A rice and okra side dish with bacon and vegetables, made easy with the Instant Pot!

Instant Pot Okra Pilaf - Limpin' Susan

I'm sure that you've heard of Hoppin' John. Southern Living says that "rumor has it Limpin’ Susan was Hoppin’ John’s secret girlfriend." Well, I don't know about all that, but I can tell you for sure, it is a delicious side dish! 

Where Hoppin' John is a rice central dish made with some kind of southern pea, most typically blackeyed peas, Limpin' Susan is made with bacon, rice and okra. Likely originating in the South Carolina Lowcountry, though nobody seems to know where the name Limpin' Susan came from.

Classic Fresh Purple Hull Peas

A classic recipe for southern peas, in this case, fresh purple hulls, simply seasoned with bacon, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, perfect as a side dish or as a feature on a vegetable plate. Pictured here with my whiskey glazed baked ham, Dr. Weil's steamed broccoli and the cornbread from my cookbook {affil link}, made with stone ground cornmeal from the Smoky Mountains.

Fresh Purple Hull Peas

If I had to pick one of my favorite southern peas, it'd have to be purple hulls. I just love them, and they are super easy to grow and easy to find, even if you don't grow your own.

Purple hull peas get their name from the color of the hull, and it used to be that if you ever shelled any from the pod, your purple stained fingers would be a dead giveaway. It might be that most shelling takes place in an air conditioned home these days, rather than in a rocker on the front porch in the heat and humidity, but I've shelled several pounds at a time and didn't have issue with those colorful fingers.

Summer Vegetable Gumbo - Garden in a Pot. A mix of summer's best veggies like sweet onion, fresh corn, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, green beans, sweet bell pepper and okra, a perfect dish for the veggie lovers!

Summer Vegetable Gumbo - Garden in a Pot

Let's have a last hurrah for summer y'all! We are finally at the end of it this Friday, well, at least according to the calendar. There won't be any fall-like temperatures showing up here in the Deep South for awhile yet even then. In fact, the past two days there has been a heat index advisory of 110 degrees. Hey, the good news is this dish can be served hot, warm or at room temperature!

I love vegetables, and this stew is loaded with the summer vegetables I love.

Other than just a general vegetable stew, I actually wasn't quite sure what I wanted to call this recipe when it was all said and done, but when I opened the stored container to heat up a serving the next day, and the aroma immediately spoke gumbo to me, so that's what I settled on. 

Classic Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo (Gumbo Ya-Ya)

A classic light roux-based gumbo, made with a cut up chicken and andouille sausage, served over hot steamed rice.

Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo

I've been making and sharing Miss Lucy's chicken gumbo with y'all for years, but admit, her classic Cajun-style method is not exactly the way that I usually make my gumbo.

Miss Lucy's recipe makes a roux, then adds water to the roux and then adds the chicken, sausage and trinity (onion, bell pepper and celery) to the pot, a classic Cajun one pot prep.

I prepare my gumbo in a way that is more traditional where I live - brown the meats, prepare the roux, cook the trinity in the roux, then add the water or stock and the rest.

However you make it, we eat a lot of it and it's mighty good!

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille - a simple stew of diced vegetables, made with bacon drippings, the Trinity of Southern Cooking, zucchini and summer squash, tomato, eggplant, okra and fresh herbs.

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille

Most folks these days seem to associate ratatouille with the Disney movie of the same name, and many may only know it from that. It actually is a real Mediterranean dish, most closely associated with France and said to have originated in Nice. The word perhaps comes from "touiller" and translates to mean something akin to "toss or stir."

Traditionally ratatouille is simply zucchini and tomatoes, with peppers, garlic and onion, sometimes sliced, sometimes cut into chunks. Somewhere along the way, eggplant was included, and though it wasn't always a part of the traditional dish, it's pretty much expected these days. I decided to make it with a dice of a variety of summer vegetables that we love in the south.

A vegetable skillet meal, made from fresh summer squash, sweet Vidalia onion, with fresh okra and tomato.

Summer Veggie Skillet - Squash and Okra with Onion and Tomato

This is one of my favorite summertime skillet vegetable dishes - just simply squash and sweet onions, sauteed in a little bit of bacon drippings and butter, and stewed down with sliced okra, fresh tomatoes and finished with some garden parsley and basil. Quick and easy to make, I can make a meal of this entire pan on these hot summer days!

Southern purple hull peas are cooked down with salt pork or bacon, onion and simple seasonings, then finished with a Creole-style stewed tomato.

Purple Hull Peas with Creole Stewed Tomatoes

Summer is winding down and I sure hope y'all put up some purple hulls - I sure did!

Simple process really - good rinse, pick through, toss in some boiling water, boil for about 2 minutes, drain, plunge in ice water till cool, drain and bag. I've tried several methods of putting up, and in my experience, blanching keeps them better and they retain a fresher taste for a longer period of time in your freezer. I use my FoodSaver so I don't freeze them in water, though some folks do. So good to pull out a bag of fresh purple hulls in the middle of the winter, I'm tellin' ya!

 

Whole okra, steamed, salted and dipped in butter.

Steamed Okra

Many, if not most of us of a certain age in the South, love our okra, but right up front y'all, there are true haters of okra out there.

The second you share something with okra on social media they show themselves for sure. 

Those of you who are among them will certainly not be interested in this post at all, and really, those of us who love it really don't need you to let us know! We get it.

Southern Field Peas and Snaps - Field peas cooked with green beans and served here with grilled smoked andouille sausage and cornbread.

Southern Field Peas and Snaps

It can be a little bit confusing when a Southerner talks about field peas, because kinda like with butter beans or what we mean when we say "Coke," they might be referring to any one of literally hundreds of Southern field peas.

Field peas, or cowpeas as we also know them, aren't really peas at all. They are beans that grow very well in the South because they are heat and drought tolerant and grow in just about any soil. They're categorized generally in four groups - crowder, cream, black-eyed and field peas, and there are many varieties to be found in each of those categories.

Classic Southern style fresh okra, sliced and tossed in a seasoned cornmeal mixture, and fried in a cast iron skillet.

Classic Iron Skillet Fried Okra

I ran across some of last year's okra I grew and put up, waiting in the freezer for me to use up, so I decided I better get on it and fry some up!

Okra is not hard at all to grow here in the heat of The Deep South, though you do need a nice sized area that gets plenty of sun to have enough to put up. I never manage to get more than a few pods from one stalk before they give up the ghost, but once the pods do begin to show up, they grow pretty quick and harvesting will keep them coming.

Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables (Giardiniera)

Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables (Giardiniera)

Giardiniera

I decided to make up a batch of pickled veggies over the Memorial Day weekend. Pickled vegetables, or Giardiniera (meaning "the garden") is probably familiar to you from the grocery store shelf, but it's a super easy pickled condiment to make at home too.

A bowl of Deep South goodness, this gumbo is seasoned with small crab bodies and then topped off with crabmeat and shrimp.

Crab and Shrimp Gumbo

Like chili, I'm always piddling around with my seafood gumbo recipes, trying to reach that one perfect gumbo my mama used to make. For this crab heavy version, I decided to use a little more onion, bump up the okra to a full pound, and not take my roux quite as dark. I thought for a sweet, crab-based gumbo, this more mellow roux would be a bit more fitting, than the richer, dark and more full bodied roux I often use.

 

A gumbo of beef, made with a 7-steak, and cooked down with The Trinity trio, okra, and a little bit of chopped tasso for some heat.

Seven Steak Gumbo

As far as I can discern, 7 steak gumbo had to have been born out of frugality.

Unlike its more pricey seafood cousin, it is a gumbo of beef and okra, but of a fairly inexpensive cut of beef, similar to round steak. Seven steak requires slow braising or stewing in order to bring out it's delicious, tender flavor, making it a suitable candidate for a gumbo.

It's called 7 steak because of the bone in it that is shaped like the number 7, when you can find it where the butcher hasn't removed it already, that is. I fix it most often as a Cajun smothered steak, but it can be used pretty much anywhere that you would use a braising steak.

Shrimp and Okra Gumbo with Microwave Roux

A gumbo made with a dark roux, a rich shrimp stock, the Trinity of vegetables, okra, shrimp and andouille sausage.

Shrimp and Okra Gumbo

Yes, it's another shrimp gumbo, but... what sets this one apart is that it was a "hurry up" gumbo, made with my microwave roux - pushed just a little bit further than usual - and pretty much, mostly ingredients that were straight out of the freezer!

• The shrimp were frozen.
• The shrimp stock I had made and put up in the freezer. You can also substitute commercial seafood or chicken broth, of course.
• Smoked sausage is also a freezer staple I always have on hand and can be quickly thawed in the microwave.
• I had even actually run completely out of onion when I decided to make this gumbo - can you imagine? No worries. I always keep extra chopped onion in the freezer.

A southern favorite, okra is sliced and cooked in bacon drippings and Vidalia onion, garden or canned tomatoes and a can of Rotel tomatoes for a little extra kick.

Smothered Okra with Bacon and Tomatoes

Definitely another southern favorite for us veggie lovers that's made in a variety of ways depending on the household - though I'll betcha a dollar that soon as I post this link over on the Facebook page I'll get a few proverbial and unfortunate "yucks."

There's always at least one person who feels a need to express their dislike of okra, one of those veggies folks seem to either love or hate. Seems there's not much of an in-between. Me? I happen to be a lover.

Basic lima bean and corn succotash gets a boost from summer bounty with the addition of sweet Vidalia onions, fresh tomatoes, bell pepper, okra and some smoked meat.

Southern Summer Succotash

Hope everybody had a wonderful holiday weekend with friends and family, and an extra day off today to recover. All the carbs and meat of late have me in the mood for some veggies and what a great time to introduce some summer succotash!

To be honest, I love a simple succotash mixture of baby butter beans and corn, maybe with a bit of onion and garlic, always some butter, and sometimes just a splash of cream. You can make succotash using fresh, frozen or even canned vegetables, so it's pretty much a year round dish you can serve anytime.

A traditional roux-based gumbo made with shrimp, spicy andouille sausage and okra. Pass hot sauce at the table, add some hot, buttered French bread and a side salad to round it out.

Shrimp and Andouille Gumbo with Okra

Delish. But, admittedly, homemade gumbo can take a bit of time between planning and preparing, though there are ways that you can save some time and make it an easier process when you get in the mood for gumbo.

Next time you are chopping an onion, go ahead and chop an extra one or two and bag it in a zipper freezer bag. When you make rice for one dinner, double up on it and then bag and freeze half. All it needs is a sprinkle of water, cover and microwave to freshen it up. For okra, pre-sliced frozen okra works fantastic.

Sliced okra is dipped in buttermilk and then dredged in a lightly seasoned mixture of cornmeal and flour, then deep fried to crispy perfection.

Restaurant-Style Southern Deep Fried Okra

We use okra a lot down here in the Deep South where gumbo is king, as a thickening agent. I believe that and steamed - yes, with that gooey, buttery, slime and all - are the only two ways that my Mama ever made okra when I was growin' up.

While most southern kitchens will feature a more classic pan fried okra, tossed with lots of cornmeal and cooked up in a small amount of fat, often bacon drippings in a hot cast iron skillet, this deep fried version is what you will most often find served at a restaurant.

Seafood and Okra Gumbo with Shrimp, Crab and Oysters

A seafood gumbo made with a dark roux, a rich shrimp stock, the Trinity of vegetables, tomatoes, andouille and shrimp, crab and oysters.

Seafood and Okra Gumbo

Seafood gumbo, made with shrimp, lots of crab, and usually oysters is definitely a Deep South tradition for Christmas. Mama always made her seafood gumbo on Christmas Eve and that was a tradition at our house. We had this yesterday (and of course it only gets better the day after) and oh my gosh... this is so dang good (if I don't say so myself), I can't begin to tell y'all!