Soul Food

Cook the collards until they completely surrender themselves to the rich, spicy, lip-smacking braising liquid. This recipe is from Buxton Hall, one of the Hot 10, America's Best New Restaurants 2016.

If it's wrong to put American cheese in your Southern mac and cheese recipe, we don't want to be right.

These light, gluten-free salmon patties are perfect as an appetizer, weeknight dinner, or even breakfast—you can also use them to make salmon burgers.

Rich, hearty black-eyed peas simmered in coconut milk get a boost of spice from habanero pepper and curry powder.

Doubling down on proteins in recipes shows sophistication and speaks to a hallmark of Soul cuisine—utilizing the entire animal. Chicken hearts are an underutilized part of the chicken. They provide an earthiness to dishes that allows fattier, delectable morsels of food to stand tall. You can find this same quality in mushrooms, but I think hearts are a fun way to explore new techniques.

Want deviled eggs, but don't want to *make* deviled eggs? This rich and flavorful spread uses the same base ingredients—boiled egg yolks, mayo, and Dijon mustard—for a smooth spread that's perfect for slathering onto toast.

Smoked oysters are succulent and salty with a creamy texture that pairs beautifully with bright, acidic flavors. The egg spread provides another layer of richness. These may seem like disparate components of a menu, but each one brings something to the meal in terms of flavor, texture, aroma, and appearance to create a memorable experience.

Every Soul and Southern kitchen has a good all-purpose seasoned flour to use for frying. This will keep for months in a cool, dry place or even longer in the freezer.

In this recipe, the cooked collard greens get finely chopped and folded into the waffle batter for a savory surprise.

I love to cook with ingredients that might otherwise be discarded, like fish collars. If you’re tempted to treat them as scraps, please don’t throw them away or use them merely for a stock. They’re delicious as the main focus of a dish—think of them as the spareribs of the sea. Here, croaker collars are marinated in citrus, chipotle, ginger, and fish sauce, and served with a mango salad full of funk, spice, and crunch.

These creamy black-eyed pea patties are flavored with mushroom, miso, tamari, and Scotch bonnet chiles. They’re finished off with a sweet-and-tangy barbecue sauce and a spoonful of chowchow.

Down South, we call this a sitting salad. It can sit on the summer picnic table without wilting, so it’s the perfect potluck dish.

These fried green tomatoes from Nicole A. Taylor are the star of her Juneteenth menu.

Keep the fat rendered from good bacon in a crock in your fridge. It’ll make this the tastiest cornbread you’ve ever had.

Our fried chicken thighs begin with a brown-sugar brine, make a pit stop in buttermilk marinade, and end their journey garnished with honey and sea salt.

Complete your Super Bowl snacking lineup with this addictive five-cheese version of the classic Southern spread.

Turn your favorite ribs into the ultimate barbecue dinner with this all-purpose recipe.

These zesty chicken fingers get their flavor from a tangy buttermilk marinade and a breading spiked with smoked paprika.

An overnight soak in buttermilk and a few key spices makes for the most flavorful, tender fried chicken.

You can’t pick them up with your fingers or gnaw the bones, but country-style boneless “ribs” make nice pork barbecue. We like this hot-covered-pot-in-the-oven method to speed things up without sacrificing taste or tenderness. Moisture and smoke are trapped inside and the pork’s fat keeps the meat from drying out. If you’re among the 20 percent of households without a slow cooker, this is for you.

My daddy loved boiled okra, but it’s too slimy for me. Fried okra, on the other hand, is great with everything!

I make this with our home-canned green beans, but canned green beans from your grocery store cook down nicely with a little help from a ham hock. The recipe says to cook these for 30 minutes. I would really say just to cook them to death, but 30 minutes sounds sweeter.

I could live on collard greens and corn bread! I like collard greens better than turnip greens because I think collards are sweeter. When I make my corn bread and greens bowl (crumbled-up buttermilk corn bread covered with collard greens and a little juice), I add a little hot pepper just for fun. In the South, collard juice, or the cooking liquid that accumulates, is often called pot likker. My daddy always planted a big collard patch every spring, not only for the family but also to share with friends. Through the years, friends knew the patch was just out back of the barn and they were free to drive in and help themselves.