About the Film
Carolina Hash starts with establishing as fact the myth that hash-popularity ends at the South Carolina borders. We learn that right across the state line in North Carolina, barbecue customers and restauranteurs "....don’t even know what hash is." The Brunswick stew states of North Carolina and Georgia which border South Carolina for the most part don’t know about it. But the tradition runs deep in all of South Carolina, and most native South Carolinians not only know about it - they can tell you where to go "....to get the best hash in South Carolina!" and the name of the hash-master.
The true origins of Carolina hash can be traced to the Carolina rice kitchens on plantations where black food artisans were required to make the most of the lesser parts of the hog at slaughter. They created a high-protein, thick “meat-gravy” flavored with hot spices familiar to their palate ladled over rice to provide energy for the rigorous labor required in working the rice fields.
Today in the Upcountry from border-to-border you will find a beef-based hash with a twang that’s different from the pork hash found with the Midlands and Low County with their variety of seasonings and secret ingredients. These traditions, in many restaurants and in the hash houses on many farms or churchyards or Volunteer Fire Departments, have been "Grandfathered-in", using black iron kettles in which many decades of hash traditions by local hash-masters occur. But as the documentary shows as it pursues the mission of folk heritage preservation, these traditions are rapidly disappearing.
This documentary tells the story of the SC hash tradition in hopes that a new generation of South Carolinians who did not originate from here will come to appreciate the uniqueness and artisanship that is in Carolina hash.
Stan Woodward Lifeworks Collection of Southern Cultureand Folklife Documentaries
