Food of the Enslaved: Barbecue, featuring Michael Twitty

hi I'm John Townsend I'm here today at Dustin Hall again i've got michael 20 with me as a special guest today we're talking about the evolution of barbecue sauces in early america thanks for joining us today on 18th century cooking [Music] so barbecue sauces tell me a little bit about the history of barbecue at least in this setting and and what we got here so barbecue is not just people roasting meat on a fire barbecue was a very specific american atlantic world you know creation it's what happens when african and native americans particular cooking styles you know grilling something over a wooden framework for a period of hours or we're hold about for a period of hours it's particularly you know the root of barbecue today what we're going to do is going to take a portion of beef rib normally this would be done a whole animal we know right ohhohh the whole sheep whole cow whatever whole pig right now outside in a hole over a framework of sticks and and it's a celebratory kind of thing it's not that every day should make something that you would have during the warmer parts of the year or even Christmastime and for the enslaved community in particular should be a wonder where opportunity they could actually have fresh meat from a domesticated animal that would be you know in mass quantities so that would be something that we very unique to the southern social Ettore repertoire this one you've already pre-prepared right we've already have some preparing so there's a little bit a little bit of cloves stuck into the fat of the fat portion of the meat which is you know it's very deep and also scored the section of beef ribs and put a little bit of garlic inside and suppose because you may be like well what's all that about you know in the 18th and next centuries they were still working from the sort of medieval always like spicing repertoire much more elaborate than what you see come the early 20th century where the rice books were written people we're a limited means who might have just been learning how to cook learning how to read learn how to read English surrealist ripped off script all that very simple sort of like basics but in this time period when you're reading Mary random other people to talking about barbecue that involves wine and mushroom sauce and there's hot peppers those two people in different areas did barbecue according to their own particular tastes and what they have access to so what we're going to do is first put a little bit of mustard down this rub it all over and what's going to do is as the fat renders and as the juices come battle all kind of merge together and if this looks familiar you know hope to it from certain parts of Carroll house with mustards used a very German thing in the South we give it the use of mustard whereas the hot pepper is very African and Caribbean and so because we don't have any mushrooms catsup we'll use the equivalent which is Worcester our modern equivalent then we'll take a little bit of salt this kitchen pepper everybody has their own kitchen Temple your man's in a hurry or whatever and just use one part each of allspice ginger cloves black pepper white pepper nutmeg and something else the secret ingredient ingredient okay from the perspective of West Africans and Western Europeans they're both taking advantage of these spices so they operate on this to the bicultural level so you have both elements being sort of being honored in this dish and of course we have the world favorite red pepper [Music] what we're going to do is we're going to pull some holes out we're going to put them into the gridiron the missional let it cook however long it takes and the world and that meanwhile we'll work on the saucer so our meats have been on the on the gridiron here for a while it's time for the sauces right what are we going to make so there's two sauces that I wanted to share with the audience and one is a sauce free presume is from about 1770 1780 in Virginia and it's composed of butter vinegar sage and red pepper now that one comes from a reference from the late eighteen hundreds of talks about a Virginia barbecue one hundred years ago talking 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 through it's midnight sensory descriptions so the simple one we're going to do is take some butter and a little bit of sage into it and then when it melts down we're going to add vinegar we're going to have to salt the red pepper in the black pepper and we let that cook and that's it okay the second one we're going to take onion garlic saute them and then add the rest with spices the vinegar and any of the ingredients a man named Wesley Jones interviewed by the works Public Administration so when he was a child through tinea that he was learning this craft colleague miss Potter he became a barbecue pitmaster and this was frequent in slave men were for the most part the center of the barbecue cooking trade he doesn't really give you a recipe he says this is what I did and it's up to the cook to figure out what proportion how much I don't think it's really I think it's always to taste which talks about adding a little bit of salt to it talks about adding herbs like basil and sage to it talks about pepper and I'm going to tell you that you know for me I like to always interpolate a little bit so always that a little bit of kitchen prep sketching pepper to lug we're also going to add in a little bit of red pepper if you'll hand me that coriander nothing that's the most surprising ingredient in this whole mixture so all these things that people working with we're sort of parallel ingredients to what they weren't ain't familiar with so you know it's interesting to look work through the food and sort of thinking about the thought process of these cooks which are exhausting their homeland but are also trying to activate themselves to the new world and also express their cultural identity how do they bring some of those same flavours leave that might not have exactly the same agree exactly so now we're going to add some apple cider vinegar which is the heart of this particular mop so when he says Maki needs to put it mopping it over the top of that exactly because the meter screen cooked for several hours low and slow you don't want to get dry and you don't want it to sort of like lose its character a little bit of molasses that's pretty common vinegar molasses become the main condiments of the inflated community and among others all of that comes together for me putting these clothes on and teaching people about our time in our past when most people African descent were enslaved is extremely important but it's also it also carries with it its own unique burdens on top of what it means to be historic interpreter and educator so how does this work how does someone who is african-american the 21st century bring the past to life and it's not just we of course don't consider just to be black history it's American history so on the one level it's part of our own unique path and the other level is part of our national story now we need two sauces okay I'm going to warn you yeah the vinegar is pretty heavy hmm so it's going to be very it's going to be one of those top men yesterday it's going to put some pep in your step start with 1780s start with 1780 so this is the simple vinegar sauce I was amazing that is really good oh yeah it takes a little bit there's a little bit there new things are happening mm-hmm yeah as you love as you taste it it's like more flavors keep coming through more flavors and more pepper it's a more pepper it's going through really really good so now this will try this over not yet okay what happens 50 years later lot of years later this is what you're going to get it's got some very very good flavors right up front instead of this one which takes a long time to get there wait an amazing contrast between the those two flavors this one's very kind of separated just a couple notes that one's much more complex much more deep I'm even wondering about what happens when they're used as a mop instead I mean these you just made right there right and what happens when you know they're mixing with that meat the whole time and exactly that's a different experience the vinegar died down whether flavors come forward and the onion and garlic also I think which we don't think of garlic as being a American or even southern flavoring but it was definitely thinner yeah it was there and it was important um I think that helps make it it makes it more familiar to us is we're so much more used to it yeah in our day that people were 50 years ago even tremendous wonderful I want to thank you so much for bringing them to these things to us you know experimenting with these flavors understanding them bringing the history of them out it is so important and it's like we can go back and share in some of that history we can share in that that collision of those cultures that are coming together in dishes like this amazing thank you so much of that and I want to thank everyone out there for coming along savoring the flavors in the aromas of the 18th century I want to thank everyone there at Gunston Hall for their wonderful help of this series if you're interested in Gunston Hall make sure to check out their website [Music]

Channel: Townsends

Views: 2,180,087

Keywords: townsend, townsends, 18th century cooking, colonial cooking, historical cooking, colonial foods, 18th century, Jon Townsend, simple cooking, Barbeque, bbq, slave food, enslaved, cultural food, gunston hall, george mason, micheal twitty, cooking gene, #townsendsbarbecue, barbecue, 18 century cooking, michael twitty, slave cooking, history of bbq, townsend bbq

Id: GwkRWIwZ43A

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/lotusbloom74]

His guest was really knowledgeable and informative, I like when he brings in some other experts. Now I want barbecue!

[u/zoupishness7]

Kinda a shame that they skipped the mushroom ketchup when the host has presented a recipe for it before. I've made it before, it's really tasty.

[u/shut_up_and_smile]

The white guy's voice and appearance reminds me of an actor that I just can't put my finger on. It's driving me crazy trying to think of what shows/movie he was in.

Anybody have any guesses?

Edit: It was Fred Willard! Thanks to the commenter below for helping me out.

[u/Thompson_S_Sweetback]

I love that guy. He can never fully contain his joy.

[u/goal2004]

Were they filming inside a freezer?