Sunday, January 15, 2012

Tips for Southern Cooking

Southern cooking is known to be nutritious, fun and delicious. Apart from Ireland and Spain, Scotland, America, and England are other countries that southern cuisine can be attributed to. The best examples of southern cooking are Creole, Cajun and Floribbean (Florida and the Caribbean).

For areas in the south of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Texas, and Oklahoma, their lively culture is well represented when it comes to the food that they cook. Aside from squash, corn is another famous ingredient in these parts. One of the things that southerners learned from Native American influences was to prepare food with the use of an open flame and this is why southerners simply adore deep pit barbecue.

A part of every southerner's diet includes sugar, milk, flour, and eggs. When it comes to this, Europe influenced the trend. Considering the fact that these people enjoy breakfast, they always have tons of baked goodies and side of milk and cheese early in the day.

A typical Southern meal includes pan-fried chicken, side bread, peas, plenty of greens, and mashed potato. Usually, a pie is served during dessert if the person can still eat. A number of traditional American soups, such as chicken noodle soup, lentil, and even split pea, actually originated from the South.

To be more specific, for their pie, southerners love pecan, pumpkin or apple, while the preferred vegetables are green beans, squash or okra. Corn bread and biscuits are preferred by southern folk and they also love basic salads made out of veggies or fruit. Southerners are also particular when it comes to table settings as eating on a nice table makes the experience more pleasing.

Southerners cannot live without corn bread. It will not be a meal without corn bread and so you can always expect free flowing bread in southern kitchens. Without any biscuits, corn bread, or rolls, a southern meal will not be complete.

Aside from flour, corn bread is made with the use of ingredients such as baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Then, egg, milk (buttermilk) and liquid shortening are added. According to one’s preference, sugar may be added as well.

Basically, corn bread is made using more than a cup of flour, several eggs, some milk, shortening, and sugar as preferred. Mix the ingredients well. Pour the mixture into a greased skillet or muffin tins to make 12 cornbread muffins.

When it comes to the south, no corn bread is served cold. They normally set oven temperatures beyond 400 degrees. The real secrets here are to sprinkle some cornmeal in the skillet just before adding the dough, don’t use flour when making pure cornbread, and after cooking, turn the cornbread upside down in the skillet to keep warm.

When it comes to the dough, it is important for the dough to be as thin as possible. Here is a tip for southern cooking that you can enjoy. 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.