Oyster stuffing and creamed onions mostly vanished everywhere else
A new england thanksgiving menu checklist covering oyster stuffing, creamed onions, and brown bread, three dishes worth reviving on any table.
11 min read
Author: Warren Ashby
Warren Ashby writes about American regional food and the meals that mark the calendar. He grew up between the Ohio Valley and the Carolina coast and has spent years collecting the versions of the same dish that change every two hundred miles.
The South bakes it in its own pan and calls it dressing
Southern cornbread dressing, step by step: two-day-old cornbread, the sage and stock ratio, the egg binder, and the internal temperature that matters.
11 min read
Hand-parched lake rice against paddy rice, cooked side by side
Wild rice cooking compared side by side: hand-parched lake rice against cultivated paddy rice, on cook time, texture, price, and the dish that hides the gap.
11 min read
Cornmeal in one, buttermilk in the other, sugar in both
Chess pie vs buttermilk pie, measured on the same scale: the cornmeal, the cup of buttermilk, the crackled top, and the doneness test both pies depend on.
13 min read
Persimmon pudding only works with a hachiya collapsed to mush
A persimmon pudding recipe that depends on collapsed fruit: how ripe is ripe, getting the pulp, the thin batter, and why the middle is meant to sink.
13 min read
Burgoo once fed a hundred people at a time
A kentucky burgoo recipe scaled down to a Dutch oven: three meats, the four vegetables that are not optional, and eight hours that do the actual work.
13 min read
Six winter greens that are not kale
Six types of winter greens compared: escarole, mustard, tatsoi, broccoli rabe, chard and turnip tops, with bitterness, cook time and the fat each needs.
13 min read
Appalachian stack cake needs a night in the pantry
An apple stack cake recipe from the southern mountains: six thin sorghum layers, a dried apple filling, and the overnight rest that makes it one cake.
13 min read
Hatch chiles are everywhere for two weeks in September
A green chile stew recipe that makes a gallon, plus how to buy and freeze a bushel during the two weeks in September when the roasters run all day.
15 min read
Virginia and Georgia both claim brunswick stew, and neither one agrees on the meat
Two states claim it and neither agrees on the meat. A brunswick stew recipe for a five-hour Saturday, the constants both sides keep, and the paddle test.
14 min read