# How to Get Northerners to Stop Eating Undercooked Vegetables and Putting Jelly on Cornbread?



## Count Porcula (Apr 29, 2022)

A while back, I posted a thread, asking for suggestions for low-carb BBQ vegetable sides. For some reason, I didn't feel like beans or greens. I think now this was a mistake.

Today I fixed something my mother used to fix. Green beans, collards, cornbread, a sliced Vidalia, and a sliced tomato. For a beverage, I had full-fat buttermilk. It was really nice. 

Yesterday, my friend who is staying here fixed BBQ chicken, and I made the greens then. I was going to use neckbones, but the grocery was out. I grabbed some salt pork instead. I didn't have time to use it, so I made the greens with half a pound of partially-fried bacon. I threw the salt pork in the smoker with the chicken so I would be able to use it for something later. When it came out, it was gorgeous. Today, when I tried a tiny piece, I learned that you can eat smoked fatback as if it were brisket.

We screwed up the timing of the meal, so the greens had to be served before they were wilted correctly. They had not released their flavor. My friend is not a Southerner, so he thought they were fantastic. Northerners like undercooked greens. After we ate, I put the greens back on the stove until they were boiled down to perfection. I would say it took another 90 minutes.

I still had a lot of greens, plus the unused fatback, so today I sliced the fatback and put it in a pot of fresh green beans. Pole beans would have been better, but they are impossible to find. I boiled the daylights out of them with a garlic clove, salt, MSG, butter, and a little sugar. Because regular green beans fall apart too early, I removed them from the pot when they started to break down, and I boiled the pork and pot liquor until I got a magnificent reduction. Then I threw the beans back in.

I made the cornbread from Martha White self-rising meal, full-fat buttermilk, two eggs, bacon grease, salt, a small amount of sugar, and a little butter. Ordinarily, I use two cups of meal and 1/4 cup grease, but I was low on grease and had to add butter. I baked in a #6 skillet at 450. I served the cornbread with butter along with the beans, greens, tomato, and onion. I could not get a decent tomato, so I used whatever nice-looking beefsteak hybrid I found at the store.

It was truly wonderful. 

My problem is that my friend thinks cornbread is supposed to be sweet, which is a sinful and degenerate point of view, so when I make cornbread, he takes a squeeze bottle of grape jelly and unloads on it. I can't even get him to use Oberholtzer's sorghum, which is the only sweet thing that should go near cornbread. He thinks I'm crazy for wanting to dip buttered cornbread in the juice from beans and greens.

I think mental illness is involved.

I'm wondering if anyone else here has had problems trying to get Northerners to eat vegetables prepared correctly. Greens that aren't boiled until they die have no flavor at all, and the same is pretty much true of beans. The difference between stiff, undercooked greens and proper greens is indescribable. The flavor is completely different, but these days, people are so convinced everything has to be crunchy and firm, you can't get them to eat good food.

Now that I've ranted, here is my cornbread recipe, to make amends. My family is from Eastern Kentucky, so it's cornbread, not cake.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups Martha White corn meal with Hot Rize (scientifically proven to be pea-pickin' good)
1-1/3 full-fat buttermilk, or more if the batter seems too stiff
2 eggs
1/4 cup bacon grease
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar

Preheat oven to 450. When it gets hot, put your #6 seasoned skillet in. When the skillet is hot, add the bacon grease. 

Warm the milk up so it won't harden fat. Beat the eggs in it. Mix into the corn meal and other dry ingredients.

The grease in the skillet should be smoking. Pour it into the batter and stir it in. Pour the batter into the skillet and bake for around 22 minutes, give or take.

You can do really great things with this cornbread if you have cream cheese and blueberries, but that's a recipe for another day.

There was nothing to the greens and beans. Just simmer with bacon, fatback, neckbones, ham hocks, jowls, or some other type of pork, plus a little garlic, salt, pepper, sugar, and butter. You only want to add enough sugar to make the vegetables seem suspiciously ripe and tasty. A very small amount of hot sauce will be good in the greens.

You want greens that are completely limp and wrinkled. If you haven't simmered them for at least three hours, they are probably not done. The beans should not disintegrate, but they should be pretty soft. The liquor should be a strong green with powerful pork flavors. It should be acidic and aromatic. You don't want the vegetables swimming in bland fluid. You want a reduction. Pork with bones is good because they will thicken it.


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## noboundaries (Apr 29, 2022)

DANG! I was mentally transported back to the years I spent in Eastern Tennessee. Thanks for posting, Count!


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## Count Porcula (Apr 29, 2022)

Hope I provided a particle of useful information.

People can always add more sugar to the cornbread if they insist. I just don't want to know about it.


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## Nefarious (Apr 29, 2022)

I think it depends on what you want to eat the vegetable with, a straw or a fork.  My mother used to cook vegetables so the only difference between them was the taste, the look was always the same, mush, and the taste was aweful.


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## schlotz (Apr 29, 2022)

I'm with ya on the cornbread sounds PERFECT, but definitely not on the greens. Worst taste I ever had to experience.


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## Count Porcula (Apr 29, 2022)

I think the world is divided into people who love nearly all vegetables and those who would have trouble eating most of them at gunpoint.

I like just about everything except asparagus, and I like asparagus a little.


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## crazymoon (Apr 29, 2022)

CP, You got me laughing ,thank-you!


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## Count Porcula (Apr 29, 2022)

Couple photos.


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## GaryHibbert (Apr 29, 2022)

I grew up eating greens, but not the greens you southern boys can get.  Up here, greens pretty much means Swiss Chard or fiddle heads.  I love them both.
When I want a feed of chard, I boil the hell out of it, and then serve them up with butter, salt, and vinegar.  Can't wait for summer.
Gary


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## noboundaries (Apr 29, 2022)

Boiled greens, ham hocks or salt pork, and a tiny splash of vinegar. Mmmmm.


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## BigW. (Apr 29, 2022)

Appears you add green beans for color to your fatback?  Ha, looks like very tasty beans.


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## Count Porcula (Apr 29, 2022)

It looks like a lot of fatback, but it was perfect. I never knew how good smoked fatback could be.

When you first add it to the beans, it smells wrong, but by the time they're done simmering, it's the smell of heaven.


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## Hijack73 (Apr 29, 2022)

Sweet cornbread is corn cake.  It has its place, but its place is not on my plate!

Now - I will make an exception of allowing more than a trace of sugar in my cornmeal batter if I'm griddling them up like pancakes.  I can tolerate the sweetness a touch more that way.   Your recipe is about right, but I'd probably make it a scant TSP to be honest....

No sugar in my collards.  Zero. 

And smoked jowl is my pork of choice for collards.  I fry it lightly and use the drippings for my cornbread grease ;)

You got my upvote OP!


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## JLeonard (Apr 29, 2022)

Reading your write up took me right back to gran'mas house for Sunday dinner deep in the back woods of Arkansas. Thank woman was a master in the kitchen. I've got her skillet (100 yrs old) but she took her cornbread recipe to the grave with her. 
Jim


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## Count Porcula (Apr 29, 2022)

The sugar in the collards is a cheat. It's not enough make them sweet. It's just enough to make people think the greens are better, like they're a special variety grown with some kind of secret fertilizer. It's like putting a tiny amount of salt in chocolate chip cookies or cheesecake batter.

Never stop cheating.


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## gmc2003 (Apr 29, 2022)

Wow you really wouldn't like me at your dinner table Count. I prefer eating most of my veggies raw with the exception of spinach, corn and potato's. When I was growing up my mother always had a plate of raw whatever vegetables she was making for supper. This included carrots,  turnips,  cauliflower, broccoli, and a few others. As for cornbread I always liked mine with butter, but my mom made them in muffin tins. 

Chris


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## Count Porcula (Apr 29, 2022)

I ate raw tomato and onion with the meal I had today. I have been known to use raw collards as salad, which is something most people won't do. I eat raw vegetables for breakfast most days.

Cooked beans and greens have to be COOOOOOOKED, though.


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## Fueling Around (Apr 29, 2022)

What brought on this rant?
My experience from a northern raised boy, that lived in the south.
Greens (collard and mustard) have to be cooked into submission to reduce the bitter note. Then are unpalatable slop. Just not my taste.
I prefer par cooked and edible vegetables
Cornbread with 2 eggs is corn cake. A personal taste much as my greens take.
Grape jelly or honey?  Most everyone I know adds some sweet to the corn bread.  I like plain butter.

Side note.  I do not like catfish.  I have tried that mud fish prepared in every way possible except for brined and smoked.


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## DougE (Apr 29, 2022)

Fueling Around said:


> Side note. I do not like catfish. I have tried that mud fish prepared in every way possible except for brined and smoked.


There isn't just one catfish. There are mud cats, channel cats, blue cats, etc, they all have a somewhat different flavor. Some are better than others.


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## 1MoreFord (Apr 30, 2022)

Count, get rid of All the sugar to reduce your carb load.  
For your cornBread try Aunt Jemima(whatever it's now called) self rising white cornmeal mix or the Martha White version.  Yellow mix makes for dryer cornBread. No sugar and no eggs for a superior cornBread.  Only use buttermilk like you are doing.  May need a little more oil/grease to make up for the eggs.
No sugar for any greens or beans.  The greens are supposed to be a bit bitter. Mom always made mixed greens or turnip greens with turnips.  Try some pepper sauce on the greens and some folks even like it on beans and peas.
If you like slather the cornBread with some good butter.


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## Count Porcula (Apr 30, 2022)

The stuff I fixed was transcendental. Apart from using real pole beans, changing it would be like putting a Briggs & Stratton in a Ferrari!


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## noboundaries (Apr 30, 2022)

DougE said:


> There isn't just one catfish. There are mud cats, channel cats, blue cats, etc, they all have a somewhat different flavor. Some are better than others.


Yep. We used to throw the mud cats back. Ugly and disgusting.


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## bbqjefff (Apr 30, 2022)

Oh Lord! The jelly on the cornbread had me cringing. You need to teach them. I'm from california but I have lived in the south and it is way better down there.


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## Count Porcula (Apr 30, 2022)

I'm afraid some people will take my remarks too seriously or personally.

I don't care what people eat. I don't actually have anything against firm vegetables, in recipes where firm vegetables are appropriate. Sometimes firm is the way to go. I will not eat limp broccoli, and I have had firm green beans that were more or less okay.

The thing is, it can be very hard to get people to try these things any other way. When it comes to green beans and greens, the difference between bouncy and steamed and simmered and compliant is enormous. At a certain point when you're boiling them with pork, the flavor changes completely. It is literally impossible to get the same flavor without a lot of cooking.

It's hard to get some people to believe this or even try what Southerners cook. When they do try it, they freak out because it's so good.

My buddy's dad was from Pittsburgh, and his mother was from Miami, which was a Northern city in her day regardless of its location. He can't comprehend cornbread that isn't yellow, extremely sweet, and full of flour. Unsweetened Appalachian cornbread made with bacon grease has delicate, subtle flavors corn cake lacks, and if you pour jelly all over it, you defeat the purpose of making it.

He also does not understand why I would suggest Kentucky sorghum instead of jelly or crummy molasses. There is a world of difference.

He thought my greens were incredible when they were only half cooked. It was as though he drank a bottle of expensive wine a month after it was bottled. I tried to tell him he needed to try them later.

He put vinegar all over them. When greens are really good, you won't want to ruin them with vinegar.

It's frustrating to make something really excellent and have people turn it down or serve it in ways that kill the flavor. I could have given him sandy-tasting Jiffy from a box, and he would have been just as happy, because all that cheap jelly covered up what he was eating.

I don't know if I could ever get him to eat shucky beans, a dish almost no one outside Appalachia has even heard of. They're fantastic, but a lot of people can't understand why anyone would eat beans with brown pods.

Then there are pickled beans. And fried apple pies, which are hand pies made from dried apples.

My grandmother used to can sausage in grease in Mason jars. I thought it looked disgusting, but then I tried it. I wish I could reproduce it now. It was amazing.

I do make my own sausage sometimes, but I don't make the canned type. Homemade sausage makes you understand how bad the stuff you buy is.


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## bbqjefff (Apr 30, 2022)

Count Porcula said:


> I'm afraid some people will take my remarks too seriously or personally.
> 
> I don't care what people eat. I don't actually have anything against firm vegetables, in recipes where firm vegetables are appropriate. Sometimes firm is the way to go. I will not eat limp broccoli, and I have had firm green beans that were more or less okay.
> 
> ...


Umm. We need more of that here in California. I totally agree with you.


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## cal1956 (Apr 30, 2022)

when  i saw this thread i laughed out  loud because it  reminded  me of a couple of years ago when a friend of my wifes  invited us for supper ,  she is  from  Ohio . and while i don't remember all that she served , the ONE thing i will always remember is the corn on the  cob, to my dying day i  will swear i could have taken that corn straight from the table and  planted it ,and  it would  have  come  up and grown more corn, that just how raw it  was , she thought it  was  fine  the  way it was haha..i still  joke with her about it to this day haha


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## chilerelleno (May 1, 2022)

Boy I tell ya what, I could cause a ruckus here  
Now first off, down here folks laugh at them Yankees in Tennessee and Kentucky referring to themselves as Southerners.
Y'all just too far North, period. 
Hell most Bayou and Cajun folks think anyone born North of I-10 are a bit blue blooded.  

But talking about how to go'bout properly fixin beans, peas, greens, okra and cornbread.
Well there's more than one way to skin each of those cats, and they're all good if done right.

One thing that gets me going is Yankees thinking Kale is an eating green.
Kale is an ornamental plant, it's not for eating, end of story.

Mamas calling I got's to run, y'all takes care now.


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## Hijack73 (May 1, 2022)

Not all lakes and rivers produce edible catfish......
The best catfish is flathead.  I prefer larger ones myself - over 10 lbs.  Most folks swear by smaller catfish.  I've had more than 1 person swear that I wasn't feeding them fish because flathead is so clean tasting.  

I won't eat blue cat.  I will eat channel cat but it depends on where it was caught.  2-3 lb channels are better than bigger ones IMO.  Perfect fillets on a 2-3 lb channel cat. 

Food is so regional.  Especially in the South.  If I drive 50 miles south, pulled pork sauce is mustard based.  Locally and basically to the ocean it's all about cider vinegar, black pepper, and red pepper flakes.  That is it.  3 ingredient BBQ sauce.  I find it repulsive....

50 miles NNE - it's cider vinegar, red pepper flake, and tomato.  Better than the 3 ingredient - but not by much!

Wars have been started locally about BBQ.  Entire generations of Carolinian soldiers have done battle over this subject for a hundred years.  There are actual laws in NC regarding BBQ and those 2 finishing sauces.  


Kale is disgusting in any form.


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## TNJAKE (May 1, 2022)

chilerelleno said:


> Boy I tell ya what, I could cause a ruckus here
> Now first off, down here folks laugh at them Yankees in Tennessee and Kentucky referring to themselves as Southerners.
> Y'all just too far North, period.
> Hell most Bayou and Cajun folks think anyone born North of I-10 are a bit blue blooded.
> ...


Woah now lol


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## DougE (May 1, 2022)

TNJAKE said:


> Woah now lol


I believe I'd rather been called a SOB lol


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## Fueling Around (May 1, 2022)

chilerelleno said:


> One thing that gets me going is Yankees thinking Kale is an eating green.
> Kale is an ornamental plant, it's not for eating, end of story.


This Yankee has never considered Kale as an edible green. It is bitter as whatever same as I consider greens.  Taste is not only a regional thing, but also what you market to the masses (idiots)


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## Steve H (May 2, 2022)

Count Porcula said:


> I don't know if I could ever get him to eat shucky beans, a dish almost no one outside Appalachia has even heard of.


Leather britches you say? My aunt used to make them. And your beans with bacon isn't cooked long enough!
	

		
			
		

		
	







My favorite way of doing them.  And if someone passes me a bowl of just wilted greens. Then I'll pass them back. Though. I must say. I do like them with a splash of spicy vinegar though.


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## GonnaSmoke (May 2, 2022)

Count Porcula said:


> I'm wondering if anyone else here has had problems trying to get Northerners to eat vegetables prepared correctly.


I think mostly it's what a person grows up eating, what they know and have been taught.

On a different note, for us fatback is heavily salted pork fat, with the skin on, from the top of the loin or back and has no lean meat in it. There was a time when I could buy it from a grocer and it would be 3"-4" thick, not anymore. Heavily salted pork fat with lean meat streaks in it was what we referred to as streak-o-lean or streaky fat and comes from the side or belly area. Looks similar to bacon, just not smoked, and usually has the skin left on.



Hijack73 said:


> The best catfish is flathead.


And not to derail, but I absolutely agree with this...


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## yankee2bbq (May 2, 2022)

Damn Yankees

But, they have a purdy mouth…


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## Count Porcula (May 2, 2022)

> Yankees in Tennessee and Kentucky



Until today, no one ever told me Jefferson Davis and Loretta Lynn were Yankees! And Duane Allman and Carl Perkins! Wow!

My great-grandfather fought for the South. He may have been confused.

I intentionally avoided using the Y-word in my original post, but it looks like the internal pressure got to be too much for someone.


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## zwiller (May 2, 2022)

chilerelleno said:


> Boy I tell ya what, I could cause a ruckus here
> Now first off, down here folks laugh at them Yankees in Tennessee and Kentucky referring to themselves as Southerners.



I thought the same thing.  LOL.  

BTW thanks for the idea!  Jelly on corn bread.  Might make the stuff edible LOL.  When you Southerner's call it sweet tea YOU AIN'T JOKING!!!


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## Count Porcula (May 2, 2022)

Don't lump me in with the sweet tea people. Tea with sugar is fine. "Sweet tea" is like pancake syrup, and it generally comes from a factory.


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## Plinsc (Jul 7, 2022)

Grew up in the North, moved to Morehead Ky for a couple years but still had to shovel snow, so on further south it was! 
 I can eat mushy or steamed vegetables, pretty much whatever I feel like that day. 
 I’m always learning how to properly cook the regional food, when in Rome…
   But jelly? Cmon now


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## SherryT (Jan 1, 2023)

Count Porcula said:


> My problem is that my friend thinks cornbread is supposed to be sweet, which is a sinful and degenerate point of view, so when I make cornbread, he takes a squeeze bottle of grape jelly and unloads on it. I can't even get him to use Oberholtzer's sorghum, which is the only sweet thing that should go near cornbread. He thinks I'm crazy for wanting to dip buttered cornbread in the juice from beans and greens.
> 
> I think mental illness is involved.



I know this was posted back in April, but I simply CANNOT stop laughing!

(The Count is right, by the way!  )


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## Buttah Butts (Jan 2, 2023)

I think it depends on where you were raised and the traditions and culture of your surroundings. Taste is subjective and what’s wonderful for one person may be disgusting to another. I grew up in New England to Portuguese immigrants. I remember friends coming over as a kid and being shocked that my mother was serving either octopus or say blood pudding. I moved to NC about 8 years ago and some of the food here isn’t my thing like vinegar bbq or say hush puppies.


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## SherryT (Jan 2, 2023)

Buttah Butts said:


> I think it depends on where you were raised and the traditions and culture of your surroundings. Taste is subjective and what’s wonderful for one person may be disgusting to another. I grew up in New England to Portuguese immigrants. I remember friends coming over as a kid and being shocked that my mother was serving either octopus or say blood pudding. I moved to NC about 8 years ago and some of the food here isn’t my thing like vinegar bbq or say hush puppies.



Oh I agree completely!

The Great Cornbread Divide...mostly sweet up north, mostly savory in the south...now add to that whether it should be made with white cornmeal or yellow cornmeal and you can quickly find yourself in a lively debate!

His "tone" was what had me laughing!

Culture and tradition DO play a huge role in what foods we like and can be VERY location-specific. Example, until "the internet", I'd never met ANYONE that wasn't from the southern border of TN going east and up into parts of Appalachia that had even HEARD of "biscuits and chocolate gravy", but it was basically a staple where I'm from.

Another example is grits! White or yellow? Sweet or savory? Instant or regular? In my HUMBLE opinion, nothing sweet should EVER come in contact with a perfectly-good bowl of slow-cooked, coarse stone-ground grits.

And don't even get me started on "fish & grits" or "shrimp & grits"! Heresy...pure, unadulterated heresy (in my humble opinion!), but it's a common, very popular dish in southern coastal regions. I'd never even HEARD of such a thing until I was in my early 40s and I'm only about 200 - 250-ish miles inland from the Gulf/Atlantic.

And then there's pizza...


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## halleoneagain (Jan 2, 2023)

SherryT said:


> "biscuits and chocolate gravy"


I've never had biscuits and gravy of any sort (Northerner) although I swear I'm going to someday.  Chocolate gravy, is that really chocolate, or just how it looks?

PS:  slow-cooked, stone ground yellow grits for me, but I call it polenta.


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## TNJAKE (Jan 2, 2023)

halleoneagain said:


> I've never had biscuits and gravy of any sort (Northerner) although I swear I'm going to someday.  Chocolate gravy, is that really chocolate, or just how it looks?
> 
> PS:  slow-cooked, stone ground yellow grits for me, but I call it polenta.


Grew up on chocolate gravy and biscuits. Wife still makes it. It's actually thinned out chocolate


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## SherryT (Jan 2, 2023)

halleoneagain said:


> I've never had biscuits and gravy of any sort (Northerner) although I swear I'm going to someday.  Chocolate gravy, is that really chocolate, or just how it looks?
> 
> PS:  slow-cooked, stone ground yellow grits for me, but I call it polenta.



It's made with Hershey's cocoa (regular, not dark or dutch-process), sugar (not much...just enough to knock off the bitterness of the cocoa), salt, butter, a little AP flour to thicken, and milk (not H&H or cream).

Most of the recipes I see online are WAY too sweet (it's not pudding) or WAY too thick (it's not pudding) or WAY too "rich" due to using H&H or cream (again, not pudding).

It's a somewhat thin, SLIGHTLY sweet gravy and is served hot over hot biscuits. Once it cools, you can toss it (doesn't re-heat well in my opinion), so you generally make only as much as you think you need for that meal.

Which brings us right back to the regional-thing...let's call it "micro-regional".


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## halleoneagain (Jan 2, 2023)

I think I'll pass on the chocolate gravy thing, at least until I've tried just plain biscuits and gravy.  I first heard of biscuits with gravy from a dear friend who grew up in the South (can't remember where just now, but as soon as I post this, I'll remember).  In reference to the North vs the South, she always said "we aren't done yet"!


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## Count Porcula (Jan 2, 2023)

Sicilian pizza is Godzilla. Thin pizza is Japan.


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## normanaj (Jan 2, 2023)

The idea that one regions' version of a particular recipe is the right or better way of doing it is subjective at best.

Here in RI we make/eat jonny cakes which is a cornmeal based "cake".I've had them down south sometimes called hoe cakes but they're really nothing more than a different stye that resembles a basic pancake more than an actual jonny cake.

The funny thing is jonny cakes/cornbread originated up north in the New England area.Every region of the world adapts recipes from another region and make them they're own because of local tastes,available ingredients etc.


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## Buttah Butts (Jan 3, 2023)

normanaj said:


> The idea that one regions' version of a particular recipe is the right or better way of doing it is subjective at best.
> 
> Here in RI we make/eat jonny cakes which is a cornmeal based "cake".I've had them down south sometimes called hoe cakes but they're really nothing more than a different stye that resembles a basic pancake more than an actual jonny cake.
> 
> The funny thing is jonny cakes/cornbread originated up north in the New England area.Every region of the world adapts recipes from another region and make them they're own because of local tastes,available ingredients etc.


Johnny cakes and Coney Island wieners are usually some of the first things I get when I go back home to RI along with coffee milk, chow mein, fish n chips, chourico I could go on and on. I really do live in a culinary desert here in NC. I sure do miss food back home in RI


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## 6GRILLZNTN (Jan 3, 2023)

Oh man.  Biscuits and sausage gravy is the BOMB.  Chocolate gravy is right next to it.  Man I love that stuff.  I made chocolate gravy for my friends a while back, and they kinda turned up their nose when I was making it.  I don't think I've ever stirred so much in my life.  They tried it, and fell in love.  Another quick and easy cornbread alternative is Jiffy Muffins.  If I'm feeling lazy, I'll grab a can of Pinto Beans, and whip up some Jiffy Muffins.   Yum!


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