Peasant foods are dishes specific to a particular culture, made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients, and usually prepared and spiced to make them more palatable. They often form a significant part of the diets of people who live in poverty, or have a lower income compared to the average for their society or country.
Peasant foods have been described 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, and they themselves tend to contain offal and grains.
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.
Meat-and-grain sausages or mushes
Ground meat or meat scraps mixed with grain in approximately equal proportions, then often formed into a loaf, sliced, and fried.
Balkenbrij
Goetta, a pork or pork-and-beef and pinhead oats sausage
Groaty pudding
Haggis
Livermush
Lorne sausage
Scrapple, pig scraps, cornmeal and other flours and spices fried together in a mush
Slatur
Ground meat or meat scraps extended with crackers or bread and vegetables, then formed into balls, patties, or loaves and baked.
Kofta
Meatloaf
Salisbury steak
Swiss steak
Testaroli
Agliata – a garlic sauce in Italian cuisine that has been a peasant food, and also used by upper-class people
Soups and stews
Acquacotta, an Italian soup that dates to ancient history. Primary ingredients are water, stale bread, onion, tomato and olive oil, along with various vegetables and leftover foods that may have been available.
Cholent, a traditional Jewish Sabbath stew
Chupe, refers to a variety of stews from South America generally made with chicken, red meat, lamb or beef tripe and other offal
Feijoada, a Brazilian dish originally made by slaves from leftover ingredients from their master's house
Gazpacho, typically a tomato-based vegetable soup, traditionally served cold, originating in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia.
Minestrone, the meal in one pot of ancient Italy that is still a basic part of Italian cuisine
Mulligan stew, a stew often made by itinerant workers
Mujaddara, an Arabian dish of lentils, rice, grains, and onions
Pea soup or "pease pudding", a common thick soup, from when dried peas were a very common food in Europe, still widely eaten
Pot-au-feu, the French stew of oxtail, marrow, and vegetables, sometimes sausage
Pottage, a staple stew made from boiling vegetables, grains and whatever was available, since Neolithic times in the British isles
Ratatouille, the stewed vegetable dish
Baked beans, the simple stewed bean dish
Barbacoa, a form of slow cooking, often of an animal head, a predecessor to barbecue
Bulgur wheat, with vegetables or meat
Broken rice, which is often cheaper than whole grains and cooks more quickly
Greens, such as dandelion and okra
Head cheese, made from boiling down the cleaned out head of an animal to make broth, still made
Hominy, a form of corn specially prepared to be more nutritious
Horsebread, a low cost European bread, that was a recourse of the poor
Lampredotto, Florentine dish or sandwich made from a cow's fourth stomach
Polenta, a porridge made with the corn left to Italian farmers so that land holders could sell all the wheat crops, still a popular food
Pumpernickel, a traditional dark rye bread of Germany, made with a long, slow (16–24 hours) steam baking process, and a sour culture
Ratatouille, the stewed vegetable dish
Red beans and rice, the Louisiana Creole dish made with red beans, vegetables, spices, and leftover pork bones slowly cooked together, and served over rice, common on Mondays when working women were hand washing clothes
Salami, a long lasting sausage, used to supplement a meat-deficient diet
Soul food, some aspects come from foods that could be taken on a transatlantic passage
Succotash, a blend of corn and beans
Taco, foods placed on native tortilla in the Americas
