Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue

Miller’s third book and his second James Beard Award winner. Black Smoke asks a simple question: if African Americans were the original pitmasters of the South, why are they so underrepresented in today’s barbecue culture? The answer takes Miller from pre-Columbian Indigenous cooking techniques through the era of slavery, where enslaved Black cooks perfected the methods that became American barbecue, to the modern competition circuit and restaurant scene.

Why Read This

If Soul Food gives you the foundation of African American culinary history, Black Smoke narrows the focus to one of its most iconic traditions. Miller profiles forgotten pitmasters, documents the rise and fall of Black-owned barbecue restaurants, and examines how barbecue became a site of both racial pride and racial exclusion. The book includes 22 recipes collected specifically for this project.

This is the natural second read after Soul Food. It is more focused and more contemporary, spending significant time on the modern barbecue renaissance and the entrepreneurs working to reclaim their place in it.

What to Expect

A 328-page hardcover with photographs and recipes. The tone is similar to Soul Food: accessible, well-researched, and personal. Miller draws on interviews, archival research, and his own experience as a certified Kansas City Barbecue Society judge. The book won the 2022 James Beard Award for Reference, History, and Scholarship and the 2022 Colorado Book Award for History.