Food of the Enslaved: Barbecue, featuring Michael Twitty

Hi, I'm Jon Townsend. I'm here again today at Gunston Hall. I have Michael Twitty with me as a special guest. Today we'll talk about the evolution of

barbecue

sauces in the early United States. Thank you for joining us today in the 18th century kitchen. So

barbecue

sauces tell me a little bit about the history of barbecue, at least in this setting, and what we have here, so barbecue is not just people grilling meat on a barbecue over a fire, it was an American Atlantic world. very specific, you know, creation is what happens when The particular cooking styles of Africans and Native Americans, you know, roast something over a wooden structure for a period of hours or over a hole in the ground for a period of hours.

In particular, they know the root of barbecue today. What we are going to do is to take a portion of beef rib normally, this would be done with a whole animal, we know well, ohhohh, the whole sheep, the whole cow, whatever, the whole pig right now out in a hole over a frame of sticks and it is a type of celebration, not that everyone The day should be something you would have during the warmer times of the year or even at Christmas, and for the

enslaved

community in particular, this would be one of the rare opportunities where they could have fresh meat from a domesticated animal that would be, you know, en masse. quantities, so that would be something very unique to the southern celebration repertoire.

You've already prepared this one beforehand, we already have some preparation, so there is a little bit of clove stuck in the fat of the fat portion of the meat. I mean, it's really deep and he also marked the beef rib section and put a little bit of garlic in there and some people might say, well, what's that all about? You know that in the 18th and 19th centuries they were still working with that type of spice. The Middle Ages always liked the repertoire of spices, much more elaborate than what you see at the beginning of the 20th century, when cookbooks were written for people of limited resources that maybe they were just learning to cook, learning to read, learning to read in English, so they stripped away everything.

Mind you, it took away all those very simple basic concepts, but in this period of time, when you read Mary Randolph, other people talk about barbecue that involves wine and mushroom sauce and there are hot peppers, those people in different areas made barbecue according to their particular tastes and what they have access to, so what we are going to do is first put a little bit of mustard on the bottom and rub it all over and what it is going to do is that as the fat dissolves and as the juices come out everything will go away merge and if this sounds familiar to you, you know people who are from certain parts of the Carolinas, where mustard is used, something very German in the south, we give it the use of mustard, while hot pepper is very African and Caribbean, and so because we don't have tomato sauce with mushrooms, we will use the equivalent which is Worcester, our modern equivalent, then we will take a little salt, this kitchen pepper, everyone has their own kitchen pepper, like everyone has your own curry or whatever, and we just use one part each of allspice ginger cloves black pepper white pepper nutmeg and something else the secret ingredient ingredient is fine from the perspective of West Africans and Western Europeans, both They're taking advantage of these spices, so they're operating on this on a bicultural level, so you have both elements are kind of honored in this dish and of course, we have the world's favorite red pepper.

What we're going to do is take out some coals, we're going to put them on the grill and then we're just going to let it cook as long as it takes and in the meantime we're going to work on the sauces, so our meats have been on the grill for a while. time, here it's sauce time, right, what are we going to do? So there are two sauces that I wanted to share with the audience and one is a sauce that we assume is from about 1770-1780 in Virginia and is made up of butter, vinegar, sage and red pepper.

Now that one comes from a late 19th century reference, it talks about a Virginia barbecue. a hundred years ago talks about how simple the mop was and it's pretty consistent with what we know and have heard about barbecue from its 18th century descriptions to its midnight sensory descriptions, so the simple thing we're going to do is take a little of butter and a little sage and then when it melts we are going to add vinegar, we are going to add the salt, the red pepper and the black pepper and we are going to let it cook and that's it, the second we are going to take onion and garlic , we sauté them and then add the rest with spices, vinegar and any of the ingredients.

A man named Wesley Jones was interviewed by the Works Projects Administration, so when he was a child to a teenager he was learning this trade. Probably his father became a barbecue master and this was common. Enslaved men were largely the center of the barbecue cooking craft. It doesn't really give you a recipe. He says this is what I did and it depends on the cook. find out in what proportion how much I don't think it is really I think it's always to taste talk about adding a little salt talk about adding herbs like basil and sage talk about pepper and I'm going to tell you You know, I always like to interpolate a little , so I always add a little cooking pepper to mine.

We're also going to add some red pepper, if you give me that cilantro. and I think that's the most surprising ingredient in this whole mix, so all of these things that people were working with were parallel ingredients to what they weren't familiar with, so you know, it's interesting to look at the work through

food

and something like that. Thinking about the thought process of these cooks who are exiled in their homeland but who are also trying to acclimatize to the new world and also express their cultural identity, how can they bring back some of those same flavors that might not have the exact same ingredients ? now we're going to add a little bit of apple cider vinegar, which is the heart of this particular mop, so when it says mop it means putting it mopping over the top exactly because the meat cooks for several hours over low heat and slow.

I don't want it to dry out and I don't want it to lose its character a little bit of molasses, that's quite common, vinegar molasses becomes the main condiment of the

enslaved

community and among others, that all comes together for me. Putting on these clothes and teaching people about our time in our past, when most people of African descent were enslaved, is extremely important, but it also carries its own unique burdens, in addition to what it means to be a historical interpreter and educator, then how? Does this work? How does an African American in the 21st century bring the past to life? past and the other level is part of our national history now we need to spice this up, okay, I'll warn you, yes, vinegar is quite intoxicating, hmm, so it's going to be very, it's going to be one of those high notes, yeah, it's going to stop put a little pep in your step, it starts with 1780, it starts with 1780, so this is the simple vinegar sauce that's amazing, it's really good, oh yeah, it takes a little, there's a little, new things are happening mm-hmm, yes, according to your taste.

It's like more flavors keep coming through more flavors and more pepper and more pepper. It's still really, really good, so now I'm supposed to try this other one. Yeah, okay, what happens 50 years later? 100 years later, this is what you're doing. I'm going to get it has some very, very good flavors right off the bat instead of this one, which takes a long time to get there well a surprising contrast between those two flavors this one is very separate just a couple of notes one is much more complex much More deeply, I even wonder what happens when they are used as a mop.

I mean these ones that you just made right there and what happens when you know they're mixing with that meat all the time and exactly that's a different experience. the vinegar goes out, other flavors come in and the onion and garlic also I think we don't think of garlic as an American or even a Southern flavor, but it was definitely there, yeah, it was there and it was important, I think that helps. do it, it makes it more familiar to us, we are much more accustomed to it, yes, in our days than people 50 years ago, even tremendously wonderful.

I want to thank you so much for bringing us these things, you know, experimenting with these. flavors, understanding them, bringing out their history, which is very important, and it is as if we can go back and share some of that history, we can share in that collision of those cultures that come together in dishes like this incredible one, thank you very much. That and I want to thank everyone for coming to savor the flavors and aromas of the 18th century. I want to thank everyone at Gunston Hall for their wonderful help on this series. If you are interested in Gunston Hall, be sure to check out. off your website