Southern DU'ers: How true is my meal to your cuisine?

[Taverner]

Applewood Smoked Pork Tenderloins
Ranch style beans
Steamed Collard Greens

[yardwork]

1. I'm not a native southerner but I've lived here a long time....

and your meal sounds more Western than Southern to me.

Here in North Carolina, "barbecue" is pulled pork cooked in a pit and then marinated in vinegar and hot peppers. It doesn't taste smoky.

We don't have ranches here. Grean beans and lima beans (called butter beans) are cooked for a long time in water with salt pork for flavoring and lots of ground pepper and salt.

Same with collard greens. They are not steamed - they are cooked in a little salty peppery water with some pieces of bacon or salt pork. The broth that is poured off at the end is called pot likker and is the most delicious potion known to man.

Some cornbread, sliced tomatoes, and buttermilk would round out the above meal nicely.

[pagerbear]

5. YW, I'm comin' over!

[misanthrope]

23. Try...

...putting a little salt and pepper in there with your greens (but DO NOT use white pepper) a dash of balsamic vinegar and a hint of worcestershire.

Oh, and of course, the greens must be fresh, not frozen or from a can. That makes all the difference.

If you have a lot of pot liquor left over, you can try reducing it slowly until it will fit into about a 12oz container. Then freeze it and use it as a pot liquor base for the next batch you cook. keep doing this with the pot liquor as time goes on.

By the way, if you're feeling sick, normally downing some pot liquor will set you right. It's absolutely loaded with vitamin C and iron, among other stuff.

[Eye and Monkey]

2. How'd you cook the tenderloin, what did you put in the beans?

[Taverner]

8. Well I cooked it this way

Slow cooked the pork tenderloin over applewood chips and smoked for about 2 hours.

The beans are more Tejano than anything - I'll admit.

But the collard greens - you mean you don't steam those? Have I been cooking these wrong all this time?

[Eye and Monkey]

15. You know, there's ALOT of variations here in Louisiana.

For instance, collards come in steamed, boiled, and several versions of "greasy greens". I prefer "greasy" - sauteed or braised for a short few minutes in a spatter of oil (or meat drippings are better), sliced onions (not chopped).

Beans - you have to put in other stuff, like onions, garlic, bell pepper. A bit of fatty meat, chunk of tasso. Plus at least a dash of hot sauce.

Tenderloin is pricey enough to be a treat for many folks. There's not too much applewood around here. Pecan, now that's a Louisiana smoking wood.

Laissez les bons temps rouler, y'all...

[GOPisEvil]

3. Very Texas!

Especially the ranch style beans.

Got cornbread?

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. Hmm?

Black eyed peas perhaps? Definitely cornbread. And don't forget the onions! Raw that is!

[pagerbear]

4. Well, lemme tell ya

...there are regional variations in Southern cooking. The U.S. South is a large place, after all!

Now, my mama never made any of that stuff for me. What the heck are ranch style beans, anyway? And my mama would have boiled those collard greens (with a bit of fatback or bacon for flavor) until they were all wilted and dark green and delicious! Mama told of having a smoke house on the NC tobacco farm where she grew up, but never once mentioned applewood smoked pork tenderloins. She can cook a mean pork roast, though! Yee-haw!

[DemoTex]

6. Not very true

Try:

Pork shoulder or Boston butt, slow cooked over hickory (with the appropriate rubs, mops, and sauces). Hint: Buy extra big bottles of cider vinegar, and lotsa black pepper and paprika.

Just a bowl of butter beans, please.

Collards cooked in chicken stock.

[jobycom]

7. Steamed? Ah, no no

Simmered. Saute onions in butter, mix in greens, lots of salt, then simmer for half an hour, longer if they are tough.

Ranch style beans and pork tenderloins? We were too poor. Pork chops, thin and greasy. Never ate ranch style beans til I moved to Texas. Lima beans are good.

Need rice, too, and some rolls.

And since I'm vegetarian now, I'd skip the pork chops, but that's a personal thing.

[Taverner]

9. On an off note, I can give ya a good way to make tofu smokers

Not all tofu actually...Mix Extra firm tofu, mushed black beans and a little parmesan cheese together and roll into patties. You can slow smoke these and they soak up all the flavor from smokin'.

[jobycom]

11. Never was much into smoked foods

In Biloxi we used to eat smoked mullet. Nasty stuff. Smoking wasn't usually part of our cuisine, though.

Blackened tofu, I've made that.

Thanks for the recipe, though.

[Taverner]

13. Smoked Mullets?

This does sound nasty :)

Does the original owner of the mullet have any say in these things?

[DemoTex]

16. On Guard! Smoked mullet is my favorite food.

Like my dad says, during the depression he could hitch-hike to Grayton Beach (Florida), camp there, and get a big smoked mullet for 20-cents and beer for a nickle a bottle. My mother and her sisters partied cheap at Grayton Beach at the end of WWII. They dined on smoked mullet too.

Now my radiologist brother owns a house at Grayton. Even with it's six-burner gourmet stove, we still sup on smoked mullet.

[jobycom]

21. Ichhh!

Nasty creatureses, smoked.

Good fried, though. Biloxi Bacon, we called it.

[leftofthedial]

10. man, if you had some fried okra

I'd be there in twenty minutes.

[jobycom]

12. Fried, stewed, sauteed, with tomatoes

Okra. Now you done gone and got me hungry. And homesick. Thanks.

[DemoTex]

17. Fresh okra with tomatoes

Stewed. That's what I had with my fried chicken and rice-and-thick-gravy tonight.

[leftofthedial]

20. damn! I'm jealous

ever since I woke up one morning in a Yankee Town, I haven't been eating right.

[leftofthedial]

19. glad to be of help!

:toast:

[chaska]

14. Well, I'm pretty doggone Southern, and...

The ONLY way I ever had porkchops was fried to within an inch of its life, "cause pork has worms or something you have to kill". Think shoe leather, tasty shoe leather.

Beans came two ways: pintos cooked from dried beans or more likely pork and beans from a can.

Greens were boiled and definitely with fatback. Fatback is omnipresent in poor folks Southern style cooking. And we were poor, as were most Southerners of my generation.

Oh, one other thing: Sunbeam (no other bread is authentic) white bread on the side, ALWAYS.

I'm from SC.

[jobycom]

22. Oh yeah, Sunbeam. Bought at the thrift store!

Nothing like day old Sunbeam white bread and dry pork chops, with ketchup. Hunts, of course (sorry, John).