Lowcountry cuisine is the cooking traditionally associated with the South Carolina and the Georgia coasts.
While it shares features of Southern cooking, it incorporates a diversity of local seafood, produce and native spices.
Lowcountry Boil:
A Lowcountry Boil, a.k.a Frogmore Stew, is a blend of the Lowcountry’s staple food in a pot. It usually includes small hierloom potatoes local shrimp, sausage and fresh corn, boiled in water with creole spices.
Lowcountry Boi tends to be a bit milder than their Louisiana cousins. For example, it is not unusual for a Lowcountry recipe to call for a mixture of hot and mild boil seasonings, whereas a Louisiana recipe may start with crab boil packets and add large amounts of cayenne pepper. While shrimp are most often used, crabs or crawfish may be included if available. This is also a bit different from a Louisiana boil, which usually involves just one kind of shellfish at a time.
Frogmore is the name of a community in the middle of St. Helena Island, near Beaufort, South Carolina. Although there are many versions of this dish around, the name Frogmore Stew was coined in the 1960s by Richard Gay, one of the owners of Gay Fish Company, circa 1948, on St. Helena Island. Frogmore Stew became far better-known after it was featured on the cover of Gourmet Magazine in the 1980s, and is enjoyed by all, with this name, to this day. In 2005,
Shrimp and Grits:
Shrimp and Grits is a staple in the South and has strong roots of the Gullah people, who are descendants of enslaved West-Africans that lived and live in the Lowcountry. It consists of grits, sometimes blended with cheese, or a gravy and fresh shrimp.
Crab Cakes:
Making minced meat patties is an ancient technique for both taste and economy. Crab Cakes are popular in areas that harvest a lot of crab, such as the Lowcountry, where blue and stone crab are plentiful.
Crab cakes are often prepared with no filler, consisting of all-lump crab meat served on a platter or sandwich. The sides are usually french fries, cole slaw, potato, or macaroni salad. Restaurants serve crab cakes with a lemon wedge and saltine crackers and sometimes with other condiments such as a remoulade, tartar sauce, mustard, cocktail sauce, ketchup, or Worcestershire sauce.
Red Rice:
Red rice is a traditional Gullah Lowcountry dish, similar to West African jollof rice.We have a rich history with rice, tracing back to the 18th century. Our tidal rivers were a natural irrigation system for the cereal. Red rice, a Gullah-inspired dish, is tomato based, with warm spices and smoky flavor, often featuring shrimp or sausage.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org.
