18 Appalachian Cooking Tricks Grandma Used That Still Work Today

18 Appalachian Cooking Tricks Grandma Used That Still Work Today Mamaw Ruth cooked at the head of Laurel Fork for fifty-two years and never owned a cookbook. Everything she knew lived in her hands, and when she passed in 1987, most of it went with her. I was the boy underfoot in that kitchen, sent for kindling and kept for tasting. These are the 18 things I watched her do, and every one of them still works in a modern kitchen. You'll learn why she salted green tomatoes and walked away for fifteen minutes, why her biscuits always touched in the pan, and why she poured leftover coffee into the ham skillet. You'll also hear the one thing she would never do to an egg, how she kept cabbage all winter without a refrigerator, and why her stack cake wasn't cut for three days. Number 1 isn't a trick at all. It's the thing no recipe card can hold. Along the way: The grease jar on the back of the stove Red-eye gravy from cold coffee and a hot pan Why stale bread makes better dressing than fresh The pepper vinegar bottle every mountain table had The great sugar-in-cornbread argument Roof-dried apples, sorghum in place of sugar, and stretching one pot to feed company Reading oven heat with your hand Caring for cast iron so it outlasts you Try one this week, and do it by feel, not by cup. Then tell me in the comments: what did your grandmother, or anyone in your family, cook that nobody ever wrote down? Who made it, and where? The holler, the town, the state. I read every one. Somebody ought to keep these things, and it might as well be us. If this brought back a kitchen you miss, subscribe and share it with someone who stood at a stove like that too. #AppalachianCooking #OldFashionedCooking #GrandmasRecipes #SouthernCooking #MountainFood #CastIron #Homesteading #LostSkills