2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. Illustrations by Stephen Crotts

Ann Jackson combines all the hominess of Southern cuisine with a dose of healthful eating in recipes that are vegetarian versions of standard favorites. Included are the sumptuous vegetable and fruit dishes and baked goods that have traditionally graced Southern tables. and tucked in between are remembrances of life in the South that will take you back to a time and place where the pace is slow and friendly, close to the earth, and full of good food.

More than thirteen hundred individual recipes, as well as suggested menus for various occasions and holidays, are collected in a new edition of this classic cookbook, first published in 1928, that is the starting place for anyone in search of authentic dishes done in the traditional style.

A definitive guide to Southern cooking and hospitality with 300 recipes, a two-color interior with nearly 100 instructional illustrations, an extensive appendix, sixteen pages of gorgeous color photography, and plenty of tips, stories, and Southern history throughout. Hi, y’all! This book is my proudest achievement so far, and I just have to tell y’all why I am so excited about it. It’s a book of classic dishes, dedicated to a whole new generation of cooks—for every bride, graduate, and anyone who has a love of a great Southern meal. My family is growing and expanding all the time. We’re blessed with marriages and grandbabies, and so sharing these recipes for honest, down-home dishes feels like passing a generation’s worth of stovetop secrets on to my family, and yours. I’ve been cooking and eating Southern food my whole life, and I can tell you that every meal you make from this book will be a mouthful of our one-of-akind spirit and traditions. These recipes showcase the diversity and ingenuity of Southern cuisine, from Cajun to Low-Country and beyond, highlighting the deep cultural richness of our gumbos and collards, our barbecues and pies. You may remember a few beloved classics from The Lady & Sons, but nearly all of these recipes are brand-new—and I think you’ll find that they are all mouthwateringly delicious. It is, without a doubt, a true Southern cooking bible. I sincerely hope that this book will take its place in your kitchen for many years to come, as I know it will in mine. Here’s to happy cooking—and the best part, happy eating, y’all! Best dishes, Paula Deen

A collection of 60 soulful, comforting, and wonderfully convenient recipes for Southern favorites--from Black Eyed Peas with Stewed Tomatoes to Country-Style Pork Ribs and Molasses Gingerbread. Cooking delicious, soul-warming Southern food that the whole family will love has never been easier! Whether it's a big pot of black-eyed peas, fall-apart tender pulled pork, or creamy apple butter, the greatest Southern dishes have one thing in common: they taste best when they're cooked low and slow. With more than sixty recipes for down-home favorites, ranging from Chicken and Cornmeal Dumplings to Buffalo Stout Beer Chili to Brown Beans and Fatback, The Southern Slow Cooker is packed with real Southern flavor. Author Kendra Bailey Morris presents regional classics from all over the South: church potlucks, Cajun and Creole traditions in the bayou, even her West Virginia granny's old recipe book. Morris carefully tested and adapted each recipe for the home kitchen, and the result is a treasure for busy home cooks everywhere. With hardly any active cooking time and featuring affordable ingredients, every dish is simple, convenient, and downright delicious. All of these satisfying, flavor-packed, and wonderfully simple recipes allow you to make the food you love in the time you have available--and will have you and your family begging for seconds.

Baking is near and dear to Paula Deen's heart, and you will feel the love she puts into each of these delicious Southern recipes in this cookbook. Paula Deen's Southern Baking is the ultimate collection of her favorite cakes, pies, sweet and savory breads, cookies, cobblers, and so much more. Whether you're baking a festive birthday cake, holiday treat, the perfect potluck dish, pastries for breakfast, rolls for dinner, or anything in between, your friends and family are sure to love them all. From crispy-bottomed cornbread baked in a cast iron skillet and tall, flaky buttermilk biscuits to fluffy meringue-topped banana pudding and carrot cake swirled with cream cheese frosting, with these tried-and-true recipes are fit for any occasion.

This spellbinding cookbook from the heart of the Mississippi Delta collects a fine black cook's recipes from a hard-scrabble heritage. It recounts rituals of surviving and enduring while rejoicing in the family ties that bind and in the magic of creating hearty meals from make-do ingredients. The foods described by Kathy Starr rise out of the common experiences of Deep South blacks, who established a distinct kind of cooking. Its "soul," the author confides, comes from the art of simmering. Its heritage is preserved here in a fascinating collection of recipes that capture the essence of black foodways in the American South. Book jacket.