The Role of Rice in Southern Food | Anthony Bourdain's The Mind of a Chef | Full Episode

VIEWERS LIKE YOU MAKE THIS PROGRAM POSSIBLE. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PBS STATION. In this episode, Chef Sean Brock explores an essential ingredient of Southern cuisine, rice. Specifically, Carolina Gold Rice. I wouldn't dare make this with anything but. He makes the low country classic dish, Hoppin' John. I could eat this every single day. Showcases his version of Charleston ice cream. This dish is quickly becoming the most popular dish at the Crayton's restaurant in Charleston. Cooks Perleux with Glenn Roberts. God, that's great. And makes Korean barbecue with Chef Ed Lee. You know what I noticed? You like to squeeze all your food. Like really squeeze it hard. God, I love cooking food. It's the coolest thing. Man, that's good. Rice, to me, is certainly the most important crop throughout the world. I mean, not only does it bring so many people together, but I believe it's one of those crops that, if you've seen the process of planting it and getting it all the way through its life cycle onto the plate, you understand the work that goes into one kernel. You value every little grain of rice. It's something that you respect probably more than any other plant, I think. Anson Mills is a company that provides these lost grains, these lost varieties of rice. Without Anson Mills, there would be no husk. It wouldn't exist. The mission is to have local rice everywhere, but starting in the South. You know, forget yield, forget money, forget finance, and just go for the best flavor. It's got to taste great coming out of the field, or nobody gives a crap. Well, Glenn Roberts, he's dedicated himself to becoming somewhat of like the Indiana Jones of Southern food, so that we can all sit down and taste Southern food the way it's supposed to taste, the way it used to taste. I think you kind of think music when you're thinking these crops. Composition of flavor and fragrance. Glenn and rice are the most important thing that's happened to Southern food in the last 30 years, hands down. We're going to make a dish called shrimp and oyster perlo, the basis of the dish being something that we're both obsessed with, Carolina gold rice. That's right. So I just added a little bit of simple smoked sausage and some aged country ham. I've had this ham hanging in my garage for like four years. The older a ham gets, the more character it gets. A little bit of garlic. That's very cool. A little bell pepper, red and green. The idea behind perlo is taking all the ingredients, making them support ingredients, not the main event, and developing the texture with those ingredients for rice. I've been cooking since I was 17 years old, and I don't get nervous cooking for many people. But I get nervous cooking for you, Glenn. Oh, stop it. And this smells wonderful. So I think at this point we'll add the rice, the coveted Carolina gold, just a little really, really light chicken stock. And then I'm also going to add the oyster liquor. We have some really fantastic briny oysters in Charleston. I'm going to add the tomato now, too. One thing that I've been thinking a lot about recently was just the idea and the beauty of a culture built around rice, a rice culture. And Charleston was a rice culture. But then, what do you say, from 1930 to 2000, no one was really growing commercial rice. It wasn't part of the culture anymore. What if that never happened, you know? Would we be sitting around drinking rice wine? We would. We would be such a reflection of Asian culture. And that springs to the cheesy phrase, or the wonderful phrase, depending on who's saying it, Charlestonians are like Asians. They worship their ancestors and eat rice. So the dish has been cooking for about 15 minutes, and the rice is almost there, very, very close. That's when I like to just kind of lay the shrimp in. I like the technique of adding the shrimp on top and not stirring it through, because you don't want to break up that rice. And just a little bit of spice. Cayenne and just some dried chilies. Let that rice finish, and the shrimp just slowly, slowly come up. If you do this properly with a cast iron pan that holds in that heat, you'll get that very thin layer of the crunchy rice. It's starting right now. Yeah, you can hear it. When you're doing this, it's important to use your ears. You know, cooking's about using all your senses. I can tell the water has cooked away, and now the rice is starting to get crunchy on the bottom. That's sounding pretty good. Shrimp are pretty much there, and that's when we add in the oysters. This season with some lemon juice. And a touch of this hot sauce that we make for acid and a touch of heat. And then the fresh chopped parsley. Mmm, that smells fabulous. That looks phenomenal. And then I'm going to put the crunchy stuff on top. As you can see, that's the good stuff there. Just going to scrape that. Get that nice carbonized sort of flavor. That's beautiful. And this goes on top. And just some nice fresh green onion. I love the way that brightens it up. That's it. Fabulous. It's not half bad for an Appalachian hillbilly boy. That's pretty good for a mountain cook. Cheers. God, that's great. That's good. This is the flavor of the South here. A brief history of rice in the Lowcountry. 1685, rice arrives in the South Carolina Lowcountry. From where, we're not 100% sure, but all evidence points to West Africa. The geography of the Lowcountry makes it perfect for rice crops to flourish. Venetians, with their knowledge of irrigation, are the first to grow the rice in the colonies. And Native Americans worked the land. Eventually, slaves brought from West Africa take over working the fields. And with that, rice not only becomes the central component of the economy of South Carolina, it also becomes the central ingredient in its cuisine, known as the Carolina Rice Kitchen. The rice of choice was Carolina Gold, coveted worldwide for its superior flavor and texture. Fast forward to 1861. The Civil War breaks out and so begins the end of rice in the South. 1865, the war ends. Slavery is abolished. Nobody's working rice fields for free. Rice's decline continues. 1927, the last commercial crop of Carolina Gold Rice is harvested. 1930, the Great Depression sets in, and America's food supply begins to diminish. And crops like Carolina Gold Rice are abandoned and forgotten. 1943, Uncle Ben's Rice is introduced to the world and becomes the top-selling rice in the country from 1950 until 1990. 1998, Anson Mills is created by Glenn Roberts with the sole purpose of reintroducing the world to Carolina Gold Rice and the other lost crops of the South. 2004, Glenn forms the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation to promote research focused on heirloom grains. 2013, Chef Sean Brock can cook classic, low-country dishes with the rice they were meant to be served with. Carolina Gold. This dish is quickly becoming the most popular dish at McCrady's restaurant in Charleston. And what's ironic about that is it's simply a bowl of rice. Carolina Gold Rice. This rice came into Charleston in 1685 and quickly became one of the most important crops that the low country has ever seen. A lot of people say that rice is responsible for the wealth of Charleston. And this rice is actually very, very special. It's aged for three years in barrels with wild bay plants. And these bay plants grow all over Charleston. It's part of the palate of the low country. And so this technique that's called Charleston Ice Cream is actually a very unique way to cook this rice. It's almost like cooking pasta in a way. You parboil it. So I bring the water up to a boil, dump the bay in to reinforce the bay flavor. I use a 7 to 1 ratio of water to rice for this. And you just leave it there for about 15 minutes. When we serve this dish in the restaurant, the cooks know that when it comes to the pass for me to taste, that it has to be perfect. I would say 90% of the time, they're trembling like this to hand me the spoon. Because if they overcook the rice, I go outside, make them call Glenn Roberts, explain to them what they just did. You call Glenn Roberts right now and tell him that you just screwed up his life's work. I'm just kidding. You should have seen the look on your face. I should do that, though. So it's time to drain this. It's perfectly cooked. Now it's important to spread this into a very even layer, as thin as you can possibly make it. If you bunch this up, that's going to stay very, very hot and hold heat and overcook the rice. I like to put new bay sliding in underneath, and then some really good butter. Just gives you a little bit of that luxury that the rice deserves. So this is going to go into the oven at 200 degrees. This rice taught me an incredible lesson. If it's perfect in the field, it'll be perfect in the plate. And that takes a long time to learn as a cook. And cooks, chefs, we live for moments like that. You can't force those moments. They just happen. And mine happened over a bowl of rice. Damn, I just got deep on some rice. So the rice is just soaking up the butter. What I like about the Charleston ice cream method, after the rice is cooked, it remains in single grains. And the reason I think that's important is because we've gone through all this trouble to find this rice, to grow it, to hull it, with skill and amazing technology, to get it whole grain. And I think this cooking technique really showcases that. I mean, look at how beautiful that is. Single grain, pearly white, perfect little grains of rice. That's all you need for happiness right there. That's why they call it Charleston ice cream, the way it mounds up like that. And then we add lots of herbs and flowers and sprouts and leaves, so that each bite, you get something different. So to finish it, we add this, which is beni. Beni came into the Lowcountry in 1800 from West Africa. And this dish provides fantastic texture and some really pleasant bitterness to cut through the sweetness and the butter of the rice. So I think why people really love this dish is because we love telling stories in the South, and we love dishes that tell stories. And I think the best stories about food are ones that tell a story of a particular person or a time or a place, and this dish has all three. It's the story of rice, it's Journey in Charleston, and the person, Glenn Roberts, that was crazy enough to quit everything that he was doing and grow this plant. To me, that's why it's such a beautiful dish. Hoppin' John is a very, very simple dish. It's rice and peas. You know, if you think about it, every culture has rice and peas, rice and beans, something like this. This one is very, very special because these ingredients tell a very cool story. In 1998, when I moved to Charleston, South Carolina to go to culinary school, I go to a restaurant, I order Hoppin' John, and the dish is terrible. The rice tasted like cardboard, the peas tasted like mud, but it wasn't the chef's fault. At the time, in 1998, no one was growing Carolina Gold rice. That's why that dish tasted terrible. It was made with inferior rice and beans, so it's an amazing story about why we should preserve and save heirloom ingredients. So first we'll cook the peas, and these are a very special cowpea from West Africa. Something that's very, very important is to soak them overnight so that they soften and it's easier for them to cook. I like to start with a little bit of butter and then your classic mirepoix. A little bit of jalapeno and garlic. And once this is just, like, softened a little bit, throw in the peas. Toss that around. And then some kind of light pork broth or chicken stock. So this is gonna come to a simmer and then sit there for about an hour, very low heat, covered, and I always store them in the liquor. The liquid in there we call pot liquor, and that's, like, that's the good stuff. It's because it's really that liquid that's in there that picks up the flavor of whatever's in the pot. Rice time. So now the rice has slowly cooked in the oven. And then our peas, which are beautifully braised and soft. Then a little drizzle of the red pea gravy, which is just a puree of that pot liquor and the peas. And then we usually garnish it with whatever's fresh and vibrant and delicious. Right now, around here, there's a lot of beautiful wild woodruff that has this great tropical celery sort of flavor. And that's it, low-country happenja. And it's ironic that I went from tasting this dish, thinking it was terrible, to it becoming my favorite dish to eat in the low country. I could eat this every single day. And these ingredients are just amazing. I'm here with Ed Lee of Louisville, Kentucky, and today we're going to make barbecue. Korean barbecue. Yes, this is kind of how I ate as a kid growing up. This is a pretty traditional Korean table. You know, it's a starch, it's a barbecue, and it's a bunch of pickles. I know you use these guys, too. This is Anson Mills Rice Grits. You know, in Asia, there's a huge tradition of broken rice. This is the exact same product. It's cheap bits of rice that was left over after the milling process that they would sell to peasants because it wasn't perfect. In the low country, this was slave food. This was the unsellable, unusable byproduct of rice production that was frowned upon. Which is funny because now we've come full circle where people are actually wanting this more than the whole pretty stuff. What happens is, when it's broken like that, you can see on my hand, immediately, the starch takes over, which, when you cook it, makes it nice and starchy. I just made this just the way I'd make, you know, sushi rice, basically. And it's a great, it's delicious. Oh, so aromatic. Yeah, you can see, because it's broken. Oh, it's perfect. This is the cheapest cut of pork. Sliced real thin. It's already got a little bit of marinade in it. I'm gonna throw Korean chili, fermented chili paste. We just throw, like, a dollop of that in there. So this actually has rice in it. Yep, and it's also got a fermented soy in it as well. And just a little bit of a barbecue sauce that we make in our restaurant. I'm gonna just throw this on the grill for a few seconds. Oh, man, that's hot. That looks great. That's gonna taste so good, man. What's the temperature right here? 700. So this is it. I'm gonna serve you like a good Korean boy and make you a rice bowl. I like it, too. I love cooking the rice in the Dutch oven. You get a little bit of that crisp on the bottom. Take a little bit of the pork, dump it over the rice. All this nice little grease on the bottom. And then, really, it's up to you. Like, sort of grab your own pickle, kind of make your own plate of stuff. So what do we have? We have... These are blood sausage. It's basically budae, except you're using starch noodles instead of rice. Man, that's awesome. Look at that. You know what I noticed? You like to squeeze all your food. Why do I do that? Like, really squeeze it hard. So these are crazy, because I grew up eating this stuff all the time. It's basically boiled peanuts, but it's a Korean version. And I always say it's funny. Like, people always think of kimchi, and they think of, like, cabbage kimchi. This is all kimchi. And really, to me, kimchi is just, it's the same word as pickle. Like, you can't pickle anything. You can kimchi anything. That looks awesome. Beautiful. My mother would be very proud. That's good, huh? Korean food, to me, is so comforting. It's just like eating Southern food. I feel like there's a Southern mentality in cuisine, and there's, like, a Korean mentality in cuisine, and there are places along that line where they intersect. And where they do, if you can sort of identify it and create cuisines around it, it's really fascinating. And that's your cuisine. That's why it's so damn good. You know what you ought to do after this? You eat this, go get a foot massage and karaoke, and call it a night. The Carolina Rice Kitchen is what I believe to be the first true American Creole cuisine. It's essentially two things. It's a collection of ingredients that were essential to healthy soil via crop rotations, and it's the cultural influences of the people that were part of working those fields, bringing the rice in, and teaching agricultural practices. The Venetian rice farmers and the Native Americans working the field, and obviously, in my opinion, the biggest influence, West Africa. You take those things, and you watch those ingredients travel from those parts of the world into the low country and their voyage into the kitchen of the rice plantation, onto the table, into the big house, and that's the Carolina Rice Kitchen. And it's certainly my biggest inspiration right now because we're right in the middle of restoring this cuisine. We're right in the middle of rebuilding this rice kitchen that is so incredibly delicious, and it's one of the most exciting times to be cooking in the South.