List of foods of the Southern United States
Appearance
List of foods of the Southern United States:
Beverages
- Sweet tea - usually served with lemon and sometimes with mint
- Tennessee whiskey - Jack Daniel's and George Dickel are the two remaining brands
- Bourbon - made in central Kentucky
- Muscadine wine - usually a homemade product
- Lemonade
- Mint julep - associated with the annual Kentucky Derby horse race
- Sugarcane juice
- Some rum is produced locally [citation needed]
- Coca-Cola - first made in Atlanta, Ga.
- Pepsi Cola - first made in New Bern, North Carolina
- Blenheim Ginger Ale
- Buffalo Rock ginger ale
- Buttermilk
- Cheerwine - a longtime favorite among North Carolinians and Virginians
- Orange juice from Florida
- Orange Nehi
- R.C. Cola - first made in Columbus, Georgia
- Double Cola - based in Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Barq's Root Beer - first made in Biloxi, Mississippi
- Dr Pepper - a popular drink in Texas before it achieved national standing
- Grapico - grape soda made by Buffalo Rock
- Mountain Dew - originally made in southwestern Virginia
- Sun Drop - citrus drink found in northern Alabama, central Tennessee, the Carolinas, western Kentucky, southeastern Missouri, and parts of Virginia
- Yoo-hoo
- Ale-8-One
Meats, poultry and seafood
- Barbecue - sauces vary regionally
- Boudin - spicy sausage, either white boudin, made with dirty rice in a casing, or red boudin, a type of blood sausage
- Chicken and dumplings
- Fried steak
- Chicken gizzards - fried
- Chit'lins - fried small intestine of a hog
- Quail
- Country Captain
- Crab cake - popular along the Chesapeake Bay (Maryland and Virginia), where the crab cake is not typically dredged in bread crumbs, and in Louisiana, where it typically is.
- Crawfish - also called crawdad
- Fried chicken - usually flour battered and pan fried
- Fried fish - cornmeal battered or dredged and pan or deep fried
- Catfish - usually fried
- Frogmore Stew - not an actual stew but a "boil" of sausage, corn, crabs, and shrimp popular in the Low Country of South Carolina
- Game meat - venison, squirrel, and various game fowl are most common, but opossum, rabbit, and raccoon are also encountered
- Ham - pan fried, roasted, or smoked; varieties include sugar cured or country (salt cured)
- Ham hocks
- Jambalaya
- Liver - usually pork or fried chicken liver
- Shrimp and grits
- Smithfield ham - a specialty of Smithfield, Virginia
- Souse meat, also called Head cheese
Soups and stews
- Brunswick stew - originated in either Virginia or Georgia
- Burgoo - served at barbecues in western and central Kentucky; similar to Brunswick stew
- Chicken Sauce-Picquante - chicken cooked in a tangy stew with tomatoes and spices, often served over rice; a favorite in southern Louisiana
- Conch chowder
- Gumbo - made with seafood or meat and okra; a Cajun/Creole delicacy
- Étouffée - a very thick stew made of crawfish or chicken and sausage, okra and roux served over rice
- She-crab soup - mainly served in the area around Charleston, South Carolina from Atlantic crabs
- Terrapin stew - a historical dish of Atlantic Coast states such as Maryland and Virginia
Vegetables and salads
- Beans - often cooked down with chunks of ham, bacon grease, or onions
- Butter or Lima beans
- Pole beans
- White or great northern beans
- Green beans
- Pinto beans
- Greens - seasoned with some kind of meat or meat grease. The liquid left after cooking is known as "pot likker".
- Collard greens
- Turnip greens
- Kale
- mustard greens
- Carrots (cooked with butter and brown sugar)
- Congealed salad
- Corn
- Boiled, steamed, or grilled corn, often "on the cob"
- Fried corn fritters
- Creamed corn
- Corn pudding
- Hoppin' John - black-eyed peas served with rice
- Mashed potatoes - called "creamed" in some regions
- Okra - flour-battered and pan-fried or boiled, stewed, or steamed
- Onion - Sliced Vidalia, whole green onion, and onion rings
- Peas - often cooked with chunks of ham or onions
- Black-eyed peas
- Purple hull
- Field peas
- Swamp cabbage
- Squash - often cooked down with onions or fried like okra
- Tomatoes - sliced ripe, also eaten at breakfast
- Sweet potatoes
- Poke sallet - cooked pokeweed
- Macaroni and cheese
- Ramps - wild leeks popular in the mountains
- Red beans & rice - the rice is often some kind of dirty rice, a longstanding favorite in Louisiana
- Tomato aspic
- Wilted lettuce- with dressing, an Appalachian speciality
- Yams
Breads
- Biscuits - traditionally prepared with buttermilk
- Cornbread
- Cracklin' Cornbread - has pork cracklins in it
- Corn pone - also called hoecake, Johnny cake
- Hush puppies
- Spoonbread
Side dishes and complements
- Peanut butter
- Mayhaw jelly
- Pepper Jelly
- Muscadine jelly
- Cane syrup
- Apple Butter
- Deviled eggs
- Dressing - stuffing, but with cornbread as a base and prepared and served separately from the meat
- Gravy is used liberally on meats, potatoes, biscuits, rice. May be milk-based (country gravy) or based on coffee (red-eye gravy) mixed with the fat drippings leftover from cooking meat
- Hot sauce - some are made in either Louisiana or Texas
- Texas Pete - hot sauce made in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
- Tabasco sauce - trademarked of aged hot sauce
- Grits
- Pickled or brandied peaches
- Sorghum molasses
- Watermelon rind pickles
- Cayenne peppers
- Cracklin' - fried pork rind
- Cole Slaw
Miscellaneous
- Boiled peanuts
- Cornbread sunk into a tall glass of milk or buttermilk
- Peanuts in Coke
- Pimento cheese sandwiches
- Steen's cane syrup
- Vienna sausages
Desserts and sweets
Cakes
Candies
- Benne seed candy - found primarily in the coastal region of Georgia and South Carolina
- Peanut brittle
- Squirrel Nut Zippers
- Pecan brittle
- Moon pies
- Goo Goo Cluster
- Pecan Divinity
- Pralines - a specialty of New Orleans
- Kentucky Cream Candy - a pulled candy that is made usually during the colder months (40 deg or below) of the year when humidity is low
Cobblers
- Blackberry cobbler
- Dewberry cobbler
- Peach cobbler
Cookies
- Tea cakes - similar to sugar cookies
Pies
- Apple pie
- Chess pie
- Dewberry pie - from the native blackberry ripening in early summer
- Fried pies - peach, apple, cherry and chocolate are most common
- Key lime pie
- Lemon ice box pie
- Mississippi mud pie
- Pecan pie
- Peanut butter pie
- Shoo fly pie - found in parts of the South where Pennsylvania Dutch settled, such as the valley of Virginia
- Sweet potato pie
- Buttermilk pie
- sqush pie
- pumkin pie