From Stigma to Celebration: The Remarkable Turnaround
In 2023, eating ramps signals insider foodie status: they are the height of trendy eating for many Americans, Appalachian or not. Here’s something that catches people off guard. In the mid-twentieth century, foraging for the first wild greens of the season was a sensible, healthy thing to do, even if it meant you smelled like ramps for several days. Yet that lingering scent indicated a lower-class status, since it implied an inability to access and purchase fresh vegetables.
Let’s be real here, this isn’t just about food. Bon Appétit magazine included a 16-page spread called “Appalachia Anew” with recipes and stories about mountain food. This is an exciting time for Appalachian food. It’s finally being celebrated, and there’s a grow- ing recognition that Appalachian cuisine includes a diverse array of foods and culinary traditions.
The Diverse Roots That Built a Cuisine
It is an amalgam of the diverse foodways, specifically among the British, German and Italian immigrant populations, Native Americans including the Cherokee people, and African-Americans, as well as their descendants in the Appalachia region. Most people get this wrong. According to many food experts and historians, Appalachian food traditions were influenced by various groups, including Native American tribes, enslaved Black people and poor white people who were mostly European immigrants.
Poet Frank X Walker coined the term “Affrilachian” to signify the importance of the African-American presence in Appalachia, including in the cuisine. The African-Americans in Appalachia have contributed to the regional food history with ingredients such as kale, collard greens, peanut beans, foods infused with bourbon (baked goods, and vegetables), spoonbread, and the use of molasses and sorghum as a meat glaze. This complexity often gets buried under tired stereotypes.
Preservation Techniques That Changed Everything
Hallmarks of Appalachian food are preservation, whether through drying (think apples or green beans) or pickling (think chow chow, sauerkraut and pickles) or foraging (think ramps, creasy greens, poke sallet and more). Over the last 20 years or so, chefs and food writers have highlighted how these food traditions are evidence of creative, resourceful people who know how to put a delicious meal on the table. What historians once dismissed as poverty cooking now looks remarkably visionary.
The cooking practices that evolved from this mindset – canning, pickling, foraging, preserving – are deeply rooted in our history, shaped by the rugged terrain, limited access to commercial goods and an ingrained culture of making do. And despite the negative stereotypes often attached to Appalachian cuisine, the fare is anything but simple or unsophisticated. The region is a biodiversity hotspot, home to more than 2,500 plant species, and our culinary heritage is diverse and complex, influenced by Cherokee, European, and African American traditions. Honestly, that number stuns me every time.
When Chefs Started Paying Attention
Meanwhile, food lovers flock to restaurants like Sean Brock’s Audrey, in Nashville, and John Fleer’s Rhubarb, here in Asheville, both of which celebrate Appalachian cuisine. As to your question, chefs like Brock, Fleer and Travis Milton have had a lot to do with it, as well as talented cookbook authors and food writers like Ronni Lundy and Sheri Castle.
In 2011, Milton assumed the mantle at Richmond’s hip New Southern eatery, Comfort, and made a name for himself with a menu that incorporated traditional Appalachian ingredients. Yet there was pushback. “I’d say ‘Appalachian Cuisine,’ and they’d hit me with a shit-eating sneer,” says Milton. The journey from mockery to recognition wasn’t easy or instant.
Foraging: The Original Farm-to-Table Movement
Foraged foods were central to the life of people in the mountains, and the practice of food foraging continued after people made their way to cities. Think about that for a second. The Appalachian Mountains are home to over 100 species of edible plants, offering foragers a diverse array of flavors and nutritional benefits throughout the seasons. Long before anyone coined the phrase “sustainable eating,” mountain families were living it.
But some younger Appalachians struggle to understand the relevance of say, poke salad, morel mushrooms or ramps. Historians and chefs alike say it’s more important than ever for us to collect historical recipes from elders and continue the tradition, not only because Appalachia’s resources are being threatened by climate change but because without preservation, these foods and their stories may be lost forever.
The Academic Recognition Finally Arrives
Abrams Locklear’s most recent book, Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People, looks at how stereotypes surrounding the food of Southern Appalachia are also used to support stereotypes about the people who live here. Her 2023 book, was listed as a top summer reading pick by Garden & Gun magazine, which described Abrams Locklear as “one of the preeminent voices in Appalachian literature, history, and culture.”
I am pleased to announce that NC Humanities has selected Hungry Roots as one of the five featured books in their 2025 North Carolina Reads statewide book club program. I congratulate Ashli and Wendy on having their book selected for this prestigious program. The scholarly world is catching up to what mountain communities knew all along.
Building a Future While Honoring the Past
The Appalachian Foodways Practitioner program is a collaborative initiative between Grow Appalachia, Mid Atlantic Arts Central Appalachian Living Traditions Program and the Appalachian Studies Association. Each year the program awards $5,000 to fellows to support their ongoing learning and community-based foodways programming. Real money backing real work matters.
Since stewarding the program in 2023, Grow Appalachia has been honored to recognize 10 Appalachian foodways practitioners representing a broad geographic region including North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky. Fellows have ranged from seed savers to food-justice advocates, community chefs specializing in Chilean empanadas, to farmers and foodways-centered organizations. In 2014, the Appalachian Food Summit started at Hindman Settlement School in southeastern Kentucky. The goal is to celebrate and support a sustainable future for Appalachian food and people.
The Complexity Beneath Simple Dishes
The largest food category home grown produce (34%) discloses that unlike few consumers today, mountaineers in the early 20th century were eating a plant-based diet. Though the two largest individual foods in this category were corn and wheat which were rich sources of carbohydrates, products prepared with these staple crops were minimally processed, retaining the majority of their fiber and micronutrient content.
Residents of this subregion have higher obesity prevalence, cardiovascular disease mortality, and diabetes rates compared with non-Appalachian counties. In some Eastern Kentucky counties, food insecurity rates top 26% compared with the national average of 11%. These findings indicate the people of Appalachia are unknowingly leveraging cultural practices to address food insecurity, yet the impact of these practices on nutritional status remains unknown. The story is complex and ongoing, filled with both challenges and resilience that refuse easy narratives.