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| South Carolina plantation workers carry rice bundles circa 1895. |
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A Rice Tradition
By Becky Billingsley
Originally published in Coastal Carolina Dining magazine
Spring 2003
The canals, stretching for miles through fields still sprouting the wild remnants of an agricultural dynasty, bear mute testimony to the toil, tribulations and tears of a Lowcountry culinary tradition.
Although rice is now firmly ingrained in South Carolina cuisine, its use here is fairly recent in the world’s dining history.
James A. Fitch, executive director of the Rice Museum in Georgetown, has extensively studied the culinary history of rice. His book, “Pass The Pilau, Please,” details the journey of this versatile grain and how it came to represent a global blend of foods that became unique to this region.
Fitch’s research goes back as far as 3500 BC in Thailand, where ancient rice grains were discovered at an archaeological site. It eventually moved across the world, to Africa as early as 1500 BC and to Europe in 326 BC.
But it was the Muslims, in the quest to expand Islam in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, who made rice better known throughout Europe, and by the 11th century AD, Fitch says, rice pilaf was a favorite dish of Christian crusaders. The Spanish embraced rice in their paellas, the French had their “jambalaia” and the Italians became known for risotto.
In the late 1680s many French Huguenots feared for their lives from the politically dominant Catholics, and some immigrated to the Carolina colony of Charles Towne. They were familiar with rice production in Italy and France, and recognized that the fertile tidal basin around Georgetown, where six rivers flow into Winyah Bay, would be perfect for growing rice.
Their first attempts at rice cultivation, Fitch says, were not successful because the French were used to the tideless Mediterranean Sea. It was African slaves, who had long grown rice in the tidal areas of West Africa, whose agricultural expertise made the Huguenots and other Europeans rich with rice.
When the new American farmers realized the potential for huge rice harvests, they bought more and more African slaves. In 1840 Georgetown County was the apex of Carolina rice agriculture, with 150 plantations containing 40,000 acres of rice fields that produced half of the national rice crop. The aromatic rice was called Carolina Gold, and its superior quality was renowned.
“South Carolina was the richest state in the South,” Fitch says, “and the second-richest in the Union after Massachusetts.”
It took a large slave force to grow all that rice. As early as 1740, according to the National Park Service, 90 percent of Georgetown’s population was slaves.
But after the Civil War, a series of devastating hurricanes dumped salt water on the fields and rendered them useless for years. Also post-war rice harvesting machinery didn’t work well in tidal mud, and rice was king no more in Georgetown County. Today there is one working rice plantation left in this area – Plumfield Plantation on the Pee Dee River near Darlington. Its rice can be purchased at the Rice Museum on Front Street in Georgetown.
The people who produced the rice also cooked it, and their recipes from Italy, France, Spain, the West Indies and Africa became part of Lowcountry culture. Some recipes, such as jambalaya and risotto, are relatively unchanged since they were brought across the ocean in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Others, such as pilau (from the Persian pilaf), chicken bog and Hoppin’ John, evolved into unique expressions of a blended society.
It’s interesting that pilau and chicken bog, which are both rice dishes with chicken and sausage, became different recipes in the eastern and western portions of Georgetown and Horry counties. Along the coast, especially around Georgetown, the rice in pilau (pronounced PER-low) has more liquid and results in rice that is separate and firm. In western locations, such as around Loris where there is an annual Bog-Off festival, the dish uses less liquid and is stickier.
Stewart Pabst, director of the Horry County Museum in Conway, is also a food historian. He thinks chicken bog used to be a lot more varied than it is today.
“People were opportunistic cookers,” he said. “Like with the old ‘Rock Soup’ fable, people would think, ‘What do we have to round this out?’ That’s definitely true of chicken bog.”
Chicken bog was a handy one-pot meal for tobacco farmers in the eastern parts of Horry County, Pabst said. While tobacco cured in the barns, it had to constantly be tended. An iron pot would be set up over an outdoor fire, and rice, sausage, chicken and water would be slow-cooked and kept warm for the workers who had to stay at the barns.
But, Pabst said, if chicken or sausage weren’t handy, then duck, turkey or whatever meat was available would work.
What never varied was the rice.
“I think the people here, on this side of the [Intracoastal Waterway] don’t see potatoes as necessary,” Pabst said. “But rice is very, very much a staple part of the diet [here], and always will be.”
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Many food connoisseurs consider cooking raw rice an art form. Here are two methods.
Rice Museum director James Fitch
Use two cups water for each cup of rice. Boil the water in a sauce pan and dump in the rice. Stir it with a fork, not a spoon. Cover the pot and reduce the heat; simmer for 15 minutes without lifting the lid.
Horry County Museum director Stewart Pabst
This method can be used in a stovetop pan or a steamer, but Pabst prefers a steamer. Use equal amounts of water and rice. Put the water in the pan and bring to a boil. Add the rice. Cover, reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
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Hard work
Growing rice was an extremely labor-intensive operation in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Thick stands of timber were cleared from the flood plains, and long canals dug by hand allowed water to run off at low tide.
Dikes were built with sand and double sets of wooden floodgates, or trunk docks, were installed in the dikes. The pressure of the tide made the inner gates work automatically if the outer gates were raised or lowered.
In March oxen and mules wearing special boots that kept them from sinking in the mud plowed fields. Seed was mixed with mud and dried, then planted in April. The fields were flooded after planting, and the mud kept the seed from floating away.
After a few days the grain sprouted, and the fields were drained. When the seedlings were well-established the fields were again flooded for three to six days, followed by draining and drying, then a light hoeing. Two weeks later they were hoed again.
The next flooding, or “flow,” lasted two or three weeks before it was drained off. The fields were allowed to dry for two more hoeings, spaced three weeks apart. The final flood lasted seven to eight weeks before the field was drained and dried a final time.
Harvest took place in early September.
─ Condensed from “Pass The Pilau, Please” by James Fitch
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Chicken Pilau (serves 30)
From “Pass The Pilau, Please”
Ingredients:
3 large chickens
6 cups rice
2 stalks celery
2 onions, halved
Salt and pepper
Preparation:
Boil chickens with onions, celery, salt and pepper until tender. In large covered roaster, put 2 cups chicken stock for each cup of rice. Season with salt and pepper. Cook in 400-degree oven until rice mixture boils. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and cook until done, about 1 hour. Remove chicken from bones and cut in large bite-size pieces. When rice is done, stir in chicken. Be sure to lift rice so some of the chicken will be in the bottom of the roaster. If the chicken is cold, warm it in some of the stock before mixing in rice. This is a good dish for a crowd.
Hoppin’ John
A traditional Lowcountry New Year’s good luck dish
From “Pass The Pilau, Please”
Ingredients:
1 cup raw cow peas (dried field peas)
4 cups water
2 teaspoons salt (or salt to taste)
1 cup raw rice
1 slice ham (or several slices bacon)
1 medium onion, chopped
Preparation:
In base of cooker, boil peas, chopped ham or bacon and onion, until peas are tender. Place rice in steamer top of cooker with 2 cups of peas and juice; stir. As rice cooks, add more peas and juice if needed, but only enough to leave the rice fluffy (not soupy). |