Latest Americansouth Podcast Episodes

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Ironies and Onion Rings: The Layered Story of the Vidalia Onion

Gravy - July 03, 2024 07:00 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
If you know and love the Vidalia onion—an onion sweet enough, its fans say, to eat like an apple—you likely also know it as a product of Georgia, as proudly claimed as the peach. But the story of the Vidalia’s popularity is far more complex than just one of a local onion made good. In this episod...

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Gravy Recommends the Podcast Sea Change

Gravy - June 28, 2024 08:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
If you're looking for a taste of something new (and Southern) in your podcast playlist, then you should really check out Sea Change, produced by our friends over at WWNO New Orleans Public Radio and distributed by PRX. Nominated for “Best Green” Podcast at the 2024 iHeart Podcast Awards, Sea Chan...

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Flambéed! The Art & Theater of Bananas Foster

Gravy - June 19, 2024 07:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Flambéed! The Art & Theater of Banana’s Foster” Gravy producer Eve Troeh takes listeners to Brennan’s, the iconic restaurant in New Orleans’ French Quarter, where skilled servers pull off one sensational culinary feat, table after table and day after day—Bananas Foster, flambéed tableside. Br...

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How Mi Tierra Shaped Modern San Antonio

Gravy - June 05, 2024 07:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In 2017, San Antonio, Texas, was officially designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. One of only two American cities to receive this distinction, its culinary history spans centuries. It claims a dining scene flush with James Beard nominated chefs, old-world German delicatessens, and farm...

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The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pitmaster Ed Mitcehll

Gravy - May 22, 2024 07:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
Ed Mitchell’s name has come to be synonymous with Eastern North Carolina wood-smoked whole-hog barbecue. From Wilson, North Carolina, he grew up smoking hogs and has tried to continue that tradition, using old techniques and traditionally farm-raised pigs.  But almost since the start, Ed Mitchell...

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Wherefore art thou, ROMEO? At Jack’s!

Gravy - May 08, 2024 07:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Wherefore art thou, ROMEO? At Jack’s!" Gravy producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners to a busy fast food restaurant in Jasper, Alabama, to sit at a round table with a group of friends who meet there daily. The group, who call themselves ROMEO—Retired Old Men Eating Out—are a fixture at this res...

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How Pineywoods Cattle Bucks Big Beef

Gravy - April 24, 2024 07:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “How Pineywoods Cattle Bucks Big Beef,” Gravy producer Stephanie Burt takes listeners out to the rolling pastures of the South to meet Pineywoods cattle, a breed that’s been grazing in the Southern region of the United States since the 1500s. The cow that some see as old fashioned is being con...

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Unshelled: George Washington Carver's Real Legacy

Gravy - April 10, 2024 07:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Unshelled: George Washington Carver's Real Legacy," producers Ishan Thakore and Katie Jane Fernelius explore a lesser-known aspect of Dr. George Washington Carver’s legacy: his role as a conservationist and a practitioner of sustainable agriculture. Carver’s life defies easy explanation. He w...

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Yock Is for Lovers: Chinese Soul Food in Tidewater Virginia

Gravy - March 27, 2024 07:00 - 31 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In "Yock Is for Lovers: Chinese Soul Food in Tidewater Virginia," Gravy producer Nicole Hutcheson delves into the history of Yock-a-Mein, tracing its origins to the Tidewater region of Virginia and delving into its significant role in shaping the distinctive culinary tradition known as Chinese so...

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Catering: Behind the Pipe and Drape

Gravy - March 13, 2024 07:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
Have you ever been to a wedding and wondered how hundreds of plates of food arrive at the right destinations at the right time? Often without an on-site kitchen. This is high-concept cooking, done without a net. Cookbook authors Matt Lee and Ted Lee spent four years immersed in the catering indus...

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California Dreams and Flossie’s Mississippi Tamales

Gravy - February 28, 2024 08:00 - 35 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “California Dreams and Flossie’s Mississippi Tamales,” journalist and Gravy producer Eve Troeh joins businesswoman Sandra Miller Foster to tell the story of the restaurant Flossie’s, and the mother-daughter dream that fueled it. This story grew from a simple question: “Does anyone serve Missis...

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Gravy Travels Due South

Gravy - February 26, 2024 06:01 - 50 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
If you're looking for a show that is a source for news, information, and perspectives from across North Carolina and the South, then you should really check out Due South from our public radio friends at WUNC—North Carolina Public Radio. Due South is a place to make sense of what’s happening in o...

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From Stuckey's to Buc-ee's

Gravy - January 31, 2024 07:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
Few companies have inspired more fanatical devotion among Texans than the convenience chain Buc-ee’s. Described by the New York Times as both a “Disneyland of roadside capitalism,” and the “through line of America’s second most sprawling state,” its iconic, buck-toothed beaver mascot has been spo...

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It's Hip To Be a Cube: Maggi Bouillon Unwrapped

Gravy - January 03, 2024 08:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In the episode “It’s Hip to Be a Cube: Maggie Bouillon Unwrapped,” Gravy producers Katie Jane Fernelius and Ishan Thakore take a deeper look at a humble but ubiquitous pantry staple—the bouillon cube. As many home cooks know, these dehydrated cubes of salty, umami flavor dissolve in water to crea...

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Gravy Recommendation: Southern Songs and Stories

Gravy - December 29, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
If you appreciate Gravy, you'll likely enjoy Southern Songs and Stories. The episode we're sharing with you today features Jake Xerxes Fussell, a musician whose music is well-known in Oxford, Mississippi, the town the Southern Foodways Alliance calls home. From Southern Songs and Stories: In this...

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What's Next for the Women of Mama Dip's Kitchen?

Gravy - December 06, 2023 08:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In "What's Next for the Women of Mama Dip's Kitchen?" Gravy producer Leoneda Inge takes listeners to Mama Dip’s Kitchen, known for its chicken and dumplings and scrumptious homemade desserts. The restaurant has fed tourists, celebrities, and steady customers for nearly fifty years in Chapel Hill,...

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Tasting the South in the San Fernando Valley

Gravy - November 22, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Tasting the South in the San Fernando Valley,” producer Rebecca Katz tells the story of how three black women created a soul food institution in one of the whitest parts of the San Fernando Valley that still thrives today. During the Second Great Migration in the 1940s, large numbers of Black...

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Adaptation, Survival, Gratitude: A Lumbee Thanksgiving Story

Gravy - November 08, 2023 09:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
At this point, most of us know the Thanksgiving story about the Pilgrims and the Indians happily indulging in a joint feast is a vast oversimplification of what actually happened. But how many of us still have an idea of Native people that's stuck in the past? "People didn't believe that I was Na...

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Czech Out Texas Kolaches

Gravy - October 11, 2023 08:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Czech Out Texas Kolaches,” Gravy producer Evan Stern invites listeners to join him on a return trip to his native Texas to explore the history, origins, and evolutions of kolaches through the voices of bakers of varying backgrounds and perspectives. This episode complements the oral history p...

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North Carolina Pottery from Clay to Kiln

Gravy - September 27, 2023 08:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “North Carolina Pottery from Clay to Kiln” Gravy producer Wilson Sayre invites us to consider the vehicles that our food sits on—plates. In this episode, she takes us to central North Carolina, where the story of the hand-thrown pottery and its relationship with food is told with gusto.  If yo...

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A Shrimp Boat Blessing with no Shrimp Boats

Gravy - September 13, 2023 08:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “A Shrimp Boat Blessing with no Shrimp Boats,” Gravy producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners to Bayou La Batre, on Alabama's Gulf Coast. Long known as the seafood capital of Alabama, Bayou La Batre has hosted a Blessing of the Fleet – a festival to bless local commercial shrimp and fishing boats...

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Annie Fisher’s Beaten Biscuits Meant Business

Gravy - August 30, 2023 08:00 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Annie Fisher’s Beaten Biscuits Meant Business,” Gravy producer Mackenzie Martin digs into beaten biscuits, the tender, flaky hardtack rolls that date back to the 1800s, when they were often served with ham and particularly popular in the South. Historically speaking, beaten biscuits were incr...

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Tasting Kentucky in Tiananmen

Gravy - August 16, 2023 08:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Tasting Kentucky in Tiananmen,” Gravy producers Ishan Thakore and Katie Jane Fernelius explore how KFC became one of the most popular restaurant chains in China, and what its dominance reveals about other huge Southern firms.  KFC is now part of the corporate conglomerate Yum! Brands, which i...

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A Tale of Two Laredos

Gravy - March 15, 2023 11:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “A Tale of Two Laredos,” Gravy producer Evan Stern visits Laredo, Texas, which shares history, culture, and memory with its sister city across the border, Nuevo Laredo. For decades, Mexican border towns were renowned for refined, white tablecloth restaurants where jacketed waiters served a caf...

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A Texas Cabrito Communion

Gravy - March 08, 2023 11:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “A Texas Cabrito Communion,” Gravy producer Evan Stern invites us to ride along as he joins the Avila and Aguirre families for a celebratory reunion and cabrito cookout at their YY Ranch, which sits below the Nueces River in Texas. The river once served as the boundary between Texas and the Me...

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Blessed Egg Rolls and the Evolution of Rockport, Texas

Gravy - March 01, 2023 12:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Blessed Egg Rolls and the Evolution of Rockport, Texas,” Gravy producer Evan Stern takes listeners to the small town of Rockport, Texas, which hugs the shores of Aransas Bay on the state’s Gulf Coast, about 35 miles northeast of Corpus Christi. There, he visits Saint Peter’s Catholic Church, ...

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A Taste of Sicily on Galveston Bay

Gravy - February 22, 2023 12:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “A Taste of Sicily on Galveston Bay,” Gravy producer Evan Stern takes listeners to Galveston, Texas. Once perhaps the greatest town of significance between New Orleans and San Francisco, today its population doesn’t even crack the top fifty of Texas cities. But while Austin is often referred t...

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Noodling with the Texas Wends

Gravy - February 15, 2023 11:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “Noodling with the Texas Wends,” Gravy producer Evan Stern takes us to the small, Central Texas town of Serbin, which was last included in the Census more than 20 years ago, when the population was only 37. But its sign still proudly announces itself as the “Home of the Texas Wends”—and the lo...

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The Gulf’s Last Generation of Black Oystermen?

Gravy - December 14, 2022 12:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
In “The Gulf’s Last Generation of Black Oystermen?” Gravy producer Kayla Stewart takes listeners to south Louisiana, where Black men have played a key role in the region’s oyster industry—and where today, they are few and far between. Stewart speaks to one of the area’s last Black oystermen about...

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Buying and Selling Food in the Black South

Gravy - December 07, 2022 12:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 533 ratings
“Buying and Selling Food in the Black South” is the fourth installment in reporter Kayla Stewart’s 2022 Gravy podcast season, where she explores Black foodways in the South and beyond. For this episode, she speaks to Black business owners who are trying to improve food access in Black communities...

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