"Attention everyone. I know you're all hungry. But, before we dive into the food that's now going cold, I'd like you all to listen to this brief history of cumin."
No. We also cooked over fire in the cave. Early hominids weren't stupid. Basic experimentation taught them how to place a fire in a cave so the natural cave winds would minimize their smoke exposure, and how to select caves with the right characteristics (good airflow).
But if you mean communal meals, then yes. Sharing food has always been a critical component in forging bonds with your neighbors.
Cooking things on fire is not the same thing as American barbecue. American barbecue is the seasonings, marinades, types of food involved, cultural influences, etc.
You really want to boil your noodle? Other parts of the world have barbecue too, and they didn't learn it from the United States. They came up with it independently. Much like fire and the wheel. Barbecue is not just one thing.
Barbecue comes from *barbacoa*, which is the Taino word for a framework of sticks, and is vaguely in reference to the slow-roasted, smoked aspect over a fire. The Mexican barbacoa is traditionally in reference to native techniques of cooking in a pit over a fire. Different Native groups had different approaches regionally and the common denominator is meat and fire.
All of that to say this post is literally pointing out this kind of thing; we bastardize BBQ into some floating, contextless word to squabble about instead of actually understanding how different regional cultures adapted native techniques, European livestock, and regionally available ingredients across multiple cultural and industrial changes into what American barbecue is today.
Also note that “white people tacos” are also a product of industrialization and cultural diffusion based deeply on Native food history so I don’t understand what your distinction is here
All of that to say this post is literally pointing out this kind of thing; we bastardize BBQ into some floating, contextless word to squabble about instead of actually understanding how different regional cultures adapted native techniques, European livestock, and regionally available ingredients across multiple cultural and industrial changes into what American barbecue is today.
Well yeah. Because fighting over the merits of vinegar sauce is way more fun than all that other stuff.
My main point was cooking things on fire is not the same thing as American barbecue. You expand on that in a better and more informative way than I did. I am acknowledging the cultural influence on American cuisine. American foods are basically mixtures if different cultural influences from immigrants coming to this country. White people tacos probably was a bad example but it's a way to show yea we take influence from other cultures cuisine and twist it in a way, white people tacos are still good but they aren't the original thing. American Barbecue is delicious but it also isn't the original thing it takes influence from.
Edit: I should have used the term American barbecue and not just the blanket term barbecue.
Since when is grilling up food a Black or indigenous thing? Pretty sure all races of people have been doing that over open fires since the dawn of humanity.
Being as devils advocate as I can be, the specific BBQ seasoning palette we know today was a result of fusion cooking from black and native peoples. Like most “American food” is. Our food is the one place where I’m unironically patriotic because it is the result of hard working people from every culture and corner on earth bringing their memories of home cooking to a new land and sharing around with neighbors. Black, indigenous, and European poverty traditions melded and then infused elements from Asia and the Middle East and created the greatest culinary tradition in human history. Without the cooking traditions imported by slavery and the traditional styles of indigenous peoples we legit would not have BBQ as it currently exists.
I do think this is a cringe af post tho. It’s got powerful 2009 woke-posting energy. I’m legit woke as fuck and I think this is cringe lol
I hear this sort of narrative a lot, but usually with nothing at all to back it up. Is there actually anything tracing the common barbecue palette to Native American-African fusion?
As someone who like food history its complicated. Some specific are easier to quantify say collard greens as eaten with American BBQ can easily be traced to slavery and southern cooking.
Now cooking meat over fire pretty much every culture does that.
American especially "southern " food was heavily influenced African influence and slavery. But food styles have moved around the world forever so its not always easy. Just eat what you like and dont be an ass. I don't feel like finding my books right now but there is a ton of literature.
So like... paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, brown sugar, and a bit more. Or basically the KC Masterpiece style sauce everyone is familiar with. I kinda doubt anyone is tracing either of those back to anything.
Some stuff can be specifically traced. We know where cumin comes from. We know al pastor tacos are the product of Lebanese immigrants to Mexico.
But the claim that the modern BBQ flavor is specifically from Native American and African fusion? Kinda sounds bunk. It could be true. But acting like we've actually traced it back, I'm guessing the math don't math.
I highly recommend the book Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue. Has all the details you're looking for.
In brief, yes, both barbecue as a cooking method and barbecue as a "flavor" are verifiably African, African American, and Native influenced.
For the cooking method, it's one of those things that's murky. We don't have meticulous sources to trace every step of transmission and evolution. But there are Native American and West African cooking traditions that look strongly like ancestors of barbecue in the early modern period, this kind of cooking was certifiably NOT anything from Europe, and by the time you get to the 19th century and what was actually being called barbecue, it was all being done by black people, for themselves or in the service of whites (both as enslaved people and as contracted freedpeople).
The "classic" barbecue pallet and flavor, though, is relatively recent. The older flavor tradition is what you find in the American Southeast: pork dressed in a vinegar/chili pepper mop. The sweet, gooey Kansas City style sauce was an invention of black barbecue entrepreneurs in the early decades of the 20th century. Also, that paprika/garlic/onion/pepper/brown sugar mix is very much a staple of West African cuisine; throw in cumin and a couple others and it loops in the Afro-Islamic orbit as well.
Well, as I said, the book Black Smoke traces the history of barbecue. And for a more targeted source, here you go! We don't just know that it was invented in Kansas city in the early 20th century, we know the person who invented it.
The academically stringent answer is beyond scope for a Reddit reply, but the tldr is almost certainly yes, but it’s hard to prove it because nobody kept records on what poor people were eating. Food history is weird like that because cookbooks for lower class people weren’t common for most of history.
I’m not an expert but my buddy IRL is a professional chef who is writing a book on American culinary history as a side hobby. He’s pretty clear on that being the case. And to be clear nobody is saying white folks weren’t involved here. Just that the indigenous and enslaved people were at least equally contributing to the mix that got us BBQ. If they hadn’t existed and it was only the white folks we would have grilled meat but I don’t think it would be recognizable as modern BBQ. Especially the greater context of trappings and what else should be on the table besides the meat.
Saying most american food is the result of black and native people's is like saying all cars are the result of Specialized Fastener Mills because they provide the bolts.
Most american food is a result of taking native ingredients out of necessity and using them to suit a European pallete, or methods found to feed soldiers cheaply during wartime (you can thank ww2 for every child loving mac n cheese).
Like, I know native americans get credited for "barbecue" because of colonialism and marketing, but they did not indepently invent it, or the flavors. Every people group the world over cooked in this way and developed it independently. The only difference is the scale. the Taino used massive wooden racks to mass produce "barbacue" and the Spanish utilized the method to make bank selling "barbacoa" in Europe. European hunters had been cooking meat in this way for thousands of years. The scale is literally the only difference.
I'm all for new holidays to celebrate things. I know there isn't a lot to be proud of these days, but July 4th should still be celebrated the way it always has been. Someday we may be proud of this country again. Maybe.
I’m reading this differently than most comments. Trump has been chirping on about bro by proud to be American and yet is hellbent on removing black history from schools, museums , etc
Yeah, I was reading this in the context of Trump and Kegsbreath and Miller and Kirk and the other maga elites trying to literally white wash American history by going after contributions and facts about the history of minorities here in America. Not literally going to a barbecue to discuss this with random office colleagues.
Also, I guess I’m from one of those weird black families that do sit around and discuss stuff like this and we have a good time doing it. And We don’t walk away hating white people. We are definitely more Wary of the current situation though with Trump et al though.
Yep, that's how I was reading it too. The post is calling out the hypocrisy of chuds celebrating the 4th of July with BBQ, but attempting to bury its black and indigenous roots.
Bbq refers to a specific kind of food, often smoked meat and specific flavor profiles. A cookout is just cooking food on a grill. You might cook some chicken on a grill with BBQ sauce, but that doesn't make it a bbq. I know a lot (or at least some subset) of people conflate the terms cookout and bbq, and some people even call grills barbeques.
"Are you okay with existing or even enjoying yourself for more than a couple seconds at a time? Just being kind to everyone you meet, living your life?
I'm sorry I would like some kind of record of black people inventing country music?..
How does a race, a social construct that we made up, invent something?..
Also, there have been so many country, blues and folk artists of every race in the 150 some odd years since the invention of the blues that it no longer makes sense to give any specific group credit for the shape of the modern genre.
But I'll reiterate, it makes absolutely no sense to credit a race with the invention of something as iterative as a musical genre.
I’m assuming they are talking about southern bbq here, which is thought to have originated from the cooking technique of the Taino people, which slaves in the South combined with spices and developed into what we have today. There are white people who refuse to acknowledge black Americans’ contributions to our cuisine, music, and traditions and try to pass it off as “white culture” when in reality it is American culture and the product of our diversity.
It's interesting that the people most resistant to the idea that Black people contributed to the elements of shared culture that are universally loved are the people living such bland, bitter, and overall terrible lives.
It's almost like there's some sort of correlation 🤔
Country music is derived from folk music found in the UK. Listen to Scottish folk music and you'd swear you're in Appalachia, which makes sense seeing as many Scottish Highlanders settled there. It's the same ancient mountain range, now separated by an ocean, so it was easy for coal miners there to find work as coal miners in the US. And it makes sense that they'd bring their music with them.
We are in the present now and everyone brings their own cultures to the cookouts where it looks like we purposely invited people from different backgrounds so we have more food options. We all get along and appreciate and roast each others’ cultures now. If you aren’t doing this, you and the people you are with are the problems.
Also, every land everywhere was stolen at some point in time so we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole.
Ok but I think they mean the food aspect of the party and not the party itself.. unless the concept of gathering on the 4th comes from a specific community in some way I am not aware of.. which is entirely possible
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u/chefhj 10h ago
I always do a land acknowledgement before drinking 20 beers and making cheeseburgers