My Juneteenth Menu Is a Celebration of Black Culture
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Juneteenth is a portmanteau of June and 19th, commemorating June 19, 1865: the day Union soldiers arrived in Confederate territory of Galveston, Texas, and announced the freedom of enslaved persons following the end of the Civil War. The overdue announcement came a full two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and there are multiple theories as to the delay. Maybe it was because Texas didn’t have many Union soldiers present, or perhaps enslavers wanted to keep getting free labor, especially harvesting cotton and corn. Even long after Juneteenth, many African Americans were unfortunately still enslaved. Although the end of slavery stretched out over many years of American history, Juneteenth remained an important, symbolic date. The holiday is also called Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day, and Juneteenth Independence Day.
When I was growing up in New Orleans, I took part in plenty of celebrations of Black culture, but rarely anything grand for Juneteenth. I only learned of Juneteenth parades, cookouts, and festivals in the 2000s when I attended Dillard University, a historically Black New Orleans university full of Texans who grew up celebrating. So if this is your first time observing Juneteenth, don’t feel behind. It only became a federal holiday in June 2021.
Early Juneteenth menus included traditional Black Southern summer dishes—the ones synonymous with “the cookout” today—barbecue, coleslaw, peach cobbler. Red foods that symbolize the blood Black Americans shed during slavery are a major component of any Juneteenth menu. Like Black culture, Juneteenth celebrations are not a monolith. We all do things a little differently, but one umbrella rule I could give is to try your best to proudly and purposefully support and honor Black people. My Juneteenth menu has everything you’d need for a gathering in honor of Black culture.
Photo by Beatriz Da Costa1/9Grilled Watermelon Salad With Lime Mango Dressing and Cornbread Croutons
Figuring out what to bring to friends’ cookouts used to be stressful, until I started making fruit salad. I hate to give up the game like this, but it’s really a perfect party dish for several reasons. People are hot and might not want to eat anything too heavy. You know we don’t eat everybody’s potato salad. Fruit salad makes it clear you can cook, but it’s neither labor-intensive nor cost-prohibitive. And after lots of drinking and carrying on, fruit salad can refresh you while satisfying that craving for “something sweet.” This particular fruit salad recipe, from JJ Johnson, Alexander Smalls, and Veronica Chambers’s Between Harlem and Heaven, layers fresh, sweet, spicy, smoky, salty, and creamy flavors; and crunchy, smooth, crispy, and chewy textures. Leaning on watermelon and mango, this fruit salad will absolutely wow the party.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert2/9Grits and Greens Soufflé
I’m from New Orleans, which is geographically in the South but has its own culture entirely. It’s like when Kid Fury told Crissle West that they were from Miami and not Florida. So when I wanted to cook greens as a whole adult and somebody’s mama, I had to ask Facebook. All my actual Southern friends guided me through, and I fell in love with greens. On my bucket list is going to the country country to eat greens and cornbread with my hands. One thing we do in New Orleans, and in the Black community as a whole, is taking dishes and combining them to elevate each separate dish while creating a fabulous new one. Like oxtail egg rolls, crawfish nachos, and this grits and greens soufflé from Jerrelle Guy’s Black Girl Baking. The recipe can be doubled or even tripled for a party.
Photo by Romulo Yanes3/9Featherlight Yeast Rolls
My brother Aaron and his wife, Shannon, have a Juneteenth celebration every year. Last year, their friend Melvin of Executive Palate made some turkey necks to add to the homemade spread. As the festivities continued, and people learned about the turkey necks, all that remained in the pan was gravy and a few scraps. So I poured about two cups of turkey neck gravy in a bowl, with about four rolls sopping it all up. Rolls are really an essential part of any gathering (whether you’re soaking up turkey neck gravy or barbecue drippings), and making your own isn’t that difficult. This recipe is different from the Parker House rolls recipe in the Emancipation Day dinner menu in Edna Lewis’s 1976 cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, but it still shows the extra emphasis on rolls for Juneteenth.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert4/9Old Arthur’s Pork Belly Burnt Ends
My best friend Allen’s dad, Uncle Harry, is my barbecue guru. Whenever we’d evacuate together for hurricanes, we’d all end up getting barbecue somewhere. But he’d barely sit at the table, because he’d be so busy talking to the pitmaster about how they do it. “Meg, you gotta always check and see if there’s a smoker or a pit outside,” he’d say. “Because if not, well that’s not real barbecue.” Now that I have my own family, I always look for the smokers and pits and text him photos of my findings through his wife, my Aunt Dee Dee.
This recipe for pork belly burnt ends, from Eudell Watts IV, starts with Watts’s great-great grandfather Arthur Watts. Arthur was born into slavery in Missouri and had been a pitmaster since childhood. Once he became free, he and his family settled in Illinois and Arthur became the community’s go-to for barbecue. Though he was never taught how to read or write, he was able to hand down his recipes and techniques in the oral tradition, with lots of secret taste testing along the way. Today, 160 years later, that legacy has become the Watts family business. This requires a smoker, and please believe I will not half-step and try to make it without one. Because, as I learned from Uncle Harry, shortcuts do not work in barbecue.
Photo by Peden + Munk, Prop Styling by Rebecca Bartoshesky, Food Styling by Sue Li5/9Grilled Lemon-Pepper Chicken
Lemon-pepper chicken is one of those foods I didn’t realize until recently was almost solely a part of Black American culture—Black Atlanta culture, to be specific. But I believe that lemon-pepper chicken, just like celebrating Juneteenth, is for everyone. In both instances, however, if you’re going to do it, you have to do it right. Atlanta pitmaster Bryan Furman uses natural lemon-pepper flavor—not something dried and shaken from a seasoning jar. Simple but delicious. As much as we all love traditional barbecue chicken at summer gatherings, lemon-pepper chicken just goes better with the season and the leftovers are perfect for a nice bright salad.
Photo by Mike McColl6/9Hickory-Smoked Baby Back Ribs
For many reasons, I don’t know how to grill. A grill I bought for 75% off in 2017 is still sitting unopened in my house’s den. That’s why I love this recipe. It’s so detailed that you could be a complete novice to grilling and still get it all the way right. Before this recipe from Rob Rainford’s Born to Grill, I didn’t know I needed to cut the membrane from the ribs. I thought you just took the whole rack, threw it in barbecue sauce, and tossed it on the grill. Reading this recipe feels like you’re calling your uncle with the Bluetooth earpiece and the brown leather sandals with socks, and he’s talking you through it.
Photo by Jerrelle Guy7/9Sorrel (Hibiscus) Tea
People call them “diaspora wars,” but I personally love when people from similar cultures debate the specificities of recipes. Especially when there’s a longstanding playful rivalry, like Trinidad and Jamaica or Ghana and Nigeria. Queen Trini Lisa is one of few places in New Orleans serving sorrel. One day when I went to visit with a friend, Chef Lisa offered us some sorrel and went on to explain what it was, making it clear that though it’s often called jamaica (pronounced huh-MY-cuh) and is also beloved and made by Jamaicans, she herself is Trinidadian and makes her sorrel in the Trini style. The recipe I chose is Jamaican, so Chef Lisa, please accept my apologies. This one comes from Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee, an anthology cookbook featuring two centuries of Black American cooking. Feel free to add lots of rum, because you really can’t even taste it despite how much you feel it.
Photo by Noah Fecks8/9New Age Church Punch
Red drinks of all kinds are essential to any Juneteenth celebration, and red drinks in punch bowls with sherbert or ice cream are essential to any Black American gathering. My elementary school was predominantly Black, so every class party was a Black family gathering: Soul Train lines, Crock-Pots of party meatballs with cocktail weenies, super sweet red drink with sherbert or ice cream in a punch bowl. My middle school was predominantly white, with kids who came from other mostly white schools. So imagine the collective Black surprise and white confusion, when at the seventh-grade open house the Black parents, aghast at the punchless refreshments area, worked together to use what was there—even going across the street to Walgreens—to get some party punch going. That may seem like a small thing, but our parents making that punch was a way of advocating for us at a school that often mistreated Black students.
At that school, though, I learned about so many foods that weren’t a thing in my Black experience: chocolate-covered espresso beans, string cheese, fancy tins of hard fruit candies dusted in confectioners’ sugar. That “white people stuff” is now my stuff and by association “Black people stuff.” Had I seen this punch recipe then, with its fresh produce and existence outside of the Hawaiian Punch and 7Up box, I would’ve thought it was “white people stuff” because I had no clue about Black culture outside of New Orleans’ 7th Ward. Thankfully at my historically Black college, where I really learned about Juneteenth, I also learned that Black culture is not a monolith and that there’s a whole African diaspora. Hopefully, that’s what readers can take away from this menu too.
Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Judy Haubert9/9Beet Red Velvet Cake
No Juneteenth menu is complete without red velvet cake. No, it was not part of the early Juneteenth celebrations, but it’s been a part of them for longer than it hasn’t been. For this occasion I chose a recipe from Kwame Onwuachi’s My America, a cookbook full of recipes spanning the African diaspora. Onwuachi is a multiethnic Black chef with roots in Louisiana and New York, which makes me think of the magic that is Black America post slavery. His red velvet cake recipe uses coconut sugar, an actual beet to impart color as was done decades ago, and vanilla bean paste.
