25 Soul Foods Served at Alabama Fish Camps

The gravel lot was full by five in the afternoon and the oil was already popping inside a kitchen you could hear from the road. Alabama fish camps fed whole towns out of cinder block buildings with no sign on the door. A plate of fried catfish with hush puppies and coleslaw cost less than two dollars and nobody left hungry. Number 11 on this list is a dessert that every fish camp grandmother guarded like a family secret. Number 19 was pulled straight from the creek that morning and number seven is a smoked fish so good that people drove across county lines just to get a plate. These were not restaurants they were community kitchens run by black families who turned river fish and creek water into a tradition that fed the rural south for generations. The supermarket seafood counter never replaced them it just pretended they were not there. Hit subscribe because this is the food your family built. Here are 25 soul foods served at Alabama fish camps. Number 25 hush puppies. Every plate at every fish camp in Alabama came with a pile of these on the side golden brown still dripping from the fryer. The batter was cornmeal a little flour diced onion salt and just enough buttermilk to hold it together. The cook dropped spoonfuls into the same oil that fried the fish which meant the hush puppies carried the flavor of everything that came before them. Catfish grease soaked into the cornmeal that was not a shortcut that was the whole design. Some camps added a pinch of sugar others stirred in jalapeno or garlic nobody wrote it down. The recipe lived in the wrist of whoever was standing over the fryer. When fast food chains started selling their own version in the 1990s they came frozen from a factory and tasted like cardboard shaped into a ball. The original never needed a brand name. Number 24 white bread not rolls not biscuits a stack of plain sliced white bread laid flat on the plate next to the fish. That was the standard at Alabama fish camps for decades. The bread served a purpose that had nothing to do with sandwiches. You used it to soak up the grease to cool your fingers between bites of hot fish and to stretch the plate when the portions ran short. A loaf cost almost nothing and it turned one piece of catfish into a full meal for a child. Some people folded the bread around the fish and ate it with hot sauce others pulled pieces off and ate them plain between bites. The bread was never fancy it was never supposed to be. Number 23 vinegar coleslaw most of the country knows coleslaw as a mayonnaise dish thick and sweet. Alabama fish camps made it different the cabbage was shredded thin and dressed in vinegar a little sugar salt and black pepper no mayonnaise that was deliberate. In the vinegar kept the cabbage crisp and safe it also cut through the heaviness of a fried fish plate in a way that creamy slaw never could. One bite of hot catfish one forkful of cold sharp slaw that balance was not accidental. The women who built those menus understood how a plate needed to work together the chains brought mayonnaise slaw later the original Alabama fish camp plate had vinegar and nothing else. Number 22 pickled onions and hot peppers they sat in a jar on every table sometimes a mason jar sometimes just a repurposed pickle jar with the label peeled off white onion rings and sliced hot peppers soaking in vinegar brine you pulled them out with a fork and laid them across your fish or dropped them onto the bread the brine did the same thing hot sauce did but slower and sharper with a heat that built instead of hit all at once. Some fish camps made their own batches using peppers from a garden out back others bought them from a local woman who canned everything she grew nobody charged extra. The jar was part of the table same as salt napkins it passed between strangers who had never spoken a word to each other and nobody thought twice about sharing. Number 21 sweet tea it came in a tall plastic cup or styrofoam cup depending on the camp and the sugar was already in it not on the side not a packet the sugar went into the pot while the water was still boiling and by the time it hit your glass it was sweet enough to make your teeth ache. Alabama fish camps did not ask how much sugar you wanted the answer was all of it some places brewed the tea so strong that the bottom of the pitcher had a layer of undissolved sugar sitting like sand. On a July afternoon in rural Alabama standing in line at a fish camp with no air conditioning that cup of tea was the only thing between you and the heat. Bottled sweet tea arrived decades later and never got the ratio right. Here is something worth knowing about Alabama fish camps most of them were never legal businesses in the way the state understood the term. No health permit, no fire inspection, no framed license behind the counter. A woman fried fish in her yard on Friday nights and the whole neighborhood lined up. A man built a cinder block shack next to a creek and sold plates out of a window for a dollar. These operations ran on trust not paperwork. The county looked the other way because everybody ate there including the people who worked at the courthouse. For black communities in rural Alabama fish camps were more than food they were the only public gathering spaces that belonged entirely to the people who built them. No dress code, no being turned away, no sitting in the back, just a plate of fish, a folding chair if you were lucky and your own people all around you. That is what the health codes eventually tried to shut down not the food the freedom. Number 20 fried okra. The pods were sliced into rounds rolled in seasoned cornmeal and fried in the same oil as the fish. The outside turned crunchy the inside stayed soft and just barely slick which is the part that divides people. Some cannot stand the texture. Alabama fish camp regulars considered that a personal failing not a flaw in the vegetable. Okra grew in gardens across the state and during peak summer there was more of it than anyone could eat fresh. Frying it was the fastest way to use up the surplus and the most popular way to serve it at a fish camp. A scoop of fried okra next to a piece of catfish was as standard as the white bread underneath it. Number 19 fried bream. This is where the fish camp story gets personal because bream was not a commercial fish nobody bought it from a distributor. Bream came out of creeks and the backwaters of rivers all across Alabama. Children caught them on cane poles and earthworms before they were old enough to bait a hook without help. A grown man could sit on a creek bank for two hours and pull in enough to feed a whole table. The fish was small barely bigger than a grown man's hand and full of tiny bones that required patience and an instinct for where to place the fork. Every experienced fish eater in Alabama could work around those bones without looking down. Children learned by watching not by asking. The bream was scaled gutted dredged in seasoned cornmeal and fried whole in a cast iron skillet or a deep pot of oil. Head on tail on the skin crisped into something almost like a cracker and the meat underneath was sweet and clean in a way that farm-raised catfish never quite matched. At a fish camp bream on the menu told you the cook had access to a creek not just a wholesale supplier. It meant somebody woke up before dawn sat on an overturned bucket and caught enough small fish to carry the whole evening service. The bones were the price of admission. Old women pulled the spine out in one clean motion and laid the two halves flat on the bread like they were opening a book. Children tried to copy the move and usually ended up with a bone stuck sideways in their cheek. Nobody complained. You ate slower you paid closer attention and the next time you did it a little better. Bream never appeared on a chain restaurant menu because it could not be farmed at scale frozen in a warehouse or shipped across state lines in a refrigerated truck. It belonged to the people who caught it and those people never needed a menu to know what they were eating. Number 18 cheese grits. The grits were cooked slow stirred often and loaded with enough cheddar to turn the whole pot a deep yellow. At fish camps that serve breakfast plates or opened early on Saturday mornings cheese grits anchored the plate the way white bread did at the evening fry. A scoop of grits next to fried fish sounds wrong to people who have never tried it. The salt from the cheese the heat from the grits and the crunch from the cornmeal crust on the fish worked together in a way that made immediate sense the moment it hit your mouth. Grits cost almost nothing to make in bulk and a five pound bag could carry a camp through an entire weekend. Most of the country ignored grits entirely until southern cooking became fashionable. Alabama fish camps had been serving them for decades before anyone thought to put them on a brunch menu. Number 17 deviled eggs. They showed up on a plate covered in plastic wrap usually carried in by somebody who was not the cook. Fish camps in Alabama operated like potlucks as much as they did like businesses. The woman running the fryer handled the fish. Everything else arrived from the community. Deviled eggs were the most reliable contribution because every household had chickens or knew someone who did. The filling was simple mashed yolk yellow mustard a little mayonnaise a spoonful of relish and a shake of paprika across the top. Nobody measured anything. The eggs vanished within the first hour and whoever brought them earned a plate of fish without paying. That exchange was never written down anywhere but everyone who showed up understood how it worked. Number 16 potato salad. This was not the cold stiff potato salad from a deli counter. Alabama fish camp potato salad was served at room temperature sometimes still warm with yellow mustard in the base instead of straight mayonnaise. The potatoes were cut into uneven chunks because nobody had time to make them uniform. Diced onion celery boiled eggs chopped rough sweet pickle relish and enough mustard to turn the whole bowl yellow. Some cooks stirred in a splash of pickle juice for sharpness. The bowl sat on the serving table with a large spoon stuck in it and you helped yourself. It was heavy filling and designed to make one piece of fish feel like a complete supper. Every cook who made it swore her recipe was the best in the county. Every one of them had a case. Number 15 fried dill pickles. Before the rest of the country discovered these in sports bars and chain restaurants Alabama fish camps had been frying pickles for years. Dill pickle slices dipped in seasoned batter dropped into hot oil until the outside blistered and the inside stays sour and crunchy. The combination of hot grease and cold vinegar created a bite that cut through everything else on the plate. Some camps served them as a proper side others put them out as a free snack while people waited in line for the orders. The pickles came straight from a store-bought jar and the batter was usually the same cornmeal mixture used for the fish. When restaurants in other states started charging eight dollars for a basket of fried pickles with ranch dressing Alabama fish camp regulars just shook their heads. Number 14 fried green tomatoes. Long before the novel and the movie put this dish in front of a national audience fried green tomatoes were a standard side at Alabama fish camps especially in late summer when the garden was over producing and the tomatoes got pulled off the vine before they had a chance to ripen. The green ones were firm, tart and held together in hot oil in a way that a ripe tomato never could. The preparation was simple thick rounds, salt and pepper, a coating of cornmeal and a skillet of hot oil until both sides turned dark gold. The tartness of the unripe fruit against the crunch of the cornmeal created a sharp earthy flavor unlike anything else on the plate. Some cooks ran the slices through egg wash first, others went straight from the cutting board to the skillet without a second step. At fish camps fried green tomatoes served a roll that went beyond a side dish. A thick slice on top of white bread with hot sauce was a meal by itself for anyone who could not afford the full catfish plate. It fed children, it stretched the family's money through a Friday night and it used up garden produce that would otherwise rot on the vine. The dish became a cultural symbol in the 1990s after the film and suddenly every southern restaurant in the country had a version on the menu. Most of them used flour and panko breading with a cream sauce and charged more than the whole fish plate used to cost. The original needed cornmeal, oil, salt and a tomato from the yard. The women who made it never needed a movie to tell them what they already knew. They had been feeding their families this way since long before anyone thought to put it in a screenplay. Most Alabama fish camps were run by women. The men caught the fish, cleaned the fish and sometimes built the building itself. But the woman stood at the fryer. She decided the oil temperature by the sound it made. She knew when to flip the fish by the color of the crust. She set the price of every plate. She fed the children who showed up without money in their pockets and she remembered who still owed from last Friday. The fish camp was her kitchen extended into the community and she ran it the same way she ran her house with authority, economy and zero tolerance for waste. When health regulations tightened and permits became mandatory in county after county, many of these women could not afford to comply. They did not have commercial kitchens or stainless steel prep tables. They had a propane burner and a cast iron pot. One by one, the camps that had fed entire neighborhoods for decades went quiet. Not because the food failed, because the paperwork cost more than the plates ever brought in. Number 13, turnip greens. The pot simmered on a burner in the back, separate from the fryer and the smell reached the parking lot before anyone was out of their car. Turnip greens cooked down in pork stock with a smoked ham hock or a piece of fatback until the leaves went soft and the liquid turned into pot liquor, dark, salty and rich enough to drink from a cup. At a fish camp, greens were the one dish on the plate that took all day to make. Everything else came together in minutes. The greens needed hours. They were ladled out with a slotted spoon served in a small bowl alongside the fish and the pot liquor stayed behind for anyone who wanted to soak their cornbread in it. That liquid was the part most people outside the South never learned about. Number 12, hot sauce. Not one brand, not one bottle. The hot sauce at an Alabama fish camp was whatever the cook kept on hand and she kept it everywhere. Crystal, Louisiana, Texas Pete. Sometimes a homemade pepper vinegar made from garden peppers sitting in a bottle for months. The bottle sat on every table and there was an unspoken rule that you used it. Fried fish without hot sauce was considered unfinished. The acid cut the grease, the heat sharpened the palate between bites and a few shakes turned a plain catfish fillet into something that made you reach for your tea. Some camps went through so many bottles they bought the gallon size from a restaurant supply store. The table was never without one. Running out would have been unforgivable. Number 11, banana pudding. This was the dessert. Not a dessert, the dessert. At Alabama fish camps banana pudding arrived in a baking dish covered with aluminum foil and it disappeared before the last round of fish left the fryer. The base was a layer of vanilla wafers, sliced bananas, and a cooked custard made from eggs, sugar, milk, and a pour of vanilla extract. The top was meringue browned under a broiler or in some versions a thick layer of whipped cream. The wafers soaked up the custard and turned into something between cake and pudding, soft and impossibly sweet. Every fish camp had one woman who made the banana pudding and she was treated with the respect that bordered on reverence. Nobody asked for the recipe. Asking was considered rude. You ate what she brought and you thanked her twice. Number 10, cornbread. Not the yellow cakey sweet cornbread from a box mix. Fish camp cornbread was made from white cornmeal, mixed thin, and poured into a scorching hot cast iron skillet greased with bacon fat. The result was flat, crispy on the edges, dense, and slightly gritty in the center, and there was no sugar in it whatsoever. Sweetening cornbread was a line that divided the entire south and Alabama fish camps came down hard on the no sugar side. The bread was cut in wedges or baked in a stick pan that shaped each piece like a small ear of corn. Either way it existed to soak up pot liquor, to crumble into a glass of buttermilk, or to sit under a piece of fried fish and catch the drippings. Adding sugar to that cornbread would have been taken as an insult to the cook. Number nine, fried buffalo fish. Most people outside the rural south have never heard of buffalo fish and that is exactly why it showed up at a fish camp. Bigmouth buffalo and smallmouth buffalo are large freshwater fish native to the rivers and lakes of Alabama. Heavy and dense and full of fine bones. Commercial fisheries passed them over because the bone structure made clean filleting nearly impossible, but fish camp cooks scored the flesh in a crosshatch pattern, dredged the pieces in cornmeal, and fried them bone and all. The scoring turned the tiny bones crispy enough to chew through. Buffalo fish had a flavor that was stronger and earthier than catfish and the people who knew how to prepare it considered it the better fish. The people who had never heard of it kept buying farm-raised tilapia at the grocery store and calling it fresh. Number eight, peach cobbler. During peach season in Alabama, which runs from late May through August, fish camps that had an oven turned out cobbler alongside the fried plates. The filling was fresh peaches, sugar, and butter. The batter rose up around the fruit and browned on top into a crust that cracked under a spoon. It was served warm, sometimes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that melted into the crust before the first bite reached your mouth. The peaches came from local trees, not from cans, and the difference was obvious. A canned peach is limp and pale. A fresh Alabama peach in July is firm, red gold at the center, and sweet enough to eat standing under the tree. Putting those peaches into a cobbler was generous. The pan emptied within the hour and nobody brought seconds. Number seven, smoked mullet. In the southern half of Alabama, where the rivers widen toward the Gulf and the salt creeks wind through Mobile County, mullet was the fish that defined the camp. Not catfish, not bream, mullet. The fish was caught in cast nets thrown by hand from the banks of brackish water, pulled in by the dozens, and smoked over greenwood in a pit behind the building. Pecan wood was common. Hickory was just as popular. The smoking took hours, and the smell carried far enough down the road to serve as the only advertisement the camp ever needed. Smoked mullet tasted nothing like fried fish. The flesh was oily, rich, and dense, with a smoke flavor that reached all the way through to the bone. The skin turned dark and pulled away in strips. You ate it with your hands, pulling the meat apart and dropping it onto bread or crackers, and the oil from the fish coated your fingers and stayed there for the rest of the evening. Some camps served it as the main plate. Others sold it by the piece from a cooler wrapped in newspaper or wax paper meant to be carried home. The mullet smokers were specialists. They were not the same people who stood at the fryer. A man who smoked mullet knew his pit the way a baker knows an oven, by the color of the smoke and the distance between the fish and the coals. When those men got too old to tend the fire, or when they passed, the pits went cold and stayed that way. Smoked mullet is still sold in parts of coastal Alabama today, but the backyard pits that made it legendary have mostly gone silent. The old operations needed no sign. The smoke was the sign. Number Six Baked Beans At most fish camps, the baked beans came from a can and nobody pretended otherwise. A large pot of store-bought beans, doctored with brown sugar, yellow mustard, diced onion, and a few strips of bacon sat on the burner next to the greens. The beans were sweet, smoky, and thick enough to hold their ground on a paper plate without running into the coleslaw. Doctoring canned beans was not laziness. It was a technique that turned a shelf-stable pantry item into something that tasted homemade with a fraction of the effort. The woman running the camp had her hands full at the fryer all evening. She did not have time to soak dried beans overnight. The canned version, improved with what she already had on the counter, served its purpose and served it well. Number Five Fried Corn On The Cob During corn season, some Alabama fish camps dropped fresh ears straight into the fryer alongside the fish. The husks were stripped, the silk pulled off, and the whole ear went into the hot oil. The kernels blistered and caramelized on the surface. The outside picked up a char that tasted like roasted corn and fryer oil together, and the result was unlike anything you could get from boiling or grilling. The ears came out dark gold and glistening, served with salt and a swipe of butter, and they disappeared before the next round of catfish hit the pot. Frying corn was messy, loud, and burned through oil fast, which is why not every camp bothered. The ones that did became known for it across the county. Number Four Fried Ham Pies These showed up at fish camps where somebody behind the counter had a sweet tooth and a rolling pin. A circle of dough, rolled thin, filled with fruit preserves or mashed sweet potato, folded in half, sealed along the edge with a fork, and fried until the crust turned golden and flaky. Peach was the most common filling. Apple and blackberry ran close behind. The pies were small enough to finish in three bites and sturdy enough to hold in one hand without falling apart, which made them the perfect walking dessert at an outdoor fish fry. Some camps sold them for small change, lined up on a tray near the window. They were always warm, they were always made that morning, and they were never enough to last the evening. Number Three Crackling Cornbread This was regular cornbread with pieces of fried pork skin folded into the batter before it went into the skillet. The cracklings were rendered pork fat, cooked until the skin turned hard and crunchy, then broken into small bits and stirred into the cornmeal mixture. When the bread baked, the cracklings softened just enough to chew, but kept their salt and their deep pork flavor, which spread through the entire slice. Crackling cornbread was heavier than regular cornbread and richer by a wide margin. One piece, alongside a bowl of greens and pot liquor, was a full meal without touching the fish plate. For families who butchered their own hogs, cracklings were a byproduct that cost nothing and added everything to a pan of bread. At fish camps, crackling cornbread was the premium side. When the skillet was empty, it did not come back. You either arrived early or you ate the regular. Number Two Fried Shrimp In the coastal counties of Alabama, from Mobile Bay south to the Gulf Shore, fish camps served shrimp that had been in salt water that same morning. The shrimp were peeled, deveined, coated in seasoned cornmeal or a light batter, and fried until the tail turned red and the crust went crisp. The size varied with the day's catch. Some nights the shrimp were large enough to eat one at a time. Other nights they came small and piled high and you picked them up by the handful. Shrimp plates cost more than catfish because shrimp required access to the Gulf and a connection to a working shrimper. Inland camps rarely had them. Coastal camps built their reputations on them. A plate of fried shrimp with hush puppies and vinegar slaw eaten on a wooden bench with a view of the bay was one of the finest meals Alabama ever produced and it cost less than a fast food value meal cost today. Number One Fried Whole Catfish. This was the foundation, the reason the fish camp existed at all. Everything else on the plate was built around this single piece of fish. The catfish was dredged in seasoned cornmeal, lowered into a cast iron pot of hot oil, and fried until the crust turned dark gold and the meat inside flaked apart at the touch of a fork. Whole catfish head on. That was how Alabama fish camps served it because that was how the women who ran those kitchens learned to cook it from the women who taught them. The head stayed on because throwing it away was waste and waste was something these kitchens refused to tolerate. The tail curled in the oil, the whiskers crisped, and when that fish hit the plate on top of two slices of white bread with coleslaw on one side and hush puppies on the other it was the most honest meal in the state of Alabama. Number 21 Devil Eggs. Hard boiled, cooled, split in half, the yolks mashed smooth with mayonnaise, yellow mustard, a pinch of salt, and enough paprika on top to turn each one the color of sunset. They sat on a plate lined with a paper towel arranged in neat rows by whoever made them that morning and they never lasted past the first hour of the fish fry. Devil Eggs were the dish that traveled. They showed up in a covered container carried by a woman who had not been asked to bring anything but brought them anyway because she always did. Children ate them in one bite, grown men ate four before admitting they had started. The plate was always the first thing cleared from the table and whoever made them pretended not to notice. Whole bone-in fried whiting demanded something from you. It came out of the grease with the skin taut and mahogany dark, the flesh sweet beneath a and eating it was an act of engagement. Fingers in, bones navigated, the small firm meat of the cheek worth working for. In black communities along the Atlantic seaboard fried whiting was the fish specific and unapologetic. Enslaved people from coastal West Africa were already practiced fishermen and whiting, mild, affordable, easy to fry in quantity fit that inheritance. By 1974 the Nation of Islam had contracted with the Peruvian distributor for 1 million pounds of whiting annually sold door to door in black neighborhoods and a 1975 issue of Muhammad Speaks listed it as a black household staple. The hot sauce that went on top was thin and sharp. Cayenne cut with vinegar, nothing creamy. Fewer families fry whole fish at home now. The bones discouraged people who didn't grow up learning to read them and that particular reading is no longer taught. When the great migration sent black families north from Mississippi and Alabama, the fish fry came with them but the fish changed. Catfish and porgy gave way to whatever the Midwest rivers offered and what they offered was carp. Number 24, hominy. Freedmen soaked dry corn kernels in water mixed with lye made from hardwood ashes. The alkaline solution loosened the holes and swelled the kernels to twice their original size. After rinsing the pale puffy grains were boiled slowly until they were tender enough to chew. Hominy was eaten as a side alongside pork or greens fried in a skillet the next morning with whatever fat was available or ground into grits when a hand mill could be found. The lye treatment did something that plain grinding could not. It released nutrients locked inside the corn that the body could not otherwise absorb. Freedmen did not know the chemistry. They knew the practice passed down from generations of contact between enslaved Africans and native peoples in the south. The technique survived because it worked and because corn was the one crop a landless man could always grow. Number 23, stewed snap beans with salt meat. A pot of green beans cooked fast is a vegetable. A pot of green beans simmered for two hours with a chunk of salt pork is a meal. The beans broke down until they were olive colored and silky so tender they dissolved against the roof of the mouth and the salt meat melted into the broth until every mouthful tasted like smoke and fat and garden soil after her reign. At a fish fry the snap beans sat in a covered pot on a stove inside the house while everything fried happened outside in the yard. They were the quiet dish, the one nobody bragged about but everybody reached for when the plate needed something green and slow and honest. The fried fish sandwich was the working currency of black community life from the 1940s through the 70s. Whiting or catfish between two slices of white bread wrapped in wax paper handed across a folding table. Fried fish sandwiches were the cash cow of church fundraisers in that era. Easy to sell at a profit for building funds or as a respectable alternative to the rent party. You could eat one standing up leaning against a car, no silverware, no plate, no formality. That particular version, bone and whitened, thin hot sauce, soft white bread, stopped showing up at the gatherings sometime after the 1980s. Number 22. Pig ears. After a hog was slaughtered and the ham's shoulders and ribs were claimed the ears were left behind with the rest of what most people considered waste. Freedmen took them. The ears were scrubbed clean, singed of any remaining hair and simmered in a pot for hours until the cartilage softened and the skin turned tender and gelatinous. Some families chopped them and added them to stews. Others pickled them in vinegar with hot pepper and onion storing the jars for weeks. The texture was unlike any other cut of pork. Part silky, part chewy with a richness that came from the collagen dissolving slowly during the long cook. A jar of pickled pig ears sitting on a shelf represented protein that required no ice, no smokehouse and no rush to eat before it spoiled. Number 19. Rice dressing. Some people outside Louisiana call it dirty rice but in New Orleans the two dishes are not exactly the same thing. Rice dressing was made with ground pork, chicken livers and gizzards chopped so fine they nearly disappeared into the grains. The holy trinity went in heavy, the seasoning was generous and the finished dish had a dark savory depth that turned the plain white rice into something worth building a whole plate around. At a fish fry, rice dressing filled the same role as jambalaya for families who preferred the finer texture and the deeper organ meat flavor that set it apart. The women who made it well were known for it and that reputation traveled across the neighborhood the same way a good name always does, on the tongues of people who had eaten the proof. Sunday mornings had their own smell and in households that kept the tradition that smell was salmon croquettes. The quiet sizzle of a shallow skillet, patties of canned pink salmon mixed with egg, onion and crushed crackers fried on both sides until golden and firm. Canned salmon was an affordable pantry staple in black households from the 1940s onward. Cheap enough to stretch your breakfast for six and rich enough to carry people through a long morning of church. Your grandmother didn't measure anything, she cracked the egg directly over the bowl, shook in the crackers by feel, added black pepper and sometimes mustard and shaped the patties with wet palms. They fell apart in the pan she told you your hands were too hot. The grits went on first, always simmering low while the croquettes fried. By the time the patties were done the kitchen was full of steam and your plate was already half warm. Salmon croquettes with grits was the Sunday companion to the Saturday fish fry, a quieter discipline that required the same hands and the same knowledge. The women who got them right are gone. Number 21 Squirrel In the woods and fence rows of the deep south, squirrels were as common as daylight. Freedmen hunted them with traps, slingshots and small caliber rifles when ammunition could be spared. The animal was skinned, cleaned and stewed low and slow with onions and root vegetables until the small tough muscles surrendered and the meat fell away from the bone. Squirrel stew was a weekday supper in freedmen's households near wooded land. The flavor was mild, closer to chicken than to the stronger wild game. A single squirrel was not much but a morning in the woods could produce three or four and that was enough for a pot that fed the family. Children learned to hunt squirrel before they learned almost anything else about putting food on the table. Number 22 Fried okra The paws had to be small, no longer than a finger, sliced into rounds and tossed in seasoned cornmeal while the cast iron skillet heated up. The trick was a dry pan with shallow oil, not a deep fryer and enough patience to let each piece sit long enough to form a crust before turning. Done right, fried okra came out crisp and dry with none of the slickness that made people who thought they hated okra push it aside. At a New Orleans fish fry, fried okra sat on the table in a bowl with no serving spoon because nobody used one. You reached in with your fingers, took a handful and dropped them on your plate next to the fish. The bowl circled the table twice and came back empty. Fried porgy came to the table whole, head on, tail on, skin blistered and crackling from the cast iron and you ate it with two slices of white bread pressed flat on either side, soaking up every drop of grease. In mid-Atlantic, black communities from the Chesapeake corridor up through Philadelphia and New York, porgy was the fish of Friday. You seasoned it with salt and cayenne, rolled it in cornmeal and dropped it into oil that had been heating since early afternoon. You tested the heat with a drop of water and listened for that first hard hiss. Porgy is a broad-finned fish with more bones than most people today are willing to navigate and that's exactly why it left modern kitchens. Younger cooks never learned how to eat around them, how to hold the fish by the tail and work the flesh away from the spine with your lips and tongue. That skill was passed at the table, not from a book. When the elders stopped frying porgy, the knowledge of how to eat it went silent with them. You knew who made the best sandwich by where you stood in line. Everybody angled toward the same woman, the one who pressed the bread hard on both sides, kept a bottle of thin vinegar hot sauce in her apron pocket and fried the whiting in small batches so nothing got soggy. Number 23, poke salat. Every spring, pokeweed pushed up through the disturbed ground along fence rows, barn lots and the edges of plowed fields. The young shoots and tender leaves were one of the first greens available after a long winter of dry beans and salt meat, but pokeweed carried a problem. The plant was toxic if prepared wrong. Freedmen knew the method that made it safe. The leaves were boiled in a full pot of water, drained completely, boiled again in fresh water, drained again and boiled a third time before they were fit to eat. After three changes of water, the greens were wilted down to a dark, soft mass that tasted mild and earthy. Fried in bacon grease with a little salt, poke salat was a springtime staple that cost nothing and grew without asking. The trick was knowing when to pick it. Young leaves were safe after proper boiling, mature stalks and berries were dangerous and everyone in a freedman's household learned the difference early. Number 20, bread pudding with whiskey sauce. The bread was stale French loaf torn by hand, soaked in a custard of eggs, sugar, vanilla, evaporated milk and cinnamon until it went soft. Raisins got folded in, the whole thing was poured into a buttered baking dish and it went into the oven until the top turned brown and the center was still trembling when you pulled it out. The whiskey sauce came separately, warm, poured from a small pot at the last minute, made with butter, powdered sugar and enough bourbon to remind everyone at the table that this was not a children's dessert. At a fish fry, bread pudding was the final course. It came out after the plates had been stacked and the oil had cooled and it turned people who were ready to leave into people who sat back down and stayed another hour. Number 20, salt herring. Barrels of salted herring arrived in the deep south by rail and by a river barge from the Atlantic coast. The fish were cheap, heavily preserved and sold in country stores where freedmen bought supplies on credit. A single herring was stiff as a board, crusted in salt and had to be soaked in water overnight before it could be cooked. Once the salt was drawn out, the fish was fried in a skillet or simmered with potatoes and onion. The flavor was strong, briny and unmistakably fishy. It was not a delicacy, it was a way to get animal protein on the table when fresh meat was out of reach and the nearest creek was fished out. Salt herring kept for months without ice, it traveled well and a single barrel could feed a family through the leaner weeks of late winter when the smokehouse was empty and the garden had not yet come up. Number 24, garlic French bread. Not garlic bread from a frozen box, this was a whole loaf of New Orleans French bread, split lengthwise, slathered thick with butter and pressed garlic and toasted in the oven until the edges went crisp and the center stayed pillowy soft. The bread came out on a cutting board and got hacked into rough pieces with a kitchen knife, nobody sliced it neatly. At a fish fry, it served the same purpose as cornbread but carried the particular stamp of a city where French bread was baked fresh every morning and went stale by sundown. A piece of that bread dragged through the juice of whatever was on the plate was worth more than the fish itself to some people. The loaf never lasted long, by the time the second round of fish came out of the oil, the cutting board was empty and somebody was already asking who was going to toast another one. Number 25, parched corn. Before a freedman could grind corn into meal or boil it into hominy, there was an even simpler way to eat it. Dried kernels were spread in a dry skillet or scattered across a flat stone, set over coals and stirred until they cracked open and turned brown. No fat, no water, no seasoning required. The heat transformed the starch into something crunchy, slightly sweet and light enough to carry in a pocket or a cloth sack for days without spoiling. Parched corn was trail food, field food and hunger food all at once. A man heading out before dawn to work land he did not own could fill a handful from the job by the door and eat it walking. Children chewed it between meals the way later generations would chew candy. It was the simplest thing corn could become and for freedmen who had nothing else ready it was enough. No chef invented this plate, it invented itself inside a cinder block building beside a creek one Friday night at a time. Those cinder block buildings are mostly gone now. The propane burners cooled off, the cast iron pots got handed down to daughters who moved to cities with kitchens that had exhaust fans and electric ranges, but the food survived. It lives in the hands that learn to debone or bring by watching in every skillet of cornmeal crusted catfish that hits hot oil on a Friday night and in the people who still know what a real fish camp plate tastes like without being told. Drop in the comments which Alabama fish camp dish your family turned into gold and which one you're cooking this weekend. The gravel lot is empty now but the skillet is still warm.