Seven recipes every S.C. cook should know (2024)

Maybe we should agree, right here at the outset, to disagree.

Because narrowing the list of beloved South Carolina dishes to just seven favorites seems like a sure path to a food feud. No matter our picks, somebody will go to the mat arguing for fried chicken, pinto beans, Beaufort stew or whatever else we’ve left out. Add to that the audacity of defining how the dishes should be prepared and, well, we’re clearly asking for trouble.

Nevertheless, we dared. With the help of some accomplished South Carolina chefs, we’ve assembled a buffet of time-honored foods that Sandlappers have grown up with and that transplants have learned to love. These are dishes we expect at church suppers, or when neighbors drop by with comfort food, or at eateries where the locals hang out. They’re the recipes your grandma made best (but maybe you’ve never mastered) and the cooking you crave from your hometown meat-and-three.

If you’re ready to add these classics to your own repertoire, take some tips from these top chefs for real South Carolina cooking at home.

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Tomato pie

We wait impatiently each spring for our garden tomatoes to ripen on the vine and savor them when, finally, they’re ready to pick. But when summer’s bounty starts to overwhelm, we need clever ways to make use of all those fresh tomatoes. That’s where tomato pie shines.

“The beauty of tomato pie is that you can use all the tomatoes—the ones that are a little too ripe or the ones that aren’t quite ripe enough,” Heidi Trull says, remembering the homemade tomato pies her family’s cook, Hattie Mae, made when she was growing up in Sumter. Now, it’s Trull laying claim to her own Southern kitchen—Grits & Groceries restaurant—in a very rural patch near Belton. And March through October, for as long as she can get hold of farm-fresh tomatoes, Trull keeps Hattie Mae’s Tomato Pie on her menu.

“It’s buttery, fatty, delicious, summertime goodness,” Trull says of the mini pies with tomatoes, cheese, mayo and seasonings stuffed inside flaky piecrusts made by her pastry-chef husband, Joe. These personal-size pies, made in muffin tins at Grits & Groceries, have attracted a national media spotlight on the Today show and on Southern Living’s YouTube channel. But it’s mostly the regular lunch crowd that gobbles up the hundreds of pies Heidi and Joe make every week.

Chef extra

To avoid soggy tomato pie, use every bit of the salt the recipe calls for, says Heidi Trull. “It gets all the moisture out of the tomatoes. You’re not going to be eating that salt, because you rinse it off.”

Hattie Mae’s tomato pie

SERVES 8

4 ripe tomatoes, sliced

¼ cup salt

1 cup grated hoop cheese

1 cup Duke’s mayonnaise

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

1 medium onion, diced

Salt and pepper to taste

8 mini piecrusts (or one large)

Slice tomatoes, and cover with ¼ cup salt. Let sit for 1 hour. Rinse well in colander, and pat dry with paper towel. Place piecrusts in pan(s), and lay tomato slices in pie shells. In a medium bowl, combine remaining ingredients. Pour over tomatoes. Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes.

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Collard greens

Like barbecue, Anthony Gray says, there’s no such thing as bad collard greens. Some are just better than others.

“Collards are a beast of a vegetable,” says Gray, chef and co‑owner of Bacon Bros. Public House in Greenville, where they cook up 100 to 150 pounds of collards a week, year-round. “You really have to beat them up a little to coerce the flavor out of them.”

There’s a sweet spot in the cooking process to reach the perfect texture and flavor, he says. Undercook your greens, and you’ll get unpleasantly crunchy collards that never absorb the flavors of their broth. Overcook them, he says, and they’re “mushy, like canned spinach.”

Because they take a good bit of prep and cooking time, people often make collards only for special occasions. “You can’t just cook a little collards—you have to make a big pot to make it worthwhile,” he says.

Chef extra

Keep tasting the broth while your greens are simmering, after the pork and greens have released their flavors, and add seasoning when needed. “If your broth tastes good, your greens will taste good,” Anthony Gray says. Hang onto the pot liquor—that’s the broth left over after cooking, and it’s full of flavor and nutrients. Use it as a base for soups, to serve over pork chops or just to ladle onto your greens. “It’s a very important part of the collard greens experience,” Gray says.

Home-cooked collard greens

SERVES 8–10

1 quart diced smoked bacon

1 quart thinly sliced yellow onion

2 tablespoons freshly minced garlic

1 cup apple cider vinegar

½ cup Worcestershire sauce

1 gallon water or chicken stock

Salt and pepper, to taste

5 pounds collard greens, washed, cut and stems removed

1 ham hock

Hot sauce or pepper vinegar (your favorite), to taste

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat, cook bacon about 10 minutes, until meat is crispy and fat has rendered down. Add onion and garlic; reduce heat to low, and cook 5–10 minutes, until onion caramelizes. Add the remaining liquid ingredients, and bring liquid to a soft boil. Taste broth; adjust flavor with salt and pepper as needed.

Add collards in batches, so they break down evenly. Stir collards, and add ham hock. Reduce heat to medium, cover pot and simmer about 1 hour, stirring occasionally and checking for tenderness. Serve with your favorite hot sauce or pepper vinegar.

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Peach cobbler

It would be a sin against the peach-producing state of South Carolina to omit the fuzzy fruit from this lineup. Peach cobbler, easily thrown together and able to feed a crowd, is a familiar friend at our potluck suppers and restaurant buffets.

As a kid spending summers on her grandparents’ farm, chef Belinda Smith-Sullivan, South Carolina Living’s recipe columnist, fell in love with peaches. Now living in the heart of S.C. peach country, she’s working on a cookbook all about peaches.

Cobblers have been popular for centuries, she says, as slightly messy concoctions of syrupy fruit topped with lightly sweetened dough, once cooked over open fire in cast-iron Dutch ovens.

“Because time was of the essence, cobbler was made quickly and was never meant to be an attractive-looking dessert, like a pie,” Smith-Sullivan says. “You don’t need to take the time and fuss with a cobbler, because they’re supposed to look rustic.”

Chef extra

Bake the peaches with no topping first, so they get softer, with a bit of bite, Belinda Smith-Sullivan says. Then dollop on the dough, and let it cook just long enough for the topping to get browned and crusty, spreading almost to the edges of the dish. “You want the peaches kind of peeking through, where the sides bubble up,” she says, but don’t worry over it too much. “It’s not an exact science.”

Perfectly easy peach cobbler

SERVES 6–8

FILLING

6–7 large peaches, peeled, pitted and sliced

½ cup sugar

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon cornstarch

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

TOPPING

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes, chilled

½ cup milk

Preheat oven to 400 F. In a large bowl, combine peaches, sugar, lemon juice, cornstarch, salt and cinnamon. Pour into a 9-inch baking dish, and place on middle rack in oven. Bake 10–15 minutes.

While peaches are in oven, in a medium bowl, blend together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Using a pastry cutter, cut in butter until flour mixture resembles coarse meal. Gradually stir in enough milk until mixture becomes a slightly sticky dough (there may be milk left over). Do not overmix.

Remove peaches from oven. Using a spoon, drop spoonfuls of dough all over top of peaches, leaving a small hole in the center to allow steam to escape. Return to oven, and bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes. Serve warm or room temperature with ice cream.

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Pimiento cheese

When they opened their kicked-back cafe beside the Swamp Rabbit Trail in Travelers Rest nine years ago, sisters Joyce and Nancy McCarrell were on a mission: to recreate “what it was like growing up at Mama’s house.”

“We wanted people to have a place where they could feel like they were coming home when they ate here,” says Joyce McCarrell of The Cafe at Williams Hardware.

No surprise, then, that pimiento cheese sandwiches, just the way Mama used to make them, were among the first items on the menu. Nothing fancy about this throw-back to the school-lunchbox standard. “We’re pretty much purists; don’t mess with it, just serve it,” McCarrell says.

Their pimiento cheese basics are cheddar and cream cheeses, a good dose of pimientos, mayo, and a little zing from paprika and cayenne pepper. No hot sauce, though, as some folks are inclined to add.

“And, of course, it’s Duke’s mayonnaise,” McCarrell says, echoing a pledge familiar to many Southern cooks who will brook no substitute for the brand born in Greenville. “That’s the one Nancy and I like, and, growing up, that’s the one Mama used.”

Chef extra

Everything the McCarrell sisters needed to know about cooking, they learned as teenagers in the 1960s from their mama, who shared what she learned from a long line of good cooks before her. So, maybe Joyce McCarrell is holding out when she teases about the secret ingredient in their pimiento cheese: “I can’t tell you how much love we put into it.”

Cafe at Williams Hardware pimiento cheese

MAKES ABOUT 2 QUARTS

1 pound block of cream cheese

½ cup of diced pimientos

1–2 cups Duke’s mayonnaise (to taste)

1½ pounds shredded sharp cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon of paprika

½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper

Heat cream cheese in a microwave at half power. Once softened, place cream cheese in mixing bowl, and add pimientos and 1 cup mayonnaise. Mix until there is a smooth consistency, with very few chunks of cream cheese remaining. Add cheddar cheese, paprika and cayenne pepper, and mix well. If desired, add more mayonnaise to make the pimiento cheese smoother and easier to spread. Keep refrigerated for up to a week.

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Biscuits

Though they’ve frustrated many a cook, homemade biscuits are welcome anytime, anywhere, in the Palmetto State. Who better to teach the basics than South Carolina culinary virtuoso Nathalie Dupree, an award-winning chef, best-selling cookbook author and cooking-show host? Her cookbook Southern Biscuits describes dozens of different ways to make biscuits.

“Historically, our biscuits are not the size of fast-food biscuits,” Dupree says. “They were always much smaller, never large. People had large families, and it was better to eat one or two small biscuits than to make large biscuits that would go to waste.”

Smaller biscuits cook faster; they don’t heat up a kitchen, a blessing for cooks in summer. Puttering around her happily cluttered little kitchen in her Charleston home, Dupree uses only a small patch of open counter and a toaster oven to whip up a quick batch of biscuits.

“People make biscuits more complicated than they need to be,” she says. The key to success is practice: Get a feel for the dough with your hands, how to avoid overworking it, how the flour behaves in different weather.

“Go out and buy $10 worth of ingredients, lock yourself in the kitchen and just play around with them,” Dupree says. “See what works best for you, see if you like Crisco or butter better. Practice hand rolling the dough.”

Dupree’s Two-ingredient biscuits are a great starter recipe for anyone whose previous attempts at biscuits have, instead, begotten hockey pucks.

“When they conquer that version, they’ll understand the dough, and they can move on to other recipes,” she says.

Chef extra

Mix ingredients in a wide bowl, where you can combine them without overworking the dough, Nathalie Dupree advises. Place biscuits close together on the baking sheet; “they get help rising from their sister biscuits.” And learn your oven’s hot spots, so you’ll know where the biscuits brown faster.

Two-ingredient biscuits

MAKES ABOUT 12 2-INCH BISCUITS

2 cups White Lily self-rising flour, plus some for shaping

1 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 450 F. In a wide, medium bowl, add flour, and make a hollow in the center. Pour in cream, and mix ingredients just until they hold together. It will be lumpy and gloppy. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface or flexible plastic cutting board. Fold the dough over on itself, or bend the cutting board to help with folding the dough over, and pat or roll out dough to a ½- or 1-inch thickness. Fold and pat again, for a total of three times, and flatten with floured hands to a ½-inch thickness. Use a 2-inch biscuit cutter to cut biscuits; place with sides touching on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 10–12 minutes, until lightly browned, turning pan around halfway through cooking time to ensure even browning. If desired, brush tops with melted butter before serving.

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Macaroni and cheese

For their family-run restaurant, Julia Belle’s, in Florence, Fran and Warren Snell knew there were two recipes they had to nail. Number one: “a killer fried chicken,” head chef Warren says. Number two: mac and cheese.

“Some people call it mac and cheese,” he says. “We call it money.”

Beautiful in its simplicity, good mac and cheese is the one non-negotiable side dish at any restaurant serving up South Carolina cooking. Be they locals or travelers along I-95, when diners step into a place called Julia Belle’s, operating in a big, red barn, they’re expecting serious Southern food, Fran says.

“Downhome,” Warren says. “Just like you’d expect to get at Grandma’s house.”

Their mac and cheese doesn’t disappoint. It’s gooey and rich and stuffed full of cheese, with a flavor bump from garlic, mustard and chicken stock.

Daughter Julia, the house baker and Warren’s cooking partner in the kitchen, describes it as “the best of both worlds—it’s very creamy, but it does have that crusty, melted cheese on top.”

Chef extra

“The secret to this recipe,” Warren Snell says, “is the amount of cheese.” That amount? “A lot.” Three different cheeses thicken the sauce, and the whole dish is topped by a thick layer of shredded cheddar, melted until there’s nary an elbow noodle in sight.

Julia Belle’s world-famous macaroni and cheese

SERVES 6–8

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup melted butter

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups milk

1 teaspoon granulated garlic

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1½ teaspoons sea salt

Dash of black pepper

2 cups shredded colby cheese

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

4½ cups shredded cheddar cheese, separated

8 cups water

1 tablespoon salt

4 cups elbow macaroni

In a saucepan over low heat, mix flour and butter together until blended, making a roux. Cook about 3 minutes. Blend in chicken stock and milk. Continue to cook on low about 6 minutes. When sauce begins to thicken, add garlic, mustard, salt, pepper, colby and Parmesan cheeses, and 3 cups of cheddar cheese (reserve 1½ cups cheddar for topping). Cook about 5 more minutes on low. Set sauce aside while macaroni cooks.

In a pot over high heat, bring water to a boil, and add salt. After salt dissolves, add macaroni. Cook about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain macaroni noodles, and add them to the sauce.

Place mixture in buttered casserole dish, and top with 1 ½ cups shredded cheddar. Bake at 375 F about 30 minutes, or until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 F.

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Shrimp and grits

It’s a dish so synonymous with the Lowcountry that a bowlful of authentic shrimp and grits must be on every Charleston tourist’s to-taste list—rightly so, by chef Frank Lee’s estimation.

“This dish has got legs,” Lee says, tracing it to its roots among the Gullah people of the sea islands. “It’s got a colorful history. It’s mysterious. It has culture, flavor, regionality. It tells a great story. It’s got all the bullet points you could want in a dish.”

Shrimp and grits was born as an easy-to-fix supper that took advantage of what was local and available, as good Southern cooking should, Lee says—abundant, sweet shrimp pulled from nearby creeks; ever-present grits, cooked slow, absorbing flavor from sulfurous coastal waters; tomatoes fresh from the garden. “It was a good nighttime dish in summer” that didn’t heat up the whole kitchen and could be seasoned simply with garlic, salt and butter, he says.

After 40-plus years as a chef, Lee retired last year from Slightly North of Broad (aka S.N.O.B.), a long-loved bistro on Charleston’s East Bay Street where shrimp and grits became a menu fixture in his tenure. He bears witness that it’s not just visitors who come in for the iconic dish; the locals love it, too.

“I’d watch people eating it,” Lee says. “Shrimp and grits makes people happy.”

Chef extra

The evolution of S.N.O.B.’s shrimp and grits recipe is fully told in Frank Lee’s new cookbook with restaurant owner Bill Hall, The S.N.O.B. Experience. What makes it work, Lee says, are “fresh-as-you-can-get shrimp,” locally made stone-ground grits that take 40 minutes to cook, “top-of-the-season tomatoes,” good sausage that doesn’t overpower the other flavors, and simple seasonings.

S.N.O.B. shrimp and grits

SERVES 2

4 ounces country ham, julienned

4 ounces kielbasa sausage

2 tablespoons butter

20 shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 teaspoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons Cajun spice

1 cup diced fresh tomatoes (peeled and seeded)

1 cup chopped green onion

2–3 ounces shrimp stock (recipe below)

Creamy grits (recipe below)

In a skillet over medium-low heat, brown ham and kielbasa with 1 tablespoon butter. Add shrimp, garlic and Cajun spice, and saute without burning the spice, about 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and green onions, and continue to saute until tomatoes render some juice. Moisten with shrimp stock; bring to a bubble (not a boil). Finish by adding remaining tablespoon of butter.

Shrimp stock

MAKES 4 CUPS

4 cups shrimp shells (about 2 pounds shrimp)

½ cup olive oil

1 cup diced onions

1 cup diced carrots

½ cup diced celery

1 teaspoon fennel seed

1 cup diced fresh tomato

2 tablespoons garlic

4½ cups water

In a 2-gallon pot, toast the shrimp shells in olive oil until pink and fragrant. Add onions, carrots, celery and fennel seed. Cook, without burning, until vegetables relax and give up some rigidity. Add tomatoes and garlic, and cook 5 minutes. Add water, and bring to a boil. Skim and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain through a fine strainer.

Creamy grits

SERVES 4

3½ cups water

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup stone-ground grits

¼ cup cream

In a saucepan, bring water, salt and 1 tablespoon butter to a boil. Stir in grits. Reduce heat to low. Cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until grits are thick and creamy, about 40 minutes. Remove from heat, and stir in cream and remaining butter. Keep warm until ready to serve.

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Your favorite foods

Got your own ideas about what should make the list of classic S.C. recipes? Of course you do. We’d love to hear about them. Visit SCLiving.coop/myrecipe to tell us your favorite S.C. dishes and share your recipes and photos. If we publish your recipe in a future issue, we’ll send you a $25 gift card.

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Related stories

Nathalie Dupree’s appetizer biscuits – The recipe for former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings’ cream cheese biscuits is one Dupree she shares in her cookbook Southern Biscuits as simple to make and perfect to serve as an appetizer.

Give peaches the slip – When it’s time to peel peaches for cobbler, you can slip the skins off easily with a simple trick. Watch this step-by-step video to see how it’s done.