The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Sean Brock of Husk

The Pappy-swigging, James Beard Award-winning Charleston chef reflects on the foods that shaped his culinary mind.

Matthew Kronsberg

When it comes to bridging the gap between hard-drinking, balls-to-the-wall stereotypes of kitchen life and the new movement toward chefs as cultural thought leaders, few pull off the balancing act quite as convincingly as Sean Brock.

Since winning Best Chef Southeast at the 2010 James Beard Awards for his modern Lowcountry cooking at Charleston’s McCrady’s, and opening the nearby Husk later the same year, Brock has become one of the most well-known chefs from the South—not to mention one of its most visible boosters. He’s a charter member of the Fatback Collective, working to bring humanely raised heritage breed pork into the mainstream of Southern barbecue culture. And despite being a self-proclaimed “hillbilly,” he’s the guy with a CSA box worth of produce tattooed on his arm who gets invited to wax poetic at chef confabs from Portland to Copenhagen to Tokyo.

He is also, at least for a little while, the guy with the TV show. This season, Mind Of a Chef, the Anthony Bourdain-produced documentary series airing on PBS, follows Brock and April Bloomfield as they explore (independently) the foods, places, and people who contributed to their respective culinary identities. Brock’s episodes are mostly concentrated in the American South, and they show him sweating through an order of Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville, visiting Appalachian Virginia where he was raised, and tracing some of the foundational techniques and ingredients of southern cooking back via the slave trade to Senegal.

But while Brock’s reputation as a chef is assured, his true legacy may be the work he does with folks like Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills, whom he collaborates with to preserve the heirloom crops and foodways of the South. Many of the ingredients he uses at his restaurants—including a recently opened Husk spinoff in Nashville—were verging on extinction not long ago. Brock’s realized that reviving them and educating people about why they matter is a lifetime’s work, though that’s not to say he doesn’t think about his eventual retirement.

“My real dream, that I know will provide me with a lifetime of happiness, is to own a pug farm—I have a pug and it’s my prize possession. I want to have a farm where I can raise Chinese pugs, where I can do whole-hog barbecue, make some country ham, and maybe a bit of whisky on the side.”

From mom’s untouchable chicken and dumplings to life-changing soba in Japan, these are the 10 dishes that have shaped Brock into one of the interesting culinary minds in America.

Ronni Lundy’s Cornbread

I got [Ronni Lundy's] book Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken: The Heart and Soul of Southern Country Kitchens and just fell in love with it. It was full of dishes that I grew up eating in the Appalachian Mountains, and dishes that I’d never really seen in restaurants or in cookbooks. And I immediately wanted to cook from it. So I made her cornbread recipe, and it was a really amazing moment for me. It was so simple—there was no flour, there was no sugar, it was just a pure cornmeal- and buttermilk-based recipe. And when I pulled it out of the oven, my mind was just blown. It took me right back to my grandma’s kitchen, and it was one of those moments where I realized how lucky I was to have grown up in such a unique and special region in the South, and all of the sudden I had this sense of pride that I’d never had before.
My Mom’s Chicken and Dumplings

[This is] hands down the most important dish of my entire life, and the most complicated adventure I’ve ever had trying to replicate a singular dish, from any cook in the world. I still can’t make it like my mom. Because, while it seems quite simple—broth, dumplings, chicken—it’s really a perfect example of how amazing southern home cooks are at intuition and cooking by feeling. There are all these little techniques and tips and tricks. For instance, you bring up your broth to a simmer, and right where each little bubble happens, that’s where you drop a dumpling—it boils it off the spoon, and that force molds the outside of the dumpling. This was my first cooking lesson as a kid, but it wasn’t until we were filming for Mind of a Chef that I picked up on some of her tricks. That’s what I love about it—it’s this thing that I’ve been chasing, but I’ll never be able to master it quite like my mother. I’ll never be able to get the dumplings just right, or the broth that delicate, but I’ve accepted that, and it’s okay.
Hoppin' John

When I was 19, [this dish] taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned about being a chef, and I didn’t even know it. I remember saving up my money and going to one of those fancy restaurants in downtown Charleston and getting the Hoppin' John. It was awful. It was absolutely terrible. It tasted like nothing; like Uncle Ben overseeing the demise of the Carolina rice kitchen. And so I dismissed it and lost interest in the Carolina rice kitchen—in that entire period of time; in that entire aspect of the food culture of the Lowcountry. How could this bowl of…nothing be the backbone of this glorious, beloved cuisine? And then I got to know Glenn Roberts. I saw him go from just this guy who milled grits to starting the Carolina Rice Foundation in 2004, resurrecting that rice, and I remember the first time I tasted it just by itself, and it all just kind of made sense. And then I got a package in the mail of the African Red Peas that started this whole thing. It was at that moment that I realized how important heirloom crops were; how important it was to restore this cuisine, and to save those plants and continue to find more plants from that era.
Soba Noodles in Japan

I was in Japan with Cook it Raw, and it was a period in my life where I was trying to make some decisions about what my role as a chef really was, what made me happy as a chef, and not what I needed to be cooking to fill the restaurant with guests every night. We went to this little place (Uesugi) just outside of the Ishikawa Prefecture. It was one guy in the kitchen; he’d been there forever. And we had 15 or 20 people with us—we all wanted to go experience the best soba noodles in the world, hot and cold, and this guy was supposed to be the best. But he would only make two orders at a time. And so we had to go through essentially 20 rounds—it took seven hours, and everybody ate at different times. What I saw was someone who didn’t make any sacrifices. He knew what his capabilities were, as a human being, and as a cook. And he knew that he could only make two perfect orders at a time, and it didn’t matter how long the guest waited, it didn’t matter how many people got upset because they couldn’t have it right away. And I admired that so much. It helped give me the confidence to be the chef that I want to be, and not the chef that everyone else wants me to be. I’ll never forget eating those noodles—experiencing that emotion, but on top of that, [the noodles] being one of the most delicious and perfect things I’ve ever put in my mouth.
My Grandma’s Biscuits and Gravy

That was a staple. We had it five times a week probably. It’s in your DNA. It’s in your bones. You wake up every morning smelling sausage gravy and biscuits—it’s a smell you never forget and it means so much more than just a plate of food. Every single time I eat it, I think about my grandmother. I had it for breakfast this morning. I had it for breakfast yesterday. It was one of the first cooking lessons my grandmother gave me—the art of Southern biscuit-making. I was a very small kid—maybe seven or eight years old—and I got it down. It’s crazy to think about—making a roux, whisking in the milk, bringing it to a simmer, rendering down the sausage—it was pretty complex stuff for a little kid. And so, when I got to culinary school, my first class was "Stocks and Sauces," and we start talking about the mother sauces. We get to béchamel, and I’m like, Béchamel? That’s gravy, dude! It was one of those things where you’re learning a very fancy technique, but you’re learning it in a black skillet in your grandma’s kitchen. I am proud of maybe one or two things that I cook—extremely proud—and I am extremely proud of the biscuits and gravy that I make.
Crawfish Etouffée

[This dish is] symbolic of a specific time in my career when I first knew that I wanted to be a professional chef, at 16 or 17 years old. Around that time, the restaurant I was cooking at had a lot of Cajun and Creole dishes on the menu. That was the thing then—it was when Emeril was just becoming Emeril—and I would actually buy crawfish from the restaurant. Now, remember, [this is when I was] 16 years old—most kids were out smoking weed and listening to the Dead, and I’m going into a grocery store getting the trinity and the rice. A lot of my favorite dishes are thing that have this incredible meaning to me—[they reflect] different parts of my life, or different people in my life. And to me, the minute I hear those two words [crawfish étouffée] muttered together, I kind of transport back to that moment in my life where I knew I wanted to be a chef.
Shrimp and Grits

Here’s the thing—if you’re a cook in a Charleston kitchen, you get so tired of making shrimp and grits. It’s what everyone wants to eat when the come to Charleston, but it’s like like, “Order in: Shrimp and Grits.” Shit, another of shrimp and grits! I trained in Charleston, and shrimp and grits at that time—call it 1998 to 2001—people were taking Lowcountry classics and trying to reinvent them with “luxury” ingredients. But it was instant grits and imported, farm-raised Asian shrimp, and so you’d have to cover it up with tasso gravy. It just did not speak to me—it was a heavy dish that was just muted. So, I never really understood shrimp and grits, because I’d never seen a pure, honest form of them. And then I had fresh milled corn grits from Glenn [Roberts], and it all made sense. And I realized that the best shrimp and grits are just that—those two things in a bowl, some shrimp gravy, maybe some scallion. And now when I travel, it’s the first thing I want to eat when I get home.
Pit-Cooked Whole Hog BBQ

People take it for granted, because it’s shredded pork on a squishy bun. They don’t see that art of knowing how to control embers over a 15- or 20-hour period. It’s really a beautiful way to cook. The first couple of times I had the opportunity to do it myself, I realized how difficult it was. And then I met Rodney Scott, and saw the master at work. And I got to cook a few pigs with him from start to finish—staying up all night, telling stories, making up lies, drinking beers, and listening to good music. I just fell in love with it all over again. I was like, Wow, maybe this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. And whole hog barbecue—wood only—there’s only about eight people doing it in the entire South. And just like many of our great traditions, it was forgotten about, and that’s just unfortunate. This dish is important to me because I’m going to cook as many whole hogs [as I can] and spread the gospel, and really show people how amazing it is. And so whenever I throw a party, no matter where it is, if I’ve got a whole bunch of people coming over—I ain’t throwing a party without cooking a whole hog.
Thiebou Yapp

Being obsessed with Hoppin' John, being obsessed with rice, being obsessed with cowpeas, being obsessed with the idea of understanding how cultures shape cuisines and cuisines shape cultures, it was really important for me to go to West Africa and experience these dishes that are the foundation of jambalaya, Hoppin' John, all these things. Thiebou yapp is essentially Hoppin' John with meat. I remember the first time I went and learned this dish—it was lamb shanks with broken rice and African cowpeas. To me, that was extremely exciting, but I didn’t think I was going to learn something that was the missing link in Southern cuisine. They flavor that dish with fermented, dried, smoked, and salted seafood—everything from sun-dried clams, to smoked oysters, to fermented sea snails. I thought it was so strange—I mean, fermented sea snails with lamb shanks and rice and peas? But then you’re eating it, and you realize how familiar it is on your palate, and in your brain, and emotionally. It’s their way of getting umami into peasant dishes the way we use ham hocks and bacon and jowls and sidemeat and country ham. It’s that glutamic acid that we crave as human beings, and that poor people use to make a pot of beans seem more fulfilling. It was at that point that I realized that that practice came over with the Atlantic slave trade, and that the use of seafood products was just replaced with pork. So, not only was it incredibly delicious, but everything just started to make sense. I realized that I live in Charleston, and have access to things from the ocean with which I can add flavor and complexity to my dishes using these ancient techniques.
Vegetables at Maresa (Los Gatos, CA)

In 2006, I was lucky enough to eat at Manresa. It was a meal that I'll never forget. I can still remember nearly every course in detail. But the course that stood out the most was a dish called "into the vegetable garden"—a dish based on David's relationship with Love Apple Farm and Cynthia Sandberg. The dish is composed of products grown exclusively for chef Kinch by Cynthia. It was phenomenal. So many textures and flavors in one dish. Each vegetable bursted with its own intense, natural flavor. The next day, I visited the farm with David. My mind was blown and all I could think about on the trip home was how I could start growing my own vegetables for the restaurant. That dish inspired me to start my own garden. It's amazing when a plate of food can change your outlook on cooking and being a chef.

The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Sean Brock of Husk

Ronni Lundy’s Cornbread

My Mom’s Chicken and Dumplings

Hoppin' John

Soba Noodles in Japan

My Grandma’s Biscuits and Gravy

Crawfish Etouffée

Shrimp and Grits

Pit-Cooked Whole Hog BBQ

Thiebou Yapp

Vegetables at Maresa (Los Gatos, CA)

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