7 North Carolina Foods That Only Show Up at a Church Homecoming

Church homecoming is about the preaching.

But a lot of people remember the food just as well.

North Carolinians who grew up around those long tables often still have a dish they look for first.

Here are the foods that make a homecoming spread feel complete.

1. Chicken and Pastry

Chicken and pastry was the dish of the night when two Wilmington churches held a potluck, Our State reported in 2018.

Members of Winter Park Baptist Church and Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church shared a table, with recipes from a cookbook the two congregations made together.

Chicken and pastry is eastern North Carolina’s version of chicken and dumplings, so the dish may sound familiar to you.

2. Banana Pudding

If you’re headed to a church supper in eastern North Carolina, Coastal Review reported in 2015, expect to see a big pan of banana pudding.

Family reunions, holiday gatherings and funeral wakes are other places the dish turns up.

Our State made a similar point in a 2012 ode to banana pudding, which says it gets made for church socials and tailgates, among other occasions.

The recipe boils down to three steps.

You slice bananas, mix vanilla pudding and pick up a box of vanilla wafers.

Some cooks top the dish with whipped cream and others make a meringue.

A pastor’s 2025 essay in Salvation South describes warm banana pudding with meringue on top at a rural church homecoming.

3. Moravian Chicken Pie

Moravian chicken pie turns up at church suppers in Winston-Salem.

Debbie Moose’s 2016 story in Gravy, the Southern Foodways Alliance’s journal, is titled “Don’t Call It a Pot Pie.”

She cites records at the Moravian Archives in Winston-Salem showing church chicken pie suppers as fundraisers by at least 1920.

In Winston-Salem, you can find a chicken pie sale at nearly every Moravian church sometime during the year.

Kingswood United Methodist Church in Rural Hall sold about 600 pies in a year, Our State reported in 2014.

The filling is cooked chicken in broth or gravy between two crusts, with no peas, carrots, onions or other vegetables inside.

Hold the peas.

4. Deviled Eggs

Deviled eggs went to church with a grandmother outside Whiteville, according to a 2023 Our State story about her grandson’s Mebane brewery.

On special occasions like Easter, she carried them up the street to her church, where you’d find them on a folding table beside other women’s egg plates.

Nothing on the table was labeled, but the cooks always knew whose tray emptied first.

Writer T. Edward Nickens recalled the covered-dish suppers at his childhood church, Lexington Avenue Baptist in High Point, around 1971, in a 2016 column.

The tables ran end to end, and you could nudge the closest one and set the deviled eggs jiggling 40 feet away.

5. Sweet Potato Casserole

At that Wilmington church potluck in 2018, you'd have found sweet potato casserole alongside potato salad and lots of sweets.

Nickens remembered the same dish from Lexington Avenue Baptist.

He stood only four feet tall then and could barely see over the sweet potato casserole.

The meal was a covered dish supper, served midday or evening.

6. Brunswick Stew

In 2013, Brunswick stew took two days at Poplar Tent Presbyterian Church in Concord.

Our State reported that the crew started cooking on the Wednesday before the annual barbecue and kept cooking on Thursday to keep the stew warm.

The church cooked about 70 large pots for a barbecue held the first Thursday in November.

For as long as people there could remember, the church had added one unusual ingredient to its stew, and that ingredient was rice.

You definitely won't find potatoes at that barbecue.

7. Fish Stew

In 2017, Our State described fish stew as a tradition at Pleasant Hill Christian Church in Jones County.

The feeding began at the church shortly after one cook's great-grandfather helped found it in 1835.

Two cousins stood at their posts in the church parking lot on the fourth Saturday in October.

They had done it for at least a quarter of a century.

Fish stew events help congregations in Jones County raise money for community projects.

The nine ingredients are bacon, onions, potatoes, whitefish, water, salt and pepper, tomato paste or sauce, and eggs.

Unlike Poplar Tent's stew, this one has potatoes.

The cousins cracked fresh eggs onto the hot surface of the stew, where the whites formed little islands.

Your bowl came with crackers and slices of bread for sopping.

The stew traces back to the Neuse River basin, where cooks used what the day's nets caught.

More Than a Meal

A church homecoming almost always has two parts, preaching and a communal meal, according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.

Churches in the state have held homecomings since colonial times.

You can find one as early as June or as late as November, though most fall in late August and early September.

In a 2006 description, First Baptist Church of Greensboro holds intermittent homecomings to remember prominent church leaders of the past, and its service ends with dinner on the grounds.

Mount Pelier Presbyterian Church in Rowland pairs its annual daylong homecoming with a call for contributions to a special offering for cemetery upkeep.

At some homecomings, you'll see a groundbreaking or the dedication of a new building.

A number of churches hold a memorial service for members who died in the past year.

It's a common practice to have a former pastor or a special guest minister deliver the sermon.

Westover United Methodist Church in Raleigh keeps the time after dinner relaxed, with music and memories.

The Cookbook Behind the Potluck

The Wilmington church potluck celebrated the debut of a cookbook, Our State reported in 2018.

The book, Memories, Molasses & More, is a 108-page paperback published with help from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.