I am not sure if it is instinctive or some sort of facilitated response caused by the local media and their attempts to panic the local populace, sell bread & milk, increase their ratings with the current bombardment about the coming flurries and artic temps, but I woke up hungry. I normally something lighter most days but will cook something heavier on the weekends from time to time. I was craving some "stick to the ribs food". When I decided to cook biscuits, my Sorghum Syrup light came on and I had to quell the craving. Once a staple for families of the rural south, it is still around, but not near as popular. I try to keep some on hand. I don't know many who eat it regularly. It was on the table at my house practically all my life and I loved then and still do. For those unfamiliar, this is how you do it.
cut the butter into
sop, and then enjoy
It definitely WILL stick to your ribs, and in a good way. I grew up eating Townsend’s Sweet Sorghum out of Jeffersonville, KY. Awesome!!
ReplyDeleteI should have added that I was fortunate enough to have participated in family venture where we raised and cut a patch of cane when I was young teenager. Of course, I didn't think so at that time when I was laboring in a hot field. We took the cane to a fellar who had a press and he had a mule that turned the press that mashed the cane pressing out the juice. It was then cooked down to the desired thickness/taste and put it into quart tins. I cannot remember how many quarts we ended up with but our part seemed like a pickup bed full of boxes containing the tins. The man processed the cane into syrup "on the halves". We ate on it steady for two years and five years later, my grandmother came across a couple of quarts that she'd put back and gave them to me. It had kept well. None of that batch turned to sugar (something sorghum will sometimes do in storage, but a little heat will turn it back to syrup most times.
DeleteAlso, I did use White Lily self rising making the biscuits.
The square "arn" skillet was given to me by my grandmother. It belonged to her mother.
I like sorghum prepared and eaten the same way with cornbread.
The syrup pictured came from some Mennonites not far from where I was raised. Below is link to one of their stores in the area.
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/food/alabama/mennonite-bakery-al
Try "Grandma's Original Unsulphured Molasses"
ReplyDelete+100. None of that sissy molasses. If you like dark roast coffee, dark chocolate, dark cigars, try the molasses. If you like the lighter fair, pass.
DeleteBut definitely try Grandma's on cornbread with your BBQ.
Ps, date molasses is great. Not at all like Grandma's.
Do you have any idea how many moles had to give up their little lives to make just 1 teaspoon of molasses?
DeleteI grew up on Grandma’s. unavailable is East asia. as is any sorghum and molasses hard to find.
DeleteI do love grandma’s tho.
+101 back to ya!
DeleteMy father, youngest son of a Caribou Maine potato farmer, honorably served 26 years in the USAF, retiring to Huntsville, AL as an Air Force "Full Bird" Colonel veteran in 1979, and passed away May, 2021, was raised on buckwheat pancakes smeared with Grandma's molasses and made sure to pass that "stick to your ribs" dish down to his sons and daughter. Having retired in Huntsville we found that Grandma's works well with southern style biscuits and cornbread!
More butter, lots more. Lol
ReplyDeleteBackwoods Okie
I put that stuff on everything.
ReplyDeleteOur sorghum of choice is Blue Ribbon when we have to buy it. Up until about 15 years ago, there was a group of us ner" do wells. One of the group had about 20 acres of good ground down on the Chikaskia River here in Northern Oklahoma. In the spring we would take the old steel wheeled John Deere 2 row planter down there and plant sorghum cane. In the fall we would have a festival. The cane would be cut and fed to a mule powered sorghum press and then we would start cooking that vile, green juice down into the elixer of the gods. My job was usually cooking a cabrito in the bbq style. Invited folks would bring something to go with tender, succulant goat. All would leave with as much sorghum as they wanted. About half of us have crossed that bridge and the rest are too stove up to go to town to drink coffee. Such is the way of the world. Yes, you are spot on about how to eat sorghum.
ReplyDeleteI live in Central Florida and all the people on my mothers side are from Southeast Georgia. There isn't any sorghum syrup to be found in this area but there are many placed that make cane syrup, I but a few pints of it every year at a nearby festival that does an old fashioned "cane squeezing". The guy who is cooking down the squeezing's will text me when my desired darkness is reached and I'll come buy and pick it up. I learned to eat biscuits with cane syrup for breakfast by the time I was in grade school.
ReplyDeleteMine was the opposite, dad from Toombs county GA, mom from Lake City FL. They make that stuff by the gallon in Toombs county, but I'm off sugar and biscuits for life...
DeleteAs Jed Clampit use to say: "Mmmmmm...doggies....!
ReplyDeleteIf those are scratch bizkits , I want your recipe. Mine don’t come out anywhere near as pretty.
ReplyDeleteTip: You gotta use soft wheat flour like White Lily. Also, frozen butter.
DeleteEmail me at roy@rbfiberoptic.com. I can send you my recipe. I grew up eating mama’s biscuits but she didn’t have a recipe, just did it by feel. I tried making biscuits and you could drive a nail with them. One day I was making some meat pies and while making the crust for them I had an epiphany, I was working the biscuits dough to much. It took a couple of tries but i got the recipe down, same ingredients as mama’s but now i had measurements and it all makes sense now.
DeleteBetter if heated with butter on the stove. How my granny served her buttermilk pancakes!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the photos. I didn't know how Southerners use sorghum.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago Gerard van der Leun, who is sorely missed, put up a link to Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill. I followed it, thought what the heck, and bought a pint of their sorghum. It lasted me until just a month ago. I put it on pancakes now and then like molasses, which I've used since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
Thank you for that Gerard memory!
DeleteAlso known as molasses in the South; any time I heard the term Sorghum it was paired with Syrup.
You ae welcome.
DeleteWe call it Sorghum or Sorghum Syrup and it is made from Sorghum cane.
A lot of folks do not realize that Molasses and Sorghum Syrup are two different things. Sorghum Syrup is made from Sorghum cane which is a type of grass that comes from Africa. The syrup is made from squeezing/crushing the stalks of the cane and cooking the juice from that cane down to a syrup. Molasses originates from the Caribbean, the sugar capital of the world, and is a byproduct of sugar production. There are similarities, but differences too. Give me Sorghum any day.
YUM!
ReplyDeleteIndeed! A great toothsome delicacy. Found by raising a few rows of sourgum, plus building a set of rollers to swueeze the stocks, its exactly the same as making maple surple. Except sourgum juice has a lot more suger content per gallon than maple sap, so it takes a lot less squeezing's to produce a few quart jars of sourgum syrup, you can cook it down to any level of sweetness you prefer, once its begun to boil off the water content, from thin to almost thicker than honey, theres a numbed of different species of sourgum too, so far we tried 4 different ones, the one we like was from a local farmer, he gifted us a whole quart if seeds. I was like holy cow thats a lot of seeds buddy! When we raised our first crop it was mind blowing how much seed it produces, just 3 50 ft rows gave us two plus bushels of seed clusters, at first had no idea what to do with them all till my wife suggested the chickens would maybe like them, and she was right, they went bonkers, plus the stalks, after going thru the mill, the pigs devoured them, gives them hours of enjoyment, ended up being a super thing to grow, nothing wasted at all. Cows like the stalks too.
ReplyDeleteCane syrup here too! I love the stuff and need to find another source. The old family up the road had a syrup cooking every Nov but he passed away about 5 years ago and the family stopped growing sugarcane. I have a little left...
ReplyDeleteYum yum, eat em up!
ReplyDeleteHere's spot you may wish to visit later this year. https://www.morgancountysorghumfestival.com/
ReplyDeletenot just Sorghum but......Ribbon Cane !
ReplyDeleteMy mother, rest her soul, used sorghum molasses in many foods - but, she was from Roanoke, Virginia. Her cornbread was to die for...
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am from Commiesota, Florida now, my German grandmother always had sourgum on hand. Loved it. Going to look for it in the local stores. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI grew up sopping sorghum syrup and butter. Learned it from my grandpa. I remember syrup in the tin pails. Wish I had a few of those. I like to slice open a wedge of cornbread, fresh out of the cast iron skillet. Slap some real butter inside. Let it melt, flip it over about halfway thru melting to let the butter soak both sides. When the butter has finished melting, open up the wedge and pour either sorghum or ribbon cane syrup over it. Mmm, mmm good!
ReplyDeleteTennessee Ernie Ford said his favorite treat was exactly that, and he could "Eat that dude with one foot in the fire".
DeleteHey Jeffery, my Daddy loved Sorghum as a snack. He was from West-By-God Virginia and would put half a stick of butter in a small bowl, add the Sorghum, and mix it up. Then he would put one drop of wintergreen oil in it and mix, eat it with slices of white bread! Also, another snack he loved was filling a tall glass with buttermilk, mix in a crumbled handful of saltine crackers, and top it off with black pepper. Sure do miss the Old Man. -- J-Dub in the State of Jefferson
ReplyDeleteMy Scots-Irish grandmother raised me . . . after surviving the Great Depression with 8 kids. Refused to throw away anything remotely edible.
ReplyDeleteOne of her staples was a vile substance she called "mush." Came in a tube about 6" in diameter. Once or twice a week she'd throw half-inch slices of that crap into a skillet with bacon grease and feed it to us. Only way to get it down was with a generous wad of butter and half a cupful of warm dark sorghum.
Worked for brains, too, when she tried to hide 'em in scrambled eggs, and leftovers from the icebox (box with a chunk of ice in the top compartment).
Guh-REAT biscuits, tho, and a genius with chicken dishes, 'specially noodles or dumplings.
Used to use homemade sorghum from northeast KY. Not relatives but close to it. They passed on and so did my supply. None of the commercial brands come close but some is better than none. I like maple syrup as well, but two different products for two different uses.
ReplyDeleteI remember the sorghum cookies my Granny made. They would give you a sugar high.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, breakfast generally featured a can of Benton County Sorghum on the table.
ReplyDelete--Tennessee Budd
Damn, Jeffery, that looks pretty good.
ReplyDeleteGuess I'll have to find me some and try it out. Like I need another reason to eat biscuits. :-)
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
One of the guys I worked with had a source for the Sorghum made in the red hills of W TN and I used to get him to get me a couple of quarts every fall. He moved to Blount County, AL quite a few years ago and I have not had any decent Sorghum since then. I agree with the Backwoods Okie, add lots more butter to your mixture.
ReplyDeleteMolasses on buttered cornbread was the finish of many suppers growing up here in northern Texas, and 50-50 with aunt jemima syrup on pancakes for breakfast.....still eat it to this day....
ReplyDeleteGood story about growing up poor...on a cattle drive up the chisom trail a cowboy from south Texas came into camp up north where they had things better, he sat down for supper and somebody passed him a bowl of sugar for his coffee...he said “no thanks I don’t put salt in my coffee”....he had never seen sugar, only grew up using molasses for sweetener....
Don't know diddly about sorghum, other than dairy farmers in the Midwest would generally grow some to go with their grain mix for the Old Girls in the milking parlor. Heads of seeds about 12-16" long on a maybe 3 foot tall plant. The seeds about the size of the BBs a boy feeds his Daisy. Having said that, where is the rest of the bacon in the picture? Those 3 slices would be gone before I even picked up the fork.
ReplyDeleteLove sorghum syrup.
ReplyDeleteGreat with pancakes and waffles, as well as biscuits.
Gettin hungri with all this food talk is better that lookin at Nipples for an Ol Man like me.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jeffery. I've eaten sorghum before, and I've seen the syrup in stores, but never tried it. I'll correct that on the next grocery gettin' trip.
ReplyDeleteBabes Chicken Dinner House has it on the table for their great biscuits.
ReplyDeleteGoing to Babe's is like sitting down at Grandma's table.
DeleteAgain, are those biscuits from scratch? Or, some frozen replica?
ReplyDeleteBeing from the south myself, as a kid we would take leftover buiscits, put a finger hole in one end stuff with butter and then pour in the "Brer Rabbit molasses" (dark) for a snack.
ReplyDeleteI grew up on Steens Cane syrup in South Louisiana. They also made black strap molasses. My Dad was a fiend for the stuff. Great on cornbread and biscuits
ReplyDeleteGood stuff. See Morgan County Sourgum Festival
ReplyDeleteThat is EXACTLY how you do it.
ReplyDeleteA cane press was part of every fall at my dad's homeplace in Northern Ga. The vertical rollers turned by engine or mule, sugar cane in and juice out. What is the yield per acre, I wonder? The cook pot was manned by a veteran of the process to prevent burning and the end result made it to Mason jars on a rude table.
Good for what ailes you.
Last time I had this (about 2 weeks ago) I could feel that my body needed something that was in sorghum. Maybe sulfer?
ReplyDeleteI get that feeling occasionally like when I started drinking raw milk. I was drinking it a quart at a time…..damn it was good!
Its the American way
ReplyDeleteI used to mix up peanut butter and sorghum like that. Sopping it up till the plate was clean. I grew up on Brer Rabbit and Steens. I have a gallon of black strap that helps me get by now. I should lay in some Steens. It's been quite a long time....
ReplyDeleteIn my youth, I helped a farmer who was a family friend cut, stack, and tie sorghum canes as animal feed. They had to be dried a bit before storage to keep them from burning later. Here in my part of south Texas, local farmers grow what they call grain sorghum. It makes heads on top of the canes, and that’s what they harvest. It looks like corn, except for the shorter height.
ReplyDeleteWanna share my recipe for a refreshing drink, mostly hot weather but I made it last week.
ReplyDeleteCuppa cold strong coffee
Couple dollops sorghum molasses
Ice
Fill tall glass with plain seltzer.
Looks like a Guinness but can be enjoyed by all.