Examining Soul Food

Many of the meals created from enslaved African American females in the south are high in fat, carbohydrates, and cholesterol. Soul food is considered a variant of southern food and is usually enjoyed during large events or family gatherings in the African American community to celebrate bonding and freedom. Soul food ‘s common dishes would be black-eyed-peas, chitterlings, collard greens, buttermilk biscuits and vegetable soup.

Black-eyed-peas which is a side dish has an earthy taste and smell such like “dirt” but can be masked depending on what seasonings were added to the food. As a tradition my family like to keep the earthly taste because it gives the food a sense of terror thus, they seasoned the black-eyed peas just enough not to overpower its original flavor. Depending on how long they were cooked for they could have a harder outer surface with a soft center or be soft enough they feel like the dissolve in the mouth.

Another popular side dish are collard greens, which consists of the boiled vegetable collard and would be seasoned and mixed with different meats such as pork feet. Boiled collard has a similar green smooth and crunchy texture to steamed lettuce. Typically, in my family we prefer to boil collard greens in pork broth and mix it with pork feet, this mixture gives the collard greens a sweet warm savory flavor like ramen noodles with pork broth. The smell of the collard greens would fill the air with a scent like that of steam vegetables and ham.

source: https://www.acouplecooks.com/easy-black-eyed-peas/

the next popular side dish would be butter milk biscuits, which are made with the main ingredients flower, butter milk, baking soda and butter. Butter milk biscuits are considered a viable side dish during any time of the day. Normally due to their dryness buttermilk biscuits are usually enjoyed with a cup of coffee, milk, or water with a combination of side and main dishes depending on the time of day.

source:https://www.africanbites.com/southern-buttermilk-biscuits/

Another side dish that could also be considered a main dish is vegetable soup. My family has a tradition which grew from slavery to mix the vegetables in the garden into a large pot and seasoned with seasoning that included pepper to bring the spicy element to the soup. Certain vegetables we would use are okra, corn, potato, and peppers. The smell steaming from the pot would bring the smell of a garden into the area and the taste gives a familiar feeling of eating my grandmother cooking as a child while feeling at home. This tradition steamed from when the enslaved grew most of their food and would commonly create vegetable soups for their meals to feed their family for days. This soup is always brought during special occasions

A Well-known entrée would be chitterlings which are pig intestines and can be fried, boiled, or simmered. It’s important to clean the pig intestines carefully before cooking them due to the increased number of bacteria they could hold comparable to other cuts of meat. Chitterlings are it extremely high in cholesterol and fat plus. can sometimes have a grassy after taste with a similar chewing texture to certain sea food like squid or octopus. Chitterlings are usually enjoyed with hot sauce and a few side dishes. Chitterlings would be considered the front face of soul food due to the enslaved getting the less values cuts of meat, they had to be creative to learn how use these leftovers they were given into sustainable dishes. This concept is the center of why most soul food dishes were created

source:https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/104414/creole-chitterlings-chitlins/

The Area of food variety in soul food is vast and each dish has its own origin story, thus for my research paper I’m planning on zoning in on the foods listed here and going more in-depth about its preparation process. I will also be discussing the different varieties of these foods that evolve over time. I chose soul food as my focus because it was always a term that I was familiar with but never knew. After examining more of the background of soul food and why the African American community continues to push on the oral recopies of the food, I began to understand that it’s about preserving the culture honoring the history that comes with me.