Sam’s BBQ: Just Like Grandma’s: Deep South cuisine reminiscent of the past
Published 2:00 pm Saturday, May 4, 2019
- Amanda M. Usher | The Valdosta Daily TimesVarious soul food dishes, including baby back ribs, are sold at Sam's Carry Out BBQ.
VALDOSTA – True Southern cuisine comes from the heart.
“My grandma used to say ‘when you cook it, if your heart is in it, the meal will come out perfect,'” said Sam Watts, owner of Sam’s Carry Out BBQ. “You have to cook with love. We do good with love right here all of the time.”
Watts equates Southern food with soul food. When he hears the terminology, he thinks of collard greens, peas, pig feet and pig tails.
Soul food reminds him of times when his grandmother would be in the kitchen frying chicken with lard.
Fried chicken and collard greens are the main components of every soul food dish, he said.
Watts not only sells Southern deep-fried chicken at his eatery, but he has green beans with ham hocks in a butter sauce, macaroni and cheese with seven cheeses, slow-cooked Boston Butt pulled pork, a Southern-style potato salad and fresh collard greens with ham hocks.
A recipe from his mother and grandmother, his cole slaw has pickles, lettuce, relish, cucumbers, red cabbage and grape cabbage in it.
“Soul food is what we grew up on, the older people,” Watts said.
He recalls a time when creamed corn didn’t come in a can. His grandmother would take the corn off of the cob and cook it.
Biting into these types of foods takes him back to the old days when the family would have Sunday dinners.
Eating at the family table unified everyone and brought them together, a concept lacking today, Watts said.
“Now, people don’t eat together anymore,” he said. “Everybody is at a fast pace.”
He believes soul food began in churches when congregations would have a meal after service. He said he currently caters soul food for local churches.
A traditional Southern dessert is peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. Watts said the two pair well. Banana pudding is another Southern dessert.
“When we were growing up, that’s what we were used to,” he said of peach cobbler. “That was our dessert treat.”
Red velvet cake can also be purchased at Sam’s.
Sam’s Carry Out BBQ, 414 E. Hill Ave., can be reached at (229) 237-2181 for more information.
