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Soul food
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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 African American culture, and thus the name "soul food" was derived.
OriginsThe term soul food became popular in the 1960s, when the word soul became used in connection with most things African American. The origins of soul food, however, are much older and can be traced back to Africa. 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. Foods such as turnips from Morocco and cabbage from Spain would play an important part in the history of African American cuisine.
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 slaves' new home in the Americas. Tall tales exist of seeds from watermelons, okra and sesame being transported in the slave's ears, hair or clothing , but their accuracy has not been verified.
As slaves, African Americans would "make do" with the ingredients at hand. The fresh vegetables found in Africa were replaced by the throwaway foods from the plantation house. Their vegetables were the tops of turnips and beets and dandelions. Soon they were cooking with new types of greens: collards, kale, cress, mustard, and pokeweed. African American slaves also developed recipes which used discarded meat from the plantation, such as pig’s feet, beef tongue or tail, 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. Many African Americans depended on catching their own meat, and wild game such as raccoon, opossum, turtle, and rabbit was, until the 1950s, very popular fare on the African American table.
The slave diet began to evolve when slaves entered the plantation houses as cooks. Suddenly, southern cooking took on new meaning. Fried chicken began to appear on the tables (however, serving fried chicken was a tradition that stemmed from West Africa as a way to honor guests); sweet potatoes sat next to boiled white potatoes. Regional foods such as apples, peaches, berries, nuts, and grains soon became puddings and pies; thus, soul cooking began to influence Southern food.
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 possum, rabbit, squirrel, and sometimes waterfowl.
While soul food originated in the South, soul food restaurants—from fried chicken and fish "shacks" to upscale dining establishments—exist in virtually every African American community in the USA, especially in cities with large African American populations, such as Charleston, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Florida, Houston, Detroit, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland, New Orleans, Memphis, Los Angeles, Oakland, Miami, Birmingham, Sacramento, St. Louis, Washington, D.C, and Atlantic City, New Jersey.
The mother of Southern cookingImpoverished whites and blacks in the South prepared many of the same dishes stemming from the soul tradition, but styles of preparation sometimes varied. African American soul food generally tends to be more intensely spiced than European American cuisine. Certain techniques popular in soul and southern cuisine, such as using all the parts of the animal for consumption (e.g. West Africa), have roots in ancient Africa. Others like frying meat have a long history of which evidence occurs in ancient cultures all over the world such as 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 Afro-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. Many blacks were cooks on plantations and may have taught the poor whites in the area their culinary traditions. Soul food is the first of the southern cuisines to arise, along with Creole cuisine (a similar cuisine that was isolated in the French Louisiana territory). During the 1870s, Irish, German and Czech immigrants started to come into the south bringing their own traditions coupled with soul food. This is when the larger, broad category of Southern cooking developed.
It is also important to note the Native American influence on soul cooking. Natives had been cultivating beans, strawberries, maize, and chili peppers. For years Natives prepared hominy (also the source of hominy grits), hotwater cornbread and strawberry bread, which Europeans appropriated as strawberry shortcake.
Soul food and health Soul food was developed by enslaved Africans who lived under the difficult and impoverished conditions of grinding physical labor. The history of soul food does not begin with the roots of slavery, but with traditions stretching back to Africa. 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.
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 - 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"
- Cracklins (commonly known as pork rinds and sometimes added to cornbread batter)
- Fatback (fatty, cured, salted pork; used to season meats and vegetables)
- Fried chicken (fried in grease with seasoned flour)
- Fried fish (any of several varieties of fish—especially catfish, but also whiting, porgies, bluegills—dredged in seasoned cornmeal and deep fried
- 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")
- Hog maws
- Neckbones (beef 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)
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 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 (African vegetable eaten fried in cornmeal and flour or stewed, often with tomatoes, corn, onions and hot peppers; the Bantu word for okra is ngombo, from which the Creole/soul food dish gumbo derives its name)
- Red beans served with rice or in chili
- Succotash (originally a Native American dish of yellow corn, tomatoes, and butter beans, usually cooked in butter)
- 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)
- Fried Corn, sweet yellow corn, off the cob, sauteed in bacon fat, with other flavorings, similar to Maque choux.
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)
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.)
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)
- 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, Tabasco, or Louisiana brand)
- Macaroni and cheese (never from a box, only 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.
- Rice pudding, with rice and corn-based vanilla pudding
- Rice (served with red beans, black beans and/or black-eyed peas, as "rice and gravy" with fried chicken, fried pork chops, etc., or cooked into purloo or "bog" with chicken, pork, tomatoes, okra, onions, sausage, etc.)
- 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 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"
- Salmon Patties, a mixture of skinned & de-boned salmon, mixed with cornmeal, eggs, milk and onions fried in a skillet to make small, round patties.
TraditionsIt is a long-standing tradition in some African American families 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. 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.
See also
External links- Historical 1960s "soul food" citations from word researcher Barry Popik.
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