Pour Some Sorghum On It

When it comes to old mountain staples reaching new heights of popularity, sorghum takes the cake—not to mention the fried chicken, pork chops, and wings. 

The versatile ingredient’s sweet and savory flavors play well with everything from desserts to meaty entrees. Yet taste is merely one part of its complexity. In Sorghum’s Savor (University Press of Florida, $20), author Ronni Lundy dives into the sweetener’s rich history and myriad uses. 

Lundy was particularly fascinated by sorghum’s role in the Civil War, when the flow of sugar came to a halt and both sides turned to the amber sweetener (Northern abolitionists encouraged it as a boycott of slave-made sugar). “The Appalachians were largely the only place where sorghum-making hung in after the war ended, once the sugarcane industry revived and beet sugar took over in the North and Midwest,” says Lundy. “Sorghum seemed to be an expression of our desire to be independent, to ‘make our own’ if possible. It could also be indicative of the mountain palate, which appreciates tang, complexity, and a little bit of darkness.”

Sorghum’s Savor celebrates that deep flavor profile with recipes ranging from “gravy horse” (sorghum butter) to Bengali vegetables, miso-sorghum chicken to apple-sorghum stack cake. Here, Lundy shares her recipe for pecan pie with a kick.

Sorghum and Bourbon Pecan Pie

Serves 8

• 1 nine-inch pie crust
• 1½ cups pecan halves
• Pinch of fine sea salt
• 4 tablespoons butter
• ½ cup sorghum syrup
• ¼ cup half-and-half
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons white cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs
• 3 tablespoons bourbon

1) Heat oven to 325° F. Place crust in nine-inch pan and flute to make a raised edge.

2) To toast pecans, lightly spray cookie sheet with oil. Spread pecans in a single layer and very lightly salt (less than a teaspoon). Roast pecans in oven for five minutes, remove, and use a spatula to stir and flip the pecans. Put back in oven and roast for five more minutes. If pecans are just starting to brown and smell fragrant, they are ready; turn them out in a bowl. If not, you may need to roast them for 1 to 2 minutes more before turning out.

3) To make pie, turn heat up to 350° F.

4) In small pan, melt butter, and stir in sorghum to blend. Remove from heat and add half-and-half. Set aside.

5) In a small bowl, blend sugar, cornmeal, and salt.

6) In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until yolks and whites are fully blended. Whisk in the sorghum mixture. Whisk in the sugar mixture. When all is blended, add the pecans and the bourbon and stir to incorporate. Pour into pie crust. 

7) Bake on the middle rack for 40–50 minutes, until the center is set. Remove and cool on rack before slicing.

Amber Waves of Grain

• An Old World grass, sorghum dates back to Egypt antiquity, brought to North America by way of the slave trade. Sweet sorghum got its start here in the 1850s, and the crop soon flourished across the Midwest and the South.

• In Appalachia,“long sweetening” became another term for sorghum syrup and “short sweetening” for refined sugar. One theory points to how long it takes sorghum to drip from a spoon, as opposed to the quick sprinkle of sugar.

• Many early moonshine recipes called for sorghum, though some Prohibition-era moonshiners turned to fast-fermenting sugar to keep up with demand. During the sugar rations of World War II, however, sorghum again emerged as a key ingredient for making hooch.

Sweet Tradition

Making sorghum syrup traditionally involves feeding sweet sorghum cane into a mill to crush out the juice, which then gets boiled until thick. Horses or mules, harnessed to long poles attached to the mill, walk in circles to turn the rollers that press out the sorghum juice. In mountain areas, neighbors often came together for a community “squeezing” each fall. Harvest festivals up and down the Southern Appalachians hark back to those annual gatherings, complete with sorghum demonstrations and other old-fashioned activities. At Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the historic sorghum mill in front of the Cable house spins to life during the Mountain Life Festival, held September 19 this year. In northern Georgia, the popular Blairsville Sorghum Festival runs the second and third weekends of October.