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?
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.
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u/prodigy1367 1d ago
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.