Simple to follow recipes and that taste delicious and the pictures the real reason I love cookbooks are the picture are beautiful

A lot of cookbooks are filled with recipes that look really pretty but I know my family will absolutely never eat. Not so with this cookbook! The book is beautifully done and every recipe I’ve tried has been absolutely delicious. Her dilly beans are a staple in our home.

Beautiful book. Great pictures, recipes, history, and ideas. Loved the recipes and can't wait to try some of them.

This book focuses mainly on pickling and canning your food. The book is well laid out. One thing I really like is that the author give you a quick story/anticdote about each item, how to, for example, make peanut butter. But she doesn’t stop there. After telling you how to make peanut butter (or whatever), she gives you a couple other recipes using whatever you’ve just made.

At the beginning of the book she explains what you’ll need and what she means by certain terms.

Very well thought out book and I’m excited to try a couple of the recipes

This book makes me so hungry!!!! Everything is mouth-watering, and I never would have thought to make these dishes on my own. Delicious!!!!!!

The journey this author took was incredible! Her insights are eye-opening and the recipes with all their stories are fabulous. The pictures just add to the delicious staples found on the pages of this cookbook. I love that the ingredients are easily accessible and the recipes are easy to make.

A beautiful book! Whether you're interested in actually cooking or (like me) just interested in reading the recipes, this is a beautiful book to add to your collection. If you grew up in the South, the photography will make you homesick for grandma's place and her cooking! Not your typical Southern cookbook by any means! A joy to read.

I live for Southern cooking and this cookbook, Southern from Scratch, absolutely did not disappoint. We have tried many of the recipes and the vast majority of them were fairly easy to follow, and that's saying something because my skills in the kitchen are legendarily bad. The author, Ashley English, is personable and as I read through the cookbook and into some of the vignettes she shared relating to the recipes, I felt like I really got to know her. Most of all, this cookbook really opened my eyes to how vast the world of Southern cooking really is. Of course, I knew the basics, but this book brought forth items less obvious than the requisite fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

TITLE: A very worthwhile collection of recipes: Rewarding, satisfying, gratifying, fulfilling

Author Ashley English hails from the Southern Appalachian region, and she has gone back to her roots, creating dishes from scratch—even the basic condiments are from scratch. She takes fresh, simple produce and works wonders with them. Then she combines them with other ingredients, including meats, poultry, fish, grains and more to make dishes that make one’s mouth water, just to look at them. To Ms. English, “Southern” is most often the American Southeast region.

Being a lover of pickled things, and being a firm believer of foodstuff from scratch, I was attracted to this book from the first pages. Recipes are not complicated nor are they especially involved. I found them fairly easy to accomplish and so satisfying. I must say that I am not a canner, and many of these condiment recipes do give instructions for canning. I found that these recipes make small enough batches, so that I am able to use the same recipes, stopping when I get to the canning instructions, and just store in the refrigerator, and not on my pantry shelves.

Every page is brimming with luscious combinations of fresh, wholesome foods and ingredients. Beautiful photography abounds, page layouts are easy on the eyes, instructions are easy to follow and ingredient lists (once your condiments are made) are not intimidating. And it is easy to see that Ms. English loves to teach and instruct—and she is very good at it.

Her writing is smooth and very personable. You’ll end up feeling that you’ve made a new friend.

She helps the reader create a Southern pantry by graciously teaching us how to make simple ingredients into condiments and all kinds of pickles, relishes, sauces and more. I have found those recipes to be my favorites in this book. After those first chapters, she offers up luscious recipes using all those fresh, wholesome hand-made products.

Will you like this book? You will, if like me, you try to find alternatives to grocery store shelf items. If you typically load up your shopping cart with boxed meals, gravy and taco mixes, BBQ sauce and salad dressing bottles, condiment jars and such, well, maybe this book is not quite the recipe book you are looking for.

As an example: Ms. English’s “Appalachian Ploughman’s Lunch” contains a loaf of crusty bread, cheese, ham, sliced apples, and the following home-made accompaniments, all recipes included in this book: Peach Chutney, Pickled Eggs, Sweet Onion Relish, Pickled Okra, Pickled Beets and Bread & Butter Pickles. Makes my mouth water and gives me the urge to head to the kitchen to create……Does it excite you, too? Or make you want run in the other direction……

If you love making your condiments and all kinds of pickles from scratch, this is a must-have book! Condiments like: Ketchup, chile sauce, apple butter, hot pepper jelly, peanut butter, apple cider vinegar, fermented hot sauce, BBQ sauce, sweet pickle relish, pimento cheese

Make your own breakfast sausage, applesauce, “Comeback” sauce, corn relish, blueberry ketchup, sauerkraut. She even dries her own peppers and makes her own hot pepper vinegar—both easy to do. Make lard in a slow-cooker. Cure your own bacon.

There are cook top skillet recipes, slow cooker recipes. Recipes that use home-made potato chips, nuts, beans

I love her take on the African dish shakshuka: Southern Shakshuka with Hoecakes. The shrimp and grits is sublime—and comes with the creative idea to make a grits buffet for a gathering. Also loved the chicken and grits recipe, with the chicken part of the dish made meltingly tender in a slow cooker on low for 6 hours. The Bourbon Bacon Jam is a real keeper. And the succotash, as Ms. English describes it, is truly an “enlivening iteration” and exceedingly inspirational. I will forever be grateful for the recipe “Brown Butter & Bourbon Braised Cabbage” (with diced apples).

There are a few decent ice cream recipes and lovely sweets and desserts, (that are not too, too sweet).

Some elements do fall short for me: I do have an issue with the lack of temperature range guidance in her fermenting recipes. The bean recipes are too few and very basic.

I liked this book so much that I intend to look into Ashley English’s other books: A Year of Pies, A Year of Picnics, Handmade Gatherings, and Quench.

As a Southern girl raised by Yankees, I have missed a lot of these essentials. Now married to a southern man, I was ready to tackle a few of these dishes.

I love to cook, and I make it a point to cook from scratch as much as I can, and I have always had a problem with biscuits. Ms. English's recipe was easy and made a success biscuit. I look forward to cheese straws and country fried dishes as well.

The recipes are easy to follow, look great, and the ones I have tried come out well. I really enjoyed the basics and the more modern spin on many of the dishes.

VERY confusing format I didn't like while flipping through this cookbook and looking for recipes to try. I understand that there's a base theme and then recipes that feature that base, but the way it was laid out made it difficult to follow and pick-up on during an initial flip-through. I did find a handful of recipes that interested me (the "Old Fashioned" Sweet Potato Pie and a savory bread pudding) but other than that I found myself skipping a lot of the recipes simply because I didn't enjoy the layout.

Ashley English offers up a recipe collection of classic southern dishes like Brunswick stew, buttermilk biscuits, and Hoppin' John and sides including chow chow, dilly beans, and cheese straws.
I enjoyed the unique uses of some classic food staples, most notably in the recipes for Potato Pickle Soup and Watermelon Rind Sloppy Joes.
Other notable recipes (that I plan to try very soon!) are Chicken Fried Shrimp with Comeback Sauce and Wild Mushroom Beef Stroganoff.
This is an excellent collection of southern food history and recipes divided into eight sections from basic pantry staples to well-planned meals to feed your entire family. The photographs from Johnny Autry are lovely: clean, subtle lighting with the focus on the colorful foods.
The way we prepare food is filled with personal preferences that usually has ties to how and where we grew up. I enjoyed English's book introduction that gave insight into her upbringing in Appalachia and how it has shaped her life and relationship with food.
While I love my decades old spiral bound recipe books, I can't help but fall in love with beautifully curated books like this that make cooking more of an experience than a chore. The photographs and brief explanations of dishes in Southern from Scratch make it a book to keep on display to flip through for food inspiration.

This book is everything I've ever wanted in a Southern cookbook. It's not new recipes, it's the good old ones that bring back memories of a happy time. Your grandmother's recipes. Nothing fancy, which is the way I like it. The pictures are gorgeous, and the recipes are like your favorite chair: comforting and inviting.

Some interesting recipes but honestly nothing I would actually do at home. Good pictures, clear instructions tho.

Loved this book, there are a lot of different Southern dishes to try and lots of awesome pictures included
through out the book.

There are quite a few canning, jam, and condiment recipes in this book. It's great for those things, but if you're looking for the complete southern meal, this book is a little lacking. I'm looking forward to trying a new biscuit recipe, but didn't get many dinner ideas. Interesting for it's bacon jams and relishes, but felt a little incomplete to me.

A beautifully photographed and organized cook book that is easy to follow. These are recipes filled with knowledge of generations and a love of cooking. Nothing here is for quick weeknight meals. These are recipes you make a tradition out of. Something you cook with your special someone filled with love and contentment.

This would be a wonderful gift for the cook in the family. Start some new holiday traditions and make a sonker for the holidays or homemade biscuits. Yum!

If you have the space and time to make large quantities of Southern classics from scratch this cookbook is for you. You can choose quality ingredients and follow the clearly organized recipes.

I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.
What a cool book! I don't know what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised. There are lots of unique recipes in here like jams, pickles (blueberry ketchup!) etc that one doesn't always find in cookbooks, no matter how broad the scope of the book is. Some solid entree ideas, sides and desserts round it out nicely.

I'm thinking the hash brown stack with applesauce is going to debut in my house soon!