The Importance Of Soul Food In African American Culture

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Soul food is a strong and powerful staple in the African American families. It is the basis of black culture, it’s what has brought so many families together through the good and the bad. When I consider soul food I think of macaroni and cheese, fried chicken and catfish, collard greens, cornbread, and sweet potato pie. But there are some foods I think shouldn’t be considered soul food such as chitterlings “chitterlingss”. As a kid my family use to cook chitterlings on major holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, or New Years. I can remember my dad sitting at the kitchen sink with his four or five bucket of chitterlings, always in a red bucket with white top, cleaning them and smoking a cigarette. It took hours to clean them, and once he was done, he only produced one and a half buckets of chitterling out of the four or five he purchased. With them clean now the cooking process starts. …show more content…

My dad put all of his cleaned chitterlings in a large pot, and put all of his seasoning in the pot and let it cook for three hours or until it becomes tender. As they cook, the smell is both sickening and overbearing and not pleasant. The scent travel throughout the house and just lingers, there’s no amount of air freshener’s that will make the scent go away. In my mind, I’m thinking, how can anyone eat something that smell so bad. With family pressuring for me to try them, I caved and got a fork and dove into a bowl of my dad’s