The glory of the Southern breakfast

[Artichoke]

I spent Memorial day wekend at my girlfriend's parents house in Decatur, Alabama, my first trip to the state. Being from Manhattan, but loving Southern food, I have long been deprived.

My girlfriend's mother did not disapoint. Each morning she made scrambeled eggs, bacon, sausage patties, homemade buttermilk biscuts and gravy. Everything was cooked in her beautifuly seasond cast iron skillets (I counted about eight in her collection).

While I have had eggs, sausage patties and bacon many times before, there is a discernable difference when they are fresh out of a cast iron skillet, the bacon was crisp and the patties developed a nice crust without being overcooked.

The homemade biscuts and gravy were a first and is something I will truly miss. The biscuts, made with White Lilly flour and buttermilk were rolled out and cut with a glass and topped with a large pat of butter while they were still hot . Soft, warm, buttery, with the tang from the buttermilk, they were ethereal. Particularly when topped with the fantastic gravy made from mixing milk, flour, salt and pepper into the bacon dripings that remained in one of the cast iron skillets.

I also drank about a gallon of half and half, half ice tea and half lemonade, which I never had before and became addicted to.

Perhaps it was the warm Southern air, the view of magnolia blossoms or the laid back Southern attitude, but the breakfasts I had this past weekend in Alabama were the best I have ever had.

[Gifted Gourmet]

A lovely weekend repast to be sure!! Some questions for you now:

(1) Are you planning to try to replicate this type of meal in your home in the North?

(2) Will those grits and red-eye gravy taste the same out of their native habitat?

(3) Is this breakfast not the quintessential sign of gracious southern living or what????

(4) What can be used in the place of those ethereal biscuits until you return to this nirvana?

(5) Surprised that the South didn't win the Civil War with these type of morning meals???

I rather enjoyed my British Breakfasts in London, but that is another story for another morning!! Thanks for letting me "rib" you ... say, did you eat any barbecued ribs on this same trip??

[Lawen]

There truly is nothing better than a big southern breakfast. My girlfriend and I have gotten in the habit of making a massive breakfast every Sunday morning (actually, more like noon). She makes great biscuits, White Lilly flour and about eight pounds of butter, while I break out grandmama's hand-me-down cast iron skillet and fry eggs, bacon, sausage, and country ham, whip up some red eye gravy with the ham grease, and have a side pot of long-simmered stone ground grits going. Strong black coffee and fresh squeezed OJ wash everything down unless it was a rough night and a big pitcher of spicy bloody marys are needed.

Not exactly healthy but any damage done to my arteries is more than compensated for by the good it does my soul. Glad you got to enjoy a true deep south breakfast.

[Mabelline]

Heaven!! Thanx, youall!!

[Gifted Gourmet]

Heaven!! Thanx, youall!!

Wait just a minute here, Mabelline!! Aren't you living in Montana these days?? What do they eat there??

[Artichoke]

say, did you eat any barbecued ribs on this same trip??

I did not have any ribs but I did go to Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q in Decatur. There are two locations, I went to the original at 1715 6th Ave. Excellent BBQ sandwich and they also have a delicious white sauce for chicken. I also llike the coleslaw, no mayonaise, just sugar and vinegar.

[Mabelline]

Pancakes. Muffins. Toast. (Joke) We eat pretty Southern, but I had to get a vicarious thrill from all the descriptions, 'cuz I go to the doc in an hour. And it worked.

[Artichoke]

(1) Are you planning to try to replicate this type of meal in your home in the North?

(2) Will those grits and red-eye gravy taste the same out of their native habitat?

(3) Is this breakfast not the quintessential sign of gracious southern living or what????

(4) What can be used in the place of those ethereal biscuits until you return to this nirvana?

(5) Surprised that the South didn't win the Civil War with these type of morning meals???

1) I am going to try and replicate the biscuts. I am an avid cook, but I never bake.

2) The breakfast will definitely taste different outside of their native habitat, particularly when accompanied by the sound of garbage trucks and car alarms rather than breezes blowing through the magnolias.

3) My weekend was filled with examples of gracious southern living, but this was definitely tops. My girlfriends mother quickley hushed me when I suggested that she not go through all the trouble of making breakfast (this is the same woman who sleeps on the couch the night before Thanksgiving so she can awake every couple of hours to baste her turkey in the smoker)

4) There are no substitutes for the ethereal biscuts, I have had some at restaurants in Manhattan that fancy themselves Southern and they were as bad as attempts at BBQ up here.

5) Yes, I am surprised the South did not win, your food was a hell of a lot more worth fighting for.

[bleudauvergne]

Artichokes description of the biscuits brought back memories. Thanks.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Artichokes description of the biscuits brought back memories. Thanks.

Because you are originally from the South or because of your new diet??

(makes the possibly erroneous assumption that biscuits are now verboten on this diet)

[Dignan]

Artie,

I don't actually see grits on your list of delectables. Were none provided?

[Gifted Gourmet]

I don't actually see grits on your list of delectables.  Were none provided?

Wondering about that myself ... not authentic sans grits, you know ...

The mother of his girlfriend is already borderline compulsive-obsessive (about the turkey at Thanksgiving!!), how could she not have offered grits with the breakfast??

Boggles the (southern) mind .... which needs no boggling in this summer heat!

[Artichoke]

I don't actually see grits on your list of delectables. Were none provided?

Alas, no. I love grits, but my girlfriend's mother is not a grits type of woman (I was not aware that such types exist south of the Mason-Dixon line.

My last great grits experiance were the shrimp and grits I had at Jestine's Kitchen in Charleston, SC. in February. I am usualy skeptical of places that find there way onto to TV Food Network (it was featured on "Best Of" and $40 a day), but the food was great. The creamiest grits I have ever had topped with shrimp and a great tasting gravy.

[Gifted Gourmet]

My last great grits experiance were the shrimp and grits I had at Jestine's Kitchen in Charleston, SC. .....the food was great. The creamiest grits I have ever had topped with shrimp and a great tasting gravy.

Not Jestine's in Charleston for me as much as Hyman's Seafood there!!

Shrimp and grits from heaven!! Went back several times just to make sure I was in possession of this "nectar from the gods"!

Huge white South Carolina shrimp, soft creamy clouds of grits, and a divinely decadent brown gravy! Forgive me for waxing poetic but this stuff was the real thing for me!!

[andiesenji]

It does sound wonderful. Milk gravy over biscuits, especially when cooked in the pan where you get the little bits of sausage and/or bacon that have been left behind in the pan mixed into the gravy.

We used to get sausage gravy over biscuits as a late morning snack on Sundays when we would have an early breakfast and dinner in the afternoon instead of the evening because it was felt that growing children should not go that long without something of meal.

It was just sausage crumbled and fried, most of the fat drained off, then flour browned in the remaining fat with the sausage and fresh full cream milk (we had Jerseys) to make the gravy.

Served over biscuits it was heaven.

The cholesterol police would probably have had a conniption fit if they were around back then. Funny, even though I still eat a "high" cholestrol diet my cholesterol has always been quite low. Perhaps it was because I became acclimated to it as a child.

Sounds like you had a wonderful time. Too bad you missed out on the grits....

I can recall one of my elderly aunts giving a report on her visit to NYC and a meal at an Italian restaurant.

She was particularly apreciative of one dish, but said "I don't know why have have to call it Po-Lan-Ta, all it was, was grits, and yellow ones at that."

Edited June 1, 2004 by andiesenji (log)

[Gifted Gourmet]

"I don't know why have have to call it Po-Lan-Ta, all it was, was grits, and yellow ones at that."

Hysterical!!

[Artichoke]

I can recall one of my elderly aunts giving a report on her visit to NYC and a meal at an Italian restaurant.

She was particularly apreciative of one dish, but said "I don't know why have have to call it Po-Lan-Ta, all it was, was grits, and yellow ones at that."

My girlfriend says the same exact thing everytime we go out for Italian. She also gets a kick out of how much restaurants in New York charge for it.

[Lan4Dawg]

now if you do it right you take one of those biscuits and fill it w/ a hunk of that country ham or a slice of sausage and wrap it in a napkin. You pull that thing out about two/three hours later as you are hiking through the woods, shopping, or running errands and you will see what true envy is. Strangers will actually walk up to you smacking their lips and ask where you got your biscuit. It is w/ great pride you can straighten your shoulders, puff out your chest, look them squarely in the eye and say, "I brought it fr/ home". Some will want your address.

My parents had a get together w/ some old friends a while back and I made several dishes for them. One of the side dishes was polenta. One of their friends looked at the dish and asked about it. When I told him it was "polenta" he laughed and said that it looked a lot like the corn meal mush his mother served to him when he was a boy growing up during the depression. I laughed and explained to him that the only difference between his "corn meal mush" & my "polenta" was the fact that I could charge a lot more for putting polenta on a menu than I could "corn meal mush".

[Dignan]

I don't actually see grits on your list of delectables. Were none provided?

Alas, no. I love grits, but my girlfriend's mother is not a grits type of woman (I was not aware that such types exist south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Well I'll be danged. You still got a pretty good feed out of her anyway.

[bleudauvergne]

Artichokes description of the biscuits brought back memories.  Thanks. 

Because you are originally from the South or because of your new diet??

(makes the possibly erroneous assumption that biscuits are now verboten on this diet)

Actually the biscuits of my grandmother's kitchen came to mind, Artichoke's description was so vivid and delicious. No biscuits for me right now, that's right, but I like to think about them - it desensitizes me and prepares me for anything else verboten I may be exposed to.

[NulloModo]

That totally reminds me of the breakfasts my father (born in Southern Illinois, but raised later in life in Alabama) used to make.

Ham and red-eye gravy, oh so delicious over those buttery biscuits... Fried eggs with black bits from the pepper and bacon grease. Crispy bacon, crispy spicey sausage, grits with tons of butter in them (with jelly optional as well), and that thick creamy white-sausage gravy to just slather over anything... wow. We always had a breakfast like that before dressing up and heading off to church when i was little, man, those were the days, wish I could've appreciated it as much back then as I do the memory now.

[FL Heat]

My Papaw had a farm, and when we grandchildren visited, Mamaw always woke us at 5 (!) to eat breakfast with him (cookin' twice in the summer? Not when there's work to do!). We ALWAYS got up obligingly, though, because it was fresh biscuits, gravy, fresh tomatoes from the garden, bacon, scrambled eggs, and garlic & cheese grits (her specialty). Man o man. The bacon & eggs came from one of their neighbors, and the cheese was made by a widower down the way a bit. It's got me drooling now, thinking about how good all that was.

And to this day, when I visit Mamaw, she'll cook very nearly that same breakfast on the day I have to leave. Rest Papaw's soul, though, she doesn't wake me at 5 for it anymore, thankfully. I've gotten her grits recipe and tried and tried, but they just don't taste as good. . .and when I tell her that, she admonishes me for trying too hard

Diana

[TheFoodTutor]

I'm a Northern transplant, but I must say I do appreciate some aspects of a Southern breakfast, especially when hung-over. I'm not too fond of grits, though. Sometimes entire months go by when I do not consume a single grit.

When I do have them, I'm torn between sweet and savory, as they can be pretty good if you sugar them as you would Cream of Wheat.

I am wondering if anyone else finds it difficult to use cast iron in a tight kitchen area, as I do. It's particularly difficult if you live in a small apartment with a smoke detector, if you catch my drift. Nothing ruins breakfast like having to run and open all the windows, rapidly fanning the morning paper under the smoke alarm to get it to stop whining.

Other than the smoke, though, cast iron is a great tool.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Sometimes entire months go by when I do not consume a single grit.

and, I assume, you have no regrits??

Good point on using the cast iron in a small confined space ... and the smoke detector problem ...

[enrevanche]

I am wondering if anyone else finds it difficult to use cast iron in a tight kitchen area, as I do. It's particularly difficult if you live in a small apartment with a smoke detector, if you catch my drift. Nothing ruins breakfast like having to run and open all the windows, rapidly fanning the morning paper under the smoke alarm to get it to stop whining.

(raises hand) Small New York City apartment, big collection of inherited and beautifully seasoned cast iron.

Solution: A small exhaust fan and an open window. We bought a small Vornado at Bed Bath and Beyond. It's a tiny little thing but moves an absolutely shocking quantity of air. Solved the problem--no more smoke. I think it set us back $30-35.

Cast iron is crucial in putting the right crust on a sausage patty. And I wouldn't think of baking a cake of cornbread (also nice smeared with butter and jam, or crumbled into sweet milk or buttermilk, as part of your Complete Southern Breakfast if you're not in the mood for biscuits) in anything else.