Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue

Black Smoke chronicles a rich culinary contribution . . . [Miller] details the history of barbecue back to its Indigenous roots in pre-Columbian days, and recounts how it became part of the culture of enslaved Africans."-New York Times

A trailblazing new volume that catalogues the contributions of Black men and women to American barbecue . . . rigorous scholarship . . . Miller is creating a lexicon to ensure that these Black contributions to American culture can't be written out of history."-Washington Post

Fascinating . . . Sets the record straight on who actually created barbecue."-Daily Beast

Miller brings African Americans back to center of smoked-meat narrative."-Houston Chronicle

Adrian Miller marshals considerable evidence to show in Black Smoke, his thorough, scholarly, enjoyable study [revealing that] barbecue is deeply rooted in African-American history and culture. . . . Miller's book highlights the fundamental racial interconnectedness that lies at the heart of American life, and the American table."-The Economist

An engaging storyteller, Miller brings his subjects to vivid life, as in the chapter on Black barbecue entrepreneurship, which predates Emancipation, with enslaved men and women using their business proceeds to buy freedom. He explores what makes the Black barbecue aesthetic exceptional and the many complexities of etiquette. . . . [and] provides plenty of mouthwatering recipes by Black barbecue artists for sauce, meat and fish, and side dishes as well as profiles of unsung Black barbecue trailblazers across three centuries. . . . A highly entertaining, celebratory, and essential reader for history buffs and barbecue lovers alike."-Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews

Exuberant . . . studious but not stuffy . . . Miller never forgets that barbecue is, at its heart, about pleasure: about smoke, sizzle, and joy. Black Smoke is scholarship with a little sauce on its chin."-Garden & Gun

Miller shows how Indigenous forms of barbecue in the Americas were received and absorbed by white colonial settlers, and how, in the southern United States, Black Americans have been the keepers of the barbecue flame, throughout the eras of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration. Miller also seeks out and showcases generations of pitmasters who are still at work; he highlights individuals from different U.S. geographic areas and different traditions of barbecue. . . . A must for serious barbecue scholars and a solid choice for any food historian."-Starred Review, Library Journal

While other barbecue books share knowledge in the form of recipes and steps, or history as told from a white perspective, Miller gets us closer to seeing the full picture, and to acknowledging that the story is richer, and more delicious, with these shared stories."-Local Palate