From Hoppin’ John and chicken bog to benne wafers and Carolina barbecue, these recipes bring the flavors of Charleston and the Lowcountry home.
To understand the cooking of South Carolina, Charleston, and the Lowcountry (the coast and Sea Islands region), start with rice. The grain helped build the state’s wealth and formed the base for what would become one of the most storied cuisines in the United States, producing dishes like Hoppin’ John, chicken bog, red rice, and purloo. The rise of rice in the Carolinas had a profound effect on the nation’s history too. As Charleston chef and writer Amethyst Ganaway puts it, “There would be no America without rice.”
But the prosperity that rice brought depended on the agricultural expertise and brutal exploitation of enslaved Africans brought to the region. Many came from rice-growing regions of West Africa, bringing knowledge of rice cultivation as well as ingredients such as benne (sesame), okra, field peas, and peanuts. These foodways would profoundly shape the cooking of the Lowcountry and beyond, and are central to Gullah Geechee cuisine, “a culture steeped deeply in its West Africanisms that survived long after the transatlantic slave trade,” writes Ganaway.
Then there’s the water. Long before Charleston became a colonial port, Indigenous communities harvested oysters and other seafood from the Lowcountry’s salt marshes and waterways. Those waters continue to supply shrimp, crab, fish, oysters, and other seafood that have shaped generations of South Carolina cooking. Charleston in particular sits where South Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic fisheries meet. “We’re basically getting double the fun, double the species,” explains James London, executive chef and owner of Chubby Fish. Here, that connection to the water appears in creamy shrimp salad, smoky shrimp purloo, flounder piccata, seafood gravy over rice grits, and simple shrimp and rice…