Inspired by Alabama
THE MEAL
(Click on the links above to jump to that part of the post!)
I’ve been looking forward to making this meal for so long! When I first decided to do this state meal challenge, I was going to do it in alphabetical order. Alabama was the first meal I planned! I ended up changing it to geographical order, but the idea of this Alabama meal has been on my mind since the beginning. I’m glad I didn’t have to wait too long to make it!
While everything about this meal was familiar, every component had a twist to it that made it new to me. My dad smokes chicken at least once a month, but the Alabama white sauce transformed it into something new. Biscuits are common enough, but this recipe had a flavor I’d never tried before. The salad was basic in flavor, but eating it as a wedge was different. You all know I love lemonade, but I’d never had peach lemonade before. And I know I’ve had banana pudding in the past, but making it from scratch with meringue on top was a new challenge.
This meal was just fun, especially because my whole family got involved and helped put it together. I loved it!
SMOKED CHICKEN WITH WHITE BBQ SAUCE
As mentioned in the Tennessee meal post, Alabama is part of the “Barbecue Belt” in the American South. Each state in the Belt loves barbecue, and each state has their own unique way of doing it. In the Heart of Dixie, the distinguishing feature is their famous white barbecue sauce.
White barbecue sauce was made famous by Big Bob Gibson in Decatur, Alabama, in 1925. In addition to the more popular barbecued pork, he would smoke whole chickens. When he needed something to keep his chicken moist, he came up with white sauce, which has a base of mayonnaise and apple cider vinegar and is often flavored with brown sugar, lemon juice, mustard, and various other spices. It’s now so popular in Alabama that people eat it with all kinds of barbecue, not just chicken, but I decided to stick with the original for this meal.
My dad made the smoked chicken using his go-to recipe, which I tried to get him to write down for me, but he hasn’t yet. It’s really simple, though. I know he uses a Costco barbecue rub, then gets the same herbs that are in the rub fresh out his garden to really enhance the flavors. He usually throws them on the smoker whole for about an hour, but I wanted them flatter so they’d be more barbecued than roasted, so he spatchcocked these ones for me. It’s a method he’s been resistant to in the past, but he did it for me, which I appreciated! I couldn’t tell you if it made a difference in the flavor, but it definitely made the skin more evenly baked and it was easier to baste and serve that way.
The chicken turned out delicious with my dad’s recipe, and the white barbecue sauce gave it an extra boost of new flavor. The white sauce was really tangy. I’m not sure how else to describe it–the dominant flavor was definitely the vinegar, but there were so many other elements giving it a unique taste I’d never tried before. It ALMOST reminded me of Ranch dressing, but that might have had more to do with the color and consistency. It was runnier than I expected–traditionally you don’t dip food in white sauce; you either baste it or just dunk the whole chicken in the sauce before serving! I’m not sure I would use this sauce again, but it was a great new combo that I’m glad I tried!
WEDGE SALAD WITH BLUE CHEESE DRESSING
An iconic Alabama vegetable dish would’ve been fried green tomatoes, but I couldn’t find any green tomatoes in my area this time of year. 🙁 But as I was researching, I came across a few references to Alabama salads, specifically how they’re loaded with toppings, and that one of their more famous salads is a wedge salad found at a restaurant called Central in Montgomery, Alabama. That sounded delicious, so I went with that! I’m sorry if it’s not indicative of a typical Alabama dinner, but I was pretty happy with this choice!
No one’s really sure who invented the wedge salad, but it’s been around since at least the 1910s, and has recently been popular in steakhouses and other barbecue restaurants. It’s usually served with cherry tomatoes, bacon bits, blue cheese crumbles, and blue cheese dressing. Incidentally, I can’t find any history of where blue cheese dressing came from either! This salad is truly a mystery, but whatever the case, I’m glad I get to eat it!
These were probably the prettiest salads I’ve ever made, but also the simplest! You literally just cut a head of iceberg lettuce into quarters, cut off the ends, then add toppings! Each little wedge had so much lettuce packed into it that they made surprisingly substantial salads. If you want to impress dinner guests on a budget, this is a great option!
I’d only ever eaten blue cheese dressing with hot wings before. It’s basically liquified blue cheese in flavor, so you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it! I personally like it a lot, but I don’t know that I’ve had it enough to tell if this version is better or worse than store-bought. My instinct is that It’s stronger for having “fresh” blue cheese in it. It was so creamy and yummy with lettuce, tomato, and bacon!
SWEET CHEESY BISCUITS
Biscuits are a staple in the South. I’m going to be making a classic version for a future meal, so for this one, I went with these sweet, cheesy biscuits. There’s a barbecue restaurant chain in the South called Jim ‘N Nick’s that started in Birmingham, Alabama, and serves these as a side. They’re so popular that the restaurant also sells bagged mixes for people to make their own biscuits at home!
These biscuits are a lot sweeter and more cake-like than what you’d find with, say, a Red Lobster cheddar biscuit. I kept accidentally calling them muffins, because they’re really more like muffins than biscuits, both in taste and texture. I was expecting them to be sweet so it didn’t bother me, but everyone else said they wished they were cheesier. The cheese flavor is very subtle, even when we used sharp cheddar. The taste of vanilla is strongest. But despite being very different than what we were used to, we still loved them and devoured an entire basketful!
PEACH LEMONADE
The obvious choice for an Alabama drink would be sweet tea–what’s more iconic than that? But since I don’t drink tea, I decided to go with a lemonade substitute. And since the state fruit of Alabama is peaches, I combined those two of my favorite flavors. The result was pure magic.
This was my favorite drink that I’ve made so far! You already know I love lemonade, but adding a peach syrup made with my parents’ home-grown peaches was amazing! It had the tart freshness of lemonade but with an extra sweetness that made it almost like drinking Trolli peach rings. (But don’t worry; it’s not that sweet!)
My mom made this part of the meal, but she said it was really easy! I’m getting the hang of making drink syrups with this challenge, and there aren’t very many ingredients involved. It takes a little longer to make than plain lemonade, but seriously the flavor is so good! I highly recommend this one!
SOUTHERN BANANA PUDDING
For an Alabama dessert, my original plan was to make a Lane Cake. It’s a classic Alabama recipe mentioned in To Kill a Mockingbird, so everyone who did a book report on it in elementary school has probably tried Lane Cake at some point. But it seems like that’s more of an old-fashioned dessert nowadays, so I changed my mind. Instead, I went with the classic–but still very popular–Southern banana pudding!
I don’t generally think of bananas as a Southern food, but I forget that the Gulf of Mexico is right there below Alabama, and they get tons of fruit imported from Central and South America. In its history, Alabama has had a booming banana trade, with Mobile, Alabama, being the central hub. With bananas being so popular and so abundant in Alabama, it wasn’t long before people were coming up with all kinds of recipes to use them in, including pudding. When Nilla wafers were invented in the early 1900s, they heavily marketed the cookies’ use in banana pudding recipes, which increased the popularity of both. Banana pudding was popular throughout the nation, but somehow along the way it became considered a classic Southern dessert, and that tradition is still in place today!
So I always thought that these kinds of banana puddings had banana in the pudding itself, but that’s not the case! If you buy a packet of banana pudding, obviously it will have banana flavoring, but this recipe is essentially vanilla pudding that’s poured over bananas. The flavors do mix and you eat them together, but it’s a little different than I thought!
This is my third time making pudding for this challenge, so that part was really easy. And you just pour the finished pudding over layers of Nilla wafers and sliced bananas to assemble it. The most difficult part was the meringue, but I was mostly successful! I think I might have over-whipped it, and my parents’ oven cooked it a little too much, so it was more dull and brown on top than it should’ve been. But it was MUCH better than my first try at making meringue (I’ll tell you about it someday), and this pudding has given me more confidence to try making meringue for pies and such in the future!
The banana pudding turned out really tasty! It’s basically the same flavor as a banana cream pie. I loved it! It wasn’t as good the next day, though–definitely best to eat it fresh.
CONCLUSION
My dad was traveling with an Alabama native this week who saw photos of my meal and said I “nailed it,” so that was an awesome compliment! I feel really good about this one. It all turned out delicious, and I found a new favorite with the peach lemonade.
How do you think I did? Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for improvement, and be sure to tune in next time for my take on a meal inspired by Florida! If that’s where you’re from, what do you think I should make to represent your state? Bonus points if you have reliable recipes or pro tips before I make the attempt! Thank you for reading!