Perloo — also spelled pilau, purloo, perlo — is the Carolina coast's one-pot rice dish: rice cooked directly in a flavoured broth with proteins (chicken, sausage, shrimp, or combinations) and vegetables, absorbing the liquid and the flavour as it cooks. It is the Low Country's answer to Louisiana jambalaya (LA1-05), and it descends from the same dual ancestry: West African jollof rice (the one-pot rice-with-protein tradition that traveled the diaspora) and Persian/Indian pilaf (rice cooked in flavoured stock, which arrived in the American South through the British colonial route via India). Karen Hess in *The Carolina Rice Kitchen* traces perloo to both traditions and argues that the African jollof connection is primary, given that the cooks who made it were predominantly African and African-descended. The word "pilau" itself traveled from Persian *polow* through Indian *pulao* through British colonial usage to the Carolina coast.
A one-pot rice dish where long-grain rice (ideally Carolina Gold) cooks directly in a broth flavoured with chicken, sausage, shrimp, tomato, the trinity (or its Carolina equivalent: onion, celery, sometimes green pepper), and seasoning. The rice absorbs the broth completely, producing separate grains stained with the colour and flavour of whatever was cooked before it. Unlike jambalaya, perloo rarely uses a roux base — it relies on the stock's own body and the tomato for depth.
Perloo is a complete meal. Cornbread or biscuits alongside. A simple green salad or coleslaw. Hot sauce. Cold beer or sweet tea.
1) The protein is cooked first — browned and removed. The aromatics are cooked in the protein's rendered fat. The liquid goes in. The rice goes in last and cooks in the flavoured stock. 2) The liquid-to-rice ratio must be precise — too much and the rice is mushy; too little and it's undercooked. Approximately 2:1 liquid to rice, adjusted for the moisture contributed by tomato and protein. 3) Cover tightly and do not lift the lid until the rice is done — same principle as jambalaya. Steam does the work. 4) Chicken perloo is the standard; shrimp perloo is the coastal luxury; sausage perloo is the everyday version. Combinations (chicken and sausage, shrimp and sausage) follow the same logic as jambalaya's multi-protein approach.
The bottom crust — the same phenomenon as jambalaya's gratin and paella's socarrat — is prized in the perloo tradition. Low heat, undisturbed pot, and the rice at the bottom caramelises against the fond. Scrape it up and fold it through. Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor's *Vibration Cooking* (1970) — one of the first cookbooks to celebrate Gullah Geechee food as art rather than poverty food — includes a perloo that she describes with characteristic directness and no apology.
Treating perloo as dirty rice with extra ingredients — perloo's technique is specific: the rice cooks in the broth, absorbing everything. Adding cooked rice to a stew is not perloo. Too much tomato — perloo is not a tomato-rice stew. The tomato should provide colour and a background sweetness, not dominate.
Karen Hess — The Carolina Rice Kitchen; Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor — Vibration Cooking; Matt Lee & Ted Lee — The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook