What Constitutes Soul Food?

Question

Always wondered what Soul Food was. I understand there's alot of Pork and Greens involved, what else?

Answer 1

I had a Soul Food New Years party with a friend once. We served collard greens, fried chicken, mac & cheese, & crab cakes.
Soul food is an American cuisine, food typically associated with African Americans of the Southern United States. Many of the various dishes and ingredients included in soul food, however, are also regional fare and comprise a part of white Southern cuisine, as well.

The roots of soul food can be traced back to Africa. African slave traders brought foods over to America from Africa along with slaves. It is thought that some slaves also brought seeds of native crops along with them to America, hiding the seeds in their ears and hair.[citation needed] Some of these foods became part of America’s crops and food. Using discarded meat from the plantation like pig’s feet, beef tongue or tail, ham hocks, chitterlings (pig small intestines), pig ears, hog jowls, tripe and skin, cooks added onions, garlic, thyme, and bay leaf to enhance the flavor. The slaves were also given discarded tops of vegetables, like the tops of turnips, beets, and dandelions. These items can be found in many soul food dishes today. As slaves began to cook for their masters, they added things like fried chicken and puddings. The term soul food became popular in the 1960s, when the word soul became used in connection with most things African American.

Answer 2

Whew! Did you ever ask a loaded question Big guy! lol
I used to wonder the same thing until I had to live in a few of the southern states. My conclusion is this. Soul Food while they are trying to improve it and make it more healthy. Everything is fried and battered and refried in more than one type of grease,oil,lard,butter etc...
It is salted and resalted so that your blood pressure will kill you by the end of the meal.
It is sickening sweet foods that are usually chocolate or banana.

Macaroni and cheese with tons of different cheeses and lots of butter
Fried chicken on every corner of the town
chiterlings
mullet
and other assorted fish that most would consider only bait food.
The dryest corn bread you will ever eat in your life and oh let's not forget the SWEET TEA. Talk about sending you into insulin shock!
The fat back that has been deep fried and shows up on a buffet as an actual dish.
Gritz and biscuits and a ton of gravy.
Tons and Tons of Watermelon in the summer of course everyone likes that,but I have seen many salting even that.

Answer 3

Soul Food, really, is more than just food. It also has to do with getting family and friends together to be able to share a meal together. It is very common in the south. We even have soul food restaurants that sell all the things the others mentioned as soul food.

Answer 4

"Technically", I think it's southern cooking as others have mentioned and has to include mashed potatoes, cream gravy, fried chicken, mustard or collard greens, and cornbread, iced tea, coffee, home-made ice cream.

It's comfort food for the diner. So, I think that soul food is the food that a person from a particular culture has grown up with, is most familiar with, and is most comforted by.

So, soul food is whatever the food is that tastes like home to the diner.

I think that every culture has its own soul food.

Answer 5

soul food to me is what makes the soul feel good now traditinal food have been named thus far however the menu has greatly advanced. having a family dinner and great food is a blessing too many a chance to laugh and talk dance if you want all the things to me that go along with soul food you can unwind your troubles if just for a few hours..and all black folks dont eat a bunch of pork so we dont cook with it.

Answer 6

My idea of soul food is any vegetable (collard greens, turnips and turnip greens, black eyed peas, green beans) cooked with bacon or fatback for hours on end. Any meat fried-chicken, porkchops, livers, gizzards, chitlins (pig intestines). Red beans and rice, rice and gravy, boiled ox-tail and rice, CORNBREAD to sop up "pot liquor" (juice from cooked greens), sweet tea...but all this must be cooked in a hot kitchen with no air conditioning and at least three barefoot kids running around!

If you've never had soul food, you don't know what you're missing out on!

Answer 7

Most consider southern food and soul food to be the same. Fried chicken, bbq ribs, catfish, grits, mashed potatoes, collard greens, okra, cornbread, buttermilk biscuits, sweet potatoes, sweet iced tea, etc.

Answer 8

yee haw is on the ball with the "pot liquor" - now that's soul food. but really soul food is comforting for the soul; gatherings with the family/friends.
can consist of more than just pork & greens. how about candy yams, neck bones & rice, turkey legs/wings, cornbread made on top of the stove or in the oven, biscuits (made from scratch), CHICKEN cooked in all kinds of ways, fish, dumplings, mac & cheese made with real sharp cheddar cheese, ox tails....this is making me hungry!!!

DESERTS- sweet potatoe pie, pineapple upside down cake, seven up cake, chocolate cake, blueberry cobbler, peach cobbler, jelly cake (pound cake split open while hot then you spread whatver kind of jam or jelly you like inside), german chocolate

you should try it one day...you'll LOVE it!

Answer 9

soul food is a term of the south but it means comfort food i think.....good food that is affordable to make for a large group of people....why greens mac and cheese chicken corn bread things that were available.....in different cultures you have spaghetti,chicken and dumplings,and the list goes on.....comfort food or soul food depends on your family

Answer 10

Soul food is a fourty ounce old english and some fried chicken. i'm black by the way. in case you thought i was trying to be racial.