The cost of eating out continues to increase as restaurant owners pass higher food cost and overhead on to cash strapped customers. With the economic outlook growing more risky by the minute, more people with a craving for southern food are turning to the many free soul food recipes available online.



Soul food, considered one of the original American foods, dates back to the time of slavery when slave owners gave the food they couldn't or wouldn't eat to the slaves. This food ironically turned out to be some of the healthiest foods, judged by today's standards.

Most of the food consisted of green vegetables (known as greens), turnips, sweet potatoes, chickpeas, corn pone, and more. To survive the long and often hot work days in the sizzling sun, the black worker required food that was not only cheap in cost but filling and nutritious. Soul food provided the needed energy slaves needed to work the long hours.

Today soul food is a multi-million dollar food industry and growing. Now online sites offering free soul food recipes continue to rise. This is evidence of the growing popularity and demand for ways to cook soul food by a demanding market. Some of the more popular soul food dishes such as collard greens, black eye peas and gumbo have had a resurgence in popularity by young people, a group that had overlooked soul food for hamburgers, pizza and other fast foods.

Popular southern recipe desserts such as sweet potato pie, peach cobbler and sock-it-to-me cake have also grown in popularity by at-home cooks. Not only are soul food recipes growing in demand by new-school cooks, but also preparation techniques, shortcuts and time-saving kitchen tools experienced serious growth in the past six months.

Not only has the bad economy influenced more people to eat more meals at home, but the need people have for home cooked meals that are healthy and nutritious have increased. With the growing problem of obesity facing more people, along with diabetes and high blood pressure, more people are taking their health and diets into their own hands by preparing more meals at home.

More soul food lovers are taking to preparing their meals and taking them to work instead of going to a restaurant. This has been estimated to save many people hundreds of dollars a month. In addition, it's more notorious as well.

With the popularity of video, more free soul food recipe sites are offering video demonstrations to site visitors. This adds more clarity to preparing the recipes, offering a show-and- tell element for cooks to enjoy. Indeed these soul food sites are not your grandmothers recipe sites.

Yes, with the popularity of home cooking and soul food combined, the demand for free soul food recipes will continue to grow as the economy worsens. People are constantly looking for more ways to cut their food cost. More families are finding the best way slash their food cost is to prepare more meals at home instead of paying others to prepare it at restaurants.