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HowAfrican Americans Brought Barbecue Traditions to the Table
By Julie Pfitzinger
For generations of African American families, one of the essential ingredients in barbecue sauce recipes has always been… secrecy. A very high level of secrecy, in fact. "Someone in the family is designated as the holder of the recipe," said Adrian Miller, a James Beard Award-winning culinary historian and author. "They can't tell unless they are about to die. And there are graveyards across the country filled with recipes." What Miller no longer wants kept secret is the impact of African Americans on the history and traditions of barbecue in America. In his new book “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue,” Miller offers a comprehensive look at the men and women who have fed many, taught many and elevated this popular cooking style to its status as a fundamental component of American culinary culture.
It was while researching his first book, which won the 2014 James Beard Book Award for Reference and Scholarship, “Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time,” that Miller discovered there was much more to tell about the history of African American cooking.
"I thought I'd have a chapter in the book on barbecue, since so many of the Black-owned barbecue places I was visiting are known for their soul-food side dishes," said Miller, of Denver, who refers to himself as The Soul Food Scholar. "The more I got into barbecue, I knew that it was definitely its own thing." Even in his early research, what became "glaringly apparent," Miller said, was that African American cooks were not getting the attention they deserved for their contributions to the cooking style as the country began to gravitate to barbecue, whether in diners, restaurants or their own backyards.
Searching for the stories and histories led Miller in some surprising directions.
"The Native American foundations of barbecue was something I'd never learned about," he said, adding that generally speaking, the roots of barbecue cooking can be found in traditions cultivated by Native Americans, Europeans and West Africans. "Of those, two of the three rely only on oral history traditions, so nothing was documented there," Miller explained, noting that he was able to uncover some writing about European settlers and their contributions to barbecue.
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