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What, exactly, is soul food?
Question
#75209. Asked by darkpresence. (Jan 30 07 2:14 PM)
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queproblema
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Hunny, it's grits and fried mullet and collard greens and cornbread. Pour the pot-likker over the cornbread. And black-eyed peas with snaps. (Ya'll knows what "snaps" is--thin pods snapped.)
Reference: I ain't a Florida cracker for nothing.
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darkpresence
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Hmmm, I know what grits is (I saw "My Cousin Vinny"), but mullet is my hairstyle and I don't think it would fry very well. Is it the fish? And you'll have to explain collard greens, pot-likker, and snaps. Um, and the explanation of snaps lol. I presume cornbread is made from corn rather than flour, or is it something that's added?
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What-A-Mess
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Soul Food....
food typically associated with African Americans of the Southern United States.
Such food stuff as: pig’s feet, beef tongue or tail, ham hocks, chitterlings(intestines of a pig. AKA "Chitlins"), pig ears, hog jowls, tripe and skin, tops of turnips, beets, and dandelions. Hominy grits. Black eyed peas. The list is fairly long.
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skysmom65
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Although the term "soul food" dates only to the slave-days[1] the roots of soul food can be traced back to Africa. Some of these foods became part of America’s crops and food. Using 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 flavor. The slaves were also given discarded tops of vegetables, like the tops of turnips, beets, and dandelions. These items can be found in many soul food dishes today. As slaves began to cook for their masters, they added things like fried chicken and puddings. The term soul food became popular in the 1960s, when the word soul became used in connection with most things African American.
After slavery ended, many African Americans, being poor, could afford only off-cuts of meat, along with 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, Houston, Detroit, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Miami, Baltimore, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.
Poor whites and blacks in the South ate many of the same dishes, but styles of preparation sometimes varied. African American soul food generally tends to be spicier than Anglo-American cuisine. The recipes and cooking techniques tended to be handed down orally.
 http://www.answers.com/soul%20food
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queproblema
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WAM and skysmom are correct. Also add hushpuppies--deep-fried globs of corn batter. A mullet is a cheap fish. I made myself sick on chittlin's once. Or twice.
Now, to lean toward my mother's family rather than my father's: Hyacinths are soul food.
If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.
- Moslih Eddin (Muslih-un-Din) Saadi (Sadi),
Gulistan (Garden of Roses)
http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/hyacinths_t001.htm
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zbeckabee
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Nice listing follows {WIKI}:
Catfish
Chicken gizzards batter-fried
Chicken livers batter-fried
Chitterlings ("chitlins")
Country fried steak
Cracklins (Pork rinds)
Fatback
Fried chicken
Fried fish -- especially catfish but also whiting, porgies, bluegills—dredged in seasoned cornmeal and deep fried
Ham hocks
Hoghead cheese (made primarily from pig snouts, lips, and ears and frequently also referred to as "souse meat" or simply "souse")
Hog maws (hog jowls, sliced and usually cooked with chitterlings)
Meatloaf (typically with a brown gravy)
Neckbones (beef neck bones seasoned and slow cooked)
Oxtail soup (a soup or stew with beef tails as a meat)
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)
Shrimp
Mashed potatoes with butter and chives
Black-eyed peas Cabbage, usually boiled down and seasoned with vinegar, salt and hamhocks or fatback.
Greens (usually cooked with ham hocks; especially collard greens, Mustard greens, turnip greens, or a combination thereof)
Lima beans (see butter beans)
Butter beans (immature lima beans, usually cooked in butter)
Green beans
Mashed potatoes (usually with butter and condensed milk)
Okra fried in cornmeal
Red beans
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 or margarine, commonly called "candied yams"; also boiled, then pureed and baked into pies)
ETC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_Food
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What-A-Mess
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Catfish is Redneck not Soul Food!
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What-A-Mess
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Country Fried Steak is Jail food!
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zbeckabee
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How far south have you been?
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queproblema
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Yes, zbeck! I'm not so sure about the meatloaf or the cabbage--if you say so. I would definitely have to add "bobby-cue"--BBQ. And biscuit (no "s") and cane syrup. You poke a hole in the side of the biscuit with your finger and fill it with syrup. I tried my great-grandmother's headcheese once, which was enough. Shrimp! Remember Bubba on Forrest Gump? Most Southerners pronounce it "srimp."
Tomatoes in succotash?? Butterbeans are usually mature, dried, limas.
Dp, I don't know your cousin Vinny, but I have grits about once a week. Collard greens are a species, Brassica oleracea Acephala Group, not collared greens. Pot-likker is the juice the greens were boiled and boiled and boiled in with hamhocks.
Everything I thought to tell you about cornbread can be found at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornbread
Mmmmm, rednecks' food of choice is soul food, and a prisoner's last request might be chicken fried steak.
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zbeckabee
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My husband makes a mean fried cabbage and a yummy meatloaf...tons of gravy and biscuits. I decided long ago that soul food isn't the food itself BUT rather how it is cooks in conjunction with how long it will take to completely clog your arteries.
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What-A-Mess
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Done lived in Atlanta foe 13 years. Bawn in a little town 'long I-16 halfinsway 'tween Macon and Savannah! Far Nuff Sugga?
I lived my first 22 years in NYC. Back to GA in mid 90's. Back in NY 2006. THANK GOD I am back in NY!
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Baloo55th
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Butterbeans are not uncommon in the UK too. I've got some in my pantry right now. Cracklins we have, but we call them scratchings. Oxtail soup comes in tins here, but some do make it themselves. Very common soup, along with tomato, mushroom and chicken soups. Pigs trotters are an old dish still cooked in the North of England. Head cheese is known, but we usually call it brawn in England. I take it that these things aren't used in the rest of the USA or they wouldn't be noticeable as being 'soul food'?
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queproblema
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Baloo, I didn't quibble on the oxtail soup, but frankly, the only time I ever had it was when my Austrian aunt prepared it. Poor southerners probably would throw a tail in the soup pot, though. My grandmother served us chicken-foot soup once, a special, nostalgic project for her. You cut the nails off with a cleaver and remove the scaly skin by scorching the raw foot in a flame. There's really not much flavor or meat on a chicken's foot! More prized is a fried pigtail.
My mother's lima beans were delectable green Fordhooks or baby limas. Grandma's butterbeans were reconstituted, tasteless, colorless, fat-laden, cooked-to-a-mush, dried-out old things. She loved 'em!
Regional cooking has become more universally enjoyed, of course, but no, most of this food a "typical" (whatever that is) American wouldn't eat. See skymoms' reply.
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Baloo55th
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I love oxtail soup. And butterbeans, too. Ours are sort of beige coloured, soft inside but slightly crisp outer.
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