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OT: SC's Most "Iconic" Dish

I guess South Carolina actually doesn't really have an "iconic" dish.
I think many of the recipes we consider "iconic" were adaptions from Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique and other West African or Caribbean Island countries and were brought here by the slaves. You find similar dishes throughout former slave holding states...especially SC, GA and LA. We have simply claimed them as our own, each with our own little twist.
 
Salmon Stew....the flounder in Spartanburg has the best.

Shrimp & Grits...not sure if it originated in SC.

I've only been able to get it in SC (Salmon Stew). When I mention it in other places, people said they've never heard of it.
 
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I think many of the recipes we consider "iconic" were adaptions from Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique and other West African or Caribbean Island countries and were brought here by the slaves. You find similar dishes throughout former slave holding states...especially SC, GA and LA. We have simply claimed them as our own, each with our own little twist.
I'm just glad stewed possum or fried squirrel never caught on.
 
Shrimp and grits for sure. Tons of states have BBQ, so don't see how that would be 'iconic' for our state. Frogmore Stew would be another one.
Sorry, I specifically suggested mustard-based BBQ as our iconic dish, which is what she ended up choosing for the list. Actually, I suggested the sauce. Though not technically a "dish," the sauce (or I guess even lack thereof) is what tends to separate all barbecue in the end. No question that mustard-based BBQ is iconic to SC. And I, of course, was going to offer a BBQ option, given that that is the niche that I cover. So, it either was going to be hash and rice or mustard BBQ. That said, there are several other non-BBQ dishes worth considering. Shrimp and grits jumped to my mind, as did chicken bog/perlou.
Chicken Bog...It's definitely one-of-a-kind & different
and have never seen anywhere else in the world.
Agreed. It has been a staple in my home since I was a kid growing up in Cheraw.
Oysters

list over
Don't see how this is iconic to SC. I love oysters, but...
Eastern South Carolina pepper and vinegar is the best bbq, and also the original. Definitely most iconic. The spanish hogs that escaped from Spanish settlements along the coast at Beaufort and Georgetown, during the early 1500's led to our iconic pork BBQ.

The pepper and vinegar bbq of Scott's BBQ is generally considered the best in South Carolina. In Hemingway, it is just a few miles from the Great Pee Dee River that drains into Georgetown.

Also, many places serve Perlo, and call it chicken bog. I prefer chicken bog.
Having grown up in the Pee Dee, I will always think of vinegar-based as the one true BBQ, but I don't think it is iconic to SC. NC, definitely, but not us. Without question, SC is known for mustard-based. For that same reason, I have also always called it chicken bog. I think perlou/perloo/purlieu/etc. is more of a G'town/Lowcounty name for what is essentially the same dish. Some argue that perlou is dryer than bog, which by name implies a wetter final product, but I don't see any real difference.
James, I would have to go with Dukes hash and chicken bog as most iconic. As you well know, hash is not a sauce but a stand alone BBQ dish I have only seen in South Carolina.
I know you would! Yeah, it would definitely have been a good choice. I guess I wonder how "Iconic" is defined. By how outsiders see what the state has contributed to the culinary scene or how natives feel about their local dishes? My original thinking was the former. By that logic, hash doesn't qualify as iconic because virtually no one has heard of it beyond our borders. Same could be argued for bog. Mustard BBQ sauce has a much more widespread awareness, I believe anyway.
I’d have to go with Hash and rice. I remember going to Ray Levers as a kid. Old guy was selling Hash out the front door and the back door….😬
I know someone who has Ray's hash and sauce recipes (or at least he claims to), but he hasn't (yet) offered to share it with me. I am currently putting together the second edition of my SC BBQ cookbook and would really like to preserve it there for posterity. Lever's is an important name in SC BBQ. Before Ray, a man named EB Lever built a reputation for his hash and BBQ. Ironically, I have his recipes which a very generous reader sent me.
 
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I had hash and rice for lunch today. I bought the hash from a volunteer fire department and it's the gray type hash instead of the red style you see at Duke's etc. I think the firemen give it extra flavor by sweating in the hash pot while they cook it.
 
Here I have been thinking for 60 years that the iconic dish of South Carolina is she crab soup. Even Nero Wolfe proclaimed that South Carolina was one of (I think) two states that had an authentic cuisine and he named she crab soup as one of its genuine dishes. I can't remember which novel the subject was broached.
 
Here I have been thinking for 60 years that the iconic dish of South Carolina is she crab soup. Even Nero Wolfe proclaimed that South Carolina was one of (I think) two states that had an authentic cuisine and he named she crab soup as one of its genuine dishes. I can't remember which novel the subject was broached.
As a native Sandlapper and a resident of Charleston since the mid-1980s, I am embarrassed to admit I had no idea she-crab soup was invented in Charleston. It was created by William Deas, butler to Mayor Rhett, for a visit from President Taft. That said, if it were the state's "Iconic" dish, wouldn't that be more widely known?
 
Ive seen Hash before in middle GA but that was the only place outside of SC where I have seen it.
 
Hominy is much bigger in your mountain communities of the Appalachian South...TN, VA, KY..being from Greer, we did not eat hominy....grits we did....they are not the same thing....
Grits and hominy are not the same thing. Being from Honea Path, I’ve eaten hominy in many a meal. I always liked it, but haven’t eaten any in quite a while.
 
I can’t believe no one has mentioned catfish stew. Where I grew up in Laurens County, all kinds of get togethers included a catfish stew cooked in a black iron pot over an open fire and man was it good.
I grew up in Laurens County a long time ago and I remember as well the catfish stew that the Pitts boys brewed in the black iron pot behind their Texaco service station. I think that they fortified it with goat.
 
I grew up in Laurens County a long time ago and I remember as well the catfish stew that the Pitts boys brewed in the black iron pot behind their Texaco service station. I think that they fortified it with goat.
Which Pitts boys was that? There were a lot of Pitts around Hickory Tavern
 
You want me to go back over 60 years. I remember that Slick Pitts had a Texaco station on Main Street in Clinton. But it was his brothers or relatives who had another on the edge of Clinton on the road to Greenwood and they made the stew. Slick had an ever present cigar in his mouth.
 
I can’t believe no one has mentioned catfish stew. Where I grew up in Laurens County, all kinds of get togethers included a catfish stew cooked in a black iron pot over an open fire and man was it good.
I'll take my chicken stew, tomato no milk, over catfish anyday but thats just me.
 
Perlo has same typical ingredients, however, bog is just that, a bog. Like grits, sling a big spoonful of grits, or chicken bog, against a wall and it sticks.

Sling perlo against a wall and it falls to the floor, in individual grains of rice. Definitely less moisture.

Old school bbq recipes, like Rodney Scott's, use traditional citrus (typically lemons, back in the day, from the Caribbean) as a sweetener to the sauce. NC pepper and vinegar generally use cheaper sweeteners like a sweet cider, to make their sauces, and typically taste sweeter, largely to control the vinegar bite in an easy manner.
 
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Sorry, I specifically suggested mustard-based BBQ as our iconic dish, which is what she ended up choosing for the list. Actually, I suggested the sauce. Though not technically a "dish," the sauce (or I guess even lack thereof) is what tends to separate all barbecue in the end. No question that mustard-based BBQ is iconic to SC. And I, of course, was going to offer a BBQ option, given that that is the niche that I cover. So, it either was going to be hash and rice or mustard BBQ. That said, there are several other non-BBQ dishes worth considering. Shrimp and grits jumped to my mind, as did chicken bog/perlou.

Agreed. It has been a staple in my home since I was a kid growing up in Cheraw.

Don't see how this is iconic to SC. I love oysters, but...

Having grown up in the Pee Dee, I will always think of vinegar-based as the one true BBQ, but I don't think it is iconic to SC. NC, definitely, but not us. Without question, SC is known for mustard-based. For that same reason, I have also always called it chicken bog. I think perlou/perloo/purlieu/etc. is more of a G'town/Lowcounty name for what is essentially the same dish. Some argue that perlou is dryer than bog, which by name implies a wetter final product, but I don't see any real difference.

I know you would! Yeah, it would definitely have been a good choice. I guess I wonder how "Iconic" is defined. By how outsiders see what the state has contributed to the culinary scene or how natives feel about their local dishes? My original thinking was the former. By that logic, hash doesn't qualify as iconic because virtually no one has heard of it beyond our borders. Same could be argued for bog. Mustard BBQ sauce has a much more widespread awareness, I believe anyway.

I know someone who has Ray's hash and sauce recipes (or at least he claims to), but he hasn't (yet) offered to share it with me. I am currently putting together the second edition of my SC BBQ cookbook and would really like to preserve it there for posterity. Lever's is an important name in SC BBQ. Before Ray, a man named EB Lever built a reputation for his hash and BBQ. Ironically, I have his recipes which a very generous reader sent me.
Please visit Bowen’s Island
 
DNR? What's that? And I grew up in upstate SC to a very country family that's been in the state for 300 years. Never seen someone actually serve chicken bog. Had Frogmore Stew many times (though we call it low country boil). I will fight someone who says shrimp and grits are iconic. I never heard of them until I was visiting Charleston in college. I feel like they only blew up fairly recently, primarily when all the northerners started moving to the beach.

I feel like mustard BBQ, hash, or pimento cheese are much more South Carolina than these other dishes. Boiled peanuts are up there too. I think they're more distributed now, but nowhere are they as prevalent.
I'm with you on the shrimp and grits. I grew up in SC. Grandmother lived in Myrtle Beach and have eaten at Lee's Inlet Kitchen since about 1955 and never saw shrimp and grits until the 90's.
Don't get me wrong, I like it a lot, but iconic.... not hardly.
 
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