My Mexican mom would say the plate pictured was a "poor man's meal fit for a king." And she was right! I still cook like this. Thanks to God for all He provides. The cultures are not to far apart.
Yes! My Portuguese grandma would always cook poor man’s meals, because the people on the island where she’s from lived very modestly. They know how to take a poor quality meat and turn it into a delicacy. Fit for Jesus himself I tell ya lolol. We’ve been blessed and I thank God every day for everything, and for people like your mom and my grandma 🥰
I did not learn that beans were considered a “side dish” until I went to college! My family, in upper E Tennessee, lived on pinto beans/onions in the winter and green beans/onions all summer! Cornbread with both!
Same here! We just had a nice big bowl of pintos with plenty of bean broth and always cornbread. I had no idea pintos were considered a "side dish". :)
I wasn’t aware pinto beans were a side dish. I’m 74 yrs old and the first I’ve read this. To all of us hillbillies it’s a main dish and always will be, right Appalachian folks???!!!!😃
My mama grew up rich. I didn’t have pinto beans til I married me a Georgia mountain boy. 😂We raised our kids on beans. It’s still a staple meal in our home. I keep a pot of beans on the counter almost every day. Upgraded to the InstantPot a few years back. So easy!!
I grew up on pinto beans, fried tators, and cornbread and onions in mountains of VA. I am 73 now and still my favorite meal. Thanks so much for sharing. Blessings
I have a wife just like her. A fine upstanding Christian woman. She cooks big hearty meals and delicious desserts. Yes, I keep her up on a mountain top and she’s my national treasure.
This woman is a national treasure! I came here to learn her recipe and 30 minutes later I don’t care about it. 10 minutes in I was sitting here with a huge grin listening to her talk about so many different things other than the actual recipe (Matt’s birthday, mayo and beans, cornbread and taters, fatback or side meat) I just so captured by her story telling that I couldn’t stop watching! I truly loved watching this video! I didn’t even write down the recipe! You just keep doing what you’re doing Mrs. Pressley!
I agree 100%!!! Thanks for sharing wholesome good cooking. I too was raised on beans and cornbread. I'm cooking this tomorrow. My Momma made the best fried tattors too.
I am so glad to see such a beautiful celebration of culture. I am black and from the south and this is familiar to me as well (beans and cornbread). I do believe we would be a healthier nation if we got back to food basics. Thanks for sharing.
Indeed- Medical doctors are only trained a couple weeks in nutrition. There is no money in the healthy. Satan always imitates what God does but twist it in his Evil ways. Mark 2:17 “When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
They should make home economics including personal finance, sewing, cooking, preservation etc mandatory in public education. Same with shop class for everybody
In a Mexican household we use tortillas! We soak ours over night in a tablespoon of white vinegar. The beans come out nice bright peach flesh tone color! Smash them up in bacon greese or lard. Roll up in a fresh tortilla, cheese, and with fresh salsa. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Or in a bowl like a soup! Gonna try some with homemade blue cornmeal cornbread.
@@Sewmena918 it's delicious ! That's what is beautiful about the U.S. so many different cultural foods to try in different ways. I always love learning new way to cook and try things.
75 year old retired chef and lifetime foodie here, and I just learned so many new things! That is true American soul food, beautifully prepared with love. I could hand out in the kitchen and garden with this lovely lady all day! Truly a treasure!
In my childhood home we had pintos every Monday. My mom "looked" the dried beans and set them to soak on Sunday night. Then she out them on the stove early Monday morning right before she started the washing, an ordeal that took the whole day with the wringer washer and wash tubs arranged all around the kitchen! On cold or rainy days, she hung the clothes on a line in the living room, as the beans simmered on the stove. Beans and cornbread with fried potatoes. Monday supper.
I just had ask my wife, " what is it about these folks that makes ya just love 'em". It's like the song ,"almost home", I'm from that area, now live seven hours away, the truth in there voice, the display of a simple, honest hard working family life, brings me home every time I watch 'em. You just can't beat beans & cornbread. Celebrate on!
Oh I do agree it makes me want to go back and live with simpler times. We would be much healthier if we ate like this. This is food is grown and prepared with love.
When your soup beans start thickening and lose their sppeal, add chicken broth, sauteed onion, celery and garlic and make bean soup. It freezes beautifully and is so good.
I love these kinds of videos where it it's not a professional chef in a professional kitchen, just an ordinary person teaching ordinary people, how to cook for their family!
I live in NE Oklahoma, Cherokee country. I grew up eating beans and fried potatoes with cornbread. There was 7 of us kids so we always had a pot of pinto beans on the stove. The wilted lettuce and fresh green onions are the best additions. I am in my sixties and my husband and I still have a pot of beans every week. We are having some today with the lettuce but I don’t have any Irish potatoes so we are having baked sweet potatoes with a hunk of butter on it or I might make pan fried sweet potatoes which we love also. I love the springtime so we can go out to the garden and gather green onions…soon will be fresh green peas and new potatoes. You and Matt are a true joy to watch, as you both remind me of my own family. Thank you for sharing your lives with us all…it makes these trying times seem much better.
Grew up in central Oklahoma and we often had pinto beans, cornbread, and fried potatoes. Often with spring onions or vinegared onions and cucumbers. I still make it for my family, one of my all time favorites.
I’m from Picher and Commerce area and mom made beans and cornbread all the time, our wilted salad mom would sprinkle a little vinegar and sugar on the greens before pouring on the hot grease. Now I live in Washington state nobody cooks like that out here. During the spring and summer, meals was served out side. Man I miss those meals.
I grew up on the gulf coast of Texas eating much like this. Beans, cornbread, salt bacon, thick slice of fresh onion, and tomato from the garden and that’s supper. Being a Mexican family that had been in Texas since before Texas was a thing, our food was a melting pot. So it was not uncommon to have tortillas, okra, pan fried pork chops, and beans on the table. I just love how so many things regionally and culturally are the same, but also all the unique differences.
The food you are describing is similar to what we eat in southeast N.C. I love getting a tomato out of the garden and having a fried pork chop and okra.
I too, grew up on the TX Gulf Coast. We always had fried okra, sliced tomatoes, fried potatoes w/pork chops and pinto beans w/cornbread. Onions too. Oh yeah, and ice tea. Yes Sir! God Bless Texas! Moved to TN for 29yrs due to work and now live in WV. Homesick 4 TX every single day. Wish Texas had ramps!
We are more alike than we are different. I don't know why we can't seem to understand this. I eat like this, and l was born and raised in New Jersey. It's not expensive to eat like this. I eat like this, and add the extra savings from groceries to my mortgage.
My mother cooked a large pot of navy beans and ham bones every Saturday for 6 children and my Grandfather and Uncle. The fellas came up every Saturday to cut and chop wood for our stove. We children helped however we could. Loved the memories of cold weekends and a warm kitchen filled with the wonderful smells of bean soup. My mother was a wonderful cook and I miss her dearly.
My favorite story of my dad’s was his telling of how they’d have beans one day and the soup of the beans the next. Born in 1918 so a survivor of The Depression in Appalachia. Galax, Va was his home.
Ate Beans and cornbread, fried tatars, with onions, almost everyday of my life until I was married. I love it still. Good tasting, nutritious, and filling. I think we will see days soon, that we all will be eating like this again.
I've been warned by folks about how all that cornbread, butter and cured sidemeat was bad for my heart. I sure hated going to their funerals over the years.
We have a little free pantry here where l live. I sometimes add items and noticed the beans and rice are never taken. People will take a can of soup first. Could eat for 3-4 days but choose easy instead. If they just know how easy it is.
Won't hear me complain. Now my wife on the other hand, she grew up poorer than I did. Pork and beans with cornbread was the bulk of what they ate coming up. She's about wore out on beans 😂
I think you may be right, but folks who are used to eating like this will probably have an advantage. The only time I got desperate during the quarantine was when I could not find pinto beans in my area. I got on Amazon and ordered 25 pounds, then started finding them at the Dollar Tree, :)
You are a gifted story-teller! We love Soup Pinto beans with cornbread, cabbage, fried taters and onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and pickled beets on the side. Yum yum.
It’s God’s plan. Sometimes we have to veer away from it and that’s OK but when it’s done like this, the way He planned it, growing much of our own food, working hard to take care of what He has blessed us with and loving and caring for our family, that’s true happiness and contentment. I am so thankful for my country upbringing and loving home. I wish I could live this way now.
Ramps are wild leeks, foraged from shaded, woody areas. They're one of the first signs of spring, and one of the first edible green things to hit markets. Their flavor is a combination of garlicky, oniony, and pungent. You can use them anywhere you would use scallions or spring onions.
I love wild leeks but haven’t found them for years so I buy leeks they sell at store (not near as good) and use them in my potato soup, split pea soup and bean soup.
Louis L’Amour (Wild West novelist) wrote something like “garlic and onions can create space around a man, but a ramp eater can clear out a room!” I believe he was talking about raw ramps, though.
Haven't heard the term "kilt lettuce" since my Granny Becky passed in 1989. Because of her I have a love of beans, salt pork, kilt lettuce and potato soup with fried pork chops. She taught me in the old ways, being from Ky.
This is a meal for kings! 👑 Tipper, you are a wonderful cook and a great ambassador for Appalachia life! I swear, if we had more families like yours, our country would be in a much better place! God bless ~
Thanks so much for creating this channel. This is the cooking I grew up with in the rural mountains of Warren county, Tn in a little community called Irving College. My mama and Mema are now gone and although I still cook these things for my family, I enjoy watching you and yours cook and talk about cooking these wonderful Appalachian folk staples! Sometimes, as I watch, I’ll realize that I have tears of nostalgia rolling down my cheeks. I guess at the same time it makes me remember and miss those wonderful times back home. Thanks so much for what you do. I means so much to folks like me. God bless!
I so wanted to eat dinner with you & Matt. Boy, everything looked beyond good. My mom called her hot lettuce dish, wilted lettuce. She used bacon grease. We also had beans, fried potatoes, cornbread, tomatoes, green onions, cucumbers on the side. It was really fun to see Matt cutting up!
I have never had kilt lettuce... just not something we had. I wonder if it's kilt like, killed (i.e. wilted)? Anyway fresh baby lettuce with pork fat on it, I'd eat it for sure!
What a great installment this is. I was raised on soup beans and I still love them. In my area Great Northern beans were the most common by far. I have enough stories involving beans for a book of essays. One of my favorites is about my Grandma Byers. During the Great Depression food had to go as far as possible. Grandma was very resourceful so when she didn't have quite enough of one thing, she had creative ways to stretch what she had. One dish that turned out to be a family favorite; beans and noodles, or beans and dumplings. Grandpa worked on the railroad which was physically difficult, especially in those days. Needless to say, a healthy appetite goes with the territory. Grandma had a few soup beans, a little salt pork, and a few staples. She always made noodles or dumplings which only takes flour and a few eggs. She got her pot of soup beans boiling and dropped them in. Finally she had a pretty good sized pot of them. My grandpa, my dad and his brother loved them! She had made a version of "Stone Soup" that stuck with us. Part two of this story: Grandma was very reluctant to cook them when I was a kid because she was afraid someone (friend or neighbor) would stop by for a visit and see what she had cooked. She said that was "depression cooking" and she was a little embarrassed by it. That was Grandma, through and through.
Precious memories! I remember our go to bean was repared exactly the same way, Great Northern with dumplings, sometimes some carrots in the beans, it was delicious! Really, any bean my Mother would fix she'd drop dumplings in them.
I was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. From what I can tell the ways of the Appalachians pretty much were the way of the Ozarks. I have had beans, cornbread and fried taters many many times growing up. As with most families here in the Ozarks money was tight and beans and taters were a staple. Love your videos. They bring back memories.
You are a natural born teacher!! It’s so wonderful how you let cooks know that there are so many ways to do things and they can find the way that is the most comfortable to them. So many people have so much anxiety over cooking, but really one can cook anyway they want! I grew up eating beans and I LOVE beans still today! And I grew up in San Francisco, CA! Love watching your channel, especially all of the cooking videos. Your kitchen is awesome and very cute. Keep up the good work and God bless!
Interesting to see how people eat different things around our country. I grew up in New England and the Midwest and we ate a lot of mashed potatoes and meat. My dad, who grew up in Boston during the Great Depression, ate a lot of Boston Baked Beans that the mothers in the neighborhood cooked. One would cook a large amount of beans, another make lots of bread, etc. and the families would share amongst themselves. That way each mother had to prepare only one dish for dinner. He talks about how when the beans got reheated many times and became thick, they would make a sandwich out of them with a little ketchup. If you are hungry enough you will enjoy whatever is set before you. He is 93 now and still eats his beans with ketchup.
Soup beans and corn bread were my birthday dinner. My mother made our favorite meal for all 5 of us. I recently taught my daughter how to make them. Yummy tradition.
I grew up with neighbors from the foothills of Appalachia. They made some of the best food ever. I still copy those foods 40 years later. You show that great food comes from the simplest of ingredients, and it is economical and healthy. Thanks a bunch.
Totally! I’m amazed they’re all slim and healthy looking! They must be very hard working people to burn off all that grease. God bless them! And Matt helping with the dishes is 💯💯💯💕.
My mother was born on an Oklahoma farm in 1919. I grew up on her mama's recipe for soup beans. She only added salt, pepper, oil, and an hour into cooking, torn up tomatoes, and lots of onions. She always cooked one of 3 greens...cabbage, turnip greens, or collards. With the cornbread...a feast! I am 75 and still cook them, and my son comes over and we dig in! A great breakfast...beans on toast. The pot liquor softens the bread...delicious.
Thank you. It’s been so many years since I heard Mamaw say a mess of kilt lettuce. Of course you are much younger, but you are so comfortable talking about your food, lifestyle, music, friends and family as she was. You are helping so many of us who have moved away from our homeplace and dearly miss it.
This brings back memories of meals at my grandparents. Soup beans, corn bread, greens, potatoes and sliced tomatoes, and sliced onions.😊 Looks delicious. I wish I had them now.
Yep my mom was from Kentucky and we kids had to work out in the garden every year and we grew corn and tomatoes and onions and Mom would make a big pot of beans and we would have cornbread and onions and tomatoes and soup beans oh my goodness that was delicious
Now that's a meal. Everything looks delicious too. I love to see a man helping cook and clean. My man cooks me breakfast, and he has always helped with chores. That's what makes a house a home....a partnership in the marriage ❤. Your videos are awesome
Tipper & Family - Rhonda and I really enjoy all your videos but this one about soup beans was especially great! We both grew up in families that routinely had pinto beans, fried potatoes and onions and some kind of salty meat. Rhonda grew up in Abilene, Texas and I was born in a coal-mining area deep in the mountains of Dickinson County, Virginia and grew up until I was 18 within 80 miles of my birth place. Rhonda’s paternal grandfather wanted pinto beans at both dinner and supper, every day of the week. Now that we are in our “golden years” living on a small farm outside Wytheville, Virginia, we are keeping with our family traditions. Now Rhonda soaks and then cooks our pintos overnight in her crockpot so that the kitchen doesn’t get too hot in the summer and it is one less thing to worry about the next day. She fries our potatoes with onions, makes our cornbread and pan fries our salty meat - Country Ham (my absolute favorite!). We occasionally have “wilted” lettuce to go with our meal. Rhonda uses a whole bag of pintos when she makes them and puts up some in the freezer and we will have them for more meals, especially our other most favorite food, anything Mexican! We have refried beans with tacos, chimichangas, pork in tomatillo sauce (Carnitas in Salsa Verde), enchiladas, etc. So the beans that Rhonda makes for us serves us in several ways. (I have to moderate the amount of beans and cornbread that I have at any one time as I am a Type II diabetic and both will raise my blood glucose readings. Fortunately, my diabetes is under control and I only test twice a day to keep track of where it is at. So I will eat all the foods that Rhonda cooks for the two of us, but for some of the carb-heavy foods, I moderate the amount that I eat at one time.) We wish you all well and keep on posting your great videos! Dwight
Hello from Abilene TX Rhonda and Dwight. Yes, we love our Tex-Mex food here, so a pot of beans in our house first gets eaten with corn bread, then as the beans are in the fridge a few days, they get creamier and make excellent refried beans, you don’t have to add oil or lard, just smash them up and serve along side Mexican rice and all those yummy things Dwight talks about- with flour tortillas of course.
Hello from another product of Dickenson County! Looking forward to this meal when I visit home in a few weeks, but summer version with fresh sweet corn on the cobb & those sliced garden tomatoes!
So fascinating how old foodways travel separately and meld with each other. I have two old cookbooks, one from the Smoky Mtns and one from the Ozarks. So many of the recipes are nearly identical.
One of the most remarkable days of my life, was visiting a friend in NC, we spend the day with his Grandma Happy, who made us beans and gravy and corn bread, and entertained us for hours telling stories of her younger days and life in the good ol days.
I was raised on good ole soup beans, fried taters, cornbread, and fresh garden maters and onions too. I have precious memories of my mama and grandma making this meal. It's still one of my favorites. Ps. My daddy's name was Woodrow. Thank you for sharing, I've had a flood of memories come back to me 🙂
I live 3+ hours from Appalachia in Ky. I had an uncle Woodrow :) Soup beans was always a thing but we wouldn't pour grease on greens... I'm struggling with that 🙃
@@Sanity_Faire I'm struggling with the raw onions. They're just not to my taste. I've never tried kilt lettuce so I can't really say whether I like it or not.
@@melissanelson2592 Thanks, but I'll have to take a hard pass on the raw onion. I hate the taste of them and I really hate the way they make my stomach ache.
I love this! I'm half Arab, and this recipe reminded me of a simple dish we make. Chick peas are a huge part of our diet. Soak them overnight, then next day throw them in the pressure cooker and cook until desired softness. Then scoop a bowl of beans, some of that bean broth, and top with just salt, a little cumin, and good quality olive oil, and serve with soft warm pita bread. Nothing fancy, nothing you'd see on a restaurant menu, but just some good ole wholesome beans for a full and warm belly 😋
I grew up in Minnesota and didn't have soup beans and cornbread until we moved to WV and started school. They didn't fix them with any seasonings, so I put ketchup on them to hide the taste. I had dinner with a friend who 's mother made beans and cornbread like you and boy, were they good 😊❤
@@mingomango1 cook the cumin and salt and other herbs with the chickpeas. Add onion & garlic too. Mash them or preferably (stick)blend w/the oil. We eat w/crudités as we stay grainfree but rarely we’ll also do nonGMO corn tortillas that are warmed. We eat meat so grain isn’t need w/the beans to make a whole protein. We often eat a meatless lunch (w/kefir or cheese always) and always eat eggs as brk protein. I love all the different ways of eating diff beans! And yes rice (or cornbread) w/beans is great tasting too just not doable at this point.
I wasn’t raised anywhere near Appalachia but we had soup pinto beans several times a week. It is an economical meal when raising a large family. We lived it when mom would fry potatoes to go along with it. Dad liked to add caramelized onions and hot peppers on his plate of beans. I like corn bread with mine. I’m sure mom cooked a pound at a time all her life. When is kids were grown she froze the beans in small portions for her and dad.
I have commented before about my Dad being raised in the Ozarks, and how similar some Appalachian things seem to be. Well, my Dad’s been gone for twenty years now, but WOW did this just bring him right to me! Lots of times, though, my Dad would use fried bacon & loved to pour it over wild mustard greens. When I was little, he taught me how to recognize them, and he would send me out to find him some. My Mom would always make the beans on Fridays, probably so that any after effects would be gone by Monday. 😆 We would also have it with Cornbread and often fried potatoes. My Mom was from Irish roots, so she learned to make this meal for my Dad. I really enjoyed watching this. Thank you. 💜
My grandparents were from the Ozarks too, and like you said, they cooked much like this! Two generations before them, everyone was in Orange County, NC. I think they brought their ways with them, because my grandma learned to cook from her grandma, who had moved to MO as a girl. I'd take my granny's cooking over any restaurant, any day, to this day. I'm 58 and she's long gone, but she made sure to teach me everything. My mom and aunt were never interested in it, they were both fast food queens. You can keep that mess lol
I've grew up on brown beans and corn bread, my Granny made them, my mom did and I do too, the best that I ever eat was cooked by my great aunt Bonnie, I have the best memories of her suppers when she made beans!! I've cooked them many different ways but now that I'm older, my favorite way is in my instant pot, I "look" my beans and rinse them, put them in my pot for 35 or 40 minutes with just water, after I let the pressure off, I salt them, add some bacon grease and using the satay setting on my cooker, I cook the beans hard for about 20 more minutes, we love the juice to be thick and they always turn out really good!
🥘🥣Thank you for giving me some apetite again. I ate pea soup yesterday, our national meal. Many people may not know but the mountains we call the Laurentians are considered by geologists to be a part of the Appalachian mountains. the only thing is that the St-Lawrence river added a valley that splits the Appalachian mountains in two. Our old folks had pretty much the same folklore and fiddling and cultivated pretty much the same herbs. 🍁
We grew up eating pinto beans. They were always a staple at our house. My Grandmother cooked a fresh pot every day. She had a lot of people to feed. We usually had fried potatoes with them. We ate very little meat except when Grandpa would kill one of his hogs. I was raised in East Tennessee. Love your videos.
I laughed when you said , "If you didn't eat soup beans and fried potatoes".... I grew up in northeastern Kentucky, which is still Appalachia, but we have so much in common, it's almost indistinguishable, love your channel! We always called it wilted lettuce, which you've talked about, I love the history with the vittles!
Looks SO GOOD I’m from East Texas but I was raised eating meals like that to . I live in Eastern Kentucky now & still think it’s one of the best meals to eat . Love your show . Lord Bless ❤️
These videos and meals take me back to childhood and remind me of the good old days. I love it! Parboiled my beans and now just waiting an hour so I can start to cook them
Beans and cornbread are good all year around too! Winter savory soup with potatoes, onions and ham, and summertime as a side dish with fresh veggies. Gotta love it 👍 🌿🌹🌿
When Matt put his plate in front of camera, I just wanted to reach out and take it!!!! One of our favorite. Wilted lettuce, beans cornbread & fried taters!!! We like beans made over open fire too. Y'all have a wonderful rest of the day!!!
As a child in Baltimore, my mother would make wilted lettuce. After she took the bacon from the pan, she would pit vinegar and sugar in with the bacon grease and bring to a boil. When it got a bit thick, she poured it over lettuce and thinly sliced onions. Always one of my favorite things. Now I use that dressing on spinach salad.
We did this, too, except that this was our "dandelion salad" that we made with dandelion leaves (picked before the plant flowered) added to the lettuce and onion. Add the bacon grease and stirred the greens together....boy, was it good.
Same here in central PA, we pour it over bitter greens like endive or dandelion and then garnish it with sliced hard boiled egg, I always thought the vinegar/sugar sweet and sour combo was solely Pennyslvania Dutch, but it's popular all around, delicious!
I swear I could eat soup beans and corn bread everyday! With some chopped white onion Or some good chow chow it's always a special treat! And thanks again --always enjoy your presentations.
@@dawntreader815 I still have my grandmother’s chow chow recipe and make it once a year (canned). I’m from Québec, Canada and we had chow chow with every meal. Didn’t know what cornbread was until I moved to the USA in 1995. First time I was served cornbread, I thought to myself “why on earth do folks serve dessert cake with the main course?” I still say it’s like a savoury cake instead of sweet cake (texture being the same).😊
I grew up on beans and cornbread. I still eat them 2 or three times a week it's my favorite comfort food Grandma had pinto beans on the table at every meal. ❤️
You have such a lovely family. Just seeing the time you spend together, doing normal things. The help you give each other, the respect and kindness you give each other...it's beautiful and something that we (as a society) have been slowly losing.
Oh my touch my heart. My granny raised 14 on her own. She had the same pressure pot. beans on after breakfast everyday. Fried taters, cornbread, and sliced red maters. I born and raised in illinois.. loved our summer vacation to granny's every year. She was in the sticks in Dyersburg, Tennessee.. my best childhood memories at my granny's. 🤗
Heavens to Betsy! I grew up knowing your "kilt lettuce" as wilted lettuce. That has been one of my Momma's favorite foods and in the late spring, early summer, we could expect that to be on the table at least 2-4 times a week. Momma would use the lettuce, and spring onions, but she also made sure to put a little of the bacon bits in it as well. Daddy wasn't a fan of it, but my brother and I could eat it without problems. Oh mercy, that took me back.
We used bacon grease on our wilted lettuce, momma would save back a piece or two to crumble up for wilted lettuce. Or later in the year she would fry a head of cabbage in the mornings bacon grease and serve it with pork chops. Good heavens now I have to make fried cabbage 😉👍🏻😂
Erin, I cannot believe just today I was trying to remember the name of that I thought was it scalded lettus I could not remember what they called it. Now you've told me . Thanks so much ! Wilted lettuce mother would put couple those little long green bulb onions in it. It was pleasant watching them cook and eat together happily satisfied. Dont see much of that anymore
My grandma used to make wilted lettuce back in the early 50s and I loved it! As I remember it in addition to the ingredients here, I want to say that she added a touch of vinegar right at the end. Loved her cooking! Thanks for the memories
My mom made Great Northern beans with ham hocks a lot. I make mixed soup beans. Love cornbread with it too. Never heard of kilt lettuce, though, we had something called wilted lettuce that may have been the same. I love that you call it a feast. True appreciation and gratitude for the Earth”s bounty.
My grandma used to make wilted spinach with bacon and hot grease, then add vinegar, sugar and onion. I loved that sweet and sour addition so much. My mom used to make your bean dish too. That side of my family came from Flat River, Missouri, close to the Mississippi River. They always said they were like the Appalachians-same traditions, just different hills. I forgot about that until I stumbled upon your channel. It makes me miss my grandparents and where they lived. I live in Colorado now. It’s beautiful, but it’s kind of missing the soul of the old ways.
Matt is so sweet of course he has skills any man that can help with cleaning up after the meal doing dishes or taking out the trash and can hunt ramps and fry taters is a keeper 😊👍
Love these country meals like I was raised on. We'd have beans and cornbread all during the week and roast or chicken on the week-end. Great memories and I still make these often. The thicker the beans get the better for me. I call that thick juice gravy. And I still make my Mom's red tomato relish to go on top of the beans.
I grew up in Texas eating that. In fact we ate a lot of what y’all eat!!!! Glad I didn’t have to change my way if eating when we moved here to the mountains. Might have a little bad weather coming y’all stay safe. We need the rain 🙏🏼🙏🏼🇺🇸 thanks again for sharing y’all’s life!!!!
Grew up in central Kentucky, it's been a long time but I would swear we had soup beans every day along with whatever else happened to be available. We called the lettuce wilted lettuce and, if memory serves me right, put a little vinegar in along with the hot grease. All cooked on a wood stove, of course! Looks so delicious. All the women who cooked those meals for me are long gone. Such wonderful memories. How foolish we were - we thought we were poor. We had family members who had moved up to Louisville or New Albany who would visit when they could for that "good eating"!
I appreciate this channel so much. I married an Appalachian man (east tennessee/kentucky border) 18 years ago this month and I cannot express how much I relate to this. Every time we go back - usually a funeral, wedding or birth - there is a least one pot of soup beans on the buffet table. I have no context for it because I only know two Appalachian families but this makes so much sense. My husband's great Aunt Sissy (RIP) with her double boiler, soup beans, sausage balls, and strawberry n pretzel salad. I inherited some of her cookbooks, some of them Mamaw's from the 50s. As a Colorado girl, still the square peg in the round hole but I've gotten some points for longevity lol!
My dad was raised in a little coal mining town on the Ohio, West Virginia border, he was born in 1935. He had 3 brothers (he was the baby) 🤗 my grandpa was a coal miner, they were raised up on soup beans, however they made theirs with great northern beans. He loved that meal till the day he passed in 2018. I make soup beans for my family till this day. ☺️ #tradition.
I’m an Okie but we always had plenty of beans, potatoes, cornbread, green onions, sometimes gravy and always iced tea. I would love to sit down and have a plate full of this great meal and of course a big glass of iced tea. Thank you for your great videos!
I loved seeing that Matt had milk with his meal. We always have milk to drink when we have soup beans and cornbread, as well as when we have chili. Our friends think we're crazy, but milk is the best with those two meals.
Alright... I Love milk with them too. I grew up drinking milk with my chili... I thought everybody did... guess not...Lol 🙃😵💫🥰 I have a lot of folks...even in my family, that think I'm nuts for having milk with chili. Oh well.. It's Delicious 😋
I loved buttermilk with mine. A tall glass with pepper sprinkled on top. The old style has little tiny bits of butter in it. The Islys milk man delivered it every week. ( we lived way out in those days and everything came by delivery back then. ) Regular milk came in glass jugs with paper lids, it had cream on the top. Mom used to pour that off and save for her and daddy’s coffee.
@@negf22 I LOVE buttermilk with pepper too! That’s how I had it when I first started drinking it! AND, like you, with lots of tiny pieces of butter in it. It came like that then! Now it’s reduced fat… 😵💫not the same at all… it’s good poured over soda or oyster crackers too… with lots of pepper of course !!! You’re the only other person besides family members that I’ve ever heard puts pepper in their buttermilk…♥️🙋♀️‼️☮️
@@cannellcooper5510 I've found that an organic, grass fed whole milk tastes just like milk did back in the 50s. We bought from the Hillcrest Dairy in Massachusetts. They delivered. After decades of not drinking milk, I found that I really love the Organic Valley brand. It tastes like what I grew up on. Maybe any local dairy that milks grass fed cows would taste just as good if not better. Lets support our local dairies before they go under. It's hard when we the customers don't want to pay $6.00 or more a gallon, so buy from the big distributors which don't let their cows graze in fields, eating a diet of grass - which is what they're supposed to eat.
My family emigrated to Southern Ohio from Eastern Kentucky and brought their Appalachian food ways with them. We ate a lot of soup beans growing up, usually with ham or salt pork in them. We had fried potatoes with them a lot of times, too. So delicious. My mother made cornbread every day, so we always had that with our soup beans. In fact, we always refer to that meal as soup beans and cornbread. We do something similar to kilt lettuce, but we call it wilted lettuce. We pour hot bacon grease mixed with vinegar over ours plus a tiny bit of sugar. It's delicious. Onions were a requirement for this meal at our house, too. A nice sliced tomato was awesome with it in summer as well. When I went to college, northern students didn't know what I was referring to when I mentioned soup beans and cornbread. They thought I was saying bean soup, which they saw only as navy bean soup. I had to educate them that bean soup and soup beans were not the same thing. All kinds of education goes on at college!!! LOL! Thanks for sharing this recipe. It brought back a lot of fond memories.
I grew up in Indiana but We ate very Appalachia. All my people are from around the mountains of ky.Tn. Watching and listening to you as you cook brings back the days of wood stoves, fireplace cracking and popping in the background and the smell of fresh perked coffee in the air. You are a true treasure God Bless
This is a common meal that we ate in the hills of Oregon when I grew up. It was pure economics. I still cook bean, now using the Crock-Pot, and then freeze them in quart ziplocs. Just yesterday I ate a bean sandwich, which includes a slice of fresh onion, of course. I am now 77 and I don't know anyone else that eats bean sandwiches.
Ahhh, the real Matt came out! Love it! I knew he couldn’t be as serious as he seemed! We have eaten dried beans and cornbread my entire life. We call it “beans and bread”, and when we have it, it’s the only thing we have. For me, it’s a complete meal. I do cook mine on the stove all day (no soaking or parboiling) and I add water as they need it. I season very simply with salt and pepper and a little corn oil-but if it’s near Thanksgiving and we happen to have a Honey Baked Ham, I’ll use the ham bone from it for seasoning. Now that’s when we have officially taken beans and bread up a notch!! I also like mine a little thickened, (but never so thick that it’s pasty-yuck), so during the last hour or so of cooking I will mash about a quarter of the beans up against the pot with the back of my spoon and then stir them back in. That thickens the broth just enough for us. Oh, and 3 of my kids eat them with ketchup. But what am I gonna do? We all have people in our family that we’re ashamed of. 😜🤣💛
My youngest boy had to use A-1 sauce on everything but oatmeal when he was little. It took a few years but he finally outgrew it. Our steak sauce budget dropped to nearly nothing after that. Our beans have a little extra flavor this year after I shot a wild hog and cured the hams and shoulderss. I put a fist sized chunk of cured meat in a crock-pot of beans and make cornbread every other week.
Those Honey Baked ham bones, along with some of the ham, are so fabulous for any kind of beans. I especially love HB ham for split pea soup and Blackeyed peas. Thick cut black-pepper bacon is another yummy meat for beans and peas. Gee, now I have cravings!
My aunt Dee would make bacon grease fried lettuce, exact same way.. It is incredible! May she, and Gordy, rest in peace. They were loved and never forgotten.
When I was growing up we'd blanch baby spinach from the garden with the hot pork fat (and sometimes we'd add a little vinegar to make a vinaigrette with the fat and maybe we'd even add some sliced hard boiled eggs). I never thought to do it with lettuce, but I'll try now.
Thanks for another lesson of where my family meals came from. I was raised on pretty much this exact meal and had it regularly. My grammy, who taught me to cook, was born in Texas but her mom was born in the Ozarks to parents who moved there from your area in Appalachia. Also, kudos on you and Matt being such a great team, it's inspiring!
I know right ... he seems to sincerely appreciate her cooking & enjoys it... he even helps do the dishes. AWESOME 👌 I was wondering what it was he added to his fried potatoes... don't think I've heard of that.
In our house we ate soup beans, ham hocks, cornbread, fried taters, always. green beans, fried corn, tomatoes, green onions, poke, but we ate Soup beans #every day, yes, we were poor, and we knew how to make corn cakes, and potatoes cakes the next day, nothing went to waste, our desert was rice pudding, homemade, because we were raised on commodities USDA., So I've learned to make it work, Thanks for your videos. Stay Blessed, * ( Also Peeling on Taters are High in Vitamins)*
I've often said "I was born and raised in Chicago but was bred from pure Kentucky stock." Despite growing up in the Chicago area Pinto Beans and Cornbread was on the menu once a week. What a treat! I haven't had this for so long. Now I'm going to have to make these tomorrow for dinner.
Growing up in my Mother’s Mexican home, her 11 children loved it when she made a simple pot of pinto beans. We just ate a bowl full topped with raw onions and pico along with buttered homemade tortillas. I sure miss those sweet times.
Something I left out in my other comments was we never called them soup beans we just called them pintos or Butterbean or what ever kind they were mostly pinto or Butterbeanswe never cared much for great northern or navy beans I still love my beans after eating them all my life and mustard greens are good in killed lettuce good video
Growing up in Southeast Arkansas, we had Pinto Beans and Cornbread Mon-Fri. Sometimes it was Fried Cornbread instead of baked. When extra Blessed, we also had Fried Potatoes! Onions were a must. We had Green Onions during Garden Season and regular onions the rest of the time. All of us kids would take one of our Green Onion 'Blades' and use it like a drinking straw in our glass of Sweet Tea! Sometimes we added Pepper Sauce to our personal helping of Pinto Beans (made by putting peppers in a bottle or jar, pouring hot vinegar over them and allowing them to age for a while). We had Turnips, Green Onions, Lettuce, Mustard Greens, and Radishes in our 'Winter' Garden, planted before the Spring Garden, because they were hale and hearty and could take the cold. When those came up, we picked them, washed them, and cut them up together on our individual plates and poured hot bacon grease over them. Salt and Pepper was added by each person if desired. The Mustard Greens were a bit bitter, but it did not taste as good without them! I do not recall us ever calling them by a name other than the items that were in it! I don't recall us referring to it as 'salad.' (We also mashed up Boiled Eggs with a fork, added salt and pepper, and poured hot grease over them - don't knock it til you try it!) During Garden Season we had Green Onions, Radishes, Turnips, Lettuce and Collard Greens, Tomatoes, Squash, Cucumbers, Cabbage, Okra, Corn, Watermelon, Whippoorwill Peas, a smaller pea that I am not recalling the name of, Kentucky Wonders, Snap Beans, Butter Beans, and I am probably skipping a few things! We had a small Apple tree and a small Peach tree and two different types of Plum trees - all yielded enough fruit for us to enjoy having something sweet. We had two Hickory trees that gave us many Hickory Nuts over the years. There was a Black Walnut tree at an old abandoned homestead down the road about a quarter of a mile that we utilized. It was common knowledge and was first come - first served! There was canning and freezing items as summer wore on. Toward the end of fall, the same Early Winter Garden items were planted and we would have them with the hot bacon grease again for a little while in the cooler weather as Winter moved in. (In Summer, food was plentiful, but we would but be in short supply before Winter was done.)
What a wonderful story, it almost made me cry. That brought back so many precious memories of my Mom and Dad and brothers, I miss them all so much. If we could only turn back time... Love, Jude from Kentucky ✝️🥀🐴🇺🇲
OMG, thank you for this! Even though I was born and raised in NE Ohio, my folks were from southern Kentucky and my mother made soup beans on a regular basis. And always extra cornbread so that she and my dad could enjoy a glass of crumbled up cornbread and buttermilk later(actually that always made me gag, still does.) I did enjoy the beans and all the fixings but haven't had them in well over 50 years. Thank you again for the great memory!
I grew up eating soup beans! We had them all week just like you said… we wasn’t a rich family by any means… but we didn’t know it then. I’m 58 yrs old and to this day this is my favorite thing to eat❤. My moms side of family was country- my dads side from Mexico/Spain. We grew up eating very traditional recipes on both sides… which I am the only grandchild that took the time to learn from all of them. I’m more grateful now as I’ve gotten older from the diversity & differences between each side of the family. I’m the only dtr outta of 3 who has tried to keep those recipes from our family alive to pass them along to the next generation. Thank you so much for your channel.. you really inspire me to continue ❤
Loved this episode. My mommy always used navy beans and we ate it like soup. She also added onion. We would butter our cornbread and use honey from a local bee keeper. Local is like no other. When my grandmother made lettuce she always added sugar and vinegar. She would cut up the pork and put it in the lettuce. So fun to see how families do recipes differently. You make me miss all the jars of goodness that my granfdmothers and mom put up.❤️
We had lots of soup beans. My daddy used great northern beans. We always had sliced onions with ours. My grandma made wilted lettuce. She put a little sugar and vinegar in hers. Love watching your cooking videos
My goodness gracious that looks good! I ain't seen a meal like this since my Grammaw passed away. Thank you so much for showing us how you do it and for bringing us all together once again. The world needs more of this kind of content.
Soup beans and cornbread is easily my favorite meal. I'm a sixth generation Floridian but our people came from Appalachia and this is how we eat. My girls are so into Soup Beans that at this point they call them Special Beans, they love 'em. Thanks for your channel!
Soup beans was called pinto bean soup when I was little. My mom made it every week and served it in bowls with lots of broth. A bowl of that and warm bread fresh out of the oven was how we ate it. I learned about cornbread and mayonnaise a few years later from my school friend’s family. But that was served on a dinner plate after the liquid had thickened up. Both ways taste great! About the only time mom cooked a ham was at the holidays. So she would ask the butcher for a ham hock to season her soup. There was a minimal charge for the ham hock, which made the meal even less expensive!
I grew up in Oklahoma eating beans & cornbread. It was always pinto beans. Her meal is exactly what I ate growing up. We had sticky taters or German fried taters made with yellow or white onion. The only term different was “romps”. We had a wilted salad similar to her kilt lettuce. We often added sliced tomatoes to the meal. Sometimes fried green tomatoes. My daddy would pour bean juice over chocolate cake for dessert. Could our family have carried this meal from generations past from Appalachia? Not sure. And tradition came from both sides of my family. Now I am hungry for that fine meal I have not had in ages.
I grew up in Washington State and other Places and my Mom always cooked this way. Her Family came from Virginia in a wagon and settled in Washington State ❤
My parents were from Oklahoma, and we ate pinto beans and cornbread frequently. Sometimes fried potatoes/onions were added. My dad liked cooked spinach with a hard boiled egg and a dash of vinegar with the meal, but the rest of us did not care for that side dish. After he finished, he would take an additional piece of cornbread and crumble it into his glass of milk. For "dessert" when we did not have cornbread, he would crumble up saltine crackers in his glass of milk. He was one of 9 kids and they struggled during the depression--I am sure they ate whatever was available!
I have a pastor who has told a lot of us about eating cake with soup beans on top- He’s in his 70s- I thought it was so different until I heard you mention it.♥️
Favorite cold weather meal. I love the 15 bean soup mix. Throw them in the crock pot in the morning and by supper you are ready to go. Working from home it was so cozy to hear them bubbling on a snowy day. Chow chow and hoe cakes or cornbread are a must! Beans and tatters! Tatters and beans! Best meal you’ve ever seen!😋
I’m from South Georgia and loved soup beans, but I moved out west long ago. Here they add tomatoes and eat the beans poured over rice. I started storing dried beans 40 years ago and cooked some of those old, old pintos in my pressure cooker (1 part beans to 3 parts water, no seasoning till soft) for 45 minutes, and they were as good as I have ever eaten!
@@cannellcooper5510 I stored them in 5 gallon food storage buckets with good-fitting lids. I just poured them in and banged the lid on tight and labeled the buckets.
My family is from Southwestern Virginia. My great grandmother, grandmother, and mother all made soup beans in a silver pressure cooker like you showed in the video. They Always served with cornbread made in the cast iron skillet and sliced raw onion.
This meal takes me back to my childhood. Pinto beans was a Saturday meal for my family. And love the kilt lettuce but I remember mom put a little vinegar in the grease. If you were standing to close to the stove it would take your breath away. Love your channel.
My Mexican mom would say the plate pictured was a "poor man's meal fit for a king." And she was right! I still cook like this. Thanks to God for all He provides. The cultures are not to far apart.
Yes! My Portuguese grandma would always cook poor man’s meals, because the people on the island where she’s from lived very modestly. They know how to take a poor quality meat and turn it into a delicacy. Fit for Jesus himself I tell ya lolol.
We’ve been blessed and I thank God every day for everything, and for people like your mom and my grandma 🥰
Raised on this food.I wonder at the fact that we didn't achieve lift off!! Lotta beans.
I am hispanic and my husband is white, nothing makes him happier than pinto beans on the stove...better than steak.lol
@@kathycourtney2 😮😟😥🤔🤔🤔🥰🥰🥰
@@LauraBlair-ut5ns 😮😟😥🤔🤔🤔😅😂🤣
I did not learn that beans were considered a “side dish” until I went to college! My family, in upper E Tennessee, lived on pinto beans/onions in the winter and green beans/onions all summer! Cornbread with both!
I never knew they were a side dish until I married, lol.
I hope to never learn pinto beans are a side dish. They will always be a favorite meal to me.
Same here! We just had a nice big bowl of pintos with plenty of bean broth and always cornbread. I had no idea pintos were considered a "side dish". :)
I wasn’t aware pinto beans were a side dish. I’m 74 yrs old and the first I’ve read this. To all of us hillbillies it’s a main dish and always will be, right Appalachian folks???!!!!😃
My mama grew up rich. I didn’t have pinto beans til I married me a Georgia mountain boy. 😂We raised our kids on beans. It’s still a staple meal in our home. I keep a pot of beans on the counter almost every day. Upgraded to the InstantPot a few years back. So easy!!
I grew up on pinto beans, fried tators, and cornbread and onions in mountains of VA. I am 73 now and still my favorite meal. Thanks so much for sharing. Blessings
To have a wife this cool would honestly be the blessing they talk about the Bible....
I have a wife just like her. A fine upstanding Christian woman. She cooks big hearty meals and delicious desserts. Yes, I keep her up on a mountain top and she’s my national treasure.
Blessed be
This woman is a national treasure! I came here to learn her recipe and 30 minutes later I don’t care about it. 10 minutes in I was sitting here with a huge grin listening to her talk about so many different things other than the actual recipe (Matt’s birthday, mayo and beans, cornbread and taters, fatback or side meat) I just so captured by her story telling that I couldn’t stop watching! I truly loved watching this video! I didn’t even write down the recipe! You just keep doing what you’re doing Mrs. Pressley!
Wow thank you for the kind encouraging words!! So glad you enjoyed the video 😀
I'm with you Robert.
Me too!!
If your that BORED find me 🤣💯🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🙊🙊
I agree 100%!!! Thanks for sharing wholesome good cooking. I too was raised on beans and cornbread. I'm cooking this tomorrow. My Momma made the best fried tattors too.
I am so glad to see such a beautiful celebration of culture. I am black and from the south and this is familiar to me as well (beans and cornbread). I do believe we would be a healthier nation if we got back to food basics. Thanks for sharing.
I agree!
Indeed- Medical doctors are only trained a couple weeks in nutrition. There is no money in the healthy. Satan always imitates what God does but twist it in his Evil ways. Mark 2:17
“When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
They should make home economics including personal finance, sewing, cooking, preservation etc mandatory in public education. Same with shop class for everybody
@@woodstream6137 Yet all young females go to school now to be worker drones outside of the home.
I completely agree. I love that I can learn about different seasonings. I’ve always been meat and potatoes so my seasoning game is weak. 😊
In a Mexican household we use tortillas! We soak ours over night in a tablespoon of white vinegar. The beans come out nice bright peach flesh tone color! Smash them up in bacon greese or lard. Roll up in a fresh tortilla, cheese, and with fresh salsa. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Or in a bowl like a soup! Gonna try some with homemade blue cornmeal cornbread.
I’m not Mexican, but I also make beans this way sometimes. So good.
@@Sewmena918 it's delicious ! That's what is beautiful about the U.S. so many different cultural foods to try in different ways. I always love learning new way to cook and try things.
Yes and the Mexican influence is my personal favorite.
@@Sewmena918 I am so glad you enjoy it! 🤗 it's my favorite as well!
@@Sewmena918 Oh mine too! i grew up in Los Angeles and always ate Mexican! Best food ever!
75 year old retired chef and lifetime foodie here, and I just learned so many new things! That is true American soul food, beautifully prepared with love. I could hand out in the kitchen and garden with this lovely lady all day! Truly a treasure!
Thank you!
@@CelebratingAppalachia thank you for sharing your knowledge, talents and gifts, and your culture. Pure American down-home family love.
Cornbread and REAL BUTTER.
This cannot be stressed enough in my opinion. 😁
So good!
You need to try butter and melt some honey it it. Drizzle over the top. (Is it a wonder I gotta watch my carbs 🤣)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Butter.
It breaks my heart when I see people using "margarine."
@@Visigoth_ We prefer butter too. If we don't have fresh we love Kerry Gold. Thanks for watching!
In my childhood home we had pintos every Monday. My mom "looked" the dried beans and set them to soak on Sunday night. Then she out them on the stove early Monday morning right before she started the washing, an ordeal that took the whole day with the wringer washer and wash tubs arranged all around the kitchen! On cold or rainy days, she hung the clothes on a line in the living room, as the beans simmered on the stove.
Beans and cornbread with fried potatoes. Monday supper.
My husband is from Louisiana and it is the same there. Monday is wash day with red beans simmering on the stove.
I just had ask my wife, " what is it about these folks that makes ya just love 'em". It's like the song ,"almost home", I'm from that area, now live seven hours away, the truth in there voice, the display of a simple, honest hard working family life, brings me home every time I watch 'em. You just can't beat beans & cornbread. Celebrate on!
Thank you so much! I'm glad we feel like home 😊
Oh I do agree it makes me want to go back and live with simpler times. We would be much healthier if we ate like this. This is food is grown and prepared with love.
When your soup beans start thickening and lose their sppeal, add chicken broth, sauteed onion, celery and garlic and make bean soup. It freezes beautifully and is so good.
I love these kinds of videos where it it's not a professional chef in a professional kitchen, just an ordinary person teaching ordinary people, how to cook for their family!
I live in NE Oklahoma, Cherokee country. I grew up eating beans and fried potatoes with cornbread. There was 7 of us kids so we always had a pot of pinto beans on the stove. The wilted lettuce and fresh green onions are the best additions. I am in my sixties and my husband and I still have a pot of beans every week. We are having some today with the lettuce but I don’t have any Irish potatoes so we are having baked sweet potatoes with a hunk of butter on it or I might make pan fried sweet potatoes which we love also. I love the springtime so we can go out to the garden and gather green onions…soon will be fresh green peas and new potatoes. You and Matt are a true joy to watch, as you both remind me of my own family. Thank you for sharing your lives with us all…it makes these trying times seem much better.
Yes, wilted saled
Grew up in central Oklahoma and we often had pinto beans, cornbread, and fried potatoes. Often with spring onions or vinegared onions and cucumbers. I still make it for my family, one of my all time favorites.
Appalachia is Cherokee territory. They serve this kind of food everywhere. Mmmm♥️
I’m from Picher and Commerce area and mom made beans and cornbread all the time, our wilted salad mom would sprinkle a little vinegar and sugar on the greens before pouring on the hot grease. Now I live in Washington state nobody cooks like that out here. During the spring and summer, meals was served out side. Man I miss those meals.
Another side dish we grew up on was fresh eggs scrambled with wild onion we would go out and find ‘‘em in the woods.
I grew up on the gulf coast of Texas eating much like this. Beans, cornbread, salt bacon, thick slice of fresh onion, and tomato from the garden and that’s supper. Being a Mexican family that had been in Texas since before Texas was a thing, our food was a melting pot. So it was not uncommon to have tortillas, okra, pan fried pork chops, and beans on the table. I just love how so many things regionally and culturally are the same, but also all the unique differences.
The food you are describing is similar to what we eat in southeast N.C. I love getting a tomato out of the garden and having a fried pork chop and okra.
A great place to eat and live.
I too, grew up on the TX Gulf Coast. We always had fried okra, sliced tomatoes, fried potatoes w/pork chops and pinto beans w/cornbread. Onions too. Oh yeah, and ice tea. Yes Sir! God Bless Texas! Moved to TN for 29yrs due to work and now live in WV. Homesick 4 TX every single day. Wish Texas had ramps!
We are more alike than we are different. I don't know why we can't seem to understand this. I eat like this, and l was born and raised in New Jersey. It's not expensive to eat like this. I eat like this, and add the extra savings from groceries to my mortgage.
You making me hungry now
My mother cooked a large pot of navy beans and ham bones every Saturday for 6 children and my Grandfather and Uncle. The fellas came up every Saturday to cut and chop wood for our stove. We children helped however we could. Loved the memories of cold weekends and a warm kitchen filled with the wonderful smells of bean soup. My mother was a wonderful cook and I miss her dearly.
My favorite story of my dad’s was his telling of how they’d have beans one day and the soup of the beans the next. Born in 1918 so a survivor of The Depression in Appalachia. Galax, Va was his home.
Ate Beans and cornbread, fried tatars, with onions, almost everyday of my life until I was married. I love it still. Good tasting, nutritious, and filling. I think we will see days soon, that we all will be eating like this again.
I've been warned by folks about how all that cornbread, butter and cured sidemeat was bad for my heart. I sure hated going to their funerals over the years.
We have a little free pantry here where l live. I sometimes add items and noticed the beans and rice are never taken. People will take a can of soup first. Could eat for 3-4 days but choose easy instead. If they just know how easy it is.
Won't hear me complain. Now my wife on the other hand, she grew up poorer than I did. Pork and beans with cornbread was the bulk of what they ate coming up. She's about wore out on beans 😂
I think you may be right, but folks who are used to eating like this will probably have an advantage. The only time I got desperate during the quarantine was when I could not find pinto beans in my area. I got on Amazon and ordered 25 pounds, then started finding them at the Dollar Tree, :)
@@RippSnortin And how good....
You are a gifted story-teller! We love Soup Pinto beans with cornbread, cabbage, fried taters and onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and pickled beets on the side. Yum yum.
Thank you so much 😀
What time is dinner? 😋
@@TranceGemini12 😂 Come on over!
Sounds so good... yum😋
You just made me hungry.i love pickled beets with sour cream..that is so good
You can tell she’s the nurturer and he’s the protector❤️ it’s refreshing to see a good marriage. 💯
Agreed
It’s God’s plan. Sometimes we have to veer away from it and that’s OK but when it’s done like this, the way He planned it, growing much of our own food, working hard to take care of what He has blessed us with and loving and caring for our family, that’s true happiness and contentment. I am so thankful for my country upbringing and loving home. I wish I could live this way now.
Ramps are wild leeks, foraged from shaded, woody areas. They're one of the first signs of spring, and one of the first edible green things to hit markets. Their flavor is a combination of garlicky, oniony, and pungent. You can use them anywhere you would use scallions or spring onions.
My Dad loves ramps. He used to go dig them up and make mom fix them and stink up the whole house.
I love wild leeks but haven’t found them for years so I buy leeks they sell at store (not near as good) and use them in my potato soup, split pea soup and bean soup.
Thank you! I ran right to the comments to see what ramps are. I love leeks; wild would be best!
Louis L’Amour (Wild West novelist) wrote something like “garlic and onions can create space around a man, but a ramp eater can clear out a room!” I believe he was talking about raw ramps, though.
@@MrNatWhilk totally agree!!
Haven't heard the term "kilt lettuce" since my Granny Becky passed in 1989. Because of her I have a love of beans, salt pork, kilt lettuce and potato soup with fried pork chops. She taught me in the old ways, being from Ky.
She sounds wonderful Melissa 😀
This is a meal for kings! 👑
Tipper, you are a wonderful cook and a great ambassador for Appalachia life! I swear, if we had more families like yours, our country would be in a much better place!
God bless ~
Agreed!
Thanks so much for creating this channel. This is the cooking I grew up with in the rural mountains of Warren county, Tn in a little community called Irving College. My mama and Mema are now gone and although I still cook these things for my family, I enjoy watching you and yours cook and talk about cooking these wonderful Appalachian folk staples! Sometimes, as I watch, I’ll realize that I have tears of nostalgia rolling down my cheeks. I guess at the same time it makes me remember and miss those wonderful times back home. Thanks so much for what you do. I means so much to folks like me. God bless!
So glad you enjoy our videos!! Thank you 😊
I so wanted to eat dinner with you & Matt. Boy, everything looked beyond good. My mom called her hot lettuce dish, wilted lettuce. She used bacon grease. We also had beans, fried potatoes, cornbread, tomatoes, green onions, cucumbers on the side. It was really fun to see Matt cutting up!
Thank you Jackie 😀
One of my favorite foods! It's really good on fresh baby spinach too
I have never had kilt lettuce... just not something we had. I wonder if it's kilt like, killed (i.e. wilted)? Anyway fresh baby lettuce with pork fat on it, I'd eat it for sure!
That's what we called it also wilted lettuce think I'll make some tomorrow night got a hankering for it now
Same salad I grew up on. 👍🏻
Back grease with little tiny bits of bacon crumbled in.
What a great installment this is. I was raised on soup beans and I still love them. In my area Great Northern beans were the most common by far. I have enough stories involving beans for a book of essays. One of my favorites is about my Grandma Byers. During the Great Depression food had to go as far as possible. Grandma was very resourceful so when she didn't have quite enough of one thing, she had creative ways to stretch what she had. One dish that turned out to be a family favorite; beans and noodles, or beans and dumplings. Grandpa worked on the railroad which was physically difficult, especially in those days. Needless to say, a healthy appetite goes with the territory. Grandma had a few soup beans, a little salt pork, and a few staples. She always made noodles or dumplings which only takes flour and a few eggs. She got her pot of soup beans boiling and dropped them in. Finally she had a pretty good sized pot of them. My grandpa, my dad and his brother loved them! She had made a version of "Stone Soup" that stuck with us. Part two of this story: Grandma was very reluctant to cook them when I was a kid because she was afraid someone (friend or neighbor) would stop by for a visit and see what she had cooked. She said that was "depression cooking" and she was a little embarrassed by it. That was Grandma, through and through.
Thank you Brad! I would have loved to have eaten her cooking 😀
Awww God bless Grandma... some of the most delicious food is inexpensive and simple, but made with care and love.
Thank you Brad for your story. Depression cooking is so good. Food which is made with love and resourcefulness is the best!
She should never be embarrassed by beans. Thank God for beans! They are so good for you and very versatile.
Precious memories! I remember our go to bean was repared exactly the same way, Great Northern with dumplings, sometimes some carrots in the beans, it was delicious! Really, any bean my Mother would fix she'd drop dumplings in them.
I was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. From what I can tell the ways of the Appalachians pretty much were the way of the Ozarks. I have had beans, cornbread and fried taters many many times growing up. As with most families here in the Ozarks money was tight and beans and taters were a staple. Love your videos. They bring back memories.
You are a natural born teacher!! It’s so wonderful how you let cooks know that there are so many ways to do things and they can find the way that is the most comfortable to them. So many people have so much anxiety over cooking, but really one can cook anyway they want!
I grew up eating beans and I LOVE beans still today! And I grew up in San Francisco, CA!
Love watching your channel, especially all of the cooking videos. Your kitchen is awesome and very cute.
Keep up the good work and God bless!
Thank you!
Interesting to see how people eat different things around our country. I grew up in New England and the Midwest and we ate a lot of mashed potatoes and meat. My dad, who grew up in Boston during the Great Depression, ate a lot of Boston Baked Beans that the mothers in the neighborhood cooked. One would cook a large amount of beans, another make lots of bread, etc. and the families would share amongst themselves. That way each mother had to prepare only one dish for dinner.
He talks about how when the beans got reheated many times and became thick, they would make a sandwich out of them with a little ketchup. If you are hungry enough you will enjoy whatever is set before you. He is 93 now and still eats his beans with ketchup.
Soup beans and corn bread were my birthday dinner. My mother made our favorite meal for all 5 of us. I recently taught my daughter how to make them. Yummy tradition.
I grew up with neighbors from the foothills of Appalachia. They made some of the best food ever. I still copy those foods 40 years later. You show that great food comes from the simplest of ingredients, and it is economical and healthy. Thanks a bunch.
Delicious! And Matt helping with the dishes! He’s a keeper!
I do not know how that man is not 300 pounds.
Totally! I’m amazed they’re all slim and healthy looking! They must be very hard working people to burn off all that grease. God bless them! And Matt helping with the dishes is 💯💯💯💕.
My mother was born on an Oklahoma farm in 1919. I grew up on her mama's recipe for soup beans. She only added salt, pepper, oil, and an hour into cooking, torn up tomatoes, and lots of onions. She always cooked one of 3 greens...cabbage, turnip greens, or collards. With the cornbread...a feast! I am 75 and still cook them, and my son comes over and we dig in! A great breakfast...beans on toast. The pot liquor softens the bread...delicious.
Thank you. It’s been so many years since I heard Mamaw say a mess of kilt lettuce. Of course you are much younger, but you are so comfortable talking about your food, lifestyle, music, friends and family as she was. You are helping so many of us who have moved away from our homeplace and dearly miss it.
This brings back memories of meals at my grandparents. Soup beans, corn bread, greens, potatoes and sliced tomatoes, and sliced onions.😊 Looks delicious. I wish I had them now.
Yep my mom was from Kentucky and we kids had to work out in the garden every year and we grew corn and tomatoes and onions and Mom would make a big pot of beans and we would have cornbread and onions and tomatoes and soup beans oh my goodness that was delicious
Now that's a meal. Everything looks delicious too. I love to see a man helping cook and clean. My man cooks me breakfast, and he has always helped with chores. That's what makes a house a home....a partnership in the marriage ❤.
Your videos are awesome
Thanks for watching
Tipper & Family - Rhonda and I really enjoy all your videos but this one about soup beans was especially great! We both grew up in families that routinely had pinto beans, fried potatoes and onions and some kind of salty meat. Rhonda grew up in Abilene, Texas and I was born in a coal-mining area deep in the mountains of Dickinson County, Virginia and grew up until I was 18 within 80 miles of my birth place.
Rhonda’s paternal grandfather wanted pinto beans at both dinner and supper, every day of the week. Now that we are in our “golden years” living on a small farm outside Wytheville, Virginia, we are keeping with our family traditions. Now Rhonda soaks and then cooks our pintos overnight in her crockpot so that the kitchen doesn’t get too hot in the summer and it is one less thing to worry about the next day. She fries our potatoes with onions, makes our cornbread and pan fries our salty meat - Country Ham (my absolute favorite!). We occasionally have “wilted” lettuce to go with our meal.
Rhonda uses a whole bag of pintos when she makes them and puts up some in the freezer and we will have them for more meals, especially our other most favorite food, anything Mexican! We have refried beans with tacos, chimichangas, pork in tomatillo sauce (Carnitas in Salsa Verde), enchiladas, etc. So the beans that Rhonda makes for us serves us in several ways. (I have to moderate the amount of beans and cornbread that I have at any one time as I am a Type II diabetic and both will raise my blood glucose readings. Fortunately, my diabetes is under control and I only test twice a day to keep track of where it is at. So I will eat all the foods that Rhonda cooks for the two of us, but for some of the carb-heavy foods, I moderate the amount that I eat at one time.) We wish you all well and keep on posting your great videos! Dwight
Thank you Dwight and Rhonda 😀
Hello from Abilene TX Rhonda and Dwight. Yes, we love our Tex-Mex food here, so a pot of beans in our house first gets eaten with corn bread, then as the beans are in the fridge a few days, they get creamier and make excellent refried beans, you don’t have to add oil or lard, just smash them up and serve along side Mexican rice and all those yummy things Dwight talks about- with flour tortillas of course.
Hello from another product of Dickenson County! Looking forward to this meal when I visit home in a few weeks, but summer version with fresh sweet corn on the cobb & those sliced garden tomatoes!
So fascinating how old foodways travel separately and meld with each other. I have two old cookbooks, one from the Smoky Mtns and one from the Ozarks. So many of the recipes are nearly identical.
One of the most remarkable days of my life, was visiting a friend in NC, we spend the day with his Grandma Happy, who made us beans and gravy and corn bread, and entertained us for hours telling stories of her younger days and life in the good ol days.
I was raised on good ole soup beans, fried taters, cornbread, and fresh garden maters and onions too. I have precious memories of my mama and grandma making this meal. It's still one of my favorites. Ps. My daddy's name was Woodrow. Thank you for sharing, I've had a flood of memories come back to me 🙂
😀
I live 3+ hours from Appalachia in Ky. I had an uncle Woodrow :) Soup beans was always a thing but we wouldn't pour grease on greens... I'm struggling with that 🙃
@@Sanity_Faire I'm struggling with the raw onions. They're just not to my taste. I've never tried kilt lettuce so I can't really say whether I like it or not.
@@johnnabuzby6103 The raw onion really transforms the beans. Try it sometime, even just a bit of diced raw onion.
@@melissanelson2592 Thanks, but I'll have to take a hard pass on the raw onion. I hate the taste of them and I really hate the way they make my stomach ache.
I love this! I'm half Arab, and this recipe reminded me of a simple dish we make. Chick peas are a huge part of our diet. Soak them overnight, then next day throw them in the pressure cooker and cook until desired softness. Then scoop a bowl of beans, some of that bean broth, and top with just salt, a little cumin, and good quality olive oil, and serve with soft warm pita bread. Nothing fancy, nothing you'd see on a restaurant menu, but just some good ole wholesome beans for a full and warm belly 😋
I'm 56 and still remember the 1st time i had chickpeas as a kid. Probably still my favorite bean .
I grew up in Minnesota and didn't have soup beans and cornbread until we moved to WV and started school. They didn't fix them with any seasonings, so I put ketchup on them to hide the taste. I had dinner with a friend who 's mother made beans and cornbread like you and boy, were they good 😊❤
Falafel and hummus are good too.
@@mingomango1 cook the cumin and salt and other herbs with the chickpeas. Add onion & garlic too. Mash them or preferably (stick)blend w/the oil. We eat w/crudités as we stay grainfree but rarely we’ll also do nonGMO corn tortillas that are warmed. We eat meat so grain isn’t need w/the beans to make a whole protein. We often eat a meatless lunch (w/kefir or cheese always) and always eat eggs as brk protein.
I love all the different ways of eating diff beans! And yes rice (or cornbread) w/beans is great tasting too just not doable at this point.
Chick peas are nasty.
I wasn’t raised anywhere near Appalachia but we had soup pinto beans several times a week. It is an economical meal when raising a large family. We lived it when mom would fry potatoes to go along with it. Dad liked to add caramelized onions and hot peppers on his plate of beans. I like corn bread with mine.
I’m sure mom cooked a pound at a time all her life. When is kids were grown she froze the beans in small portions for her and dad.
I have commented before about my Dad being raised in the Ozarks, and how similar some Appalachian things seem to be. Well, my Dad’s been gone for twenty years now, but WOW did this just bring him right to me! Lots of times, though, my Dad would use fried bacon & loved to pour it over wild mustard greens. When I was little, he taught me how to recognize them, and he would send me out to find him some. My Mom would always make the beans on Fridays, probably so that any after effects would be gone by Monday. 😆 We would also have it with Cornbread and often fried potatoes. My Mom was from Irish roots, so she learned to make this meal for my Dad. I really enjoyed watching this. Thank you. 💜
Oh Julie , that’s sounds awesome n tasty ! 💝😘
Your dad had good taste. Mustard greens are 🤌
My grandparents were from the Ozarks too, and like you said, they cooked much like this! Two generations before them, everyone was in Orange County, NC. I think they brought their ways with them, because my grandma learned to cook from her grandma, who had moved to MO as a girl. I'd take my granny's cooking over any restaurant, any day, to this day. I'm 58 and she's long gone, but she made sure to teach me everything. My mom and aunt were never interested in it, they were both fast food queens. You can keep that mess lol
@@MedusasFeelinSalty Right on, P A ! 👍👍
I've grew up on brown beans and corn bread, my Granny made them, my mom did and I do too, the best that I ever eat was cooked by my great aunt Bonnie, I have the best memories of her suppers when she made beans!! I've cooked them many different ways but now that I'm older, my favorite way is in my instant pot, I "look" my beans and rinse them, put them in my pot for 35 or 40 minutes with just water, after I let the pressure off, I salt them, add some bacon grease and using the satay setting on my cooker, I cook the beans hard for about 20 more minutes, we love the juice to be thick and they always turn out really good!
🥘🥣Thank you for giving me some apetite again. I ate pea soup yesterday, our national meal. Many people may not know but the mountains we call the Laurentians are considered by geologists to be a part of the Appalachian mountains. the only thing is that the St-Lawrence river added a valley that splits the Appalachian mountains in two. Our old folks had pretty much the same folklore and fiddling and cultivated pretty much the same herbs. 🍁
We grew up eating pinto beans. They were always a staple at our house. My Grandmother cooked a fresh pot every day. She had a lot of people to feed. We usually had fried potatoes with them. We ate very little meat except when Grandpa would kill one of his hogs. I was raised in East Tennessee. Love your videos.
I laughed when you said , "If you didn't eat soup beans and fried potatoes".... I grew up in northeastern Kentucky, which is still Appalachia, but we have so much in common, it's almost indistinguishable, love your channel! We always called it wilted lettuce, which you've talked about, I love the history with the vittles!
Here in arkansas we call it wilted lettuce & onions. It always goes with cornbread with the wilted lettuce & onions on top of the cornbread.
Looks SO GOOD I’m from East Texas but I was raised eating meals like that to . I live in Eastern Kentucky now & still think it’s one of the best meals to eat . Love your show . Lord Bless ❤️
These videos and meals take me back to childhood and remind me of the good old days. I love it! Parboiled my beans and now just waiting an hour so I can start to cook them
Beans and cornbread are good all year around too! Winter savory soup with potatoes, onions and ham, and summertime as a side dish with fresh veggies. Gotta love it 👍 🌿🌹🌿
So true!
Nothing like beans and cornbread. So good!
No their not their disgusting.
Here in Wisconsin, we use bean & ham with onion & carrots. We call it bean soup. It's awesome.
I love carrots in basically any soup or stew, or anything slow cooked. Minced celery can go in anything like that as well imo
When Matt put his plate in front of camera, I just wanted to reach out and take it!!!! One of our favorite. Wilted lettuce, beans cornbread & fried taters!!! We like beans made over open fire too. Y'all have a wonderful rest of the day!!!
😀 Thank you John!
Me too John!! LOL I want to do that every time they put a plate up in front of the camera
As a child in Baltimore, my mother would make wilted lettuce. After she took the bacon from the pan, she would pit vinegar and sugar in with the bacon grease and bring to a boil. When it got a bit thick, she poured it over lettuce and thinly sliced onions. Always one of my favorite things. Now I use that dressing on spinach salad.
Same here in East Tennessee. We put the bacon grease and vinegar separate though
We did this, too, except that this was our "dandelion salad" that we made with dandelion leaves (picked before the plant flowered) added to the lettuce and onion. Add the bacon grease and stirred the greens together....boy, was it good.
Same here in central PA, we pour it over bitter greens like endive or dandelion and then garnish it with sliced hard boiled egg, I always thought the vinegar/sugar sweet and sour combo was solely Pennyslvania Dutch, but it's popular all around, delicious!
I swear I could eat soup beans and corn bread everyday! With some chopped white onion Or some good chow chow it's always a special treat! And thanks again --always enjoy your presentations.
Yes! We had chow chow too but haven't had in years.
Amen!
@@dawntreader815 I still have my grandmother’s chow chow recipe and make it once a year (canned). I’m from Québec, Canada and we had chow chow with every meal. Didn’t know what cornbread was until I moved to the USA in 1995. First time I was served cornbread, I thought to myself “why on earth do folks serve dessert cake with the main course?” I still say it’s like a savoury cake instead of sweet cake (texture being the same).😊
@@isabeauskorski9961 That is so cool!! I wish I had my grandmother's recipe but I know it wouldn't taste the same!!
@@dawntreader815😊
I grew up on beans and cornbread. I still eat them 2 or three times a week it's my favorite comfort food
Grandma had pinto beans on the table at every meal. ❤️
You have such a lovely family. Just seeing the time you spend together, doing normal things. The help you give each other, the respect and kindness you give each other...it's beautiful and something that we (as a society) have been slowly losing.
Oh my touch my heart. My granny raised 14 on her own. She had the same pressure pot. beans on after breakfast everyday. Fried taters, cornbread, and sliced red maters. I born and raised in illinois.. loved our summer vacation to granny's every year. She was in the sticks in Dyersburg, Tennessee.. my best childhood memories at my granny's. 🤗
Heavens to Betsy! I grew up knowing your "kilt lettuce" as wilted lettuce. That has been one of my Momma's favorite foods and in the late spring, early summer, we could expect that to be on the table at least 2-4 times a week. Momma would use the lettuce, and spring onions, but she also made sure to put a little of the bacon bits in it as well. Daddy wasn't a fan of it, but my brother and I could eat it without problems. Oh mercy, that took me back.
Me too. One of my mother's favorite foods. I'm not a fan but people love it.
We used bacon grease on our wilted lettuce, momma would save back a piece or two to crumble up for wilted lettuce. Or later in the year she would fry a head of cabbage in the mornings bacon grease and serve it with pork chops. Good heavens now I have to make fried cabbage 😉👍🏻😂
Erin, I cannot believe just today I was trying to remember the name of that I thought was it scalded lettus I could not remember what they called it. Now you've told me . Thanks so much ! Wilted lettuce mother would put couple those little long green bulb onions in it. It was pleasant watching them cook and eat together happily satisfied. Dont see much of that anymore
Same. My dad still makes big old bowls of it in the summer.
My grandma used to make wilted lettuce back in the early 50s and I loved it! As I remember it in addition to the ingredients here, I want to say that she added a touch of vinegar right at the end. Loved her cooking! Thanks for the memories
My mom made Great Northern beans with ham hocks a lot. I make mixed soup beans. Love cornbread with it too. Never heard of kilt lettuce, though, we had something called wilted lettuce that may have been the same. I love that you call it a feast. True appreciation and gratitude for the Earth”s bounty.
Kilt lettuce and wilted lettuce.
Same thing. Good stuff!!!!
My mom made wilted lettuce and my cookbook which I got as a wedding gift in 1966 has the recipe in it. Hot bacon grease and vinegar -- YAAY.
Jo , I'm from Pike County and that's what we called it also.
@@patmelton43what cookbook?? Is it still in print? Sounds like a cookbook I need. Blessings!
My grandma used to make wilted spinach with bacon and hot grease, then add vinegar, sugar and onion. I loved that sweet and sour addition so much. My mom used to make your bean dish too. That side of my family came from Flat River, Missouri, close to the Mississippi River. They always said they were like the Appalachians-same traditions, just different hills. I forgot about that until I stumbled upon your channel. It makes me miss my grandparents and where they lived. I live in Colorado now. It’s beautiful, but it’s kind of missing the soul of the old ways.
❤...Polo missouri here...
Matt is so sweet of course he has skills any man that can help with cleaning up after the meal doing dishes or taking out the trash and can hunt ramps and fry taters is a keeper 😊👍
What are ramps?
Love these country meals like I was raised on. We'd have beans and cornbread all during the week and roast or chicken on the week-end. Great memories and I still make these often. The thicker the beans get the better for me. I call that thick juice gravy. And I still make my Mom's red tomato relish to go on top of the beans.
Never heard if tomato relish. Sounds delish!
Oh could you share the recipe for red tomato relish? It sounds wonderful.
I grew up in Texas eating that. In fact we ate a lot of what y’all eat!!!! Glad I didn’t have to change my way if eating when we moved here to the mountains. Might have a little bad weather coming y’all stay safe. We need the rain 🙏🏼🙏🏼🇺🇸 thanks again for sharing y’all’s life!!!!
Grew up in central Kentucky, it's been a long time but I would swear we had soup beans every day along with whatever else happened to be available. We called the lettuce wilted lettuce and, if memory serves me right, put a little vinegar in along with the hot grease. All cooked on a wood stove, of course! Looks so delicious. All the women who cooked those meals for me are long gone. Such wonderful memories. How foolish we were - we thought we were poor. We had family members who had moved up to Louisville or New Albany who would visit when they could for that "good eating"!
I grew up in Ky. and this was a regular meal and like you we put a little vinegar in our wilted lettuce. I still fix me some every once in awhile.
We put slices of bacon in the salad also before we put the sugar vinegar grease dressing on…my favorite salad
I appreciate this channel so much. I married an Appalachian man (east tennessee/kentucky border) 18 years ago this month and I cannot express how much I relate to this. Every time we go back - usually a funeral, wedding or birth - there is a least one pot of soup beans on the buffet table. I have no context for it because I only know two Appalachian families but this makes so much sense. My husband's great Aunt Sissy (RIP) with her double boiler, soup beans, sausage balls, and strawberry n pretzel salad. I inherited some of her cookbooks, some of them Mamaw's from the 50s. As a Colorado girl, still the square peg in the round hole but I've gotten some points for longevity lol!
So glad you enjoy our videos!
My dad was raised in a little coal mining town on the Ohio, West Virginia border, he was born in 1935. He had 3 brothers (he was the baby) 🤗 my grandpa was a coal miner, they were raised up on soup beans, however they made theirs with great northern beans. He loved that meal till the day he passed in 2018. I make soup beans for my family till this day. ☺️ #tradition.
I’m an Okie but we always had plenty of beans, potatoes, cornbread, green onions, sometimes gravy and always iced tea. I would love to sit down and have a plate full of this great meal and of course a big glass of iced tea. Thank you for your great videos!
Yes, there was always a pitcher of tea in the fridge for my dad. Forgot about that.
My favorite Okie meal. We ate this once a week or close to it. Cheap, delicious, and nutritious. Noms.
Same.
I loved seeing that Matt had milk with his meal. We always have milk to drink when we have soup beans and cornbread, as well as when we have chili. Our friends think we're crazy, but milk is the best with those two meals.
Alright... I Love milk with them too. I grew up drinking milk with my chili... I thought everybody did... guess not...Lol 🙃😵💫🥰 I have a lot of folks...even in my family, that think I'm nuts for having milk with chili. Oh well.. It's Delicious 😋
I loved buttermilk with mine. A tall glass with pepper sprinkled on top. The old style has little tiny bits of butter in it. The Islys milk man delivered it every week. ( we lived way out in those days and everything came by delivery back then. ) Regular milk came in glass jugs with paper lids, it had cream on the top. Mom used to pour that off and save for her and daddy’s coffee.
@@negf22 I LOVE buttermilk with pepper too! That’s how I had it when I first started drinking it! AND, like you, with lots of tiny pieces of butter in it. It came like that then! Now it’s reduced fat… 😵💫not the same at all… it’s good poured over soda or oyster crackers too… with lots of pepper of course !!! You’re the only other person besides family members that I’ve ever heard puts pepper in their buttermilk…♥️🙋♀️‼️☮️
I heard all my life that you shouldn't drink milk with chili but I've done it a thousand times and had no problem
@@cannellcooper5510 I've found that an organic, grass fed whole milk tastes just like milk did back in the 50s.
We bought from the Hillcrest Dairy in Massachusetts. They delivered.
After decades of not drinking milk, I found that I really love the Organic Valley brand. It tastes like what I grew up on.
Maybe any local dairy that milks grass fed cows would taste just as good if not better. Lets support our local dairies before they go under. It's hard when we the customers don't want to pay $6.00 or more a gallon, so buy from the big distributors which don't let their cows graze in fields, eating a diet of grass - which is what they're supposed to eat.
My family emigrated to Southern Ohio from Eastern Kentucky and brought their Appalachian food ways with them. We ate a lot of soup beans growing up, usually with ham or salt pork in them. We had fried potatoes with them a lot of times, too. So delicious. My mother made cornbread every day, so we always had that with our soup beans. In fact, we always refer to that meal as soup beans and cornbread. We do something similar to kilt lettuce, but we call it wilted lettuce. We pour hot bacon grease mixed with vinegar over ours plus a tiny bit of sugar. It's delicious. Onions were a requirement for this meal at our house, too. A nice sliced tomato was awesome with it in summer as well. When I went to college, northern students didn't know what I was referring to when I mentioned soup beans and cornbread. They thought I was saying bean soup, which they saw only as navy bean soup. I had to educate them that bean soup and soup beans were not the same thing. All kinds of education goes on at college!!! LOL! Thanks for sharing this recipe. It brought back a lot of fond memories.
Ate a lot of beans, taters, and cornbread growing up! Love them still today. Really like the end where everyone is being silly. Y'all are a riot! 🤣
Glad you enjoyed it 😀
I wish there was an episode of beans across America because she is right every region eats there beans differently.
I grew up in Indiana but We ate very Appalachia. All my people are from around the mountains of ky.Tn. Watching and listening to you as you cook brings back the days of wood stoves, fireplace cracking and popping in the background and the smell of fresh perked coffee in the air. You are a true treasure God Bless
This is a common meal that we ate in the hills of Oregon when I grew up. It was pure economics. I still cook bean, now using the Crock-Pot, and then freeze them in quart ziplocs. Just yesterday I ate a bean sandwich, which includes a slice of fresh onion, of course. I am now 77 and I don't know anyone else that eats bean sandwiches.
Our favorite is dried butter beans, slaw, fried okra, cornbread. We had field peas, fried okra, slaw, mashed potatoes, cornbread, sliced tomatoes, onion tonight. Delicious!
Yum! 😀
Ahhh, the real Matt came out! Love it! I knew he couldn’t be as serious as he seemed!
We have eaten dried beans and cornbread my entire life. We call it “beans and bread”, and when we have it, it’s the only thing we have. For me, it’s a complete meal. I do cook mine on the stove all day (no soaking or parboiling) and I add water as they need it. I season very simply with salt and pepper and a little corn oil-but if it’s near Thanksgiving and we happen to have a Honey Baked Ham, I’ll use the ham bone from it for seasoning. Now that’s when we have officially taken beans and bread up a notch!! I also like mine a little thickened, (but never so thick that it’s pasty-yuck), so during the last hour or so of cooking I will mash about a quarter of the beans up against the pot with the back of my spoon and then stir them back in. That thickens the broth just enough for us.
Oh, and 3 of my kids eat them with ketchup. But what am I gonna do? We all have people in our family that we’re ashamed of. 😜🤣💛
😀
"We do all have family we're ashamed of.' That's hilarious 😂😂😂 but true.
Love, Jude from Kentucky ✝️🥀🐴🇺🇲
My youngest boy had to use A-1 sauce on everything but oatmeal when he was little. It took a few years but he finally outgrew it. Our steak sauce budget dropped to nearly nothing after that.
Our beans have a little extra flavor this year after I shot a wild hog and cured the hams and shoulderss. I put a fist sized chunk of cured meat in a crock-pot of beans and make cornbread every other week.
I have always eaten my beans with cornbread fried potatoes and ketchup 😊
Those Honey Baked ham bones, along with some of the ham, are so fabulous for any kind of beans. I especially love HB ham for split pea soup and Blackeyed peas.
Thick cut black-pepper bacon is another yummy meat for beans and peas.
Gee, now I have cravings!
My aunt Dee would make bacon grease fried lettuce, exact same way.. It is incredible! May she, and Gordy, rest in peace. They were loved and never forgotten.
This reminds me of my childhood in NE Tennessee. ❤
We call it wilted lettuce. We use lettuce, bacon, onion and radishes. Bacon grease and a little vinegar. So good! You have a wonderful meal there!
this was one of my mom's favorites. lettuce and onions
she always ate it with a green onion
When I was growing up we'd blanch baby spinach from the garden with the hot pork fat (and sometimes we'd add a little vinegar to make a vinaigrette with the fat and maybe we'd even add some sliced hard boiled eggs). I never thought to do it with lettuce, but I'll try now.
Thanks for another lesson of where my family meals came from. I was raised on pretty much this exact meal and had it regularly. My grammy, who taught me to cook, was born in Texas but her mom was born in the Ozarks to parents who moved there from your area in Appalachia. Also, kudos on you and Matt being such a great team, it's inspiring!
I know right ... he seems to sincerely appreciate her cooking & enjoys it... he even helps do the dishes. AWESOME 👌 I was wondering what it was he added to his fried potatoes... don't think I've heard of that.
In our house we ate soup beans, ham hocks, cornbread, fried taters, always. green beans, fried corn, tomatoes, green onions, poke, but we ate Soup beans #every day, yes, we were poor, and we knew how to make corn cakes, and potatoes cakes the next day, nothing went to waste, our desert was rice pudding, homemade, because we were raised on commodities USDA., So I've learned to make it work, Thanks for your videos. Stay Blessed, * ( Also Peeling on Taters are High in Vitamins)*
I've often said "I was born and raised in Chicago but was bred from pure Kentucky stock." Despite growing up in the Chicago area Pinto Beans and Cornbread was on the menu once a week. What a treat! I haven't had this for so long. Now I'm going to have to make these tomorrow for dinner.
I was born in Chicago but grew up in Kentucky! :)
yep..me too...but they left Kentucky for Arizona instead of Chicago...but beans and cornbread at least once a week.
Growing up in my Mother’s Mexican home, her 11 children loved it when she made a simple pot of pinto beans. We just ate a bowl full topped with raw onions and pico along with buttered homemade tortillas. I sure miss those sweet times.
Us too!!! The smell of beans cooking and tortillas, yumm...
It's amazing how similar some food ways are.
one of my favorite snacks growing up, my tias fresh made and warm flour tortillas filled with beans....
Something I left out in my other comments was we never called them soup beans we just called them pintos or Butterbean or what ever kind they were mostly pinto or Butterbeanswe never cared much for great northern or navy beans I still love my beans after eating them all my life and mustard greens are good in killed lettuce good video
Growing up in Southeast Arkansas,
we had Pinto Beans and Cornbread Mon-Fri. Sometimes it was Fried Cornbread instead of baked.
When extra Blessed, we also had Fried Potatoes! Onions were a must. We had Green Onions during Garden Season and regular onions the rest of the time. All of us kids would take one of our Green Onion 'Blades' and use it like a drinking straw in our glass of Sweet Tea!
Sometimes we added Pepper Sauce to our personal helping of Pinto Beans (made by putting peppers in a bottle or jar, pouring hot vinegar over them and allowing them to age for a while).
We had Turnips, Green Onions, Lettuce, Mustard Greens, and Radishes in our 'Winter' Garden, planted before the Spring Garden, because they were hale and hearty and could take the cold.
When those came up, we picked them, washed them, and cut them up together on our individual plates and poured hot bacon grease over them. Salt and Pepper was added by each person if desired. The Mustard Greens were a bit bitter, but it did not taste as good without them!
I do not recall us ever calling them by a name other than the items that were in it! I don't recall us referring to it as 'salad.'
(We also mashed up Boiled Eggs with a fork, added salt and pepper, and poured hot grease over them - don't knock it til you try it!)
During Garden Season we had Green Onions, Radishes, Turnips, Lettuce and Collard Greens, Tomatoes, Squash, Cucumbers, Cabbage, Okra, Corn, Watermelon, Whippoorwill Peas, a smaller pea that I am not recalling the name of, Kentucky Wonders, Snap Beans, Butter Beans, and I am probably skipping a few things!
We had a small Apple tree and a small Peach tree and two different types of Plum trees - all yielded enough fruit for us to enjoy having something sweet.
We had two Hickory trees that gave us many Hickory Nuts over the years. There was a Black Walnut tree at an old abandoned homestead down the road about a quarter of a mile that we utilized. It was common knowledge and was first come - first served!
There was canning and freezing items as summer wore on.
Toward the end of fall, the same Early Winter Garden items were planted and we would have them with the hot bacon grease again for a little while in the cooler weather as Winter moved in.
(In Summer, food was plentiful, but we would but be in short supply before Winter was done.)
Thank you for sharing 😀
What a wonderful story, it almost made me cry.
That brought back so many precious memories of my Mom and Dad and brothers, I miss them all so much. If we could only turn back time...
Love, Jude from Kentucky ✝️🥀🐴🇺🇲
I have never had soup beans! Now thanks to you, it’s a must try! ❤️
I hope you like them 😀
OMG, thank you for this! Even though I was born and raised in NE Ohio, my folks were from southern Kentucky and my mother made soup beans on a regular basis. And always extra cornbread so that she and my dad could enjoy a glass of crumbled up cornbread and buttermilk later(actually that always made me gag, still does.) I did enjoy the beans and all the fixings but haven't had them in well over 50 years. Thank you again for the great memory!
I grew up eating soup beans! We had them all week just like you said… we wasn’t a rich family by any means… but we didn’t know it then. I’m 58 yrs old and to this day this is my favorite thing to eat❤. My moms side of family was country- my dads side from Mexico/Spain. We grew up eating very traditional recipes on both sides… which I am the only grandchild that took the time to learn from all of them. I’m more grateful now as I’ve gotten older from the diversity & differences between each side of the family. I’m the only dtr outta of 3 who has tried to keep those recipes from our family alive to pass them along to the next generation. Thank you so much for your channel.. you really inspire me to continue ❤
Thank you for sharing! So glad you enjoy our videos 😀
Yes Mama made soup beans all the time with a cake of corn bread. With some turnip greens. That was good eating.
So good 😊
Loved this episode. My mommy always used navy beans and we ate it like soup. She also added onion. We would butter our cornbread and use honey from a local bee keeper. Local is like no other.
When my grandmother made lettuce she always added sugar and vinegar. She would cut up the pork and put it in the lettuce. So fun to see how families do recipes differently.
You make me miss all the jars of goodness that my granfdmothers and mom put up.❤️
We had lots of soup beans. My daddy used great northern beans. We always had sliced onions with ours. My grandma made wilted lettuce. She put a little sugar and vinegar in hers. Love watching your cooking videos
Thank you 😀
My goodness gracious that looks good! I ain't seen a meal like this since my Grammaw passed away. Thank you so much for showing us how you do it and for bringing us all together once again. The world needs more of this kind of content.
You are so kind-thank you 😀
I'm from Arkansas and my grandmother always had pinto beans and fried potatoes w cornbread and onion for us. One of my favorite meals to fix today.
Soup beans and cornbread is easily my favorite meal. I'm a sixth generation Floridian but our people came from Appalachia and this is how we eat. My girls are so into Soup Beans that at this point they call them Special Beans, they love 'em. Thanks for your channel!
Soup beans was called pinto bean soup when I was little. My mom made it every week and served it in bowls with lots of broth. A bowl of that and warm bread fresh out of the oven was how we ate it. I learned about cornbread and mayonnaise a few years later from my school friend’s family. But that was served on a dinner plate after the liquid had thickened up. Both ways taste great!
About the only time mom cooked a ham was at the holidays. So she would ask the butcher for a ham hock to season her soup. There was a minimal charge for the ham hock, which made the meal even less expensive!
I grew up in Oklahoma eating beans & cornbread. It was always pinto beans. Her meal is exactly what I ate growing up. We had sticky taters or German fried taters made with yellow or white onion. The only term different was “romps”. We had a wilted salad similar to her kilt lettuce. We often added sliced tomatoes to the meal. Sometimes fried green tomatoes. My daddy would pour bean juice over chocolate cake for dessert. Could our family have carried this meal from generations past from Appalachia? Not sure. And tradition came from both sides of my family. Now I am hungry for that fine meal I have not had in ages.
I grew up in Washington State and other Places and my Mom always cooked this way. Her Family came from Virginia in a wagon and settled in Washington State ❤
My parents were from Oklahoma, and we ate pinto beans and cornbread frequently. Sometimes fried potatoes/onions were added. My dad liked cooked spinach with a hard boiled egg and a dash of vinegar with the meal, but the rest of us did not care for that side dish. After he finished, he would take an additional piece of cornbread and crumble it into his glass of milk. For "dessert" when we did not have cornbread, he would crumble up saltine crackers in his glass of milk. He was one of 9 kids and they struggled during the depression--I am sure they ate whatever was available!
@@patevans3709 oh my goodness I love that 👍
I have a pastor who has told a lot of us about eating cake with soup beans on top- He’s in his 70s- I thought it was so different until I heard you mention it.♥️
Some people make sweet cornbread and to me it has a cake like taste and texture.
Memories of my moms cooking when we were at home. I was raised on meals like this.
Such good memories 😀
Favorite cold weather meal. I love the 15 bean soup mix. Throw them in the crock pot in the morning and by supper you are ready to go. Working from home it was so cozy to hear them bubbling on a snowy day. Chow chow and hoe cakes or cornbread are a must! Beans and tatters! Tatters and beans! Best meal you’ve ever seen!😋
I’m from South Georgia and loved soup beans, but I moved out west long ago. Here they add tomatoes and eat the beans poured over rice. I started storing dried beans 40 years ago and cooked some of those old, old pintos in my pressure cooker (1 part beans to 3 parts water, no seasoning till soft) for 45 minutes, and they were as good as I have ever eaten!
How did you store the Pintos for so long ???
@@cannellcooper5510 I stored them in 5 gallon food storage buckets with good-fitting lids. I just poured them in and banged the lid on tight and labeled the buckets.
My family is from Southwestern Virginia. My great grandmother, grandmother, and mother all made soup beans in a silver pressure cooker like you showed in the video. They Always served with cornbread made in the cast iron skillet and sliced raw onion.
This meal takes me back to my childhood. Pinto beans was a Saturday meal for my family. And love the kilt lettuce but I remember mom put a little vinegar in the grease. If you were standing to close to the stove it would take your breath away. Love your channel.
Yelp. Bacon grease, Vinegar and bring the sour back with a little sugar. Whew.