A Traditional Appalachian Meal and How to Make Fried Corn

I'm about to make a traditional summertime Appalachian supper I thought that you might want to join me because I'm going to make fried corn and you might want to see how that's done it's really easy I'll go ahead and tell you that I'm going to read you a little bit before we get started I already have some fat back you can hear it frying over there frying so I've already kind of got started but I'm going to read to you from Smokehouse ham spoon bread and scooping on wine by Joseph E Dabney it's about fried corn fried corn that's the best declared Ernest Parker mother used just enough grease to season that fresh corn that and a little salt and pepper Nanny Taylor Jones who lived to be 103 years old and had a gorgeous lifetime view of Paris Mountain South Carolina was famed for her fried corn it was the country butter she put in it that's what made it so good said her daughter lib Dabney my sister-in-law and a superb cook in her own right for fried or creamed corn mountain people insist on white corn North Carolina's Beth Tartan quoted her chemistry professor the late Charles Higgins as saying yellow corn was good only for horses in my experience there are two key elements necessary to produce in a delicious dish of fried corn first make sure you buy a superior sweet corn variety such as the traditional Silver Queen or the new super sweet varieties second and almost as important use Precision when milking the ears of corn if you use a corn cutter try to slice off only the tips of the grains then use a sharp table knife to scrape the milk into your bowl a better way is to use a sharp knife to slice open the corn tips lengthwise on each row called cream style cutting then use a spoon or the back of a knife to scrape out the corn milk so the corn I'm going to be using tonight is fresh just pick this morning corn and it is Silver Queen that's our favorite unfortunately we don't have a place to grow corn these days since Pat passed away we really don't have a place but this corn was grown just down the road from me and it's it's we've been eating it all summer the farmer that plants it he plants it in succession so that corn comes in about three or four times during the summer and it is really good so first I'm going to show you how to cut the corn off the cob for fried corn so before I show you the corn right quick I'm gonna finish my crackling cornbread my Pan's really hot so I can put it back in the oven so I've got my cornmeal in and I'm just going to mix in my buttermilk and then I'm going to mix in my cracked ones make sure to get them all out some of them are stuck in the corners that's that lovely sound you like to hear when you put cornbread in making a mess okay let me pop that in the oven and then I'll show you how to do the corn ER so a knife a sharp knife works great just like Joseph Dabney was saying I bought this I don't know years ago from someone when I was still working at the college that was selling one of my friends that was selling a Pampered Chef things and it's so that's where it come from and it works really well it just kind of uh slices it off for y'all at once so I use it to get the corn off you could use a knife and there's all kinds of corn graters and different things in the old days they kind of handmade them out of metal [Music] so I scrape off corn whoops and then just like he was describing I go back with a spoon and kind of scrape to get the rest of the milk that he was calling it's kind of like what you would do for cream corn as well I've left some corn on the ends there you can see but what I do with the corn cobs is feed them to my chicken so I if I don't get every little kernel I figure that they they get a special treat that day [Music] I use this too this little tool I'm one of those people I love roasting ears like I said boiled corn it's probably my favorite way to eat corn but I don't like to eat it off the cob so we boil it man it just eats his like you know holding the cob up and eating it and I've always get mine off like this and eat it like that I think it's back from the days I had braces when I was young and I think it's something I just during that time I couldn't eat it like that and somehow I got used to eating it not just directly by chewing on the cob anyway it's just personal preference see how fresh and juicy and milky this is like I said it was just picked this morning really pretty full ears too this fried corn is so easy to make that you could uh I mean so it's easy like if you just if you're just one person living at home just do one ear or two ears or whatever you know whatever how many you you think you would eat but uh because it's just so easy to do it's you don't have to have a real recipe as far as if you want to do it for a crowd you just you just cut off a whole lot of corn and have a big pan or if you just want to do it for one or two people you could just do a smaller amount yeah we'll go back and get those doing corn is messy though as you can see it's splattering I see some splatter over there okay now we're ready for the next part so you can see I have my fat back back here it's getting Brown fat back or streaking meat we call it kind of interchangeably both it's what it is is it's salt pork so it's very salty so one way you could fry corn is you could definitely use some of this grease from this and fry it in that you could use bacon grease which is typically what I do or butter or maybe a combination of both you might do butter and a little bit of bacon grease or fat back grease either one [Music] sometimes when you're cooking fat back they it has a tendency to curl up on you sometimes more than others so when that happens I like to I use another smaller I love to cook cast irons really all I cook in I mean unless I'm doing a sauce or something so I might set a smaller cast iron on top of this for like a press so that it really presses it in there and helps it get crispy and done so I think I'll do that I'm gonna get one foreign just help it hurry along back here in the back I have some about to let them burn too I need to cut them down oh I just have some soup beans it was actually some I had in the freezer that we had made if when we make soup beans if we don't eat them all I pop them into smaller sizes in the freezer and that way like today when I was like what can I do for supper well I really want to have cornbread or crackling bread but I didn't have time I didn't think ahead and make a pot of beans so I'm just glad I had those in the freezer and it's only me and Matt eating together tonight so that's plenty for both of us along with all this other food I'm also having another delicacy of summer is fried squash so I've got my fried squash ready I'll do the corn after I start the squash just it does really quickly the corn does now as far as the doneness of the Corn again that's kind of personal preference but to me no more than like eight or ten minutes is as long as you need to to cook it for us anyway that's what we like add me a little water to my beans so to fry my corn I'm going to use some bacon grease a little bit of bacon grease [Music] and then to that I'm going to add just a little bit of butter foreign [Music] [Music] foreign foreign 's heated up a little bit and the butter and the bacon grease have come to heat and kind of melded together we're going to add the corn and as far as seasoning it you just need to season it your personal preference there are people who put sugar on it I don't think it I don't think it needs it it's just so sweet anyway if you if you don't have really milky or uh foreign if you wanted to you could add a little bit of water you can do that you could add a little bit of sugar but like I said I don't really think it needs to to have any and then of course Salt and Pepper to taste or whatever else you want to put on anything you want to foreign you come along with me to cook reminds me of if you ever watched Hee Haw you'll remember Grandpa's what's for supper Grandpa at the window and then he would lean out the wind and tell them and it always sounded great always sounded wonderful so you can see how it's beginning to stick a little bit so I might add just a touch of hot water to it not much though just a little kind of help it steam along let's see I don't think I ever added salt and pepper did I I better pay attention to what I'm doing foreign foreign getting some color to it that one's done so streaking meat or fat pork I think it's I don't know if it's an acquired taste but it's just that some people really like it and then some people don't so you may just have to try on that one and see see what you think if you like it or if you don't we love it I guess the Corn's been cooking about six minutes six or seven minutes but I think I'm gonna call it done it just looks so good and fresh and good going to turn the heat off of it I think our squash is about all done too so since I do love to cook and cast iron a lot of people ask me how to clean them like on this one really there was nothing really stuck down those are just loose little pieces there so I could I'll just wipe that out discard the grease and then wipe that out and it will be good if like this one we'll probably have pieces stuck so I'll pour some water in it and I'll boil the water and as I do that it'll boil up the pieces and then once I discard that I will like rub some we haven't like a rag that we just keep kind of it's an oil rag we keep it in a Cool Whip container so that we just always use the same one once it's clean I will rub the inside of it it's kind of it's not really re-seasoning it it's just putting another layer of oil on it foreign [Music] add a little bit more water just to keep it from scorching while I wait on the cornbread that's all we're waiting on now and for me to slice up a tomato Es are the other wonderful thing that accompanies all Appalachian at my house anyway suppers and breakfasts to really breakfast and supper and dinner sometimes so there's just nothing as good as a fresh tomato so I've got the cornbread out I'm gonna slice this tomato and I think I'm about ready to call Matt to come eat come on foreign feast so I hope you enjoyed cooking supper with me I especially hope that you enjoyed the fried corn do you have memories about fried corn was that something that you eat when you were growing up or maybe you eat today I have a wonderful memory about fried corn when I was in fifth grade my mama Marie died so I was pretty young Pat was Pat's mother my father's mother but when prior to that prior to when I was in school she was my babysitter she kept me for granny and Pap so I can remember being in her little kitchen in her little house is no longer there anymore and she would let me stand in a chair next to the stove as she cooked and I can remember her frying corn and then let me have some of it that's just one of my most precious memories so I hope that you'll share your memories with me and I hope that you'll continue to drop back by often as we celebrate Appalachia including Appalachian food ways foreign

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 1,311,204

Keywords: what traditional Appalachia Food is, Food that is eaten in Appalachia, What is traditional Appalachian Food, Comfort food in Appalachi, What is Appalachian cooking, Appalachian Recipes, Appalachian food staples, Traditional Mountain Food, Fried Corn, Southern Fried corn, Fried corn in Appalachia, Fried Corn recipe, how to make fried corn, pan fried corn, creamy fried corn, Appalachian Foodways, Appalachia, A traditional Appalachian Meal, meal commonly eaten in Appalachia

Id: -2dnqHTEi60

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021