A great summer salad made with garden fresh tomatoes, veggies and bacon, tossed in a flavorful mayonnaise dressing and macaroni.

Bacon and Tomato Macaroni Salad

This year, I only planted tomatoes, and although there are a few stragglers out there, they've all just about played out. I've had a few small baskets of them going at any given time this summer though, and I sure have been enjoying them, in every form possible! This macaroni salad is among the definite summer favorites of mine and one that's been sharing space in my fridge throughout this heat wave.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Fresh green beans, trimmed and snapped and layered in with salt pork, onion, sliced smoked andouille sausage, plenty of freshly cracked black pepper and pork or chicken base or stock, cooked in the Instant Pot.

Instant Pot Green Beans, Potatoes and Andouille

I absolutely love a pot of slow stewed, fresh green beans, so much so, that I can literally make a meal of a pot, especially when you throw in some ham or andouille sausage! Just give me that and some cornbread, and I am in heaven y'all!

I use my Instant Pot {affil link}, or one of my other electronic pressure cookers a lot, yes, even in the summer. I was never real attached to a slow cooker much, but I do a lot of cooking in the Instant Pot. This Instant Pot version of green beans comes in right up there along with the slow stewed version, even though instead of hours slow stewing, they come together in just minutes. I've made them enough times now, varying the way I do them, that I'm finally ready to publish a standalone version. No worries if you don't have an Instant Pot though - just click here to get to my slow-stewed, stovetop version!

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Thickly cut slices of summer squash, tossed with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and a mixture of dried herbs, then grilled.

Grilled Squash with Herbs

I hesitated to share this "recipe" at first but then I thought hey, the first time I ever wanted to grill squash, I had to look up "how to grill squash" because I wanted to do it right, so hopefully it will be helpful. There is always somebody, somewhere just learning to cook.

Besides y'all. Doesn't that just look scrumptious? It's really quite simple, but along the way I've discovered a couple of helpful tips.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

A whole cut up chicken, or bone-in leg quarters, cut up, baked with simple seasonings and the trinity. Pass under the broiler to brown further, as above.

Southern-Style Baked Chicken

I love a good baked chicken and though I have a few different recipes that I've used over the years, this is one of my favorite ways to make it. We often find whole chickens, as well as family-sized packages of thighs and legs, or large block frozen bags of leg quarters on sale around here, so that's what I usually use for this dish. You can certainly use breasts, and even wings, though you'll need to adjust times accordingly, depending on size, so as not to overcook, especially with the boneless breasts.

Baked chicken is certainly not unique to the South, of course, but there is a certain way that we prepare it that makes it a little more unique to our region - just chicken, simply seasoned and baked with a scattering of the trinity, the way we love it in the South.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Marinated Cracked Blue Crab Salad

Highly seasoned boiled crab and claws, marinated in a vinegar and oil dressing, with fresh vegetables, lemon and lots of garlic.

Marinated Blue Crab Salad

From the time that I was a little girl, tying down chicken backs into crab nets on a Biloxi pier with my Grandma Mac, fresh crabs have been such a central part of my life.

In gumbo or stuffed into the shell, made into crab cakes or patties, stuffed into po'boy bread, or jumbo shrimp, in pasta, even that hot crab dip that shows up at pretty much every event in existence around here, I can't even imagine a life without some fresh blue crab in it.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

The flavors of a sloppy joe sandwich in an easy, baked casserole form.

Sloppy Joe Bake

The Cajun loves my homemade sloppy joes, but my hamburger buns were a little on the not so fresh side, so I decided to go with the baked version this time. It's a delicious and creative way to change up the sloppy joe routine - plus there's cheese involved!

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Quick and easy batter biscuits, made in a muffin tin.

Easy Spoon Biscuits

This recipe has been around a long, long time, but I've been seeing a form of these all over Facebook here recently as "no yeast rolls," though that's a bit of a misnomer because they aren't rolls at all. I mean, in my eyes, yeast is what makes a roll a roll and gives it that special lift and texture.

This is more like a quick batter bread really, that's poured into a muffin tin for little individual biscuits, similar to those muffin tin spoon rolls, that actually are made with yeast, but are just as easy as these biscuits.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Sweetened blackberries, layered in with crumb topping and baked.

Blackberry Crumb Cobbler

A few years back, I was feeling a little nostalgic for those days when blackberry picking was a common thing that children did, so I planted two thornless blackberry bushes I purchased from Cottage Farms on QVC. I think I've had them for three summers and those things have been producing like crazy! If you decide to plant some here's two things I have learned.

The first year they grew like mad. Beautiful canes full of greenery everywhere but not a single blossom or berry in sight. Once it froze here, I thought I'd lost them, but I just left them be and lo and behold once spring rolled around, out sprouted new growth from those canes I thought were dead and here came the blooms and berries - in early spring, followed by more in late summer.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Jumbo shrimp, tossed in a seasoned olive oil with lemon zest and lots of garlic, topped with a panko and Parmesan crumb topping and baked.

Sheet Pan Panko Shrimp

These are almost sheet pan scampi or garlic shrimp meets oven fried shrimp, without all the hassle of dipping and battering. The inspiration for this dish came from Marlene Koch's cookbook, Eat What You Love Everyday {affil link} and it works well as both a main dish or an appetizer. The Cajun and I weren't that hungry, so I left the tails on and we ate this as an appetizer. They were amazing!

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Spaghetti Recipe Roundup

When folks think of spaghetti, they typically think of the classic spaghetti in meat sauce or with meatballs. It's definitely a favorite, easy to make and easy to teach, and even though it's the version I make most often, I also like variety!

I've put together a collection here of some of my favorite spaghetti recipes, all right here on DeepSouthDish.com, for when you're looking not only for the classic version of spaghetti, but maybe something a little different.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Seasoned and seared pork chops, simmered with tomatoes, onion and sweet bell peppers.

Creole Smothered Chops

These are just so tasty, it's hard to believe that they are also simple and easy.

They aren't really "smothered," as in the sense most folks think about with that word - all saturated in some kind of gravy or sauce. It's more of a light smother of veggies.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Shrimp and vegetables, sauteed in a garlic butter sauce and tossed with pasta.

Garlic Butter Shrimp with Pasta

Recipes like this one have been widely shared on social media the past few years, typically made on its own without pasta. That's pretty good for a snack or party food, but I'm all about the main dish, so of course I had to write my version to include pasta!

It's pretty similar to a shrimp scampi actually, with some subtle differences, enough so that it sets it apart for me to consider it as a separate post from my scampi, plus I've included some additional variations in this one too.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

A hearty, one-pot Italian-style meal, made with bone-in chicken thighs, Cajun andouille, potatoes, tomatoes and white beans.

One Pot Italian-Style Chicken Stew

This is a good and hearty, one-pot, Italian style stew, though "stew" is really a loose interpretation here. It's hearty, but not thick and rich as we think of stews to be, but rather a bit lighter, making it fully appropriate any time of the year.

I based my recipe on a bit of a combination of MarkCharles Misilli's One Pot Italian Chicken from the cookbook Easy Everyday Favorites and Jacques Pépin's Chicken Bouillabaisse in his cookbook Fast Food My Way {affil links}, since I find them to be strikingly similar.

Click Here to Continue Reading »

A casserole of cubed rye bread, shredded corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese finished with a savory egg custard.

Baked Reuben Casserole

I know that some of you make a New England Boiled Dinner of cabbage, root vegetables and a full corned beef brisket for holidays like St. Patrick's Day, but I'm a cheater. The Cajun doesn't care much for any of that stuff, so I take a shortcut to get the corned beef and cabbage I want, and he eats leftovers. I've been making it that way for years, using shredded deli corned beef or the canned stuff, and I love it, so it suits me just fine.

That said, I'm guessing some of you have been consuming Reuben sandwiches from the St. Patrick's Day leftovers, something that I also enjoy occasionally, but my husband can also do without. This casserole is yet another way to use some of that leftover corned beef. Almost a strata, except that it's tossed instead of layered, and sometimes referred to as a savory bread pudding, it's apparently a pretty common recipe around the net, though I hadn't made it myself before. The recipe that I patterned it after is from the Taste of Home cookbook, 201 Recipes You'll Make Forever. {affil link}

Click Here to Continue Reading »

Classic American-style stuffed cabbage leaves.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

I don't really know when it was that I fell in love with cabbage, but I do love it. I can't recall one single instance where my Mama ever even fixed it, but I've certainly made it plenty myself! My favorite way to eat it is what we in the south call fried cabbage, though it's not really "fried," at least not in the sense of the word that folks automatically think of as fried in the south. It's more of a saute and braise, or even smothered really. I love it!

Cabbage rolls though? Well, let's just say since my Mama never made them, I didn't really have a pattern to start with, so it took multiple attempts and I was never fully pleased with the outcome. As I do, I tended to overthink them also, and came to discover that simplicity was the key.

Click Here to Continue Reading »