Don't experiment.
Keep it, like, the same. Keep it simple.
The way we all been doing it for generations, generations,
and our ancestors, like --
Kunta Kinte don't want breadcrumbs
on top of his macaroni & cheese.
Hey guys, I'm Stasia,
supervising producer here at Thrillist.
Food and culture go hand in hand.
And here at Thrillist,
we strive to celebrate every culture.
So, for Black History Month,
we're sitting down with our Thrillist family
to discuss some of our most memorable dishes
and family traditions.
Hey everybody, I'm Vanessa Péan.
Meaghan. Chanel.
Khalid. Matt Winter.
Hi, my name is Mack.
Black History Month is family.
It's love.
Black excellence and individuals
who have dedicated their lives and made differences.
Celebrating the whole African diaspora
and bringing it back into one place
where we could all just celebrate each other.
That's what Black History Month means to me.
The most profound moments that I could remember
in my life have been over food.
It's something about food that just like...
It brings families together.
All your cousins, all your distant friends.
Really having like that family feel,
which is, in conjunction with good food,
it's just like the most amazing thing ever.
One dish that I really enjoy
that my grandma makes is banana pudding.
My grandmother's collard greens.
Really, really good oxtail.
Sweet potato pie.
Fried pork, fried goat, black rice.
You won't taste her cooking anywhere else.
Like, no one can do it like her.
My mom had made fried chicken the night before,
and at first, me and my sisters were not
into the idea of cold fried chicken.
But it was the most singular food moment
that I can remember.
I just, I don't know where life would be
without cold fried chicken.
In my family, people joke a lot,
and I feel like that dish is the soothing dessert.
After you get, like, cracked though,
you might want grandma's pudding to ease your pain.
Shannon.
Sister, you know that you're not allowed
to bring the macaroni & cheese.
My family, as I mentioned, is Jamaican,
which means that they are very loud,
very excited about everything.
So, any family gathering usually means
a lot of people talking over each other,
probably disagreeing on something.
So, some of the traditions for the holidays,
me and my mother always cooking.
My other sisters coming in, trying to smell,
trying to put in their opinions on
how much of this, how much of that,
even though they can't cook.
Who makes the best, you know, oxtail?
Who makes the best curry chicken?
So there's always fighting,
up until the moment that all the food is coming out
and then everyone's quiet.
Like, real quiet.
Haitians got their independence from slavery
in 1804, January 1.
New Year's Day, one of the things
that you must, must, must eat
is a thing called soup joumou,
kinda like a jambalaya kind of dish.
So as soon as you wake up in the morning,
your mom's been up since like 6am
making this soup.
Then, your aunts, your cousins, everybody comes over,
and it's kinda like a traditional dish.
In the Guyanese culture, the biggest thing is
for Christmas.
We have this thing called pepperpot.
It's taking a cassava, burning it,
and it makes like a black syrup.
And it's called cassareep.
And we make that with a whole bunch of meat together
in one big pot.
Sunday dinner was absolutely mandatory.
And it's the kind of food
that we would like to think is probably
what our ancestors were eating back in slavery.
Fried chicken, macaroni & cheese --
it's like really, really simple, good food.
I don't cook.
The foods and traditions that I'll pass down
from my family would definitely be the pepperpot
for every Christmas morning.
I can't see Christmas without it.
Roti and curry every so often,
because roti and curry's life.
Dishes that I wanna carry on are
definitely the sweet potato pie.
My favorite thing to cook is probably curry chicken,
and different cultures have their own takes on it.
But I think the way that I make it,
which obviously is influenced by my mother and my family,
it has a special kick on it,
and there's a few different spices that we use
that I feel like really comes through.
And I'm always proud when I make it.
One of the things that I really, really have to learn
is how to make black rice.
That's kind of like our rice pilaf.
You throw some bacon in there,
you throw some sausage in there,
you throw some chicken in there,
and sometimes you throw shrimp.
My momma likes to have four kind of meats,
so you put all that in there and then you serve it.
One dish that I would like to learn
from my grandmother would be...
stewed okra.
She makes it in a way that I haven't had anywhere else.
I am... I am...
I am Black History Month.
Real quick before we eat too much,
I wanna make sure I get...
I get the...
[Stasia] Come on, Meaghan. Come on.
I didn't eat breakfast!