The American Indian cooking tradition is most evident in the dishes made with maize flour, typical of the Indian tribes. The flour is used to make a typical bread, polenta, and for Grits, a soup the Indian chiefs used during celebrations. Above all, we have the Native Americans to thank for the most characteristically Yankee tradition of them all: the Barbecue, the method for slow-cooking and smoking meat over hot coals. The very name derives from an Indian word, Baribicu, meaning hole of fire.
