How to Decipher Soul Food Menus
Another name for Southern or African American dishes, soul food has a distinctive history and flavor--and some unusual monikers for certain recipes. When you sit down to your first soul food meal in a restaurant, the menu will contain unfamiliar terms. Here's a beginner's guide that'll help you decipher a soul food menu. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Learn that greens are exactly that--green veggies like collard greens and mustard greens. These loose, leafy vegetables grow primarily in the southern United States and Brazil. They're similar to spinach and are often combined in "poke" salad.
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Discover the names for various meats on the soul food menu. Hog intestines, known as chitterlings or "chitlins," can be prepared battered and fried. Pigs feet are cooked in a similar fashion and eaten with vinegar and hot sauce. Battered and fried chicken livers and gizzards appear on many soul food menus.
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Understand that some meat flavorings season vegetables and main dishes. Ham hocks, from the bottom-end of a smoked ham, flavor vegetables and soups. The salty pork called "fatback," derived from the fat layer on a pig's back, also seasons meat dishes and black-eyed peas. "Cracklins," or pork rind (made from pig skin), can be served hot or cold or mixed in cornbread.
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Sample okra, a slightly sticky, green vegetable used in stews, soups and bread. Cut and boiled sweet potatoes, also referred to as candied yams, make sweet potato pies, a staple dessert on a soul food menu.
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Eat different breads on the soul food menu. These include deep-fried cornmeal batter called hush puppies, johnnycakes (pancakes made from cornmeal) and cornbread, derived from Native American maize recipes.
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