A great deal of African-American culinary traditions incorporate homegrown vegetables, rice, and fruit. During slavery African-Americans grew their own food, because isolation and poverty left them very few opportunities to seek sustenance elsewhere. They raised their own crops with the experience they acquired (or continued in many cases) through work in the rice, fruit, and vegetable fields. Not only did they succeed in growing exceptional food, African-Americans found interesting ways to cook it, using culinary traditions from Africa. Rice is especially important fresh ingredient grown and prepared in African-American foodways. While this ingredient appears in most Southern dishes, especially those of South Carolina, because rice was the area's crowning glory in terms of agricultural exports, how African-Americans used it, particularly in Gullah cooking, is a fascinating culmination of necessity and African traditions.
African cooking traditions coupled with amazing feats in culinary improvisation resulted in imaginative and nutritious rice dishes that have pervaded most of Southern cooking. Rice itself is amazingly versatile and it allowed African-Americans to experiment and create recipes and cooking techniques that still inform American cooking traditions today. Caw Caw Interpretive Center an environmental and historical education center shows how prominent a role rice played in the lives of African-Americans and why it worked its way into their cuisine.