Traditional Southern dishes

An example of a traditional Southern meal is deep fried chicken, field peas, turnip or collard greens, cornbread, sweet tea and a dessert that could be a pie (sweet potato, pecan and peach are traditional southern pies), or a cobbler (peach, blackberry or mixed berry are traditional cobblers).

Some other foods commonly associated with the South are mint juleps, pecan pie, country ham, chicken fried steak, grits, buttermilk biscuits, especially with gravy or sorghum, pimento cheese, sweet tea, pit barbecue, catfish, fried green tomatoes, cornbread, bread pudding, fried chicken, okra, butter beans, pinto beans, "greens", and black eyed peas. A common snack food, in season, is boiled peanuts.

Fried chicken is among the region's best-known exports, though pork is also an integral a part of the cuisine, with Virginia ham being one renowned form. Barbecue is always understood to be pork, unless specified as some other meat, and there are many regional "cookoff" competitions. A traditional holiday get-together featuring whole hog barbecue is known in the Carolinas as a "pig pickin'." Green beans are often flavored with bacon and salt pork, biscuits served with ham often accompany breakfast, and ham with red-eye gravy or country gravy is a common dinner dish. A bit of fatback is added to many vegetable dishes, especially greens, for flavoring.

It is not uncommon for a traditional southern meal to consist of only vegetables with no meat dish at all, although meat or meat products are often used in the cooking process. "Beans and Greens," which consists of either white or brown beans alongside a "mess" of greens has always been popular in most parts of the South. Turnip greens are generally prepared mixed with diced turnips and a piece of fatback. It is often said that Southerners tend to cook down their vegetables a little longer and/or use more seasoning than other Americans, but it often depends on the cook.

Traditional Southern breakfast

Breakfast is an extremely important meal in the South. Southerners will often eat breakfast at all hours of the day due to its popularity. Many restaurants and fast food chains with Southern roots will often specialize in this fare, serve breakfast all day or include a separate menu just for breakfast. Cracker Barrel does all of these. Other examples of this include the Waffle House, and Shoney's.

Some things that are typical as breakfast items include:

• bacon
• gravy made from pork fat
• traditional pork sausage in patties
• link sausage, less often
• Canadian bacon
• chicken fried steak
• country ham with red eye gravy
• eggs prepared in a variety of ways including scrambled with cheese or as an omelet with onions, peppers, olives and other items.
• grits cheese, butter or salt are often added.
• hominy
• tomatoes Usually served fresh, sliced. Not usually cooked unless sauteed with eggs.
• muscadine Eaten separately or made into jam to eat on toast or biscuits.
• biscuits often with either milk gravy or with some kind of jam. Other variations include hot chocolate gravy where the biscuits are served piping hot and pinched up in a dish with a little butter added before pouring on the chocolate gravy. Also certain meats like stewed roast beef hash can be served with biscuits for an alternative taste. Tomato gravy on biscuits is popular in parts of Mississippi and Tennessee or some parts of Georgia,. Biscuits can also be sliced in half and served with some type of meat, eggs and/or chesse in the middle usually with butter and/or jelly. Biscuits can also be served with country ham and red-eye gravy (red-eye gravy is made by first frying country ham in a skillet, then deglazing the pan with just a bit of coffee).
• hot sauce is often added to sausage, gravy or eggs
• Some kind of fruit, grapefruit is probably most common
• juice, Florida orange juice is common, or more rarely, Georgia peach juice.
• sweet tea is often served at breakfast in many areas
• pancakes or waffles topped with fruit or syrup
• doughnuts like Krispy Kreme
• cobbler
• Other pastry items like the Creole/Cajun Beignets
• Livermush is a pork product made with liver and cornmeal. Popular in North Carolina.