American

If you’ve ever had Frito pie down South, then you know where we’re coming from here. This creamy turkey casserole, topped with a crispy layer of melted cheese and crushed corn chips, is the kind of thing that can make grown men cry on Super Bowl Sunday. Bobby loves to serve this with a side of crunchy, garlicky broccoli.

This is our Granny Paul’s recipe for fried chicken, and it’s as simple a taste of Southern home cooking as there ever could be. Serve it with collard greens and some mashed potatoes, and before you know it you’ll be whistlin’ “Dixie.” And you don’t need to save this meal for Sunday suppers—if you’re short on time, just skip the refrigeration and season the chicken right before you fry it to have yourself a down-home after-work treat.

There’s just something about layers of ground beef, salsa, tortilla chips, sour cream, and cheddar cheese that appeals to the soul—at least when your mama has been making seven-layer salads and dips for as long as you can remember. Mexican flavors are particularly popular for parties—Brooke is definitely a big fan of them—but this dish is quick enough to fix for a fun weeknight fiesta, too. You can use up the broken bottom-of-the-bag tortilla chips for this meal, and you don’t need a side dish other than a little guacamole for dipping the extra chips in.

We always have a red rice dish on the buffet table at The Lady & Sons. Here we added beef to the skillet to turn our Cajun-influenced red rice dish into an easy crowd-pleaser. Since we’re on the Georgia coast, we’ll also do red rice with sausage and shrimp, so you can use that instead if you like: Just brown crumbled sausage in place of the beef and stir in a half pound of shelled shrimp for the last five minutes of simmering (or until they’re pink).

My granny always made this punch. She practically raised me; we lived with her until my daddy bought us a house and moved us out when I was still a little boy. My grandmother was a hardworking Southern woman, always cooking and cleaning her house. This is her recipe for as refreshing and fragrant a summer drink as you can imagine—a really intensely flavored version of sweet tea, if you will. It’s a family favorite to this day. (It doesn’t call for Crown Royal, and I don’t even mind.) One thing, though: My granny’s last name wasn’t Jenkins, and she never did tell me who this recipe is originally named after; that’s a mystery for the ages, I guess.

For some people in the South, dessert doesn’t count unless it’s one thing and one thing only: this one.

Anybody who’s ever seen me on Pitmasters knows that Crown Royal is my drink of choice. Students who come to my classes bring me bottles; folks who come up to my rig at barbecue contests bring me bottles, too. I’m grateful, because after a long day of barbecuing I always relax with a little Crown and water—because every king can always use another Crown. But on occasion, I like to surprise my liver with something different. This is as Georgia of a drink as you can get, with a little help from our Canadian neighbors.

Pimiento cheese is the bright orange spread that Southerners are crazy for because it’s comforting and delicious and traditional. It’s most often served as a dip or spread, but it’s also good in a sandwich all by itself or as a topping on burgers. I like to make up a big batch for family gatherings and barbecues, and if I have some left over, I’ll eat it in a sandwich the next day. I’m going to give you a big recipe, too, so you can do the same.

If I’m working, which is to say I’m not drinking anything strong because I’m focused on winning a competition, I don’t drink anything besides sweet tea. I love sweet tea, truly. It’s the drink of the South, the drink of my home. Here’s how we do it.

When I host cooking school weekends at my place, I often do a Lowcountry Boil on Friday nights for my usual “meet and greet” session, where the folks attending can get to know one another—and me—a little bit. This is a specialty of the Lowcountry areas like Charleston and Savannah, where the people live near the water and have access to plenty of fresh shrimp. But of course you don’t need to live near the water to enjoy it. The traditional way to serve this is to basically dump it—spread it, if you will—across a large picnic table that has been covered with newspaper. You may want to fancy up the serving situation, but it’s fine to keep it casual, too. You can just tell your guests that’s how they do it down South.

If you ever find yourself wondering what to do with that last pound of barbecue, I’ve got a solution for you: nachos. This is the best damn appetizer in the world, especially good for things like Super Bowl parties and poker games. You can make your own salsa, of course, but I usually just use whichever brand I happen to have in the fridge.

When I make this stew, an extremely old-fashioned and indigenous example of the “poor people” food that the South was built on, I feel like I’m cooking a piece of my own history. The origins of this piquant, thin stew, which is loaded with meat and vegetables, are hotly disputed between Brunswick, Georgia, and Brunswick County, Virginia (I’m a Georgia product myself, so you know which side I’m on). I always make this for a crowd. A big crowd. Like those at my cooking school, which typically draws more than fifty students. I have my own professional-size meat grinder, and what I often do is grind the onions and potatoes together with the pork and brisket. You don’t need to do that at home; you can just mix them together. And feel free to cut this recipe in half (or quarters, whatever you need), but I suggest you make it for your next snow day, and bake up some cornbread to go with it—feed the whole block and you’ll have friends for life, trust me.

Deviled eggs remind me of church picnics and Fourth of July parties and just about every occasion I grew up going to where there was food involved. Of course I make my own deviled eggs, but you know I’m not going to make them like everybody else’s; I put my own stamp on them. And that means barbecue. Deviled eggs stuffed with a little of it makes them better than you’ve ever had them, I promise you that.

Cold fruit salads like this one are an old-fashioned piece of Americana. You can find recipes for stuffed canned peaches and pears and other so-called salads like this one in historic Southern cookbooks and of course in classics like the Joy of Cooking and The Settlement Cookbook. You don’t see them much around anymore, which is a shame because this salad is cool and refreshing—a great thing to serve for a summer lunch or as a first course for a dinner party. It may seem weird nowadays to serve canned pears with mayo, but would I waste my time with something that wasn’t good as hell? I didn’t think so.

Cornbread is the Southern starch; it’s been in the South as long as there have been cooks to make it. Some people I know still call it corn pone. I always cook it in a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet and add my secret ingredient: cracklin’s. These are fried pieces of pork skin, and they are incredibly delicious; they’re the by-product of rendering pig skin for fat, and because I cook a lot of whole hogs I have the makings for them around all the time. If you don’t, feel free to substitute some nice crispy bacon instead. You might also add some chopped red bell pepper for a change and some color.

Coleslaw is an extremely time-honored side dish that is served with all sorts of things in the South. Cole is actually an old English word for “cabbage,” which is of course what coleslaw is always made out of. This is my very favorite coleslaw recipe. In the South, creamy slaws like this one are traditional with fish dinners, and this is the slaw we always serve at our fish fries. It is served cold and smooth and is just perfect with fried fish and hushpuppies. Vinegar-based slaw is the classic to go with barbecue, but this one happens to taste great with barbecued meats, too.

On the second season of Pitmasters, I wasn’t a competitor; I was a judge. What can I say—that’s what happens when no one can beat you. Anyway, the judging panel consisted of football star Warren Sapp, chef Art Smith, and yours truly. On one episode, we held a competition for the best homemade potato salad. I pride myself on my potato salad. I said to the contestants, “You got to have mayonnaise to have a good potato salad.” I don’t care what else you put in it—it’s got to be a little bit creamy.

Trout is a freshwater fish, the majority of which swim in the rivers of Idaho and North Carolina. Because it’s so commonly farmed, trout is available in markets year-round. It’s a meaty fish with a naturally salty flavor, and it takes well to smoking. I like to eat smoked trout as a main dish with a little garlic butter on top and some cheese biscuits on the side. It’s also really good in a sandwich with some horseradish, or mixed into a dip with a little mayonnaise and sour cream.

If you think I’m talking about the haircut—“business in the front, recreation in the rear”—you best move on to the next recipe. If you know good food, you’ve probably heard about mullet, which is a fish found worldwide in tropical and coastal waters and abundantly on both coasts of Florida and into Georgia. Mullet is a bony fish with light meat and a stout body—and it’s oily, so it takes especially well to absorbing smoke. Any good fishmonger should be able to get you some.