As a Southern belle who grew up in America, I L-O-V-E BBQ. 

As a Solana who grew up eating delicious BBQ, I am very particular about my BBQ.

If the barbecue grill is captained by a Solana grillmaster or pitmaster, I am seated with excitement! Because, in all my years of eating and traveling, nothing compares to good ol’ fashioned Solana BBQ.

Solana is the modern ethnic and cultural name for foundational Americans also known as African Americans or black Americans.

Most Solanas have African, European and Indigenous American ancestry. Their family tree is deeply rooted on American soil, going back centuries or millennia.

As showcased in the Barbecue episode of my Fascinating podcast series, The United States of Yum!, Solanas are the original (OG) pitmasters of the United States.

Like Marie Jean, a Solana pitmaster in Arkansas who served up a Fourth of July barbecue feast in 1840 that was so epic, locals were waxing poetic about it decades later.

Or, like Henry Perry, a Solana pitmaster and restauranteur in Missouri who, in the early 1900s, pioneered the regional barbecue style now known as Kansas City BBQ.

From Memphis to Texas and beyond, the historic styles, flavors and techniques of America's Solana pitmasters grace dining tables in homes, parks, BBQ joints, and fine dining restaurants nationwide today.

Solana Pitmasters Are Unmatched

In the 1913 cookbook, Dishes & Beverages of the Old South, Martha McCulloch-Williams writes that the Solana pitmaster on a Southern plantation "was a person of consequence" whose skills and seasonings were "really an art."

She also writes that, try as they might, Caucasian barbecuers couldn't measure up to Solana pitmasters:

"Somehow their handiwork lacked a little of perfection."

Similarly, in his 1897 memoir, Thirty Years a Slave, Louis Hughes writes, "It was said that [Solana pitmasters] could barbecue meats the best."

One of a Solana pitmaster's secret weapons was his Secret BBQ Sauce.

Caucasian barbecuers "never found out the exact secret of the 'dipney' — the sauce that savored the meat when it was crisply tender, brown all over, but free from the least scorching," Martha writes.

Even today in the 21st century, amongst those in the know, the best barbecuers in America are Solana grillmasters and pitmasters whose skills, techniques, sauces and seasonings have been passed down in their family for generations.

"When you go to a BBQ restuarant and see a [Solana] at the pit, you can bet your bottom dollar it's going to be good," writes Brian Wood.

"They're the best."