Southern Food

I finally had my first encounter with real southern cuisine.

My company had a catered southern Thanksgiving Day lunch. All week leading up to it I keep hearing people talk about how amazing the caterer's "dressing" is. I had no clue what dressing was, and I had to ask someone. It's stuffing, but instead of being made with white bread, it's made with cornbread (and includes lots of other things, like: celery, butter, slightly beaten eggs, butter, bell peppers, butter, etc.).

As you can imagine, it has a pretty thick and gewy consistency. After all the build up to the dressing, I thought it tasted pretty bland -- there's nothing in it to give it any flavor. But everyone else raved about it, and it was the first thing that the caterer ran out of. Other items on the menu included cooked string beans that were covered in a sweet but bland sauce. And there was mac and cheese, which I detest. So I pretty much only ate the turkey, which was quite good.

Now you're all going to find this much more interesting:

Apparently down here in Alabama, most people deep fry their turkey instead of roast it.

At lunch today two of my co-workers walked me through how to deep fry a turkey; this website has good in-depth directions, but in short, this is how it's done:

1. Buy an outdoor turkey fryer, protective gloves, and a long sleeve shirt.

I stress "outdoor" because deep frying a turkey is quite messy. Many people do it on their driveway so that they can hose everything down afterwards.

2. Inject the marinade into the turkey.

3. Drop the turkey into the deep fryer for 30 minutes to an hour.

One of the main reasons this is so popular is that the cook time is typically under an hour, where as roasting a turkey is an all day affair.

I'm of course going to have to try deep fried turkey, and I'll spend the next few days hunting for a restaurant that makes it.