Appalachian Food

Traditional Appalachian foods include the many-layered dried-apple stack cake; soup beans or pinto beans boiled with pork; chicken and slick dumplings served with gruel; white half-runner green beans boiled for long periods with salt pork or pork side meat; and feather-light biscuits covered with white-sausage gravy. Appalachians take pride in preparing apple butter, deviled eggs, pork barbecue, and fried apple pies, and they speak reverently about their eggs scrambled with poke, their fried morel mushrooms or dryland fish, and their white lightning or moonshine, a high-alcohol-content drink poured from quart-sized canning jars. The corn that yields moonshine is also the source of cornbread, roasted ear corn, fried corn, hominy, and grits. Any list of diverse Appalachian foods could go on for hundreds of items and would have to include the wild, garlic-like green ramps dug from the ground in March and the highly perfumed tropical pawpaw fruits that fall from small trees in September. It would also have to include wild meats such as bear, venison, squirrel, and turtle.