What city has the best Soul Food/southern cooking? (state, better, America)
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This is intriguing. I love soul food too, but for some reason I rarely ever eat it unless it's prepared by my grandmother. Grandparents seem to have that special touch when it comes to this type of food. Cornbread dressing with giblet gravy is my favorite (the crowd favorite it seems). I also love the rice dressing they prepare in Louisiana, but cornbread dressing is the best to me.
Beef tips with rice!!!!! You can't go wrong there either lol.
Yes it does because whites don't cook it the same way. Isn't it wierd that it's always affliated with blacks
do what, now?
where i am from, whites and blacks buy the same chittlins, pigs feet, liver, blackeyed peas, frog legs and fatback, catfish, grits, cornbread, and greens, from the same aisles of the same piggly wiggly. this is what poor people eat in the south, no matter what color. (and sometimes not so poor)
so elaborate, where are you from, and how do whites and blacks prepare food differently there?
Soul Food is Soul Food. And like Spade said, Anywhere with a large Black population has good Soul Food. I'm not saying Soul Food is only a black thing, blacks and whites in the South eat the SAME thing, but a MAJORITY of blacks in OTHER regions of the US have original ancestry in the Southern US, as apposed to MOST Whites in other regions who's US ancestry were originally from those regions. Example: ALOT of older blacks in NYC, LA, CHI, etc have roots or were born in the South, and you can still here there accents and probably moved to these areas in the Great Migration. Whereas ALOT of Whites and older Whites in those same regions were originally from there and can trace there ancestries in those regions since before the 20's or before The Great Migration of blacks. So don't be surprised if you can find GREAT Soul Food joints in NYC, LA, CHI, etc. Los Angeles will most likely have Texas and Louisiana type Soul Food(like Creole joints), while NY will prob have more GA, NC, inspired Soul Food, according to the migration patterns of the blacks to other states(blacks in the Eastern South migrated to NY, while blacks in the Western South, migrated to Cali.)
Y'all check this joint (and menu) out. If I ever visit New England, I think I may give this place some business! LOL
Preparation does vary quite a bit sometimes between whites and blacks in the south. But it's the same general idea for both parties and there are more similarities than differences. Also, I think soul food and southern cooking are equally valid terms. I think soul food involves a couple of things that white southerners don't usually partake of. Chitlens and pig's feet. I don't think i've ever heard of white person mention chitlens. To be fair though, I live in Austin and while the black population in Austin retains a bunch of its southern characterisics the white population is losing it more and more everyday. So I can't speak for whites in places like Miss, Bama, and Georgia.
As far as the term soul food goes, I'm not entirely sure when or where it originated. My best guess is after the great migration the term probably became popular when whites in these areas that had never before seen many blacks needed something to call it. But then again black people I know have been embracing the term for a very long time, my grandfather is in is 70s and was raised in Texas all his life and he still says it. So who knows?
Good post and points, UT.
I have posted this before (in fact, on the Texas forum just yesterday), but I always thought this "incident" was very relevant to the general topic of soul/Southern cooking and the blends of the same. Here it is (again! LOL):
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Back in the 60's, was when that expression "soul food" first gained some popularity in the American vernacular. With most of the media and TV concerns being in the NE and California, it was very often associated with blacks to people outside the South. The thing was, it confused many of us Southern whites because WE had eaten this great crusine described as "soul" all our lives! LOL
Well, there was (and this is supposed to be a true story, remember) there was some huge plant up in Michigan (maybe they made cars) which employed so many folks they had a company cafeteria. There were all races/ethnic groups represented, including many blacks and whites originally from the South (particularly from Alabama, Tennessee and Texas).
Anyway, because of this natural diversity, there were special "food days" set aside for the respective cultures. For instance, there would be a "Greek Day" or "Italian Day" featuring the specialized foods.
Ok. Well, a group of Southern whites went to the cafeteria managment and asked about having a "Southern Day", which would feature certain good stuff like fried chicken, catfish, black-eyed peas, greens, okra and grits and cornbread! (damn, makes me hungry just to think about it! LOL)
Anyway, it was agreed to do so, and the day was posted on the company bulletin board. Problem was though, it happened to fall on the Dr. Martin Luthur King holiday!
This was just pure happenstance. But, the way it was translated to many northerners was that rednecks from Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, etc., wanted to have a menu that, on MLK Day, would include such things as fried chicken and watermelon!
Oh man! Many northerners got "offended" and thought this was an intended insult...since none of them had any experience with the South. Their whole whole way of thinking was that what they regarded as "soul food" was to be exclusively associated with a so-called "negative stereotype" of blacks, with the same mindset being that the Southern whites were making fun of and taunting them.
Hell, maybe they even expected a minstrel show...
As it turned out, not surprisingly at all, it was a group of Southern blacks who smoothed things over. They explained to management that "hey, down where we come from, ALL of us homefolk, black AND white, eat this food. There is nothing racist about it."
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Anyway, I think you (and others) are very correct in that differences can exist between Southern whites and blacks...even if in most cases, a "dinner on the grounds" or old-fashioned Sunday dinner would feature the same fare and both groups would be comfortable with that prepared by the other.
But anyway, yeah, "Chitlins" is the one that most comes to mind as a difference. Pigs feet most likely too. Although (back when I was a bit of a rounder) I have many times spent afternoons in good ol' white boy beer-joints which had pigs feet (along with pickled eggs) available, I can't say I ever saw the the former as part of the menu in white kitchens.
What about "souse" or "hog head cheese"? I know for sure this one was not uncommon (at least at one time) for both blacks and whites in the South. My grandparents always told me that was part of the hog killin'...along with cracklins! LOL
Now I think I am going to go pickle some eggs! Seriously.
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