Soul food is the ethnic cuisine of African Americans. Originating in the American South from the cuisines of enslaved Africans transported from Africa through the Atlantic slave trade, soul food is closely associated with the cuisine of the Southern United States. The expression "soul food" originated in the mid-1960s when "soul" was a common word used to describe African-American culture. Soul food uses cooking techniques and ingredients from West African, Central African, Western European, and Indigenous cuisine of the Americas.

The cuisine was initially denigrated as low quality and belittled because of its origin. It was seen as low-class food, and African Americans in the North looked down on their Black Southern compatriots who preferred soul food (see the Great Migration). The concept evolved from describing the food of slaves in the South, to being taken up as a primary source of pride in the African American community even in the North, such as in New York City, Chicago and Detroit.

Soul food historian Adrian Miller said the difference between soul food and Southern food is that soul food is intensely seasoned and uses a variety of meats to add flavor to food and adds a variety of spicy and savory sauces. These spicy and savory sauces add robust flavor. This method of preparation was influenced by West African cuisine where West Africans create sauces to add flavor and spice to their food. Black Americans also add sugar to make cornbread, while "white southerners say when you put sugar in corn bread, it becomes cake". Bob Jeffries, the author of Soul Food Cookbook, said the difference between soul food and Southern food is: "While all soul food is Southern food, not all Southern food is soul. Soul food cooking is an example of how really good Southern [African-American] cooks cooked with what they had available to them."

Impoverished White and Black people in the South cooked many of the same dishes stemming from Southern cooking traditions, but styles of preparation sometimes varied. Certain techniques popular in soul and other Southern cuisines (i.e., frying meat and using all parts of the animal for consumption) are shared with cultures all over the world.

The earliest use of the word "soul food" to describe a type of cuisine is found in a 1909 published memoir of a former slave named Thomas L. Johnson. Johnson described a church service where the congregation was served food. He wrote: "There are some, when preaching, only preach three-quarters of the truth, or less, when serving up dishes of soul-food to suit the palates of those they must please." The term soul food became popular during the 1960s and 1970s in the midst of the Black Power movement. One of the earliest written uses of the term is found in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was published in 1965. LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) published an article entitled "Soul Food" and was one of the key proponents for establishing the food as a part of the Black American identity. Those who had participated in the Great Migration found within soul food a reminder of the home and family they had left behind after moving to unfamiliar northern cities. Soul food restaurants were Black-owned businesses that served as neighborhood meeting places where people socialized and ate together. According to author Laretta Henderson, middle-class African Americans embrace their "blackness" by preparing and eating soul food. Henderson wrote:

In its culinary incarnation, "soul food" was associated with a shared history of oppression and inculcated, by some, with cultural pride. Soul food was eaten by the bondsmen. It was also the food former slaves incorporated into their diet after emancipation. Therefore, during the 1960s, middle-class blacks used their reported consumption of soul food to distance themselves from the values of the white middle class, to define themselves ethnically, and to align themselves with lower-class blacks. Irrespective of political affiliation or social class, the definition of "blackness", or "soul", became part of everyday discourse in the black community.

This style of cooking is celebrated in the month of June, called National Soul Food month.

During the period of the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved people ate African foods aboard slave ships. These included rice, millet, okra, black-eyed peas, yams, and legumes such as kidney beans and lima beans. These crops were brought to North America and became a staple in Southern cuisine. One enslaved African aboard a slave ship recalled later that all they ate were yams on the voyage from Africa to Charleston, South Carolina. Slave ships were provisioned with African vegetables, fruits, and animals to feed the enslaved people bound in chains below the ships' decks. These items were later planted and used in the New World for food and as cash crops. The introduction of African plants to the Americas that shaped American cuisine was part of what is called the Columbian exchange. Researchers from Mercer University Libraries said: "The foods selected to bring to America were brought over for specific reasons. 'They all remain palatable long after harvesting and were thus ideal for use on the slow voyage from Africa. Secondly, they are all the edible parts of plants that thrive in the American South, and therefore they flourished once they had been planted hopefully by the slave in the garden space allotted to him on his owner's plantation'". Another way rice, okra, and millet came to North America was by enslaved African women on slave ships hiding the seeds of rice, okra, and millet in their braided hair as a precaution against an unknown future in the new land where they would be forced to work.