Peasant foods (or poor people's food) are those dishes specific to a particular culture made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients and usually prepared and spiced to make them more palatable. They have often formed a significant part of the diets of poor people.

Peasant foods are so called as being the diet of peasants, that is, tenant or poorer farmers and their farm workers, and by extension, of other cash-poor people. They may use ingredients, such as offal and less-tender cuts of meat, which are not as marketable as a cash crop. Characteristic recipes often consist of hearty one-dish meals, in which chunks of meat and various vegetables are eaten in a savory broth, with bread or other staple food. Sausages are also amenable to varied readily-available ingredients.

Peasant foods often involve skilled preparation by knowledgeable cooks using inventiveness and skills passed down from earlier generations. Such dishes are often prized as ethnic foods by other cultures and by descendants of the native culture who still desire these traditional dishes even when their incomes rise to the point where they can purchase any food they like.

[edit] See also

• Barbacoa
• Cuisine
• Peasant
• Soul food
• Traditional knowledge
• Po' boy

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