Intestinal fortitude

For those brave enough to try them, chitterlings are a holiday staple, continuing a somewhat contentious tradition of the Old South.

By SHARON TUBBS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 27, 2002

[Times photos: Fraser Hale] At Bob’s Market in Tampa, chitterlings come packaged three ways.

Inside Bob's Market, it smells like a mix of animal fat and bleach. Randy Bowden is swishing a wet mop across cracked tile. Behind him is the usual display of fresh-cut meats: turkey necks, ox tails, turkey wings.

I'm real busy right now, Bowden says, don't have too much time to talk.

Just one thing, Randy. Do you eat chitterlings?

"Yeees," he says, as if it should be a given. "I grew up on them."

Sam Malone, working behind the meat counter, shakes his head. He can't tolerate them.

But like any market in a black community, Bob's is well-stocked with a display of chitterlings -- pronounced CHIT-lins by those who know soul food.

The holiday season is prime time for them. On New Year's Day, as was the case on Thanksgiving and Christmas, plates stacked with collard greens, baked macaroni and cheese, yams, ham and corn bread will make room for hog intestines.

The food originated during slavery, when masters gave unwanted cuts of pork to slaves during the hog slaughtering season. The slaves cleaned and seasoned the intestines, fashioning them into a meal, as they did with other cuts, such as pig feet.

But chitterlings have managed to set themselves apart from other soul food. If contention can be associated with a side dish, chitterlings are it.

To some African-Americans, they are disgusting. Raw chitterlings have a foul odor and carry harmful bacteria. But beyond the culinary issues, there are historical ones. Indeed, some believe that the staying power of chitterlings is symbolic of a pervasive slave mentality.

James Alsbrook, a black columnist and an Ohio University journalism professor, was quoted in the college newsletter's 1999 obituary of his death as having said this about chitterlings:

"Just as thousands of brainwashed blacks today eat the same harmful physical diet of chitterings and pig feet forced on them in slavery, so do thousands of blacks today think in the same restraining mindsets of hopelessness, defeatism and self-hatred forced on them in slavery."

Still others embrace chitterlings as part of the culture. For them, the food became an example of something that white slave masters meant to be bad, but black people turned into good.

"Those kinds of things that manage to distinguish our culture, we ought to hold on to," said Marvin Dunn, author of Black Miami in the Twentieth Century and chairman of the psychology department at Florida International University. "It's part of our history," he said, adding that he looked forward to a serving this holiday season. "It's part of our culture."

At Bob's in Tampa, Malone explains that he grew up with chitterlings on the family dinner table, although he doesn't eat them. "It's like a delicacy now," he explains while slicing cheese for a customer. "It's like an exotic food."

The holiday season is prime time for chitterlings at markets such as Bob’s Market in Tampa.

Everyone has a different definition of delicacy. The Scottish eat haggis, a dish that includes a sheep's lungs and heart to be boiled inside the animal's stomach. Some people eat tripe, the stomachs of oxen, cows and pigs. Others dine on prairie oysters, the testicles of a bull calf, or sweetbreads, the thymus or pancreas of a calf.

With African-Americans, chitterlings that were once considered trash became profit at some point. "See, the white man . . . they see (that) black people like them," Malone is saying.

Butchers used to give chitterlings away like scrap. But when the 45-year-old was growing up in Detroit, meat managers started seeing dollar signs and selling buckets of chitterlings for $1.99.

Today, neighborhood stores such as Bob's, as well as chain stores in black communities, sell chitterlings for about $5.99 to $7.99 per 10-pound bucket.

Bob Pazos, owner of the market, says he has seen the chitterling trade go down over the years. “It’s going to be something of the past in years to come,” he says.

About a mile from Bob's, at Winn-Dixie on E Hillsborough Ave., market manager Reggie Hayes set up a promotional display of chitterlings last week. There had been a shortage of chitterlings at the warehouse where he usually buys meats, but, happily, he finally got in a shipment. "This is an ethnic area," he said. "We can sell them all day long."

In St. Petersburg, at Coquina Meat Market, store owner Maher Albarghuthi said his chitterling sales were steady this year. "We sell a lot of them on Thanksgiving and Christmas," mostly to elderly black women, he said.

Back in Tampa, Willie Eason has come to Bob's to pick up some cheese and deli meat. He overhears the chitterling discussion.

"Got to have them," he says, rubbing his stomach.

Eason cooks chitterlings several times a year: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, his birthday and his father's birthday. He buys about 40 pounds of chitterlings, then spends hours separating the fat from the intestinal lining. Chitterlings often have a milk-colored or grayish tint. They can be rubbery before being cooked. The white clumps of fat, which can account for up to half of the chitterlings' weight, are thrown out.

Most people either boil or fry chitterlings. But Eason is somewhat of a chitterling connoisseur. At times, he covers the chitterlings in a mustard and mayonnaise glaze, he says. Or, he'll put the chitterlings in a tomato sauce with vegetables, peppers and such.

"You wouldn't believe it's chitterlings!" he says.

Some in the store seem unconvinced. Sensing this, Eason recounts the story of his brother-in-law, who once said he would never eat raccoon -- another exotic delicacy, as far as Eason is concerned.

Eason knew better. He barbecued a raccoon one day and had brother-in-law over, told him it was just some meat he'd cooked up. "Tastes just like chicken," Eason said.

The meat was so good, the brother-in-law almost ate the whole thing. When he finally turned down his plate, Eason looked at him and laughed.

"I said, 'Boy, you just don't know, you just ate a raccoon!"'

Same goes for chitterlings. "A lot of people say, 'Uh, uh!' " Eason said. "But I'll get them. I'll take (chitterlings) and put them over some yellow rice."

Malone turns to Eason, apparently starting to come around. "Now, see, the way you're saying, I probably could tolerate it."

It's the smell, Malone says, turning up his nose. The odor of a bucket of raw chitterlings can be so strong that cooks often use vinegar to get rid of it during boiling. Some cut potatoes or apples into the pot to absorb the smell.

Bowden discounts the odor. "A lot of people who don't like the smell are the first ones to get a plate," he says. "Undercover chitterling eaters," he calls them.

Although chitterlings are odorless and safe after they are cooked, like many meats, they can be dangerous while raw.

State departments of health in Georgia, New York and Vermont have tried to educate their communities on how to properly prepare chitterlings. The food can carry bacteria that causes yersiniosis, a bacterial disease that usually affects children and young adults. It can be spread by eating food contaminated with feces from infected animals and by exposure to the bacteria. Pigs are the main source of this disease-causing bacteria. Symptoms can include fever, stomach pain and bloody diarrhea.

The Georgia Division of Public Health advises cooks to boil raw chitterlings five minutes before cleaning them to prevent germs from spreading in the kitchen during preparation. Also, cooks should disinfect everything in a kitchen that chitterlings touch with 1 tablespoon of bleach per gallon of water.

My sister used to clean 100 pounds of chitterlings, Malone is saying.

A hundred pounds?

"That's nothing," Eason says. "I cleaned 300 pounds!"

People used to make extra holiday money selling clean chitterlings to those who didn't want to do it themselves, Malone and Eason say.

But nowadays, chitterlings can be bought precleaned and are marketed to people of all races.

Moo & Oink advertises "the cleanest 'lil chitlin in America."

And "Don't make the mistake of thinking chitlins are an African-American dish," Moo & Oink's Web site says. "Chitlins are also very popular among Southern whites, who consider them part of Southern cooking." Moo & Oink further notes that pork intestines are used in dishes by people of many cultures as casings in some kinds of sausages, for instance, and in a Mexican tomato-based soup.

LaWanda Page, who played Aunt Esther on the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son and died this year, was the spokeswoman for Queenella's precleaned chitterlings. Wearing her signature wig, Page can still be seen on the company's Web site, smiling and holding up a package of frozen chitterlings sealed in plastic.

Juba Carter, the butcher at Bob’s, thinks the pig is the most unhealthy animal people eat. You won’t catch him with a plate of chitterlings.

Chitterlings also have become an item on soul food menus, such as Shirley's Soul Food in St. Petersburg. There, workers buy precleaned chitterlings and make a fresh pot every Friday.

During much of the discussion at Bob's, butcher Juba Carter is silent. He cuts all kinds of meat but doesn't eat it. He'll have some chicken, fish or lamb every now and then, but no pork -- and definitely not chitterlings.

"It's not healthy," he says. The pig, he says, is one of the most unclean and unhealthy animals that people can eat. But he doesn't belabor the point with his co-workers, he says.

"Everybody has their own head, you know? We can't tell people, 'You can't do this, you can't do that.' "

Certainly slaves had to live on what they could, he says. "The ones who made it off of that ship had to be strong, my brother," he says to Eason. "We are survivors."

In comes Bob Pazos, the store owner and one of only two white faces in sight.

"Let me just tell you about chitterlings, okay?" says Pazos, who has been in the business a long time. "The chitterling trade I've seen over the past 24 years, I've seen it slowly, slowly going down."

About 10 or 12 years ago, Pazos would order 600 buckets of chitterlings to sell in a store about the size of a shotgun house. "All your old-timers ate them," he said. Today? Buyers are getting older. Their 30-something children eat the chitterlings that their mothers and grandmothers cook but won't make them themselves. Pazos sells about a quarter of what he used to.

"It's going to be something of the past in years to come," he says.

As for Pazos, he has tasted chitterlings twice. Two regular customers thought they'd bring him a plate of chitterlings as a treat. The thought was nice. But, he said, "I didn't really care for them."

But "people who love them, love them," Malone says.

His mother and sisters would stand guard over the chitterling pot at holiday gatherings. Rather than let relatives serve themselves, they'd dole out chitterling portions onto people's plates, lest they get too much.

Even if they don't regulate serving size during the holiday meal this year, he says, they'll be listening.

"Every time you hear that chitterling pot move, you look to see how much they're getting," Malone says, not even the hint of a smile on his face. "Chitterlings is serious business, baby."

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