Soul food describes food traditionally eaten by African Americans of the United States. The term soul food also applies to whiteSouthern US cuisine. The style of cooking originated during the time of slavery, when slaves were given only the "leftover" and "undesirable" cuts of meat (while the white slave owners got the meatiest cuts of ham, roasts, etc.), and had only the vegetables they grew themselves. Later, after slavery, many, being poor, could only afford the off-cuts of meat, along with offal, catfish, chickens they raised, and only certain easily-raised or low-cost vegetables.
Dishes or ingredients common in soul food include:
Black-eyed peas (cooked separately or with rice, as hoppin' john)
Lima beans (sometimes mistakenly known as "butter beans," and usually cooked in butter)
Chicken (often fried with cornmeal breading or seasoned flour)
Chitterlings, or chitlins (the cleaned and prepared intestines of hogs, slow-cooked and often eaten with vinegar and hot sauce; sometimes parboiled, then battered and fried)
Chow-chow (a spicy, homemade pickle relish sometimes made with okra, corn, cabbage, green tomatoes and other vegetables; commonly used to top black-eyed peas and otherwise as a condiment and side dish)
Collard greens (usually cooked with ham hocks, often combined with other greens)
Cornbread (a short bread often baked in an iron skillet, sometimes seasoned with bacon fat)
Fried ice cream (Ice Cream deep frozen coated with cookies and fried)
Ham hocks (smoked, used to flavor vegetables and legumes)
Hog maws (or hog jowls, sliced and usually cooked with chitterlings)
Hot sauce (a condiment of cayenne peppers, vinegar, salt, garlic and other spices often used on chitterlings, fried chicken and fish – not the same as "Tabasco sauce", which has heat, but little flavor)
Succotash (originally, a Native American dish of yellow corn and butter beans, usually cooked in butter)
Sweet potatoes (often parboiled, sliced and then baked, using sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter or margarine, commonly called "candied yams"; also boild, then pureed and baked into pies)
Turnip greens (usually cooked with ham hocks, often combined with other greens)
While soul food originated in the South, soul food restaurants – from fried chicken and fish "shacks" to upscale dining establishments – are in virtually every African_American community in the nation, especially in cities with large African American populations, such as Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
Traditionally, as noted above, soul food is cooked and seasoned with pork products, and fried dishes are usually cooked with hydrogenated vegetable oil ("shortening" or "Crisco"), which is a trans fat. Unfortunately, frequent consumption of these ingredients often contributes to disproportionately high occurrences of obesity, hypertension, cardiac/circulatory problems and/or diabetes in African-Americans, often resulting in a shortened lifespan. More modern methods of cooking soul food include using more healthful alternatives for frying (liquid vegetable oil or canola oil) and cooking/stewing using smoked turkey instead of pork.
Blacks from African and non-African countries are oftentimes referred to by their nations of origin; however in general, the cultural assumption is that if a person is fl, native English-speaking and living in the United States, he or she is AfricanAmerican.
Many AfricanAmericans began to abandon the term "Afro-American", which had become popular in the 1960s and '70s, for "AfricanAmerican," out of desire for an unabbreviated expression of their African heritage that could not be mistaken or derided as an allusion to the afro hairstyle.
The collective economic status of AfricanAmericans is a matter of contentious debate, with statistics simultaneously suggesting both the residual effects of historical marginalization and sustained progress for large sections of the population in the United States, and the greater affluence of the group when compared to populations outside of the United States.
African religious practices, considered "heathen", were strictly forbidden, and drums were outlawed for fear that the talking drum would be used by slaves to communicate over distances to plot rebellions.
Other AfricanAmericans continue the centuries old practice of Voodoo, or Vodun, a heavily syncretic melding of elements of Catholicism and the Yoruba and Akan religions of Nigeria and Ghana, the points of origin of many of their ancestors.
AfricanAmerican scholar and activist "Maulana" Ron Karenga invented the festival of Kwanzaa in 1966, as an alternative to the increasing commercialization of Christmas.
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