9 Lowcountry Foods South Carolinians Eat That Confuse Everyone Else

Order dinner in Charleston with an out-of-state guest, and watch their face when the menu arrives.

Soup made from crab eggs. A stew named after frogs that contains none. Peanuts served wet.

South Carolinians grew up on all of it and forget how strange it sounds everywhere else.

These are the Lowcountry foods South Carolinians eat that confuse everyone else.

1. Boiled Peanuts

Nothing sorts South Carolinians from everyone else faster than a styrofoam cup of hot, wet peanuts.

Outsiders expect a crunch.

They get something soft, salty, and closer to a bean, which makes sense because peanuts are a legume.

South Carolina made boiled peanuts its official state snack in 2006, and the law even defines them: Peanuts boiled in the shell for at least an hour.

Locals buy them from roadside stands and gas stations, steaming from a crock pot by the register.

Visitors buy them once, make a face, and hand the cup back.

More for the locals.

2. Frogmore Stew

The name alone stops outsiders cold, so South Carolinians usually lead with the disclaimer: No frogs.

Frogmore stew takes its name from the Frogmore community on St. Helena Island, near Beaufort.

The dish is shrimp, smoked sausage, corn, and potatoes, boiled in one seasoned pot and dumped across a newspaper-covered table.

Credit usually goes to a local shrimper who fed his National Guard unit from one giant pot in the 1960s.

The rest of the country calls it a Lowcountry boil.

Around Beaufort, the old name still holds, and saying “Lowcountry boil” instead gives you away as a visitor.

3. She-Crab Soup

Explaining she-crab soup to a visitor is a rite of passage for South Carolinians.

Yes, the crab’s sex matters.

The classic Charleston version gets its color and briny depth from the orange roe of female crabs, folded into a sherry-spiked cream soup.

The story goes that a Charleston butler named William Deas created it in the early 1900s, dressing up a pale crab soup for a fancy dinner, possibly one honoring President William Howard Taft.

Whatever the guest list was, Deas’ roe trick became the signature soup of the South Carolina coast.

Tourists order it expecting chowder.

They leave asking for the recipe.

4. Chicken Bog

Tell someone from Ohio you’re having bog for dinner, and the conversation stops there.

Chicken bog is South Carolina comfort at its plainest: Chicken, smoked sausage, and rice cooked down in one pot until everything sticks together.

Locals say the name describes the chicken bogging down in all that wet rice.

The dish rules the Pee Dee region and Horry County, and the town of Loris has thrown a Bog-Off cooking contest every fall since 1979.

It looks humble in the pot.

So does everything else worth driving for.

5. Benne Wafers

Charleston bakeries sell tins of paper-thin cookies that leave tourists asking the same question: What's a benne?

Benne means "sesame" in West African languages, including Wolof.

The seeds crossed the Atlantic on slave ships, and enslaved West Africans grew the plants in their own Lowcountry garden plots.

Tradition holds that benne brings good luck to anyone who eats it.

South Carolinians toast the seeds into crisp, caramel-edged wafers, and one tin never survives the ride home.

6. Charleston Red Rice

Outsiders look at Charleston red rice and see a side dish.

South Carolinians see three hundred years of history on a plate.

The dish descends from jollof rice, carried from West Africa's rice coast by the enslaved people whose skill built the Lowcountry's rice economy.

Rice simmers in crushed tomatoes with bacon or smoked sausage until every grain turns brick red.

The Gullah Geechee community kept the tradition alive.

Ask for red rice north of the state line, and you mostly get a blank look and Spanish rice.

7. Okra Soup

South Carolinians will defend okra soup to strangers who only know okra as the vegetable they refuse to try.

The pods came from West Africa, and Gullah cooks turned them into a tomato-based soup that has simmered on Lowcountry stoves for generations.

Okra thickens the pot naturally, no flour required.

Serve it over white rice with cornbread on the side.

The texture puts off newcomers. The flavor converts the brave ones.

8. Shrimp and Grits

The rest of America knows shrimp and grits as a white-tablecloth dinner entree, which amuses South Carolinians to no end.

In the Lowcountry, the dish started as breakfast.

Creek shrimp cooked fast in a pan, spooned over hominy, and eaten before the workday during shrimp season.

The first published recipe appeared in a Charleston cookbook in 1930 under the name "shrimps and hominy."

Gullah Geechee cooks made it long before any cookbook noticed.

Fancy restaurants added cheese, bacon, and a tripled price, but a South Carolinian at a stove needs fifteen minutes and a cast-iron pan.

9. Hoppin' John

Try explaining to a confused houseguest why South Carolinians eat peas and rice for luck every January 1.

Hoppin' John is field peas and rice cooked together in one pot, a dish with roots in the Gullah kitchens of the rice plantations and, before that, West Africa.

Purists reach for Sea Island red peas and Carolina Gold rice, the Lowcountry's heirloom crops.

The peas stand in for coins, and collard greens on the side represent folding money, so no sensible South Carolina household skips the meal.