Black smoke African Americans and the United States of barbecue

Adrian Miller

Book - 2021

"Across America, the pure love and popularity of barbecue cookery has gone through the roof. Prepared in one regional style or another, in the South and beyond, barbecue is one of the nation's most distinctive culinary arts. And people aren't just eating it; they're also reading books and articles and watching TV shows about it. But why is it, asks Adrian Miller--admitted 'cuehead and longtime certified barbecue judge--that in today's barbecue culture African Americans don't get much love? In Black Smoke, Miller chronicles how Black barbecuers, pitmasters, and restaurateurs helped develop this cornerstone of American foodways and how they are coming into their own today"--

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Subjects
Published
Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Adrian Miller (author)
Item Description
"A Ferris and Ferris book" - title page.
Physical Description
301 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781469662800
  • Introduction: Kindling my barbecue passion
  • Pit smoked: barbecue's Native American foundation
  • How did "barbeque" get so Black?
  • Burnt offerings: barbecue in African American church culture
  • Rising smoke: the ascendancy of the African American barbecue specialist
  • Barbecue is my business: the emergence of African American barbecue entrepreneurs
  • Black barbeque is beautiful: toward an African American barbeque aesthetic
  • Liquid black smoke: the primacy of sauce
  • Short-circuited: African Americans and competition barbecue
  • Blowing smoke: the fading media representation of African American barbecuers
  • Glowing embers: the future of African American barbecue
  • Tending the fire
  • My favorite African American barbecue restaurants.
Review by Library Journal Review

Who created barbecue? What makes it authentic? Who gets to write the history of this iconic American cuisine? James Beard Book Award winner Miller (Soul Food) explores the role of Black Americans in barbecue's complex cultural history. He writes that barbecue has long been an important way to build community, and that the cuisine's foundations in marginalized communities have long been obscured, including the innovative techniques and ur-barbecue of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Miller shows how Indigenous forms of barbecue in the Americas were received and absorbed by white colonial settlers, and how, in the southern United States, Black Americans have been the keepers of the barbecue flame, throughout the eras of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration. Miller also seeks out and showcases generations of pitmasters who are still at work; he highlights individuals from different U.S. geographic areas and different traditions of barbecue. VERDICT This enjoyable book, which includes more than 20 recipes, is a must for serious barbecue scholars and a solid choice for any food historian.--Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A deep dive into the past, present, and future of a classic American cuisine, recognizing the African Americans at the heart of it. "If Black people ever had a national flag, it would be the Black Power fist holding a rib!" In Miller's delicious third book, after Soul Food (a James Beard Award winner) and The President's Kitchen Cabinet, he opens with this anonymous quote, illustrating the abiding connection between African American culture and barbecue. But African Americans--the "innovators, rejuvenators, and reinventors" of barbecue--have seen their singular contributions to the culinary tradition "pushed to the margins." To right this wrong, the author researched "hundreds of books, cookbooks, newspapers, online resources, oral histories, and periodicals," interviewed barbecue aficionados and people working in the industry, judged competitions, and ate his way through more than 200 restaurants across the country. He chronicles how Native American cooking techniques from the 1500s evolved into the social, festive food tradition we now call barbecue. An engaging storyteller, Miller brings his subjects to vivid life, as in the chapter on Black barbecue entrepreneurship, which predates Emancipation, with enslaved men and women using their business proceeds to buy freedom. He explores what makes the Black barbecue aesthetic exceptional and the many complexities of etiquette. "You've probably noticed that when you ask a barbecuer for tips on the cooking process, he or she is somewhat forthcoming," he writes. "It's when you ask for recipes that everyone becomes tight-lipped. Why? Because a barbecue sauce recipe is easy to replicate, but when it comes to cooking, a pitmaster counts on you being too lazy to actually prepare traditional barbecue." Still, Miller provides plenty of mouthwatering recipes by Black barbecue artists for sauce, meat and fish, and side dishes as well as profiles of unsung Black barbecue trailblazers across three centuries. The author rounds out the book with archival documents and color photographs. A highly entertaining, celebratory, and essential reader for history buffs and barbecue lovers alike. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.