For many cultures around the world, salt pork is a beloved ingredient that adds a unique savory flavor to many indigenous dishes. And in Louisiana, it’s a favorite in everything from red beans and black eye peas to cassoulet. But what exactly is salt pork? And what does it bring to the table?

What is Salt Pork?

Salt pork refers to heavily salted slabs of pork belly, pork shoulder, or other fatty cuts. The meat is rubbed with salt or submerged in a salt brine, which preserves the meat and infuses it with concentrated flavor.

The History of Salt Pork

The use of salt pork traces back to Europe in the Middle Ages, when salting and curing meats was an essential preservation technique. The practice spread around the globe as Europeans explored and colonized other continents. In the Caribbean, West Africa, and the United States, salt pork became a culinary tradition in New England dishes like Boston baked beans and clam chowder, and in the South, in staple dishes like beans, peas, and greens.

How to Use Salt Pork

Imparting flavor and fat into bean and blackeye pea dishes, salt pork adds body and a silky texture to stewed and slow-simmering favorites, thickening and enriching the cooking liquid. Traditional southern dishes like BBQ Beans and Field Peas with Snap Beans feature salt pork for its signature flavor.

The Difference Between Salt Pork and Bacon

Salt pork and bacon are both made from pork belly, salted to cure the meat, and available in slabs or sliced. But unlike bacon, salt pork is not smoked and contains substantially more fat. It also costs less! And since it has more fat, the collagen that’s released from salt pork during cooking melts into beans and other slowly simmered dishes, giving them amazing richness and texture. Salt pork can be used as one large piece, cut into cubes, or diced, depending on the recipe.

The Difference Between Salt Pork and Pickled Pork

Another common question is, what’s the difference between salt pork and pickled pork? While both salt pork and pickled pork are favorites in slow-cooked dishes like beans, pickled pork is cured with salt and then brined in vinegar, spices, and seasonings, providing a tangy flavor in addition to the saltiness. Salt pork is cured with just salt, and no other seasonings are involved.

Here’s what home cooks say when asked about the secret to their red beans:

“Sometimes cook with pickle and salt pork, or mild smoke sausage, also some people use bacon.”- Roxanne F.

“Salt pork!”- Wade L.

“I use the trinity, salt pork, smoked or regular turkey necks, Tony’s, and that’s about all. I will try the crab boil.”- Saja M.

“I’ve been cooking Camellia red beans for 55 years. I use onion, garlic, bacon fat and salt pork. If I can’t get salt pork, I use pickle meat. I taste the beans before I add salt.”- Eunette B.

Red Beans & Rice is an iconic New Orleans dish that’s talked about, debated, cooked, and beloved across the southern United States. And just like other traditional rice and bean dishes that prevail throughout North and South America, it inspires tremendous local pride and is a key component of our cultural identity.

Red Kidneys: From Ancient Mexico to the Caribbean and Beyond

In ancient Mexico, the Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Teotihuacan peoples, and eventually the Aztecs, grew kidney beans. The beans were originally grown alongside corn and squash; beans were trained to climb the stalks of corn. The agricultural trifecta provided much-needed nitrogen to replenish the soil and a well-rounded diet to its eaters. The three moved together upward into the Caribbean and throughout the North American mainland.

On November 4, 1492 Christopher Columbus “discovered” the kidney bean on the island of Cuba, writing in his diary, “The country is very fertile . . . They have beans of kinds very different from ours.” He called these American beans fabas, because they reminded him of favas of Western Europe, and the Latin name stuck: phaseolus. The American beans were taken back to Europe and adopted into local foodways centuries before tomatoes, peppers, corn, and potatoes. According to Beans: A History, kidneys were largely deemed peasant food for centuries, a history revealed by its eventual Latin designation, Phaseolus vulgaris, aka the vulgar, or ‘common’ bean.

French Glandoulat

Kidneys buttressed and amplified stewy dishes throughout early modern Europe. Like in Glandoulat, a southwestern French dish in which red kidney beans join pork, carrots, spices, Armagnac, and goose fat.

Rice and Beans – A Classic Combination

The classic combination of rice and beans, or some starchy substitute, has long been equated with sustaining life. “Rice is god,” a Hindu proverb says, “but lentils are my life.” In many corners of the world, rice and beans, peas, or lentils are often paired — the Japanese celebrate certain holidays with a bowl of white glutinous rice and red adzuki beans. But nowhere are beans and rice more prominent than in the Americas, both North and South, where the pairing of grain and legume is often the unofficial national dish.

Brazilian Feijoada

In Brazil, the unofficial national dish is Feijoada, a stew of black beans and salted pork commonly served alongside a heaping of rice.

Cuban Frijoles Negros

In Cuba, they eat Moros y Cristianos, ‘Moors and Christians,’ a name given for the combination of black beans (Moros/dark) and rice (Christians/white), as well as Frijoles Negros, where the black beans are served on top of, or alongside rice.

Nicaraguan & Costa Rican Gallo Pinto

According to Rice and Beans, A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places, Nicaraguans and Costa Ricans fight over who invented Gallo Pinto, or ‘spotted rooster,’ another melange of black or red beans and rice.

Caribbean Rice & Beans

Caribbean Rice & Beans (often called Caribbean Rice & Peas) is a popular Sunday lunch dish made with red kidney beans, rice, scotch bonnet peppers, and coconut milk.

Hoppin’ John

The red beans and rice equivalent in other parts of the South, especially in South Carolina, is Hoppin’ John, a mix of salt pork, rice, and blackeye peas or cowpeas (some French-speaking Louisianians might call this dish jambalaya au congri). Cowpeas are the preferred legume in the Carolinas. George Washington Carver, the African-American scientist, said of the lowly cowpea: “As a food for man, the cowpea should be to the South, what the White, Soup, Navy, or Boston bean is to the North, East, and West: and it may be prepared in a sufficient number of ways to suit the most fastidious palate.”

African Red-Red

Hailing from Ghana, African Red-Red is a red stew made with blackeye peas and served with rice and plantains. Blackeye peas were brought by or with enslaved West Africans to the Americas, first to the mid-Atlantic seaboard, likely alongside rice.

Rice: Red Beans’ Most Popular Partner

Some rice was grown in Louisiana as early as the 1840s, with some imported from the rice capital of South Carolina. Rice cultivation in the state finally took off in the 1870s, with a massive expansion occurring around 1900. Today, Louisiana is ranked third in the production of rice in the United States, after Arkansas and California.

No one knows for sure why and how New Orleanians began to eat red beans and rice. “Red beans are to New Orleans what the white bean is to Boston and the cowpea is to South Carolina,” reporters for the Federal Writers Project wrote in 1938. No definite answers exist in the historical record, though it probably travelled over with early nineteenth-century exiles from the French Caribbean.

Rien Fertel is a Louisiana-born and based food writer, historian, and teacher. He grew up in his family’s chain of restaurants across the country. His work has appeared in Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Southern Living, Spirit, Saveur, The Local Palate, and many other publications. He holds a PhD in History and teaches in New Orleans.

Chickpeas, the Ancient Beans Used ‘Round the World

Chickpeas, also known as garbanzos, are ancient beans. Remains have been found in the Middle East that date back more than seven millennia. The ancient world associated them with Venus, the Roman goddess of love, and they were thought to help with reproductive difficulties. More recently, in the 18th century, they were roasted as a coffee substitute. Most people today know them as the main ingredient in hummus, the Middle Eastern bean paste that takes its name from the Arabic word for chickpea.

Chickpeas are known as channa in Trinidad and are a constant in Trinidadian food. Fried and seasoned with a variety of spices, channa is a street snack that’s perfect for munching any time but seems to go particularly well with cocktails. Chickpeas appear in many types of soups and stews, but are at their best when served in a dish like Caribbean-style chickpea and potato curry that’s also known as channa aloo.

The History of Curries

In the Caribbean region, curries have their origin in the waves of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent who arrived in the 19th century. In New Orleans and the United States, they are traditional as well, dating back to the days of the clipper ships when captains brought exotic spices back from their journeys that transformed traditional dishes into savory delights.  This curry displays the thriftiness of many housewives in both areas, uses potatoes to complete the dish and places the history of three continents squarely on the plate.

Caribbean-Style Chickpea Curry

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons butter

1 large onion, minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper, or to taste

3 tablespoons Madras-style curry powder

1/2 cup Steen’s cane vinegar (or distilled white vinegar)

1 1/2 cups Camellia Brand Garbanzo Beans, soaked overnight (3 cups, plumped)

3 cups coarsely chopped potatoes

Directions:

1. In a large frying pan, heat the butter and sauté the onion, garlic, and ginger until the onion is soft but not brown. Add the curry powder and the crushed red pepper, stirring so that they do not stick or burn. Gradually add the vinegar and stir until you have a smooth paste. (You may have to add more.)

2. Add the soaked chickpeas and the potatoes; stir well to cover them with the paste. Remove from heat and allow to marinate for at least 2 hours.

3. When ready to cook, place the chickpea and potato mixture into a large frying pan or in the bottom of a Dutch oven, and add enough water to reconstitute the paste and prevent scorching. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 2 hours or until the chickpeas and potatoes are fork tender. Check occasionally and add more water if necessary to prevent scorching.

4. Serve hot with mango chutney, raisins, freshly grated coconut or with the Indian bread known as roti.

Written by Jessica B. Harris, a culinary historian, journalist and acclaimed cookbook author who has been honored for spreading the word of African and Caribbean cuisines around the world.

The History of Blackeye Peas

On the African continent where these legumes were first domesticated, blackeye peas were planted on the borders of fields to help keep down the weeds. They were also used to enrich the soil. Cattle grazed on the stems and vines, giving rise to some of the legume’s alternate names: cowpeas and field peas.

A Southern Staple

In the United States, few foods are more connected with African Americans than blackeye peas. Before the early 1700s, they were growing in the Carolina colonies, became one of the area’s first cash crops, and were exported to the Caribbean colonies where they were also prized. In the United States, they appear in early cookbooks like The Virginia Housewife, in which Mary Randolph suggests making a fried bean cake that is garnished with “thin bits of fried bacon.” Today, they come into their own at the holiday season when no self-respecting southerner will go without a dish of blackeye peas for luck on New Year’s Day.

Fritter Heaven

In the Caribbean, they turn up in a myriad of beans and rice combinations but take a back seat to the Congo or gunga pea there. They come back into their own in Brazil. There, in the northeast region, the pea is transformed into a fritter known as an acarajé, which is the traditional street food of Salvador da Bahia. The fritters are made to order and dressed with a selection of fish pastes and hot sauces to the buyer’s taste. No trip to the city is complete without the taste of at least one. The following recipe is for non-traditional fritters that use ginger and garlic and that don’t call for skinning the beans. One bite, though, and you can almost feel the sea breezes blowing off the harbor.

Brazilian-Style Blackeye Pea Fritters

Ingredients:

1 (1-pound) package Camellia Brand Blackeye Peas
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
3 teaspoons ginger paste*
2 teaspoons garlic paste*
Salt to taste
Oil for frying

*Both ginger and garlic paste are readily available in supermarkets, usually found in the fresh produce/herbs section.

Directions:

1. Soak blackeye peas 8-10 hours or overnight.

2. When ready to prepare, place soaked blackeye peas in a food processor with remaining ingredients. Process until a smooth, thick batter forms, with no lumps. Add salt to taste. Empty batter from food processor into a large bowl, and aerate it by beating for 2-3 minutes with a wooden spoon.

3. In a large heavy skillet or Dutch oven, heat at least 2 inches of oil for frying. When ready to fry, stir the batter again, and drop by large spoonsful into the hot oil. Allow to brown, turning each fritter once. Continue to stir remaining batter to aerate it before frying.

4. Drain fritters on absorbent paper, and serve hot with hot sauce, salsa or condiment of your choice.

Makes about two dozen fritters.

Written by Jessica B. Harris, a culinary historian, journalist and acclaimed cookbook author who has been honored for spreading the word of African and Caribbean cuisines around the world.