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Food in Alabama

More than soul food in Alalbama. It is local livestock, local vegetables and local fish.

Alabama foods

Poultry, beef cattle, and hogs are raised in Alabama producing also eggs and milk. Although not livestock, bees are raised for their honey and wax. Farmers grow peanuts, soy beans, wheat, oats, pecans, sweet potatoes and other vegetables. There is catfish and the boats fishing in the Gulf of Mexico bring in red snapper, flounder, shrimp, and crabs.

Alabama's traditional food and drink includes plenty of barbecue pork and beef. Chicken is a relatively new addition to the BBQ menu, although main courses include plenty of fried chicken. Other mains could be hot dogs, corn dogs, hickory smoked ribs, deep fried catfish, country fried steak, and chitlings or chitterlings. On the side serve okra, collard greens, black eyed peas, green beans, corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, corn bread, red-eye gravy, thickening gravy, and such. Wash it with buffalo Rock ginger ale or Grapico soft drink. For dessert, choose pecan pie, pudding, or peach cobbler.

Breakfast in Alabama leans more towards bacon, sausage patties, ham, hash browns, biscuits with more gravy, and grits, with Golden Eagle table syrup.

Fried pies are a delicious dessert. Fried pies are made by filling pie dough with peaches, or peach butter, folding them in a half moon shape and then frying them in fat.

…and food events

National Shrimp Festival, Gulf Shores, October.

Alabama is associated with cotton plantations, but it is not the first cotton producer in USA. George W. Carver was a botanist who did much research about peanuts and sweet potatoes as alternative crops to cotton at Tuskegee Institute, which has become Tuskegee University, Alabama.

Alabama
The Heart of Dixie
Capital: Montgomery
State bird: Yellow-sotted Flicker
State insect: Monarch butterfly
State tree: Southern Pine
State Flower: Camelia

 

The sweet potato has had other names in the past, including Indian potato, long potato, and tuckahoe. Native Americans used sweet potatoes and they taught settlers how to grow and use the vegetable.

Recipes from Alabama

Sweet potato biscuits.

Red-eye gravy is a sauce made mixing black coffee with the pan drippings from frying country ham.


Hot dogs and barbecue rule in Birmingham, Alabama with barbecue restaurants and hot dog stands virtually everywhere.