grab, grabble, gravel verb
To dig up with the hands, esp a potato early in the season, and smooth back the dirt around the plant to leave it intact.
1913 Kephart Our Sthn High 293-94 To “grabble ‘taters” is to pick from a hill of new potatoes a few of the best, then smooth back the soil without disturbing the immature ones. 1969 GSMNP-38:106 They’d plant a few rows of early potatoes to grabble out. 1977 Hamilton Mountain Memories 33 Papa’s big potato patch was outside the garden and we were not to “grabble” there, for he said it kept the plants from producing big potatoes. 1980 Brewer Hit’s Gettin’ In east Tennessee, a few people still “grabble” for new potatoes. A few others “grabble” for fish under rocks and stream banks. 1981 Brewer Wonderment 92 What Lucinda calls “grannying” is called “grabbling” in some quarters. 1990 Oliver Cooking Hazel Creek 13 Everyone looked forward to new potatoes which, as soon as they had matured sufficiently were “grabbled” out of the ground and then boiled in their jackets until tender; a gravy of flour & milk was then made in the water & the potatoes cooked & served in this. 1995 Montgomery Coll. Grab, Grabble = to grab a few potatoes without disturbing the plant (Cardwell).
~Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English
We haven’t harvested all the taters we grew this year yet, but we have been grabbling them out to eat fresh.
I love taters anytime of the year but oh my goodness they are so good when they are newly grown.
There are so many ways of cooking potatoes and I think we love them all. One of my favorite quick ways to cook them is to chop and roast in the oven. So quick, easy, and tasty!
Mashed taters are good as are baked ones. My niece April brought a dish called ranch potatoes to our recent get together and they were really good. Cheese potatoes are mighty good too.
And oh my I love new potatoes cooked in green beans or cooked in the oven until their skin gets all crispy.
Pap made the best pan of fried taters you’ve ever eat. He’d often tell the story of one of his friends Bergan Moore. Bergan always fried the taters on the men’s church camping trip. Pap said he only turned them once but somehow managed to get them done all the way through with just the perfect crispness.
The Deer Hunter makes a pretty good pan of fried taters too. He’s had a lot of practice since I always ask him to fry them if that’s what we want to have with a meal. His are especially good when he adds in some ramps.
There’s more than a few potato recipes in mine and Jim’s cookbook Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food. Streaked Meat Dutch Oven Potatoes comes to mind—mighty fine eating for sure.
You can find out more about the cookbook here.
Last night’s video: Harvesting Cabbage and Grapes & Treasure in Granny’s Wall.
Tipper
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I’ve peeled and fried potatoes since I was 9 yrs old. My how times have changed in the 50 yrs since I was a 9 yr old, I doubt many 9 yr olds are using kitchen knives and hot grease these days. PS….I canned 18 half pints of blackberry jelly today using the recipe in your cookbook!!!
My husband loves potatoes and they are often in our meals in some capacity!
There are so many great recipes in your cookbook, Tipper! We made one recently called “Cheeseburger Pie” (Jim’s recipe). It was delicious! Might be one you’d like to try if you haven’t already.
I wonder if your niece April made a recipe like this one, https://smittenkitchen.com/2024/03/turkey-meatloaf-for-skeptics/ (The Crushed Ranch-y Potatoes recipe is at the bottom of this recipe). They are sooooo good! Well worth trying. 🙂 I really recommend them.
Allie-thank you! That might have been the recipe 🙂
I’ve only tried growing potatoes twice and they never produced so I just stopped planting them in my garden. Glad y’all have had good crops of potatoes, even if it’s just enough to eat fresh when you harvest them. Hopefully they will continue to grow big yields now since y’all got some good rain lately.
We called it grabbling for new potatoes, but noodling for fish. .
I grew up eating potatoes with every evening meal because that’s what my father wanted and because he grew up in extreme poverty and survived on mostly potato meals. Though I like them cooked any old way, my favorite might be chunks of ham, green beans, onions, and potatoes, a one pot meal, and with butter and milk added to the pot before serving. My 84-year-old sister and I still make this beautiful meal.
we got to hand gravel a mess of potatoes. I cook them whole and with green beans. They were so good. Of course with a hot pan of Cornbread.
We all love taters cooked any way. I think my favorite may be stewed potatoes cooked down low. Mama always wanted me to make her some fried taters so I guess I make pretty good ones. We have not grown any in many years because we could not control the bugs. This year I got one of the grow bags and did everything I knew to care for the taters I planted in it. It was exciting to see the plants grow–they were so green and beautiful. When the plants died we dumped the bag out and searched. We found two teeny tiny taters–I was so disappointed!
Here I thought I was the only one who could recall the delicacy which is new potatoes in what Duane Oliver now calls a milk and flour gravy. No, it’s not a “cream gravy” or a rouix, which have a fat base. In fact the dish has no fat at all. It’s “new” potatoes, water, a little milk, a little flour, salt to taste and lots and lots of black pepper. Before anyone says “well milk has fat”, skim milk works just fine. The milk only serves to keep the flour from clumping anyhow.
The trick is the potatoes have to be straight from the garden. Not dug yesterday, not just this morning but right out of the ground, run under the water spout and into a pot of boiling salted water. Once potatoes see daylight they start growing a skin that protects them until they can grow again. If you wait until that process begins it’s too late. The taste changes drastically. I’m not saying that ordinary potatoes aren’t delicious, they are! But “new potatoes” are a whole nother category altogether!
I wish someone somewhere would try this recipe. Duane Oliver has passed away now so I would like at least one compatriot in life’s pathway.
My taters didn’t do well this year. I had some plants 2 foot tall without a single tater on them, hadn’t figured this out yet. Taters are a staple in our diet and I love em anyway they’re fixed.
Mom always graveled taters to eat with the first mess of green beans we picked in early July. Sometimes she felt bad for serving small taters that had only been in the ground since Good Friday. I wish she could see the price the grocery stores charge for a bag of ‘gourmet’ taters now. The smaller they are, the more they cost.
I’ve never really had fresh potatoes right from the ground. My farmers market get much produce from rural mountain areas. I’m going to imagine their smaller new potatoes, both red and yellow, are probably fresh. Not a blemish on them. I just boil until tender than load up with some good salt butter and fresh cut-up parsley. Scalloped potatoes are one of myfavorite, especially in the winter. They have a long cook time and scent the house good. But our family are “latkes” or fried potato pancakes. I could eat a ton everyday and be happy. I’ve read where a person can live on nothing but potatoes and milk. I’m sure many had to do just that. Glad I didn’t have to. https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/2414428380911303587?q=latkes
New potatos are awesome when first dug up, just like you said! We like them mashed with a meal and they are really good cut up for French fries! We do this every year first thing and the rest of the potatoes will go in storage for now! I always dig mine up by hand!
New potatoes cooked with rattlesnake or peanut beans are my favorite. Good eating!
Tipper, did you sell a cookbook before Celebrating Southern Appalachia Food?
I made your blackberry cobbler, for my thrifting friend who’s in rehab, and it’s a winner!
Brenda-only a little eCookbook 🙂 You can see it here: https://blindpigandtheacorn.etsy.com/listing/1064871916/favorite-recipes-from-appalachia
My Ky daddy planted a very large garden every year with potatoes being one of his largest crops. We grabbled out some of the potatoes when they were ready, and Mom cooked them, usually in a big pot of green beans. Oh, were they good. She also would cook them and put them with roasts, etc. When the potatoes were ready to be harvested, we would dig them up and daddy would put them in a cold storage room that was off the utility room. In the winter he placed an old blanket or something to protect them from the cold, and it did get cold in northeastern Ohio. We ate these potatoes all winter and usually up until around April. My mother canned or froze the garden vegetables, and we rarely bought any vegetables from the store. We had fried taters a lot along with cornbread, green beans, slaw, onions, and other foods. So good. I still make these and other foods I see you cook Tipper. I may have been raised up north, but I cook like my Appalachian mother. My mother will be ninety-five August 10 and still cooks. She lives with one of my three bachelor brothers in Ohio. Here in southern Virginia most people cook like you and me Tipper. I enjoyed your video last evening entitled: “Harvesting Cabbage and Grapes & Treasure in Granny’s Wall.” We lost our garden to deer this year, but we will have a large number of grapes to gather. I put paper bags on some of the grapes in April and this has kept the birds, deer and other varmints away.
I do love potatoes. I’ve never had much success growing them yet but it’s still exciting to get the tiny ones out of the soil. I made your blackberry pie recipe for our church picnic yesterday and there wasn’t a crumb left of it!
Yep, we always did that when I was growing up. Here though, about the time there are potatoes at all the tops are dying or dead. So leaving some to grow doesn’t work well. Fact is, weather is just plain marginal for growing potatoes. I plant as soon as possible but the ground is cold enough they are slow to emerge. Then just about 90 days later they are dying. Just one more indicator I live in the wrong place. In my mind, I am not in Appalachia but I can see the edge of it from here – barely. I’m not really Piedmont either. I am In-Between.
Foothills?
Yes, sir – sorta – but more like a rolling upland. I’m at about 1400 feet elevation here, along the northern edge of the Brevard Fault. To me the real Upper Piedmont starts over on the south side of it some miles away. And there occurs a band of jumbled hills.
Potatoes are one of my favorite side dishes too. I loved it when my mom would cook potatoes in the green beans. So good! So happy to see your rain has returned.
My parents always graveled out a few potatoes because my mama loves creamed ones. I love potatoes any way you make them except creamed potatoes. I have never developed a taste for those. My mama makes the best mashed potatoes and potato salad ever. My sisters and I always make them just like her, and all of our hubbys especially like the potato salad. My dad always has made the best fried potatoes I have ever eaten. He always added a pinch of sugar—and he also only turned them once and they were just delicious.
I like fried potatoes, in green beans cooked with a chunk of country ham and just about any other way they are cooked. I remember when as a kid we would have several long rows of potatoes and would plow them up by hooking a 2 horse middle buster with a short length of chain behind our tractor. I would drive the tractor and Daddy would guide the plow. This would plow deep and turn the potatoes out on each side of the row. We were always anxious to see how well our potatoes had done for the year.
God bless Tipper Pressley and her family