A Traditional Appalachian Meal and How to Make Fried Corn

I'm Afro American and grew up on a small vegetable and hog farm in North Florida and it is amazing how similar our meals were to what you grew up on and what you cook. I mean incredibly near identical. Altho we call yellow corn field corn and white corn sweet corn...we fry them both in sweet butter and only add salt to yellow corn. It is a joy to watch you cook and an inspiration because I'm inspired to wash my dishes so I can go throw down in my own kitchen! It just goes to show that people are people and we are, a lot of us, very similar.

That looks like some fine eating. I remember growing up as a kid in the mountains and all I wanted was a hamburger from McDonalds, and we were eating like Kings from the garden. Too young to know how good I had it.

Hello I'm an African American woman from Colorado. However after watching your show, I've discovered I'm really from Appalachia. 😊 All the food you cook is the same food my mother and father cooked. Not only is the food the same, the way you cook it is the same. I have truly enjoyed watching you today. I can't wait to share your channel with my mother. Thank you

Last night we had family over, and one person had never eaten true Southern food. In all, there were 11 of us. I cooked a whole covered dish supper for them. Cornbread, baked macaroni and cheese, turnip greens, green beans, pan-fried okra, blackeyed peas, deviled eggs, tea, Cheerwine, fried chicken, biscuits. There's nothing I like better than cooking for a crowd of people.

I was lucky to have a true "hillbilly" mother from outside Owenton, Kentucky. Some of my family had outhouses, smokehouses, etc. My mother grew up in the 40s with no refrigerator, and they put lunch meat wrapped in wax paper in a bucket, in the well. My mother's family lived on the same land that they were granted after coming to America from Northern Ireland in the 1740s-ish. They farmed tobacco, and whatever they could grow. My Grandad raised hogs. A true country ham, from my uncle Leo and aunt Geneva's smokehouse was beyond great. Homemade biscuits and sausage gravy was Sunday breakfast. My older cousins made moonshine, which maid them decent money. Proud of my Appalachian and Scots-Irish roots.

I’m watching this with tears in my eyes. If I could go back just for one supper at my grandparents and sit down at their table. Especially during the summer. Sliced tomatoes. Fried okra and squash. Pinto beans. My imagination and memories just go haywire thinking about it. Cornbread. Corn on the cob or cream style. Sliced cucumbers in Italian dressing with sliced onions. There’s not a day that goes by that these thoughts cross my mind and a tear rolls down one of my cheeks. We weren’t well off by no means and we lived on a gravel road on a rural route but I would’ve never known it until now.

This is definitely the food I grew up on in rural country Georgia . One time I was cooking some black eyed peas and collard greens and cornbread and my dear friend Wade who grew up in Detroit asked me “What you know about collard greens!?” I told him I knew! What he called soul food was what all of us Southern girls grew up on and still cook. It’s the best.

Love from an old Englishman who lived in Va for ten-years. Those mystical mountains and the fabulous taste of that simple food, such memories! Thank you.

Man I miss sharing meals like this with my parents and grandparents. Some people think that all that grease and butter isn’t healthy, but country cooking is usually about the vegetables and not the meat. Just a strip or two of meat and pile the plate with vegetables from your garden, grandpa’s garden meemaw’s garden and the neighbor.

18:16 You said it. Most people in cities have no idea what a good sun-ripened tomato tastes like. The artificially ripened tomato's they sell in grocery stores have ZERO flavor.

I’ve gone back to cooking and eating like this the last few months and have actually lost a little weight. Notice how well balanced the meal is. And food prepared like this is very satisfying and filling, so you tend not to overeat or find yourself looking for snacks between meals. Great tutorial.

I'm originally from Michigan, and I went to Appalachia and wound up helping poor people fix up their houses. They said I have Forever Friends there and I plan on going back in 2023 sometime. Holiday Blessings to you dear Lady!! 🙏

Matt is a blessed man he is eating like a king. I would have cut some raw onion up on those beans and cornbread.

Matt……… I hope you realize how lucky of a man you are. When you’re lovely wife cooks like this when “it’s just the two of us eating tonight”, you are truly BLESSED.

my 84 year old mother still cooks just like this. So good!!

My grandmother made the greatest fried corn in history! When I was about 12, I started spending the summer with my grandparents. To teach me hard work. After a long day in the tobacco fields, nothing was better than a big dinner with fried corn. One of my greatest childhood memories!

Always a tomato and an onion on the table, every meal. God Bless.

This takes me back to my mom cooking with all burners going and the house smelling like love and warmth 😊🥰

Fried corn, corn on the cob, cream corn were all my favorite memories of growing up under my mom and granny's cooking. AND silver queen corn was king at my dad's house. The only kind he planted, and he swore by it as the best. One year he planted about 40 acres of it, and let it turn to shell corn. We helped him shell it, then he took it to a Grist Mill in North Georgia and had it ground into cornmeal. We each [3 kids] got a 50 lb flour sack full of cornmeal for Christmas that year. If only I had a chance to re-live that experience.

I'm blessed beyond measure that this is the food my family raised me on. My Granny was from Eastern Kentucky and our roots go back to the Carolinas. Steeped in beautiful food traditions, I raised 3 kids on garden foods, we canned, made bread, our own butter, jams and my husband hunted. We gave them a much of my Appalachian and his East Texas upbringing as we could. Brings me wonderful memories.