What Makes It Soul Food?

Pan Fried Pork Chops

What is it?  What is the attribute that when found in a culinary creation that places it into the incredibly unique category of Soul Food?  What are the requirements?  What are it's earmarks?

Is it a specific set of ingredients?  Most if not all good chefs or even good cooks for that matter will tell you that the quality of their finished creations relies heavily on the quality of the ingredients that they get to use in it's cooking.  So, is that where we find that particular element that makes Soul Food so magical?  The ingredients?

Or, is it the preparation?  The fact is that chefs and cooks are like architects or artists.  In fact, they are artists.  Give the architect a list of materials to build from and they will build you the house that they see...the one that comes from within them...from their talent or their preferences or even their limitations. Give the same building materials to a different architect and you get a completely different house.  Same goes with cooks.  Give any ten the same ingredients and let them run wild and what you get in the end may be similar, but is more likely to be all but completely different.  Their variances in preparation having been influenced in this case not by their ingredients in the least, but by WHO they are and WHAT their skills are or perhaps are not.

Scalloped Potatoes

So then, is it the chef?

Can only certain people with certain experiences and certain likes or certain training or ethnic backgrounds from certain places...can they be the quotient that is most important in making food into Soul Food?

Is it where you're from?  Is it spices and seasonings?  Is it necessity or history that informs what kinds of foods can be called Soul Food?

Is it love?  Is it passion?  These, like spices of the physical kind can season a meal or a dish in a way that only they can.

Is it how the food tastes or how eating it makes you feel?

Is Soul Food to be found in only one culture or does every community have their own Soul Food?

Shrimp Nicole

What is it?  I sincerely and genuinely want...need to know.

Why? Because I love food.  Food is, for me...family.  It is fellowship.  It is as sincere an expression of love and caring and provision as  man can give to man as to sit them down and present them with a meal that is crafted with their well being in mind.  It is an invitation to sit and talk and slow down and converse and share and be well.  It is history of my family, a tapestry of moments together over the years that is captured in a smell and a taste and a spice or a flavor.  It is my mother's dressing and gravy at Thanksgiving.  It is my father's red beans and rice.  It is my sister's mac and cheese and my baby sister's fresh green beans full of smoked jowl.  It's my nephew's shrimp and grits and my grandmother's prune cake.  It's my uncle Bobby's ribs and my great grand mother Primm's home made rolls.

Why do I need to know?  So that I can find it and keep it alive.  So that I can give it to my daughters and my grand sons.  So that I can honor my dad who left my family a legacy of appreciation of how a meal that is done well is an expression of deepest affection.  We call it, one of the ways of "showing your love."

I believe that I'm not alone in this.  I believe that so many others all over the world share a like passion for the food that they call Soul Food.  Food that is part of the backdrop of their lives and their childhood.  Food that tells the story of who your people are and of where it is that you come from. Food that reminds us of times and places and people that matter most.

Where is the Soul of Soul Food?  What is it?  How can I grab hold of it and share it?

That's what I'm here to find out.  I'd love it if you joined me.

Kevin