National Buttermilk Biscuit Day is a holiday that comes around every May 14th and celebrates a bread product that’s popular all across the United States, but is especially popular in the South. It’s a food that can be eaten with a little bit of butter, made into breakfast sandwiches with the addition of meat such as ham or sausage, or topped with jam.

It’s also the bedrock ingredient in the popular Southern dish biscuits and gravy. For people who might not be familiar with this traditional breakfast dish, it’s typically made with buttery, fluffy biscuits that are served with a milk-based gravy full of sausage chunks.

It’s a dish that’s popular in U.S. states such as Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee, but it can certainly be found in locations all around the world — with local variations, of course. So, how do we celebrate this day as a day dedicated to Southern foods?

First and foremost, we can go over some of the foods that we feel are the best representatives of the food heritage. Below are some of the best Southern foods that we’ve enjoyed over the years and believe will serve as the perfect complement to National Biscuit Day. Let’s enjoy the following foods with a nice tall glass of Southern iced tea and have a little bit of fun.

Biscuits & Gravy

We can’t talk about Southern foods and this particular holiday dedicated to biscuits without talking about Biscuits and Gravy. This is a food that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and is probably one of the best Southern comfort foods ever created.

It was originally designed to fill up field laborers before they put in a back-breaking day of hard work, so it’s supposed to be a high-calorie food. Of course, since most people aren’t probably working in the fields all day, they might want to keep the portion of this food pretty small.

Smothered Pork Chops

There’s a reason why smothered pork chops are a Southern cuisine classic. They’re delicious and super easy to make. Perfectly cooked bone-in pork chops with mushroom gravy are absolutely heavenly, especially when you pair them with a couple of buttermilk biscuits, some collard greens, and some mashed potatoes. Doesn’t that just sound delicious?

Crispy Fried Chicken

Another classic Southern dish that pairs well with biscuits is crispy fried chicken. Take some chicken pieces, soak them in buttermilk, coat them in seasoning and batter, and fry them in vegetable oil or shortening. A quick look on the Internet should give you all the Southern fried chicken recipes you could ever want, from classic golden fried chicken to spicy Cajun fried chicken. The hardest part is finding the one that you like the best.

Country Ham

Although hams are enjoyed all over the world, we feel that country ham is a unique dish that’s enjoyed by Southerners. This heavily salted ham is smoked using red oak or hickory and is enjoyed all across the South. In North Carolina, they’re not smoked and are known as salt & pepper hams.

In Missouri, country hams are usually made with brown sugar and tend to be less salty and milder than hams produced in Kentucky and Virginia. No matter what type of ham a person enjoys, there’s nothing like a few buttermilk biscuits to complement them, especially when you use the ham to make ham and biscuit sandwiches!

Southern-Style Breakfast

You don’t have to have biscuits and gravy to have a Southern-style breakfast. People can also enjoy biscuits without gravy, although we have to be honest, gravy does make everything better. A Southern-style breakfast generally includes eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, and hash browns or fried potatoes. Yes, this breakfast can be quite heavy, but it’s a great way to start your day.

Red-Eye Gravy With Ham

Okay, technically we’re still talking about breakfast, but we decided to go ahead and include this dish because it’s so iconic. Red-eye gravy is a thin gravy that often goes by a variety of different names. It’s called poor man’s gravy, bird-eye gravy, cedar gravy, bottom sop, pan gravy, coffee gravy, and red ham gravy.

It’s made with the drippings from a country ham that’s mixed with black coffee and often served over ham, biscuits, and grits. Delicious!

Chicken Fried Steak

Chicken fried steak is another Southern dish that pairs well with buttermilk biscuits. It’s basically a piece of beef that’s been pounded flat, coated with seasoned flour, and then pan-fried or deep-fried. It’s then usually covered in a milk-based gravy. This dish was brought to the Southern U.S. by German immigrants settling in the region.

It’s basically just the Americanized version of Wiener Schnitzel — a breaded veal cutlet that was often served with a creamy sauce called Rahmsauce.

That concludes our article on the best down-home Southern foods to complement National Buttermilk Biscuit Day. We hope we gave you some fresh ideas for the next time you’re craving a good Southern meal, or just want an excuse to whip up some fluffy buttermilk biscuits of your own.