Did you know that we can thank early and later American Black food professionals for the uniquely American style of artfully smoked and salted bacon?! Conspicuously absent from the narrative of America’s favorite pork product is the broad skillsets of enslaved and previously enslaved butchers, cooks and artisan smokers who knew how to season and cure pork proteins to perfection. Food prep work that took a minimum of a week encompassing tasks including but not limited to: butchering, salting/curing and preserving select cuts in order to create great bacon and hams …” Although it’s hard for us to comprehend it’s important to understand that in spite of all that edible artistry, the enslaved laborers were not allowed to enjoy any of it for themselves or provide it to their families because delicacies like that were only intended for the enslavers — that elite white owning class they toiled for — without compensation — yet for them generated such flavor-filled amazingness….

I know you know there’s a whole lot more to this story BUT for that and then some you’ll have to at least follow (and ideally join a reasonably priced tier on! ;) my Patreon to get more slices of this and so many other stories where I write back into the narrative the original food artisans of these Americas who quite honestly should’ve never been left outta the picture in the first place….