Bill Neal's Southern Cooking

by Bill Neal

Southern cooking, the most interesting and complex regional cuisine in America, remains a mystery to many professional cooks and southerners. With a stellar collection of recipes, Neal reveals the background and subtleties of southern foods. He uses imaginative new ways with old standards to make the recipes more accessible, but he never resorts to shortcuts or processed ingredients. He also shows how the meeting of Native American, Western European, and African cultures has created this cuisine.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1985

Reviews

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Southern cooking is one of my favourite cookbook genres and this is one of the best I've read. The best are always a mix of good food made with whatevers freshest at the moment backed by stories and memories of a whole mix of different people and written in a way that halfway feels like an incantation. 'This Moravian pie was made by my aunty Ruth on the 4th Thursday of every month and must be made with blackberries picked during a full moon' type stuff. Magical.

[L Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bill Neal is the go-to guy for biscuits and buckles and cobblers (the best I've ever had or made) and all things Southern. His easy style and the descriptions and stories that accompany the recipes make this a cookbook as well as an homage to the South. Sitting with titan Southern cooks Edna Lewis and John Egerton, Bill Neal's books hold a lofty place on my bookshelf.

[Arrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

117 recipes and more from the then-young 34 year-old Southern chef, no longer with us and taken well before his time. Bill Neal was very instrumental in elevating both Southern cuisine and more importantly, its perception by outsiders, to the level it enjoys today. I drove by Crook's Corner, which he owned and was the chef twice a day for years without stopping by to have him personalize my copy of his cookbook - and then he was gone. Life is too short.

A welcome addition to anyone with a collection of Southern or particularly NC cooking - see also Moreton Neal's "Remembering Bill Neal."

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great how to of low country cooking. It's the book I turn to when trying to figure out how to cook greens, grits, spoon bread, or a killer creole potato salad. For some one who grew up in Los Angeles and not having a southern grandma to teach me traditional southern home cooking this is a pretty good substitute, minus all the grandma hugging.

[Amy]

Given to me for my birthday, 1990. HEavy on the lard. We were not surprised when Neal died of a heart attack shortly after this. Inscribed by Javaczuk.

Packing away now as we declutter the house, preparing to put it on the market.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant primer on southern regionalism through cooking. First published in the 80s, Neal's book and his cooking helped lay the groundwork for much of the regionalist cuisine of today.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top ten.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must buy book recipes on pgs 7,36,98,161,168,170