Black Smoke

February 15, 2021
A deep dive into the past, present, and future of a classic American cuisine, recognizing the African Americans at the heart of it. "If Black people ever had a national flag, it would be the Black Power fist holding a rib!" In Miller's delicious third book, after Soul Food (a James Beard Award winner) and The President's Kitchen Cabinet, he opens with this anonymous quote, illustrating the abiding connection between African American culture and barbecue. But African Americans--the "innovators, rejuvenators, and reinventors" of barbecue--have seen their singular contributions to the culinary tradition "pushed to the margins." To right this wrong, the author researched "hundreds of books, cookbooks, newspapers, online resources, oral histories, and periodicals," interviewed barbecue aficionados and people working in the industry, judged competitions, and ate his way through more than 200 restaurants across the country. He chronicles how Native American cooking techniques from the 1500s evolved into the social, festive food tradition we now call barbecue. An engaging storyteller, Miller brings his subjects to vivid life, as in the chapter on Black barbecue entrepreneurship, which predates Emancipation, with enslaved men and women using their business proceeds to buy freedom. He explores what makes the Black barbecue aesthetic exceptional and the many complexities of etiquette. "You've probably noticed that when you ask a barbecuer for tips on the cooking process, he or she is somewhat forthcoming," he writes. "It's when you ask for recipes that everyone becomes tight-lipped. Why? Because a barbecue sauce recipe is easy to replicate, but when it comes to cooking, a pitmaster counts on you being too lazy to actually prepare traditional barbecue." Still, Miller provides plenty of mouthwatering recipes by Black barbecue artists for sauce, meat and fish, and side dishes as well as profiles of unsung Black barbecue trailblazers across three centuries. The author rounds out the book with archival documents and color photographs. A highly entertaining, celebratory, and essential reader for history buffs and barbecue lovers alike.

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Starred review from May 1, 2021

Who created barbecue? What makes it authentic? Who gets to write the history of this iconic American cuisine? James Beard Book Award winner Miller (Soul Food) explores the role of Black Americans in barbecue's complex cultural history. He writes that barbecue has long been an important way to build community, and that the cuisine's foundations in marginalized communities have long been obscured, including the innovative techniques and ur-barbecue of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Miller shows how Indigenous forms of barbecue in the Americas were received and absorbed by white colonial settlers, and how, in the southern United States, Black Americans have been the keepers of the barbecue flame, throughout the eras of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration. Miller also seeks out and showcases generations of pitmasters who are still at work; he highlights individuals from different U.S. geographic areas and different traditions of barbecue. VERDICT This enjoyable book, which includes more than 20 recipes, is a must for serious barbecue scholars and a solid choice for any food historian.--Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI

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