I've heard about this term in American movies, but I don't know exactly what it means..... - can someone enlighten me?

...and not just that, is there anyone here who wants to come to MY city, here in India, and maybe open a soul food Restaurant here??!! Like - NOT the corporate chains n all, - we *get* American food here, but that's like KFC and Pizza Hut and so on - NOT that!! ie. the REAL shit. I think there's room in the market for a restaurant like this,.... to give my city something that it's never experienced before!

If YOU don't want to, do you know anyone?

It depends on whether you are asking about real soulfood or rather what soulfood means to different people.

Real soulfood is a Southern thing and has its origins in the ingredients that were deemed "not good enough" for the plantation owners and slave owners, i.e. pigs feet and other less desired meats, or cheap stuff, and ingredients such as okra and black eyed peas. Interestingly, black eyed peas are also a staple food in many African and Middle Eastern countries and in mediterranean countries like Greece and Turkey.

Some of the typical soulfood dishes have similarities with Indian food, too, albeit much blander and less spicy (though compared to the general American cuisine, I´d say that soulfood is definitely spicier and hotter than most other American foods).

To some others , however, the term soulfood means something like a bigger , more savory version of comfort food....like hamburgers, greasy stuff, fries, heavy meals with gravy.

But the majority would agree with me that soulfood is what I described in my first post above.

Lots of greens, collard greens, corn, cornbread, biscuits (not to be confused with British biscuits..whole different thing), some hot sauce or gravy, fried chicken, ice tea or also known as sweet tea, pigs feet, chili, beans, sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie, mac and cheese, etc. etc. etc.

And Cajun and Creole influences, too.

[Edited 8/28/16 8:31am]

Grits, collard greens, corn bread..sweet potato pie, macaroni and cheese...traditional African American food usually from the south. During slavery Blacks either grew their own food or used what the master left behind and made it good. Delish!

if you look at the etymology (from an amurderkkkan outlook)

the food given to blackskinned people were the things that the

'other' folks wouldn't eat. HOWEVER instead of keepin the people

weak and sick it was almost the exact opposite...

the strength didn't come from the garbage they ate, but from

their inner spirit (i.e. soul)...

to increase they health they had t increase their spirit so,

everything they ate became food for the soul (spirit)...

SO!!!

souldfood is all the garbage that 'civil' people wouldn't eat back then

and consider it a delicacy now...

they consited of entrails, weeds, snouts, feet, butts, and bones...

that people are usin pics of chicken and real greens is only a modern

cleaned up version of what 'soul food' originated as...

KoolEaze said:

Lots of greens, collard greens, corn, cornbread, biscuits (not to be confused with British biscuits..whole different thing), some hot sauce or gravy, fried chicken, ice tea or also known as sweet tea, pigs feet, chili, beans, sweet potatoes, sweet potato pie, mac and cheese, etc. etc. etc.

And Cajun and Creole influences, too.

[Edited 8/28/16 8:31am]

Jesus
u just made me lust for this and I'm on a fitness thing

Some of it comes from African cooking. Eating the edibles from the animals most people don't eat. During slavery master used to throw the dregs from their tables, slaves later created a cuisine based on souther cooking. Oddly racists taught blacks how to eat. Eating that are killing blacks.

2freaky4church1 said:

Some of it comes from African cooking. Eating the edibles from the animals most people don't eat. During slavery master used to throw the dregs from their tables, slaves later created a cuisine based on souther cooking. Oddly racists taught blacks how to eat. Eating that are killing blacks.

actually if you look at southern cooking white and blacks 'eat' alike (not saying that as in all black and whites eat it) but Fried Chicken potato salad etc all that BIG eating is what is killing folks.
The foods in itself is not bad. Greens are very good for you, so are sweet potatoes and yams

It's in the portions and how much people eat.
At one time people who ate it were also walking a lot and working/physically moving etc so the bodies health too care of it. But when more and more people are driving sitting and not being physically active then the body doesn't handle the food properly

Basically, good down south homecooking food that is bad for you. Buttermilk fried chicken, homemade mustard potato salad with egg, candied yams with melted marshmellows, homemade cornbread with lots of butter, collard greens cooked with ham hocks, turkey necks, homemade biscuits from scratch, homemade macaroni and cheese...I could go on and on.

Great,...so who's opening the restaurant HERE?

Well, I don't know whether if this constitutes as "soul food" or not, but its southern cooking. My BF's mom made this for us when we visited her in Destin, FL. The first pic has I think meat loaf, chicken dumplings, greens, beans, biscuit, fried chicken I think & I don't know what else. The other pic is the famous peach cobbler with vanilla coconut ice cream which made me accidentaly moan loudly the minute I took the first bite

[img:$uid]http://i1351.photobucket.com/albums/p792/HMD82/food_zpsdtfhxr0c.jpg[/img:$uid]

[img:$uid]http://i1351.photobucket.com/albums/p792/HMD82/peach_zpsknqligmh.jpg[/img:$uid]

[Edited 8/29/16 6:26am]

Horsefeathers said:

What I grew up eating as a poor family in rural Appalachia was exactly the same as what is labeled as soul food anywhere else. I am perfectly at home in any soul food restaurant even if I am the only person in there who looks like me. Turns out a lot of people who look like me eat soul food, though. To my dad, any meat was good meat whether it came from entrails, pork brains, feet, tails, faces, squirrels, rabbits, or just about anything else. He grew up one of nine during the depression when they ate pinto beans and cornbread every night and never felt deprived. Any meat to him was a luxury, and we were rained on a farm kind of like that. We not only grew, hunted, and processed most of our own food, it's preparation and presentation was pretty much anything you'd find in any soul food restaurant. Black people seem so surprised at first. My husband (black) and his family and some friends: "you cook like a black woman!" No, I cook like someone who grew up poor.

Sometimes that where the best food comes from, because it came from the heart. I came from the country and while our scenarios are different - due to cultural factors - I can indetify. People look at me funny when I say we eat rabbits in the country. It was whats around and I loved it, I can't deny to appease folks anymore

Hamad, u Muslim?

squirrels, rabbits, or just about anything else.

Squirrels and rabbits??!!! You're HEARTLESS, that's what *you* are - you ate those cute little creatures??!! Those little mites that run up and down tree trunks near my house....?!!!

I think you mean "raised" btw....

Hamad said:

My BF's mom made this for us when we visited her in Destin, FL.

[Edited 8/29/16 6:26am]

...and you liked it so much that you actually took a picture of the food??!! Must have been good..... do you guys have restaurant review sites over there, like we have Zomato over here....? It's over there that I get to see pics like yours..... (well, not *soul* food, just... whatever people eat around *here*....)

domainator2010 said:

I had a book that had a lot of black folklore, and old school soul food recipes, one I remember had a recipe for possum, from beginning to finish, interesting read. Funny what things get passed along and what doesn't. My play auntie born and bred in Kansas, decided to educate us children one day, fixed chicken feet and "sweet bread" of course we had to taste it before she told us what it was.

That's just disgusting. I would have thrown up.

domainator2010 said:

That's just disgusting. I would have thrown up.

Yep trying to survive gets disgusting sometimes, and yet here we are. Thank goodness we can choose what to keep and what to throw away.

Escargot anyone?

domainator2010 said:

morningsong said:

morningsong said:

I had a book that had a lot of black folklore, and old school soul food recipes, one I remember had a recipe for possum, from beginning to finish, interesting read. Funny what things get passed along and what doesn't. My play auntie born and bred in Kansas, decided to educate us children one day, fixed chicken feet and "sweet bread" of course we had to taste it before she told us what it was.

A lot of those fixins are very common American food of poor folk(which was just about everyone)

I remember watching episodes of the Twilight Zone or Andy Griffith and there was talk of '..ccoon huntin' and eating possum

I've had raccoon before. once in the 70s

Hogshead cheese, chicken feet, never pig oysters, never could do pigs feet, ox tail, gizzards, no frogs legs, cannot eat any kind of shrimp crap lobster anymore, never squirrel, I think I had rabbit once, deer/venison,

OldFriends4Sale said:

morningsong said:

I had a book that had a lot of black folklore, and old school soul food recipes, one I remember had a recipe for possum, from beginning to finish, interesting read. Funny what things get passed along and what doesn't. My play auntie born and bred in Kansas, decided to educate us children one day, fixed chicken feet and "sweet bread" of course we had to taste it before she told us what it was.

A lot of those fixins are very common American food of poor folk(which was just about everyone)

I remember watching episodes of the Twilight Zone or Andy Griffith and there was talk of '..ccoon huntin' and eating possum

I've had raccoon before. once in the 70s

Hogshead cheese, chicken feet, never pig oysters, never could do pigs feet, ox tail, gizzards, no frogs legs, cannot eat any kind of shrimp crap lobster anymore, never squirrel, I think I had rabbit once, deer/venison,

I like shrimp, crab and lobster so much that I can´t even imagine overeating on them or never wanting to eat them again. You must have eaten tons of them.

How did you get them so cheap? Or are you older than 90 and remember the times when seafood was still poor people´s food?

OldFriends4Sale said:

morningsong said:

I had a book that had a lot of black folklore, and old school soul food recipes, one I remember had a recipe for possum, from beginning to finish, interesting read. Funny what things get passed along and what doesn't. My play auntie born and bred in Kansas, decided to educate us children one day, fixed chicken feet and "sweet bread" of course we had to taste it before she told us what it was.

A lot of those fixins are very common American food of poor folk(which was just about everyone)

I remember watching episodes of the Twilight Zone or Andy Griffith and there was talk of '..ccoon huntin' and eating possum

I've had raccoon before. once in the 70s

Hogshead cheese, chicken feet, never pig oysters, never could do pigs feet, ox tail, gizzards, no frogs legs, cannot eat any kind of shrimp crap lobster anymore, never squirrel, I think I had rabbit once, deer/venison,

The list is very long with things I haven't eaten, I can pretty much say mostly everything you've listed. Use to love hogshead cheese when I was a child, one couldn't pay me to eat it now. I've just eaten Alligator meat lousiana style, loved it. Eaten escargot, enjoyed it at the time. Nope can't stand lobster but I like crayfish, barely tolerate shrimp and will only eat alaskan king crab. Still will devour some chicken gizzards.

Horsefeathers said:

I STILL love me some ox tails and rice. Damn yuppies ruin everything. I remember when ox tails were basically scraps and cost virtually nothing. Then they became popular in trendy so-called soul food restaurants and more people started eating it, and now they're damn expensive. Same with chicken wings. GTFOH with all this fancy-pants wing appetizer stuff.

There is a local grocery that sells that stuff for cheap, the guy goes 'down south' a few times a year a brings back a lot of stuff people don't find up here.

But we have a popular grocery in NY state Wegmans and they carry ox tail for cheep / chicken gizzards too