The style of cooking originated during slavery, when slaves were generally given only the "leftover" and "undesirable" cuts of meat (after the slaveowners had taken the choicest cuts), and had only the vegetables they grew for themselves. After slavery, many, being poor, could afford only off-cuts of meat, along with offal. Farming, hunting and fishing provided fresh vegetables, 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 – are in virtually every African-American community in the nation, especially in cities with large African American populations, such as Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
Dishes and ingredients
Soul food uses a great variety of dishes and ingredients, some unique, some shared with other cuisines.
Chitterlings, or chitlins (the cleaned and prepared intestines of hogs, slow-cooked and often eaten with vinegar and hot sauce; sometimes parboiled, then battered and fried)
Cracklins (commonly known as pork rinds and sometimes added to cornbread batter)
Fatback (fatty, cured, salted pork used to season meats and vegetables)
Okra (African vegetable eaten fried in cornmeal or stewed, often with tomatoes, corn, onions and hot pepers; Bantu for okra is ngombo, which gives its name to the Creole/soul food dish "gumbo")
Succotash (originally, a Native American dish of yellow corn and butter beans, usually cooked in butter)
Sweet potatoes (often parboiled, sliced and then baked, using sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter or margarine, commonly called "candied yams"; also boiled, then pureed and baked into pies)
Yams (not the botanical yam, but the sweet potato)
Other items
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)
Chow-chow (a spicy, homemade pickle relish sometimes made with okra, corn, cabbage, green tomatoes and other vegetables; commonly used to top black-eyed peas and otherwise as a condiment and side dish)
Cornbread (a short bread often baked in an iron skillet, sometimes seasoned with bacon fat)
Fried ice cream (Ice Cream deep frozen coated with cookies and fried)
Hot sauce (a condiment of cayenne peppers, vinegar, salt, garlic and other spices often used on chitterlings, fried chicken and fish – not the same as "Tabasco sauce", which has heat, but little flavor)
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"
Watermelon (brought to the New World by African slaves)
Health
Traditionally, as noted above, soul food is cooked and seasoned with pork products, and fried dishes are usually cooked with either lard or hydrogenated vegetable oil ("shortening" or "Crisco"), which is a trans fat. Unfortunately, frequent consumption of these ingredients without significant exercise or actvity to work the calories off often contributes to disproportionately high occurrences of obesity, hypertension, cardiac/circulatory problems and/or diabetes in African-Americans, often resulting in a shortened lifespan. More modern methods of cooking soul food include using more healthful alternatives for frying (liquid vegetable oil or canola oil) and cooking/stewing using smoked turkey instead of pork.
