Culinary historian Michael W. Twitty lives and breathes Southern meals. “My first solid food was potlikker and cornbread,” Twitty says, “before I even had teeth.” Twitty earned a repute as a scholar of Southern meals via his first two books—his James Beard Award-winning debut, The Cooking Geneand his 2021 deep-dive, Rice. Now, he’s again together with his third, most formidable ebook, a tome of Southern recipes referred to as Recipes From the American South.
“[The book] is meant to celebrate the American South,” Twitty explains. “However, I didn’t really mean for this cookbook to be a manual, a book of spells. I wanted it to really be a journey, a record. I think it’s important to read it first for the information, second for the recipes.”
This cookbook will not be a ebook of spells, however a few of the info inside was eye-opening for me. In specific, Twitty says that he by no means seasons the dredging flour for dishes like fried rooster or fried fish. Here’s why he skips this conventional step.
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Why You Shouldn’t Season Flour for Fried Chicken
“I don’t season the flour,” Twitty explains. “That’s a consistent aspect of this cookbook. I do not season the flour because it will burn, and it gives a burnt look to the crust that we don’t want.”
He acknowledges that correct seasoning is important, and says he seasons the meat earlier than it’s dredged in flour, preserving the spices safely away from the warmth of the oil. The end result: a superbly fried piece of rooster, fish, or greens with layers of seasoning inbuilt.
For Twitty’s Southern Fried Chicken, which is predicated on his circle of relatives’s recipe, Twitty delivers the seasoning by way of the buttermilk marinade that rooster items soak in for 4 to 12 hours. That marinade is loaded with paprika, poultry seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, and pepper. Once the rooster has marinated, it will get dipped in a easy mixture of all-purpose flour and cornmeal for a crunchy exterior with no burnt bits. You can see this strategy in his different recipes, too, together with Twitty’s Fried Fish, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Fried Shrimp.
Frying meals might be intimidating for residence cooks, doubtless as a result of there are a number of totally different steps (i.e., alternatives for issues to go improper). If you have not made fried rooster shortly, although, it is value a second shot. This tip, like a lot of the knowledge in Recipes From the American Southis rooted in information that’s been handed down for generations. It’s a intelligent strategy to keep away from the dreaded burn whereas nonetheless producing a superbly seasoned last product.
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Why I Love This Cookbook
Recipes From the American South is the type of legacy cookbook that deserves a spot on the shelf between Julia Child and Joy of Cooking. In it, you’ll discover recipes you would possibly anticipate—Fried Chicken, Succotash, and Collard Greens—amongst many surprises, like Sephardic Pink Rice and Chinese Mississippi Collard Greens. That juxtaposition is by design. Twitty says he needed this cookbook to specific that the South isn’t a monolith.
“Southern food is not one thing. I don’t want to pass on that curse of, ‘if you don’t have this, then it’s not real, or it’s inauthentic.’” says Twitty. “I’ve often made the point in the book about variations, so that people understand that 30 miles away, somebody was making this exact same dish, and it was very different.”
Find Recipes From the American South on Bookshop.org or at your native bookseller.
