Soul food  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Soul food is an American cuisine, a selection of foods, and is the traditional cuisine of African-Americans of the Southern United States and of black communities beyond. In the mid-1960s, "soul" was a common adjective used to describe black culture (for example, soul music), and thus the name "soul food" was derived.

Origins

The term soul food became popular in the 1960s, when the word soul became used in connection with African American culture. The origins of soul food, however, are much older and can be traced back to Africa. Rice; sorghum, known by Europeans as "guinea corn"; okra; and peanuts -- all common elements in West African cuisine -- were introduced to the Americas as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and became dietary staples among enslaved Africans. They also comprise an important part of American southern cooking. Many culinary historians believe that in the beginning of the 14th century, around the time of early African exploration, European explorers brought their own food supplies and introduced them into the African diet.Template:Fact Foods such as turnips from Morocco and cabbage from Spain would play an important part in the history of African American cuisineTemplate:Fact.

When the European slave trade began in the early 1400s, the diet of newly enslaved Africans changed on the long journeys from their homeland. It was during this time that some of the indigenous crops of Africa began showing up in the Americas.

Slave owners fed their chattel as cheaply as possible, often with throwaway foods from the plantation, forcing slaves to make do with the ingredients at hand. In slave households, vegetables were the tops of turnips and beets and dandelions. Soon, slaves were cooking with new types of greens: collards, kale, cress, mustard, and pokeweed. They also developed recipes which used lard; cornmeal; and offal, discarded cuts of meat such as pigs' feet, oxtail, ham hocks, chitterlings (pig small intestines), pig ears, hog jowls, tripe and skin. Cooks added onions, garlic, thyme, and bay leaf to enhance the flavors. Some slaves supplemented their meager diets by maintaining small plots made available to them to grow their own vegetables, and many engaged in subsistance fishing and hunting, which yielded wild game for the table. Foods such as such as raccoon, squirrel, opossum, turtle, and rabbit were, until the 1950s, very common fare among the still predominantly rural and southern African American population.

There was little waste in the traditional African American kitchen. Leftover fish became croquettes (by adding an egg, cornmeal or flour, seasonings which were breaded and deep-fried). Stale bread became bread pudding, and each part of the pig had its own special dish. Even the liquid from cooked greens, called potlikker, was consumed as a type of gravy, or drink.

After long hours of labor, the evening meal was a time for families to get together, and the tradition of communal meals was the perfect environment for conversation and the reciting of oral history and storytelling. Another tradition was the potluck dinner, with each family member bringing a different dish to the dinner. When it was their families' turn for a visit by the preacher, it was also common practice for African-American women to hold up Sunday lunches or dinners until he arrived. If the minister frequently graced one's family table, then that conferred upon the family a degree of prestige in the eyes of the congregation. The tradition of extended family, friends and neighbors gathering at one woman's household at Christmas and Thanksgiving because of her status as a cook also began with the preacher's approval.

After slavery in the United States came to an end, many poor African Americans could afford only the least expensive cuts of meat and offal. Subsistence farming yielded fresh vegetables, and fishing and hunting provided fish and wild game, such as opossum, rabbit, squirrel, and sometimes waterfowl.

While soul food originated in the South, soul food restaurants have appeared all around the United States—from fried chicken and fish "shacks" to upscale dining establishments, especially in cities with large African American populations, such as Charleston, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Florida, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, New York, Baltimore, San Antonio (due to the large military population), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland, New Orleans, Memphis, Los Angeles, Oakland, Miami, Birmingham, Sacramento, St. Louis, Washington, D.C, and Atlantic City.

The mother of Southern cooking

Impoverished whites and blacks in the South prepared many of the same dishes stemming from the soul tradition, but styles of preparation sometimes varied. Certain techniques popular in soul and southern cuisine like frying meat and using all parts of the animal for consumption, have a long history of which evidence occurs in ancient cultures all over the world, including Rome, Egypt and China. Whichever way it was introduced to the American South, fried meat became a common staple. To this day it is popular among Southern Euro and African-Americans.

Many people in the south debate over what the difference is between soul food and Southern cooking. Before the 1870s, the south was made up of a predominately Anglo and black population. During the 1870s, Irish, German and Czech immigrants started to come into the south bringing their own traditions coupled with soul food. Such as the creation of southern fried chicken, which is of Scottish origin from Scots-Irish immigrants to the south. The African-americans contributed some of the spices and this became a southern fusion dish. Many dishes were made by both Blacks and Whites of the south. Many Whites grew eating many of the items that are classified as Soul food, because many of the dishes in Soul food are part of White southern food as well.

It is also important to note the Native American influence on soul cooking at a time when Black Indians was relatively common. Indigenous peoples had been cultivating beans, strawberries, maize, and chili peppers; and for years, they prepared hominy (also the source of hominy grits), hotwater cornbread and strawberry bread, which Europeans appropriated as strawberry shortcakeTemplate:Fact.

Cookbooks

Since it was illegal in many states for enslaved Africans to learn to read or write, soul food recipes and cooking techniques tended to be passed along orally, until after slavery. The first soul food cookbook is attributed to Abby Fisher, entitled What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking and published in 1881. Good Things to Eat was published in 1911; the author, Rufus Estes, was a former slave who worked for the Pullman railway car service. Many other cookbooks were written by African Americans during that time, but as they were not widely distributed; most are now lost.

Since the mid-20th century, many cookbooks highlighting soul food and African American foodways compiled by African Americans have been published and well received. Vertamae Grosvenor's Vibration Cooking, or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, originally published in 1970, focused on South Carolina "Lowcountry", Geechee, or Gullah, cooking. Its focus on spontaneity in the kitchen—cooking by "vibration" rather than precisely measuring ingredients, as well as "making do" with ingredients on hand—captured the essence of traditional African American cooking techniques. The simple, healthful, basic ingredients of lowcountry cuisine, like shrimp, oysters, crab, fresh produce, rice and sweet potatoes, made it a bestseller.

At the center of African American food celebrations is the value of sharing. Likewise, African American cookbooks often have a common theme of family and family gatherings. Usher boards and Women's Day committees of various religious congregations large and small, and even public service and social welfare organizations such as the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) have produced cookbooks to fund their operations and for charitable enterprises. The NCNW produced its first cookbook, The Historical Cookbook of the American Negro, in 1958, and revived the practice in 1993, producing a popular series of cookbooks featuring recipes by well-known and celebrity African Americans, among them: The Black Family Reunion Cookbook (1993), Celebrating Our Mothers' Kitchens: Treasured Memories and Tested Recipes (1994), and Mother Africa's Table: A Chronicle of Celebration (1998). The NCNW also recently reissued The Historical Cookbook.

Celebrated traditional Southern chef and author Edna Lewis wrote a series of books between 1972 and 2003, including A Taste of Country Cooking (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976) where she weaves stories of her childhood in Freetown, Virginia into her recipes for "real Southern food".

Another organization, the Chicago-based Real Men Charities, in existence since the 1980s, sponsors food-based charitable and educational programs and activities around the nation. As its primary annual, celebrity-studded fundraiser, Real Men Charities sponsors "Real Men Cook" events and programs in fifteen cities nationwide, where African American men gather to present their best recipes—some original, others handed down for generations—for charity. The event is timed to coincide roughly with Juneteenth and Father's Day and is promoted with the slogan "Every day is Family Day When Real Men Cook." In 2004, Real Men rolled out its Sweet Potato Pound Cake Mix in select food retail establishments in several cities, and published a cookbook in 2005 titled Real Men Cook: Rites, Rituals and Recipes for Living. Proceeds from these events and from the cookbook help fund the organization's varied operations and activities.

Soul food and health

Soul food was developed by enslaved African-Americans who lived under the difficult and impoverished conditions of grinding physical labor. It is humble, hearty fare, traditionally cooked and seasoned with pork products and often fried in lard.

Formerly, an important aspect of the preparation of soul food was the reuse of cooking lard. Because many cooks were too poor to throw out shortening that had already been used, they would pour the cooled liquid grease into a container. After cooling completely, the grease resolidified and could be used again the next time the cook required lard. Used cooking lard was simply a way to reuse an ingredient. Many poor Whites do this as well.

Frequent consumption of these ingredients without significant exercise or activity can contribute to disproportionately high occurrences of obesity, hypertension, cardiac/circulatory problems, and/or type 2 diabetes, conditions which often result in shortened lifespan. Additionally, trans fat, which is used not only in soul food, but in many baked goods, is a known contributor to cardiovascular disease.

As a result, some African-Americans may use methods of cooking soul food different from those employed by their grandparents, including using more healthful alternatives for frying (liquid vegetable oil or canola oil) and cooking and stewing using smoked turkey instead of pork. Changes in hog farming techniques have also resulted in drastically leaner pork. Some cooks have even adapted recipes to include healthier alternatives to traditional ingredients including tofu and soy-based analogues. Critics have argued that the attempt to make soul food healthier has the undesirable effect of not being as flavorful as the traditional recipes.

Certain staples of a soul food diet have pronounced health benefits. Collard greens are an excellent source of vitamins and minerals, including vitamin A, B₆, and C, manganese, iron, calcium, folic acid, fiber and small amounts of omega 3 fatty acids. They also contain a number of phytonutrients which are thought to play a role in the prevention of ovarian and breast cancer. Peas, rice, and legumes are excellent, inexpensive sources of protein which also contain important vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Sweet potatoes are an excellent source of beta carotene and trace minerals as well, and have come to be classified as an "anti-diabetic" food. Recent animal studies have shown that sweet potatoes can stabilize blood sugar levels and lower insulin resistance.

The importance of frying as a cooking technique is in large part responsible for soul food's reputation as greasy and unhealthy. However, when done correctly, deep fat frying at high temperatures can allow less oil into the food than pan frying with small amounts of oil. When foods are deep fried, the water in the food boils out. This outward force of steam is greater than the inward force of the oil, so very little oil ends up in the food. However, heavy breading, insufficient oil, or too low a temperature can result in oily, generally unhealthy food.

Dishes and ingredients

Soul food uses a great variety of dishes and ingredients, some unique and some shared with other cuisines.

Meats

• BBQ (a type of meat barbecued, traditional in African American Culture, but also eaten by Whites as well)
• Chicken gizzards, batter-fried
• Chicken livers, batter-fried
• Chitterlings ("chitlins") (the cleaned and prepared intestines of pigs, slow cooked and often eaten with vinegar and hot sauce; sometimes parboiled, then battered and fried)
• Country fried steak, also known as "chicken fried steak" (beef deep-fried with a crisp flour or batter coating, usually served with white gravy)
• Cracklins (commonly known as pork rinds and sometimes added to cornbread batter, also eaten by other cultures)
• Fatback (fatty, cured, salted pork; used to season meats and vegetables)
• Fried chicken (fried in grease with seasoned flour, eaten by southern Whites as well)
• Fried fish (any of several varieties of fish—especially catfish, but also whiting, porgies, bluegills—dredged in seasoned cornmeal and deep fried, eaten by southern Whites as well
• Ham hocks (smoked, used to flavor vegetables and legumes)
• Hoghead cheese (made primarily from pig snouts, lips, and ears, and frequently referred to as "souse meat" or simply "souse", derived from European cooking techniques)
• Hog maws (the muscular lining of the stomach of a pig - sliced and often cooked with chitterlings)
• Hog jowls, (the cheek of a hog, which is usually cut into squares before being cured and smoked)
• Neckbones (pork neck bones seasoned and slow cooked)
• Oxtail soup (a soup or stew made from beef tails)
• Pigs feet (slow cooked like chitterlings, sometimes pickled and, like chitterlings, often eaten with vinegar and hot sauce)
• Ribs (usually pork, but can also be beef ribs) See BBQ

Vegetables

• Black-eyed peas (cooked separately, or with rice as Hoppin' John)
• Cabbage, usually boiled and seasoned with vinegar, salt and ham hocks or fatback. More recently, smoked poultry (turkey or chicken) is also used as a seasoning.
• Greens (usually cooked with ham hocks; especially collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, or a combination thereof. A wild green known as poke salad, which requires special preparation due to its toxicity when raw.)
• Lima beans (see also butter beans)
• Butter beans (immature lima beans, usually cooked in butter or combined with multiple regional sausages)
• Field peas (seasoned with pork)
• Okra (vegetable eaten fried in cornmeal and flour or stewed, often with tomatoes, corn, onions and hot peppers)
• Succotash (originally a Native American dish of yellow corn, tomatoes, and butter beans, usually cooked in butter) Eaten by most Americans in the south
• Sweet potatoes (often parboiled, sliced and then baked, using sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter, commonly called "candied yams"; also boiled, then pureed, seasoned and baked into pies—similar in taste and texture to pumpkin pie) Eaten by most Americans in the south
• Fried Corn, sweet yellow corn, off the cob, sauteed in bacon fat, with other flavorings, similar to Maque choux. Likely to derive from the Cajun people of Louisiana.

Breads

• Biscuits (a shortbread similar to scones, commonly served with butter, jam, jelly, sorghum or cane syrup, or gravy; used to wipe up, or "sop," liquids from a dish) Eaten by most Americans in the south
• Cornbread (a shortbread often baked in a skillet, commonly seasoned with bacon fat); a Native American contribution.
• Hoecakes (a type of cornbread made of cornmeal, salt and water, which is very thin in texture, and fried in cooking oil in a skillet. It became known as "hoecake" because field hands often cooked it on a shovel or hoe held to an open flame)
• Hot water cornbread (cornmeal mixed with hot water and fried)
• Hushpuppies (balls of cornmeal deep-fried with salt and diced onions; slaves used them to "hush" their dogs yelping for food in their yards. Eaten by most Americans in the south
• Johnny cakes (fried cornmeal pancakes, usually salted and buttered)
• Milk and bread (a "po' folks' dessert-in-a-glass" of slightly crumbled cornbread, buttermilk and sugar)
• Sweet bread (bread with a certain sweetness, presumably from molasses)
• Dumplings (homemade flat square noodles boiled with stewed chicken (usually a hen). Eaten by most Americans in the south
• Panbread (a type of unleavened bread made with flour salt, butter and water. It's cooked on top of the stove with an iron skillet. Similar to traditional flatbread that one finds within various cultures across the world.)

Beverages

• Punch A variety of flavors depending on the season.
• Carrot Juice A favorite juice blend made of carrots
• Kool-Aid A sweet punch, coming in a variety of flavors.

Other items

• Chow-chow (a spicy, homemade pickle relish sometimes made with okra, corn, cabbage, hot peppers, green tomatoes and other vegetables; commonly used to top black-eyed peas and otherwise as a condiment and side dish)
• Grits (or "hominy grits", made from processed, dried, ground corn kernels and usually eaten as a breakfast food the consistency of porridge; also served with fish and meat at dinnertime, similar to polenta) Eaten by most Americans in the south
• Hot sauce (a condiment of cayenne peppers, vinegar, salt, garlic and other spices often used on chitterlings, fried chicken and fish including homemade or Texas Pete, Frank's, Tabasco, or Louisiana brand) A contribution from the Cajun people of Louisiana
• Macaroni and cheese (usually cooked from scratch with cheddar cheese, milk, flour, and seasonings mustard is option but a rarity.) It becomes a casserole when meats, such as bacon or ham, are added. Eaten all over America
• Rice pudding, with rice and corn-based vanilla pudding Eaten in many cultures
• Sorghum syrup (from sorghum, or "Guinea corn," a sweet grain indigenous to Africa introduced into the U.S. by African slaves in the early 17th century; see biscuits); frequently referred to as "sorghum molasses"
• Sweet tea, inexpensive orange pekoe (black tea, often Lipton, Tetley, or Luzianne brands) boiled, sweetened with cane sugar, and chilled, served with lemon. The tea is sometimes steeped in the sun instead of boiled; this is referred to as "sun tea" General Southern cuisine
• Salmon Patties (also known as Salmon Croquet/Croquettes), a mixture of skinned & de-boned salmon, mixed with cornmeal, eggs, milk and onions fried in a skillet to make small, round patties.
• Red Velvet Cake - a popular cake within the African-American culture, in which some say the dark reddish color of the cake symbolizes the struggles of African-Americans during the decades. Eaten in many cultures
• Waffles
• Watermelons

Traditions

It is a long-standing tradition in some African American and in general all Southern communities to indulge in a family or communal New Year's Day dinner featuring cabbage or greens, which symbolize money, and black-eyed peas, which symbolize good luck. Some families also include corn or cornbread in the meal to symbolize brighter days. Supermarkets that cater to African Americans often have these items, canned and fresh, in greater amounts and on prominent display at the end of the year to accommodate increased demand. On Fridays it is common to fry fish in general in the South.

See also

• Cuisine of the Southern United States
• Cuisine of the United States
• Edna Lewis