Classic Southern Comfort Foods That Need To Make A Comeback

The American South has always prided itself on its distinctive culture and history. But many of its homegrown dishes -– treats such as fried chicken, cornbread, and giant layer cakes –- have become so popular outside the region that we've grown to embrace them as prototypical all-American foods. A closer look, however, reveals why the distinctive dishes of the South could have only been born there. Cornbread and other corn-based dishes were gifts from the region's Native Americans, who introduced European settlers to the local grain. Common Southern preparations such as stewed collards or okra were the contributions of enslaved Africans, who brought these vegetables with them during their passage. And the South's rich baking tradition comes from its European settlers.

But the food of the South is more than just fried chicken and collards. The region has a rich inventory of rib-sticking traditional comfort foods little known outside the region and not frequently seen in restaurants, even in the South. Rather, these are home-cooking favorites made with inexpensive everyday ingredients, making them great choices for frugal families. But don't sleep on these –- humble as they are, these old favorites offer comfort in spades, and if you're new to them, they'll make fun and novel additions to your weekday meal rotation.

Biscuits and gravy are a classic Southern combo. But while classic white gravy laced with sausage crumbles is the best-known biscuit topper, it isn't your only option. If you're looking for something a little lighter and brighter, try another old Southern favorite: tomato gravy. Like many humble comfort foods, tomato gravy was born out of necessity. Tomatoes thrive in the warm summers of the South, and during the Great Depression, cash-strapped cooks needed a way to make use of overripe tomatoes before they went bad.

Their solution was to cook them down with onions, garlic, and sometimes bacon, thicken it with a roux, and ladle them over hot biscuits. (And if tomatoes aren't in season, canned tomatoes will also work.) Like other types of gravy, it also works as a topper or condiment for chicken, vegetables, and other dishes. So what does it taste like? It has the umami tanginess of a good tomato sauce with a smoky touch from the bacon and a creamy texture from the roux –- so it's a bundle of familiar flavors in a deliciously different form.

Hoecakes are another old Southern favorite you're unlikely to find on restaurant menus. And unless you grew up in the South, you probably only know of them through historical novels, if you've heard of them at all. But these rustic cornmeal-based pancakes are well worth trying, for a couple of reasons. First, they have a long and deep history in the South (they were a favorite dish of George Washington and once a well-loved favorite on southern tables), and second, they were well-loved for a reason –- they're not only easy and inexpensive to make, but tasty.

Like many old dishes, hoecakes have a murky history, with numerous cultures taking credit for inventing them and multiple origin stories for their odd name. While they've long been a point of pride for Black cooks, with some legends stating that enslaved people cooked them in the fields on the surfaces of actual hoes, recipes for hoecakes appeared in colonial cookbooks as far back as the 17^th century and were likely inspired by Native American cuisine. (Moreover, during that era, the word hoe also referred to a type of cooking utensil as well as a gardening tool.) And recipes are just as varied as the origin stories — some are little more than fried rounds of thick cornmeal mush, while others contain milk and eggs along with cornmeal. However, you make them, enjoy them as Washington did — topped with a generous amount of butter and honey.

Many of us grew up with an unspoken breakfast code: it was understood that certain sweet foods are responsible breakfast choices, while others aren't. Yogurt and fruit parfaits? Perfectly fine. Ice cream and fruit sauce? Nope. Fruit muffins? Yes. Fruit cupcakes? Sorry, no. Those of us who grew up with this take it for granted as common sense, but is it really? After all, cupcakes and breakfast pastries are both combinations of flour, sugar, and fat, so nutrition isn't a real excuse here.

No such division exists in  many areas of the South and Appalachia, where a favorite breakfast is chocolate gravy, a decadent, creamy, fudgy sauce served over biscuits. It makes no pretense of being low in fat or loaded with nutrients –- it's just a filling, satisfying, and oh-so-decadent way to start your day. Best of all for busy home cooks, it's cheap and easy to make: it's basically powdered cocoa, sugar, and flour whisked into milk and cooked until thick, rather like a thin, warm chocolate pudding. Some food historians believe the dish emerged when Hershey's cocoa became widely available in country stores, while others trace its roots further back, to Spanish traders who introduced their chocolate-drinking tradition to the South. Whatever its origins, it's a treat for chocoholics. And insiders share an important tip for enjoying it: be sure to crumble your biscuits to maximize surface area and give you the most possible chocolate per bite.

Chicken and dumplings is one of those old-timey dishes most people outside the South have heard of, but rarely see in the wild. The hearty, saucy, flavorful meal in a pot is thought to have Eastern European roots, and bears a close resemblance to old-world meat stews with thick noodles or potato dumplings. In the States, however, it acquired a reputation as rural poverty food, as it provides a cheap way to stretch out a single chicken to feed a hungry family. Its homely appearance is a likely contributor to its humble reputation — a beige pot of gravy covering piles of chicken and boiled dumplings doesn't look terribly sexy. This could be why it has yet to receive the mainstream love enjoyed by other Southern favorites such as red velvet cake and Nashville hot chicken.

But don't let this put you off — a taste of well-made chicken and dumplings will make you a believer. You'll find as many variations as you'll find cooks, but the basic formula is cooked chicken, vegetables, and biscuit-dough dumplings simmered in chicken-based gravy. For an easy shortcut, you can shape your dumplings from canned biscuit dough, and for extra decadence, you can enrich the soup sauce with a bit of cream before serving.

If you've ever had a glass of iced tea in the South, you learned quickly that locals love things sweet –- your tea will almost certainly be sugary enough to keep a hummingbird happy. There's a historical reason for the Southern sweet tooth: Sugarcane is a popular crop in the region, which made sugar more affordable and accessible there than elsewhere in the U.S. Moreover, sugar is a good food preservative –- and thus indispensable in the era before refrigeration.

A classic example of a super-sweet Southern dessert of this era is chess pie. Its filling is a simple custard of butter, sugar, and eggs, but has multiple variations, including versions with vinegar or lemon to cut the sweetness or cornmeal for extra body –- imagine a pecan pie without the pecans, and you get the basic idea of what a chess pie is like. Some sources believe its name is an abbreviation of chest, as in a pie chest (a cabinet in which pies were kept in the pre-refrigeration era). Thanks to all the sugar in the filling, a chess pie could keep in a pie chest for several days, in the off chance it didn't get gobbled down straight out of the oven. Old-school plain chess pies are a simple pleasure, but adventurous modern pastry chefs have revived the recipe, creating new versions flavored with chocolate, orange, pumpkin, and more.

Fresh tomatoes are a common sight on Southern tables during the summer months –- they grow abundantly in the region, and cooks take full advantage of the bounty. While many juicy ripe tomatoes find their way into classic Southern tomato sandwiches, a lesser-known, slightly fancier way to showcase them is in a classic tomato pie –- basically, a cheesy quiche studded with tangy slices of fresh tomato. Savory, creamy, and juicy all at once, it's a great summer brunch or supper dish.

Like other traditional foods, tomato pies vary by region and by cook. One early version was a bit like an apple pie flavored with cinnamon and sugar, but with sliced green tomatoes standing in for the apples. Another savory version incorporated bacon and cream. Other versions incorporate additional summery ingredients such as corn, and many versions employ a clever — and distinctly Southern –- shortcut to make the pie's savory custard base: Duke's mayonnaise.

Another hearty classic little known outside the South, Brunswick stew features chopped meat in a tomato-based sauce along with lima beans and corn. Beyond these basic details, anything else is possible. While early versions were made with game including squirrel and opossum, modern versions –- often served in barbecue restaurants –- employ pulled pork (and sometimes chicken) instead, and may opt to switch out basic tomato sauce for ketchup and barbecue sauce. And by tradition, cooks tossed in any vegetables they had around, not just limas and corn –- because Brunswick stew is a dish meant to feed a crowd, any ingredient that could help feed more people was welcome.

In short, Brunswick stew isn't so much a fixed recipe as a vibe. But two regions claim credit for inventing the dish: Brunswick, Georgia, and Brunswick County, Virginia. Virginians are so confident the dish is theirs their state's general assembly declared Brunswick County the home of the dish. This did not stop Brunswick, Georgia, from displaying a giant antique stew pot in front of its visitors' center and hosting the annual Brunswick Rockin' Stewbilee, a festival featuring a stew-cooking contest. A more plausible origin story, however, is the dish is a Native American invention, created by cooking local game and indigenous seasonal produce together.

Southerners have a special fondness for sweet, fizzy drinks. Many iconic soda brands, including Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, and Dr. Pepper, were invented in the South. And Southerners don't just gulp down soda to cool off –- they seem to appreciate it on a deeper level than other Americans, leveraging its fizziness and flavor to make unusual snacks such as peanuts and Coke (a pack of salted peanuts poured directly into a bottle of Coke) and even incorporating it into their cooking and baking.

A great example of a Southern soda recipe is old-school 7-Up cake. It's essentially a citrusy pound cake that gets its flavor and airiness from 7-Up, a vintage lemon-lime soda. A unique feature of the cake –- and perhaps part of its appeal to Southern home cooks –- is that the fizzy soda is the cake's only leavening . Even without the expected baking powder or soda, the cake bakes up as fluffy and airy as any other cake. It's old-school comfort food at its best, but if a demure lemon-lime cake doesn't do it for you, Southern cooks also bake up Coca-Cola cakes with cocoa and marshmallows and Dr. Pepper cakes, also flavored with chocolate.