. Potato dishes such as boiled with ham and green beans.
My yearly contribution to family Thanksgiving meal is a large beef roast. Simple. Easy. And everybody likes it. I will eat turkey, but not a huge fan. I won’t touch ham or pork – including bacon. (Am I the only person on the planet who can’t stand bacon – including the smell when it’s cooking?)
Southern deserts are fantastic, aren’t they? Pecan pie. Chess pie (which is essentially pecan pie without pecans). Banana pudding. Chocolate cake.
Salivating starting now.
Of course! :) I got my cucumbers from some Amish people at the farmer’s market. Here’s my MILs recipe that I used this year. I added Pickle Crisp to mine because I didn’t have any grape leaves for the extra crisp. It was the first time I’d dealt with Pickle Crisp as my mom always had a grapevine growing up that we put in our pickles.
Oh! I assumed you meant a pickle recipe, but it looks like you may have meant the bacon and Brussels. I just chop up a bunch of bacon into 1 inch bites, throw them in the skillet on medium heat to rend the fat out better. Then I de-stem and half the Brussels. Once the bacon is about half cooked, I throw the Brussels into the skillet with the bacon, about 1 Tbsp (per pound of sprouts) of butter, garlic, salt, and pepper, then turn up the heat. I let the Brussels get a little crispy.
We don’t do chess pie so much, but definitely pecan and pumpkin pies. One of my aunts makes a delicious homemade cheesecake every year and strawberry trifle has become a staple at our dessert bar. :)
I believe you need to talk to @skipsul.
I think I remember you don’t like cilantro because it reminded you of soap. Maybe that’s the reason I like it. Brings back memories from childhood when having my mouth washed out. ;-) There’s just no rhyme or reason why people like/dislike some things.
I’m not overly fond of bacon either. I will eat it on occasion, and I will use it in combinations with other foods, but it’s not something I miss if I don’t have it.
My father cannot stand anything remotely like pumpkin, and that includes sweet potatoes. I asked him why, and his reasons were as follows:
Bacon is perhaps the only food that could save an abomination like brussel sprouts.
Itty-bitty cabbage heads with the same amount of flatulence compressed into the smaller space.
Sounds like another rootabaga story.
Sweet!
Picture it, 1991 Lafayette La, yours truly hung over after a night of debauchery heads to a soul food spot. A delightful Black lady with an ass the size of a AMC Pacer comes out with a half gallon bucket behind pans and pans of collards, pork chops, ribs, fried okra, catfish, chicken and everything. She looks at me and says,”what can momma get you?”, and fills up layers and layers of the bucket for me. Man oh man it sopped up the poisons.
Mini pies in a muffin tin are a pita. Good job.
I don’t think even bacon could make Brussel sprouts edible.
In England, they call rutabagas – swedes. Do you know what they call them in Sweden? Rutabagas.
Actually – this is one of the rare instances where I put aside my usual distaste for bacon. Frying brussel sprouts in with bacon is terrific. The flavors really do complement each other. Just cut the bacon into small pieces, throw them onto a cold frying pan (the fat renders out of the bacon during the heating, whereas it just sears in place if thrown into a hot pan, leaving the bacon rubbery), and once the fat has mostly rendered out (and the bacon has crisped), toss in the sprouts (ideally they should be halved, or even quartered if they are large).
My grandmother was Swedish.
For an extra kick, toss in some mustard seed with the bacon.
You’d be surprised! Mom said the same thing until she tried them how I cooked them.
Ooh! I’ll have to try that!
Does the bacon overcome the smell? That is like my kryptonite, it wafts up my nose, I collapse snapping into the fetal position and wet myself. I will have to harden my resolve that bacon can overcome……….
I get that – the smell of brussel sprouts can be really off-putting to many people, as can asparagus. The key here is to use fresh sprouts, as they’ll crisp up and caramelize a bit around the edges in the bacon fat. Frozen are a big no-no for this, even if thawed first. There’s something about old sprouts that makes them more pungent and less savory.
I really dislike boiled sprouts, but fried? Very different if done correctly.
Brussel sprouts brings back memories of my grandmother. Her’s were the only ones I would ever eat because she served them with a cheese sauce.
Our Thanksgiving is pretty southern and usually means way more food than our family of 4 and my parents can consume. Sometimes I smoke the turkey, although this year we’ll probably go back to an herb roasted turkey. Lots of butter and herbs under the skin and inside the cavity. My wife will make her famous sausage cornbread dressing and mac & cheese. We’ll have some vegetables just to say the meal isn’t totally unhealthy; it’s usually something like sautéed green beans or maybe roasted broccoli. My wife will also make her sweet potato casserole (which doesn’t use any marshmallows; it’s from an old Cajun recipe book she has).
Not sure what we’ll have for dessert. Probably pumpkin pie, pecan pie and maybe my Mom’s cherry pie with a cream cheese topping.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays for this reason. Christmas is usually busy with other things, but Thanksgiving is just about family, love and food.
My Flemish ancestry is waving their private parts in your general direction.
Sliced & fried in olive oil, with garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, and a dash of cayenne pepper with just tad of caramelization, and I have had sprout haters turn to believers.
I will add the bacon this year, which can only add to the goodness…
EDIT: I see I have Deanned, and that others have put forth my argument better, and Skip is correct that freezing Brussel Sprout really ruins them, and finally slicing them (i.e. like shaving them) gets for a better caramelizing and a much better ratio of crispiness to soft leaves.
Lemon Cheese Cake. I dream of it. And, no, it isn’t cheesecake.
That sounds like a winner too.
My Irish ancestry is having a pint and doesn’t care what your Flemish ancestry is doing.