Down Home Cooking

Sometimes the best food comes from regional areas. This is known as down home cooking and it has many different forms. It could be recipes that sprang from backwoods cooking or 300 year old recipes that haven't changed. These are the foods that have been on the American palate from the country's earliest days. Sometimes it mixes indigenous foods with early English cooking techniques. Yet no matter what the era or the century , it' still tasty and filling.

One of the best known recipes is burgoo. This is a stew that had everything in it from squirrel (a major component in this type of cuisine) to mutton. Mostly it is now made with the last meat along with pork and chicken. Red pepper is added to it for seasoning and it is slow cooked like chili and served in a bowl much like it. Burgoo's name could come from two sources - a shortening of the phrase "bird stew" or barbecue. No one is really sure. It is mostly eaten in northern Kentucky and southern Indiana and is a staple of some restaurants.To be honest it's easy to make and you can make it in the morning for dinner that night.

Another down home dish is barbecue. No, not the meats and veggies you toss on the grill but actual spicy sweet barbecue. It's sometimes called pulled pork. This is an amazing dish , usually served best on hamburger roll ( this is known as a "soak")Barbecue starts off with a slow cooked pork butt or shoulder, usually mixed with onions. It is cooked to the point where the meat is so tender you can easily shred it with your fingers. The barbecue is then liberally doused with vinegar its' own juices and any favorite commercial barbecue sauce. It is then put on a hamburger roll or any soft bread. Usually it can be served with fresh, crunchy cole slaw.A better side is extra salty potato chips because they bring out the sweetness of the barbecue and the meat.

What's a perfect ending to this? Why, cobbler , of course. You could also make brown Betty, grunt or buckle. These are all fruit desserts from the Colonial era that came with the colonists. They had to substitute English pears and apples with native American fruits and came up with these yummy desserts (although cobbler was eaten throughout the day). They are easy to make with the fruits of the season such as blackberry or blueberry. A cobbler always tastes best when it has fresh cream or vanilla ice cream on the side.

This is the food that fed America from the 1600's to today/ . Nothing fancy but filling and flavorful. They have survived through the Colonial era getting enjoyed by modern Americans.