Appalachian Chicken and Waffles: Countering Southern Food Fetishism

If we do it right, Appalachian food studies can correct the excesses of southern food fetishism; open up fertile ground for a complicated story of race, class, gender, region and food; and tell a heck of a good story at the same time.

Photograph Album 10, Scan 69, ca. 1905–1915, in the John C. Campbell and Olive D. Campbell Papers #3800, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In the mountains of western North Carolina in the 1970s and early 1980s, summer Saturday nights brought out square dancers and cloggers. Absent of specialized shoes or frilly petticoated outfits, the dancers only needed an empty barn, a blue-grass band, a caller, and an even number of couples to take the floor. A young Belgian man from Wisconsin discovered the region’s barn dances that night. He had grown up on polkas and had come to the mountains as an engineer for a new industrial plant. The band learned “Roll Out the Barrel” for him and the man learned every complicated figure the caller sang out. He met a woman there whose family had lived in the mountains since the 1780s. They married, had a daughter, and together they attended the dances each summer. Returning home at one in the morning, they arrived at their 1960s suburban house located one mile up a steep mountain. Everyone put on pajamas while he pulled out his chrome-plated electric waffle maker, and before bed he made a breakfast feast for all. Too late for dinner, too early for breakfast, exhausted and energized from music, dancing, and late night adventures, the family added scrambled eggs, syrup, bacon and leftovers to the waffle supper. Were they Appalachian waffles? Does such a thing exist in the popular consciousness? Were they Belgian waffles? They were not what is marketed under the name today—not thick, not covered with whipped cream, not made on a machine stamped with the word. Buttermilk, some cornmeal, and fresh butter turned out crispy, light, and perfectly thin waffles that restored body and soul after a long night of Appalachian dancing and music. The satisfied family tumbled into bed in the wee hours of the night.

For Christmas mornings, the same family crawled out of bed well before dawn, in the dark of the cold night. They had to get ready to go to the woman’s mother’s house for country breakfast. Some years there was a pretense of calling it “Christmas brunch,” but the fancy phrase obscured the fact that if you were not there in line with your plate by 7:45 a.m., you missed out. For the family that lived more than thirty minutes away from their destination, quickly exploring a few treasures from Santa, packing gifts, and donning Christmas finery under warm winter coats before piling into the car for the long drive meant early mornings indeed. Upon reaching the bright lights of the house and navigating the driveway packed with relatives’ vehicles, the sleepy family piled into the kitchen. Heat wafting from the stove collided with cold mountain air streaming from the porch. The stove had cast iron skillets and dutch ovens covering every eye—eggs scrambling, bacon crackling, grits simmering, and chicken frying. Gravy was nearby; biscuits were in the oven; ham was already on the table. Family members brought homemade jellies, jams, honey, and cane syrup. Coconut cakes, fruitcakes, divinity, fudge, and other holiday candies and desserts sat ready. The chickens were store-bought and the stove was electric in the 1970s, but little else had changed in the preparation of the fried chicken. Was it Appalachian fried chicken? It was not thickly coated in crunchy layers, not always divided into perfectly sized pieces, not what

Appalachia has only slowly been included in [recent] adventures in authenticity. Craft moonshine is having a moment. Ramps, morels, and other foraged wild foods are shipped out of the region to chefs’ kitchens for “reinterpretation.” Ole Smoky Tennessee...