Soul Food Cooking: New School Rules Taking Over

Soul food cooking is slowly changing in many ways. No, the taste and satisfaction of this southern cuisine continues maintain it's tradition. But the ingredients and cooking methods are starting to change. To the delight of health experts and medical professionals the changes are welcome and long overdue.

Southern cooking has long had a tradition of belly satisfying food. However, it has also had another tradition, high calorie, sodium and fat content. This contributes to heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure and other ailments. But new school rules and changes continue to take place to help make many soul food recipes more user or eater-friendly, especially when it comes to health.

Some of the changes taking place is different cooking methods that call for less fat or heavy oils in the cooking process. Other changes call for less deep fat frying and more baking, roasting and grilling instead. Stir frying has also been introduced into many soul food recipes. For example, stir fried collard greens is turning into a cult favorite among healthy soul food enthusiast. Stir frying helps to preserve essential nutrients and vitamins as opposed to boiling in high amounts of water as in the traditional way.

In addition, seasoning with traditional pork products such as ham hocks, fat back and bacon continues to slowly fade away. These ingredients also contain huge amounts of sodium and artery clogging fats. Healthier alternatives to season vegetables such as collard greens, black-eyed peas and other traditional southern vegetables is now smoked turkey. For example, turkey necks, turkey ham or turkey bacon. This gives dishes that traditional robust, smoky flavor without the artery clogging fats or blood pressure rising sodium of fat back or ham hocks.

The soul food cooking landscape continues to evolve to meet the growing demands of a health conscious consumer. No doubt, more creative and healthy changes are being tested now as you read this, I will continue to keep you updated and informed of those changes.