{"id":46817,"date":"2019-03-27T16:21:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T23:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soulofamerica.com\/?page_id=46817"},"modified":"2020-11-07T19:11:49","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T03:11:49","slug":"low-country-cuisine","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.soulofamerica.com\/us-cities\/charleston\/low-country-cuisine\/","title":{"rendered":"Low Country Cuisine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Low Country Cuisine favored by Charleston restaurants<\/strong>; credit SCPRT<\/p><\/div>\n

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Low Country Cuisine<\/h2>\n
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Food is a major part of a culture\u2019s heritage. It is a way of bringing families together and carrying on traditions. West African influences on African American cooking have not only survived the slave trade they\u2019ve influenced American cooking as a whole. That\u2019s especially true with the regional Low Country Cuisine so popular in Charleston. The food is a mixture of African, Caribbean, European, and Native American influences. These days it\u2019s served in five-star restaurants all over South Carolina. But many patrons of the cuisine don\u2019t know the African history behind it.<\/p>\n

When West Africans first came to this country, some of the food items they brought with them included: okra, beef jerky, collard greens, yams, peanuts, rice, black-eyed peas, watermelon, and cornmeal. In fact, \u201cgumbo\u201d is an African word for okra, and \u201cgoober\u201d is an African word for peanut.<\/p>\n

African slaves mixed the foods they brought over with what was available to them in the low country. Their meals were rice-based \u2013 another main food item brought with them from Africa. Thousands of slaves were brought from Africa because of their expertise in rice cultivation. Rice was THE agricultural export of South Carolina during slavery, making it the richest state in the Union behind Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

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