Until a few decades ago, Miller said, a discussion of barbecue without Black chefs would have seemed just plain “weird.”Īttorney and food historian Adrian Miller at Boney's BBQ in his hometown of Denver, Colorado And after the Civil War, it became a coveted skill and a way for formerly enslaved people to earn a living, not just in the South but all over the country. In a conversational and voluminously researched tome spiked with recipes and profiles of Black chefs, Miller documents Southern barbecue from its beginnings in Virginia, where Native American pit cooking techniques were married to European preferences, and adapted according to the palates of its West African cooks.īarbecue spread with slavery across the South. Stretching back to Colonial times when enslaved Africans were most often in charge of the pits, Black barbecue cooks had been regarded as the most skilled practitioners of the art during most of America’s history, Miller said. This beautifully illustrated chronicle also features 22 barbecue recipes collected just for this book.Until recently, the oversight would likely have been inconceivable, said Miller, a Beard Award-winning writer of food history and author of a new book called “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.” Miller celebrates and restores the faces and stories of the men and women who have influenced this American cuisine. Though often pushed to the margins, African Americans have enriched a barbecue culture that has come to be embraced by all. It’s a smoke-filled story of Black perseverance, culinary innovation, and entrepreneurship. In Black Smoke, Miller chronicles how Black barbecuers, pitmasters, and restauranteurs helped develop this cornerstone of American foodways and how they are coming into their own today.

But why is it, asks Adrian Miller - admitted ‘cuehead and longtime certified barbecue judge - that in today’s barbecue culture African Americans don’t get much love? And people aren’t just eating it they’re also reading books and articles and watching TV shows about it. Prepared in one regional style or another, in the South and beyond, barbecue is one of the nation’s most distinctive culinary arts. WINNER–2022 Colorado Book Award for History!įINALIST–International Association of Culinary Professionals Book Award in Literary and Historical Food Writing.Ī Garden and Gun Magazine Best Book of 2021.Īcross America, the pure love and popularity of barbecue cookery has gone through the roof.

WINNER–2022 James Beard Award for Reference, History, and Scholarship! Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecuewill be published by the University of North Carolina Press in Spring 2021.

Black smoke adrian miller