Most people have trouble giving a clear, concise definition of “Arkansas cuisine.”

It’s not even easy for me, and I was born and raised in this state.

I do know this: We love food. 

After Hurricane Katrina destroyed many of the holdings of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum at New Orleans in 2005, the museum put out a call across the South for cookbooks. Almost 30 boxes of community cookbooks arrived from Arkansas. In fact, the museum received more cookbooks from Arkansas than anywhere else. 

Arkansas is fascinating to historians and sociologists because northwest Arkansas is so different from southeast Arkansas, and northeast Arkansas is so different from southwest Arkansas. We’re a state of contrasts and multiple influences. The cookbooks that wound up in New Orleans from Arkansas showed the museum staff that Arkansas cuisine has been influenced by everything from German immigration to homegrown spice producers to an affection for the Dutch oven. But Arkansas food has never received its due on the national stage because we’ve been overshadowed by Texas barbecue to the west, Memphis barbecue to the east and Louisiana cooking to the south.

So what’s the best definition of Arkansas cuisine?

If I had to boil it down into a single sentence, I would say Arkansas cuisine is traditional country cooking done simply and done well, using the freshest ingredients possible.

I was fortunate that all four of my grandparents here in Arkansas lived into their 90s. Both of my grandmothers were superb cooks. Both sets of grandparents had gardens, chicken yards and fruit trees. If they were still with us, they would have spent the spring serving the vinegar-and-bacon-grease-soaked salad of fresh lettuce and radishes that always tasted like an Arkansas spring to me.

I still dream of spending summer mornings with them while picking pole beans, purple-hull peas, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and okra from their gardens.

I also find myself craving the cooking of the late Lucille Balch, who worked in our home when I was a child. We weren’t rich, but we did have an African-American maid who was like a member of the family. I still crave Lucille’s fried chicken, squash, fried apples, eggplant, dewberry cobblers and more. That’s the food that shaped my definition of “Arkansas cuisine.”

In an essay several years ago in the Oxford American magazine, Sam Eifling described Arkansas as a “smallish, landlocked state with Missouri’s backwoods as its roof, Mississippi’s catfish pipeline to its east, culinary powerhouse Louisiana to the south and Texas’ beef-pork-pepper riot at its southwestern corner. Arkansas resists glib division, but when it comes to food, primary are the Ozarks of the northwest, roughly, and then the Delta of the east and southeast. Historically, as now, life was work, money hard, and the only thing cheap was the time that a cook could invest in laboring over the family’s meals.” 

The writer concluded that the pig is probably as good a symbol as any for Arkansas cuisine.

My favorite meals? 

Give me Arkansas wild duck and cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Serve me fried quail, rice, gravy, homemade biscuits and strawberry preserves in the winter.

In the spring, summer and early fall, you can make it fried crappie, fried potatoes and sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and green onions fresh from the garden. 

I’m one of those who believe there’s no greater expression of our Arkansas culture than our food. My late grandfather at Des Arc would walk a block from his house to Main Street and request that the folks at the fish market there save him any fiddlers brought in by the commercial fishermen on the White River. For those of you not familiar with the finer things in life, a fiddler is a small catfish that’s typically fried whole. You cannot find fiddlers in many restaurants these days, though my friend Gene DePriest at Gene’s Restaurant in Brinkley does them right. 

When I was home as a boy in the summers, our “dinner” was in the Old South tradition – at 1 p.m. My mom and dad would come home from work to eat the big meal Lucille had cooked. My dad often would take a short nap on the couch before heading back downtown.

“Supper” was at night. It was more simple. But there were few things I liked better in the evening than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the cold fried chicken left over from earlier in the day and a glass of milk. Sometimes, a fresh cantaloupe would serve as dessert. 

Yes, Arkansas is a fringe state, not solely a part of any one region. It’s a state that’s mostly Southern but also a bit Midwestern and a tad Southwestern. We’re a state of contradictions, a state that regularly confounds outsiders. Yet we’re also a state that grows good food, cooks it well and enjoys eating it. 

Define Arkansas cuisine, you say? 

It’s not easy. The Arkansan will tell us not to worry about it. It’s time to hush and eat.

What’s on your Arkansas supper plate?

Rex Nelson of Little Rock has been the president of Arkansas Independent Colleges and Universities since January 2011.

One of the state’s most high-profile writers and speakers, Nelson has had a long career in government, journalism and public affairs. He has been honored through the years by organizations as varied as the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas, the Arkansas Municipal League and the Arkansas chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. He’s viewed as an expert on Arkansas history, Southern culture and Southern politics and has appeared on radio and television stations across the country.

Nelson writes a weekly column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state’s largest newspaper, and is the author of the popular Southern Fried blog. His feature stories regularly appear in magazines such as Arkansas Life and TBQ.

This summer, he will move into a new position as director of corporate communication for Simmons First National Corp.

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Getting To Know Your ARWB Foodies

What foods remind you of your childhood? Fried fish. My father loved to fish, and we ate everything he caught — catfish, crappie, bream, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, you name it.

What is your favorite international cuisine? Italian. Love garlic, tomatoes and pasta. I especially love the Sicilian-Creole blend of cooking that can be found in New Orleans.

What is always in your refrigerator at home? A good brand of butter along with eggs.

What is your most used cookbook? I don’t use cookbooks. 

What is your favorite kitchen gadget? A good corkscrew.

Do you have a favorite food indulgence? Fish, be it freshwater or saltwater.

What is your go-to ingredient that you use time and time again? Tabasco sauce 

What is your favorite food meal to cook at home? Salty Virginia country ham and eggs.

What is a cooking tip that you would like to share with beginning cooks? I rarely cook.

When you’re not cooking, what are some of your favorite pastimes?  Reading about Southern culture, history and politics. 

What else would you like us to know about you/I could take you to some restaurants that would make you say: “I wish I had known about this place years ago.”