What is Gullah Cuisine?
Gullah cuisine, a distinctive culinary tradition rooted in the rich heritage of the Gullah people, offers a unique and flavorful experience. Descendants of enslaved West Africans brought to the South Carolina Lowcountry and Sea Islands, the Gullah people have preserved their culinary heritage for centuries, creating a cuisine that blends African and American influences with a focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients.
Key Characteristics of Gullah Cuisine:
- Seasonality: Gullah cuisine emphasizes the use of fresh, locally sourced ingredients that are in season. This ensures that dishes are not only flavorful but also reflect the natural rhythms of the land.
- Seafood: The abundance of seafood in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands plays a prominent role in Gullah cuisine. Dishes like shrimp and grits, crab rice, and fish stews are staples, showcasing the culinary ingenuity of the Gullah people in utilizing the bounty of the sea.
- Rice: Rice, a staple food in West Africa, holds a central position in Gullah cuisine. It is used in various dishes, from savory stews to sweet desserts, reflecting the Gullah people’s deep connection to their African roots.
- Flavorful Seasonings: Gullah cuisine is known for its bold and flavorful seasonings. Ingredients like okra, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers add a unique depth and complexity to the dishes.
- Traditional Cooking Techniques: Gullah cuisine often employs traditional cooking techniques passed down through generations. Slow cooking, stewing, and frying are common methods, ensuring that the flavors of the ingredients are fully developed.
Popular Gullah Dishes:
- Shrimp and Grits: This iconic dish combines succulent shrimp with creamy grits, creating a harmonious blend of textures and flavors.
- Crab Rice: A flavorful rice dish cooked with fresh crab meat, vegetables, and spices, offering a taste of the Lowcountry’s seafood bounty.
- Okra Soup: A hearty and flavorful soup made with okra, tomatoes, onions, and spices, showcasing the versatility of this unique vegetable.
- Red Rice: A vibrant rice dish cooked with tomatoes, bacon, and spices, offering a unique and savory flavor profile.
- Hoppin’ John: A traditional dish of black-eyed peas and rice, often served with collard greens and cornbread, symbolizing good luck and prosperity.
Where to Experience Gullah Cuisine:
- Bertha’s Kitchen (North Charleston): A James Beard Award-winning restaurant serving authentic Gullah cuisine, including okra soup, stewed chicken, and lima beans.
- Hannibal’s Kitchen (Charleston): A local favorite offering a mix of Southern and Gullah dishes, including crab rice, whole whiting, and collards with smoked neck bones.
- Gullah Grub (St. Helena Island): A restaurant owned by a Gullah chef who proudly showcases the cuisine’s heritage, serving dishes like fish chowder, crab soup, and shrimp gumbo.
- My Three Sons (North Charleston): A family-owned restaurant with over 40 years of experience, serving Gullah favorites like crab soup, okra soup, and seafood rice.
- Gullah Gullah Fish (Manning): A seafood market and cafe offering Gullah-inspired dishes like oxtails, garlic crabs, and Gullah rice.
Gullah Cuisine: A Legacy of Resilience and Flavor
Gullah cuisine is more than just a culinary tradition; it is a testament to the resilience and cultural richness of the Gullah people. By preserving their culinary heritage, the Gullah people have not only kept their traditions alive but also shared their unique flavors and stories with the world. Gullah cuisine offers a captivating journey through history and flavor, inviting everyone to experience the rich culinary legacy of the Gullah people.
Where to try Gullah dishes in Charleston
Though its name may not immediately conjure warm and fuzzy feelings, that’s precisely what those who seek out the Southern-food staple go for. This finery-free, family-owned restaurant in Charleston’s Eastside neighborhood says it’s been “feeding the soul of the city” for more than 40 years. As anyone will tell you, go there for the crab rice.
Having forgone frills to focus on good homestyle Southern cooking, Bertha’s Kitchen in North Charleston calls many both inside and out of the Gullah-Geechee community to sample its favored food. It has been named an American Classic by the James Beard Foundation, and the fried fish and red rice are must-tastes.
In South Carolina’s Lowcountry, descendants of the Gullah-Geechee, Africans brought to the state during slavery, are reviving the cuisine that defined the city.
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A Gullah staple, okra soup is similar to gumbo but begins with a tomato base rather than a roux.
Photo by Aimee M. Lee/Shutterstock
Renowned Gullah chef Benjamin Dennis is certain of two things: Southern cuisine has deeper roots than just perfectly crispy fried chicken served with macaroni and cheese. Culture is what defines a cuisine. “Charleston would be nothing without the Gullah-Geechee culture—period,” Dennis says.
The Charleston native explains that the hands of enslaved Africans stirring the pots in colonists’ homes as early as the 1700s largely shaped Southern cuisine as he tastes-tests a Gullah-style pasta salad made with freshly caught shrimp and in-season sweet peas in his catering kitchen.
Dennis describes how Charleston’s food evolved: “We took the rustic soul of the African hands and the Native American [style of cooking] and made this special mash-up.” Gullah-Geechee cuisine is generally described as a combination of Lowcountry ingredients and West and Central African cooking methods, with dishes like okra soup and crab rice. Seasonality and seafood are what distinguish it from more popular Southern dishes like grits and collard greens, according to Dennis, a Gullah. It has impacted traditional Charleston fare like she-crab soup and shrimp and grits.
Dennis, who has made it his mission to spread awareness of Gullah-Geechee cooking and has grown to become one of the cuisine’s most well-known figures, acknowledges that there has been a decline in Gullah culture representation in recent years, but he also sees a resurgence. A renewed interest in this cuisine is currently taking place as the Southern city strives to preserve its history.
“Word’s been getting out,” Dennis says. People are becoming aware of their deep ties to this culture and its origins. ”.
In the last few years, Charleston has focused more on its past as newcomers attempt to take advantage of the city’s rising fame while also endangering its unique cultural identity. Developers are rushing to build new housing because they fear that some relics won’t survive.
“There’s a great fear that as more land is developed and more people move in, a lot of the Gullah people will be effectively displaced from their land and their culture will be jeopardized,” says Ivy Farr McIntyre, Ph.D. D. , director of communications for the South Carolina Historical Society. (Those who identify as Gullahs from South Carolina and Geechees from the Georgia region call themselves respectively.) ).
Efforts to preserve the creole language spoken by the Gullah-Geechee community have even made it to the Ivy League—Harvard added a course to its African Language program in late 2017. At Charleston’s South Carolina Historical Society Museum, a Gullah-focused gallery showcases a dictionary that reveals words with Gullah roots—gumbo, for example, comes from the Gullah word for okra.
The popularity of Gullah-Geechee cuisine is picking up, too—it’s even found its way into the hands of local brewers: Revelry Brewing’s Cream Ale is brewed with grits grown by Geechee Boy Mill.
In western Africa, where rice was a staple food and okra went with everything, southern cuisine first emerged. Farm-to-table cooking was a way of life for the Gullah-Geechee, who were the descendants of Africans who were brought to the Lowcountry of South Carolina and the Sea Islands of Georgia as slaves because they were skilled at growing rice. This was long before it was fashionable.
Fresh, seasonal seafood is a mainstay of Gullah-Geechee cuisine, as seen on this shrimp boat on Shem Creek in Charleston.
Photo by Serge Skiba/Shutterstock
“Seasonality is important because it makes the cuisine special, especially for those who still live in the countryside,” says Dennis, who gets his Carolina blue crab from Louie the crab man on James Island. Dennis characterizes Louie as “an old-school Gullah dude.” He doesn’t have a shop, but if you track him down after he’s busted, you’re in business. “It comes straight out the creek, straight to your hand. ”.
These trips around Charleston to source fresh fare for Gullah-Geechee meals are rich and rooted in tradition—a fact that the city’s French Quarter Inn capitalized on a few years ago.
Due to the scarcity of Gullah-Geechee cuisine in the mainstream, the historic district boutique hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, decided to introduce an immersive culinary experience in 2018. Chef Dennis gave interested parties a tour of his kitchen and a lesson in both culture and cooking. (The tours have been on hold since March 2020. ).
“Although some restaurants do incorporate touches of Gullah cuisine and cooking techniques into their meals, we noticed there were no Gullah-specific restaurants,” says Carlo Carroccia, dual hotel manager of French Quarter Inn and the Spectator Hotel, explaining that the dishes often make up just a small section of a menu.
Dennis was gathering okra for his personal favorite Gullah dish, okra soup, and those who joined him for the hotel’s culinary adventure got to go along. The mixture of ingredients can change their form based on the season.
A Gullah-Geechee classic, Charleston red rice is made with bacon and tomato paste.
The excursion started with a 20-minute drive out of downtown Charleston, past the grand oak trees and Spanish moss of local postcard fame, to Joseph Fields Farm on John’s Island. From Fields, a Gullah farmer whose family has owned the land since the 1850s, guests gathered fresh okra, butter beans, corn, and tomatoes for the soup. Next, they went to a local heritage farm for sustainably made smoked pork neckbone and to the docks for fresh shrimp from a boat called Miss Lady.
After a private cooking class with Dennis at a local Charleston home, dinner was served. A perfect Gullah meal, historically speaking, would fall between two different phrases: “E time ta eat,” which is said when supper is served, and “Boi dat ting bussin,” which is said if the meal was particularly satisfying.
While more mom-and-pop than mainstream, some Gullah-run restaurants remain, with several handed down African-origin recipes on the menu. Hannibal’s Kitchen is known for its crab rice, while Bertha’s Kitchen is where Dennis finds his favorite red rice—a Charleston classic made with tomato paste and bacon.
Gullah-Geechee food is flavor without the frills. With just salt, pepper, and thyme, Dennis can create a flavor that is almost as complex and nuanced as the people who cultivated it. Gullah-Geechee Nation spokesperson Marquetta Goodwine, also known as Queen Quet, affirms that “proper seasoning and the right person stirring the pot” are the two most important aspects of the cuisine.
Goodwine isn’t blind to the fact that the food, despite being among the earliest to have shaped Charleston’s culinary identity, is now receiving the credit it deserves. “People don’t realize all the healing and empowering energy that is within the pots, but they want to taste our cuisine now that they see our strength,” she says. This has sustained our culture and ourselves, and it will do so in the future. ”.
Gullah Geechee Food Traditions
FAQ
What is Gullah style food?
Where is Gullah food from?
What is the staple of Gullah cooking?
What are 3 examples of Gullah culture?
What is Gullah food?
The dish was a mainstay for enslaved West African people of the Lowcountry. Brown’s version of the dish includes field peas, smoked meat, and plenty of flavorful alliums like onions, garlic, and scallions. You can’t talk about classic Gullah food without mentioning some of the sweet stuff!
Which foods contain guarana?
Guarana (Paullinia cupana) is a plant native to the Amazon. It is a common ingredient of energy drinks, also alcoholic drinks, and sodas. Some of them are Coke Mother, Crunk, Dark Dog, Demon and ED energy drink.
What makes a Gullah restaurant special?
Celebrated Gullah chef Benjamin Dennis is certain about two things: Culture is the defining characteristic of a cuisine, and the roots of Southern fare run deeper than chicken fried to a perfect crisp accompanied with mac’n’cheese. “Charleston would be nothing without the Gullah-Geechee culture—period,” Dennis says.
What is Gullah Geechee food?
If you’ve ever had shrimp and grits or Hoppin’ John, you’ve had Gullah Geechee food. Theirs is a grain-based cuisine, with rice playing a starring role — Gullah Geechee people brought rice farming and cultivation with them, having lived along the West African ‘rice coast’ from Senegal to Sierra Leone and beyond.