What is barbecue?

The debate rages

Barak Obama gave an outdoor shirtsleeve speech at a "barbecue" in Eau Claire, WI on Sunday 8/24/08, the day after he announced Joe Biden as his running mate. He began his remarks by demonstrating a grasp of a controversy even more divisive than taxes: "There was a debate about whether technically this could be called a barbecue. Because my theory is that if there's no barbecue, it's not a barbecue. It's a cookout."

Clearly Obama has a specific, narrow definition of barbecue in mind, as do many purists. But history and common usage disagree with him.

Perhaps realizing that he might have offended the organizers or taken on an issue too hot to handle, he ended his speech with a politically correct pivot: "Let's go get a bratwurst!"

The etymology of barbecue

Whether you spell it Barbecue, Barbeque, Barbaque, BBQ, B-B-Que, Bar-B-Q, Bar-B-Que, Bar-B-Cue, 'Cue, 'Que, Barby, and just plain Q, the origins of the word barbecue (that's how I, and most American dictionaries, spell it) are a bit hazy. Here's my take on the controversy:

Barbecoa. The most credible source of the word is a Taino Indian word which the Spanish recorded as barbecoa in 1526. Tainos were the occupants of some Caribbean Islands when Spanish conquistadores arrived. Spaniards described the barbecoa as a lattice framework made of saplings 2-3 feet high and used to hold meat above coals so it could cook, smoke, and dry. A barbecoa is shown above in an illustration by the first European artist in North America, Miles Harvey.

A French explorer remarked "A Caribbee has been known, on returning home from fishing, fatigued and pressed with hunger, to have the patience to wait the roasting of a fish on a wooden grate fixed two feet above the ground over a fire so small as sometimes to require the whole day to dress it." Note the smoke in the illustration above and the two fish cooking with indirect heat off to the left.

According to John Masefield's 1906 book On the Spanish Main, "The meat to be preserved, were it ox, fish, wild boar, or human being, was then laid upon the grille [yes, they were cannibals]. The fire underneath the grille was kept low, and fed with green sticks, and with the offal, hide, and bones of the slaughtered animal. This process was called boucanning, from an Indian word boucan, which seems to have signified dried meat and camp-fire.

"Meat thus cured kept good for several months. It was of delicate flavour, red as a rose [sounds like a smoke ring, doesn't it?], and of a tempting smell. It could be eaten without further cookery. Sometimes the meat was cut into pieces and salted, before it was boucanned - a practice which made it keep a little longer than it would otherwise have done. Sometimes it was merely cut in strips, roughly rubbed with brine, and hung in the sun to dry into charqui, or jerked beef. The flesh of the wild hog made the most toothsome boucanned meat. It kept good a little longer than the beef, but it needed more careful treatment, as stowage in a damp lazaretto turned it bad at once [a lazaretto is a quarantine for sailors, most likely a cellar in this case]. The hunters took especial care to kill none but the choicest wild boars for sea-store. Lean boars and sows were never killed. Many hunters, it seems, confined themselves to hunting boars, leaving the beeves as unworthy quarry."

Fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean films will appreciate this description of buccaneers from Atlantic Monthly, September 1862: "A cotton shirt hung on their shoulders, and a pair of cotton drawers struggled vainly to cover their thighs: you had to look very closely to pronounce upon the material, it was so stained with blood and fat. Their bronzed faces and thick necks were hirsute, as if overgrown with moss, tangled or crispy. Their feet were tied up in the raw hides of hogs or beeves just slaughtered, from which they also frequently extemporized drawers, cut while reeking, and left to stiffen to the shape of the legs. A heavy-stocked musket, made at Dieppe or Nantes, with a barrel four and a half feet long, and carrying sixteen balls to the pound, lay over the shoulder, a calabash full of powder, with a wax stopper, was slung behind, and a belt of crocodile's skin, with four knives and a bayonet, went round the waist. These individuals, if the term is applicable to the phenomena in question, were buccaneers.

"The name is derived from the arrangements which the Caribs made to cook their prisoners of war. After being dismembered, their pieces were placed upon wooden gridirons, which were called in Carib, barbacoa [actually, they were called babracot]. It will please our Southern brethren to recognize a congenial origin for their favorite barbecue. The place where these grilling hurdles were set up was called boucan, and the method of roasting and smoking, boucaner. The buccaneers were men of many nations, who hunted the wild cattle, which had increased prodigiously from the original Spanish stock; after taking off the hide, they served the flesh as the Caribs served their captives. There appears to have been a division of employment among them; for some hunted beeves [beefs or cattle] merely for the hide, and others hunted the wild hogs to salt and sell their flesh."

The Spanish adopted the Taino method and refined it, called it barbecoa, and brought it to Florida, Mexico, and back home to Spain. De Soto brought hogs with him to Florida and is known to have held a barbacoa near Tupelo, Mississippi, in December 1540 with the local Chickasaw tribe. Apparently De Soto and his army traveled with as many as 400 hogs, and Indians loved the flavor.

Today Mexican and Texas barbacoa usually refers to cooking meat wrapped in agave leaves or aluminum foil and buried in hot coals or cooked in an oven.

De la barbe a la queue. The 1938 French encyclopedia of cooking, Larousse Gastronomique, naturally claims the word barbecue for the French. It says the term came from the French expression "de la barbe a la queue" meaning "from the beard to the tail". It referred to a technique of impaling an animal on a roasting spit. Larousse suggests there may even be a connection to the Romanian berbec, meaning roast mutton. It is hard to find anyone in the know who thinks French or Romanian was the origin of the word.

Bernard Quayle. Robb Walsh, in his excellent book "Legends of Texas Barbecue", reports that cookbooks in Texas tell the fanciful tale of a wealthy Texas rancher named either Bernard Quayle or Barnaby Quinn. Apparently he loved serving his friends whole sheep, hogs, and cattle roasted over open pits. His branding iron had his initials, B.Q. with a straight line beneath. It was common for ranches to be named for their brand, "Thus, the 'bar B.Q.' became synonymous with fine eating - or so the story goes". Walsh reports the myth, and a myth it surely is since the word barbecue had been in common use for many years before the hypothetical messers Quayle or Quinn.

Gridiron. Why is barbecue so popular at football tailgate parties? As any fan will tell you, the greensward the game is played on, marked with parallel white stripes, is called a gridiron. What he may not know is that a gridiron is an early name for the iron grate with parallel bars upon which meat is cooked over coals. And what is the central object of the game? A pigskin, of course.

"The story of barbecue is the story of America. Settlers arrive on great unspoiled continent. Discover wondrous riches. Set them on fire and eat them." Vince Stanton

Barbecue is the world's oldest cooking method and that is beyond dispute. But everything else about barbecue is controversial and grounds for an argument. There are even parts of North Carolina at war against each other over the definition.

Some folks think that barbecue, like jazz, is an American invention. Alas, neither the cooking method nor the word is American.

Some folks think barbecue is hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Others think it is only whole hog. Others are adamant that it is low and slow with indirect heat from wood or charcoal.

And there are snobs. Worse than any I've seen in the wine world. They put religious fundamentalist to shame with their adamancy. Let's get to the facts and see if we can hold the snobs at bay.

Roasting meat over a fire and smoking meat slowly have been around since naked humans lived in caves. In 2007 University of Haifa researchers uncovered evidence that early humans living in the area around Carmel about 200,000 years ago were serious about their grilled meats. From bone and tool evidence, the Israeli hunters preferred large mature animals and cuts of meat that had plenty of flesh on them, and they left head and hooves in the field. Among their favorites were deer, an ancestor of cattle, and boars. From burn marks around the joints and scrape markes on the bones, there is evidence that these cave dwellers knew how to cook.

European artists have painted pictures of barbecues since pig hair bristles were first wrapped around a stick to make a brush (the ox roast below took place in Italy in the 1500s).

Italian Ox Roast

Some think the origins of barbecue are in China where some early kitchens had special devices for smoking. A wonderful speculation on the discovery of the delights of fire-roasted pork was penned by the English essayist and humorist Charles Lamb in 1822. He tells of the Chinese peasant Bo-bo who, long long ago, accidentally burned down his father's cottage and the pigs within. Bo-bo was distraught until he smelled the carcasses. "He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crums (cq) of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted - crackling!"

Bo-bo not only discovers barbecue, but "cracklins" as well! He then embarks on a career of arson burning down the neighborhood to sate his hunger for pork. Click here to read Lamb's tale, "A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig."

And let's not forget that long before refrigeration, smoking meats was a worldwide method for preserving it.

Just what is barbecue? There are many legitimate definitions. One definition just will not do. Below I have tried to get an objective, inclusive, and definitive handle on what the word barbecue means. First, let me put on my flak jacket, because some folks think of barbecue as a religion and I am certain to anger someone with this enterprise. Won't be the first time I've done that!

There is a wrongheaded revisionist movement afoot to narrow the definition of barbecue to this: Pork or beef cooked low and slow with wood smoke. All the rest, they say, "is just grilling". And many in the medai repeat this silliness.

The problem is that this definition flies in the face of history and all the criteria by which dictionaries are written. The revisionists forget that many of the finest barbecue shrines in Texas and Memphis cook hot, fast, ov er direct heat, and some cook with only charcoal. No wood. They also overlook the fact that since the 1600s, people have been calling cookouts featuring everything from fish to possum "a barbecue". You just can't appropriate a perfectly good word and change its definition, folks.

Here are the legitimate definitions of barbecue, the ones in the dictionary and those in common use, and the ones that are historically accurate:

1) Barbecue, Noun. A cookout. A social event centered around an outdoor meal at which meat that was cooked outdoors is served. This is the broadest definition and by far the most common definition. In 1769 George Washington wrote in his diary that he "went up to Alexandria to a barbicue." Colonists cooked everything from squirrels to venison at their barbecue parties. In 1860 newly elected Texas Governor Sam Houston was the featured speaker at the "Great American Barbecue" thrown by the American Party in Austin, to which all Texas citizens were invited for free. Today, a barbecue can include any food cooked over an open flame or coals, such as chicken, fish, or even vegetables. Purists just have to get over it. In England there is an interesting variation, the "barbecue singsong", where food is cooked outdoors, a social event occurs, and singing breaks out. In the classic episode of the BBC sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances", Hyacinth and Richard hold a barbecue singsong. Hyacinth claims that the concept is a party game invented by Henry VIII.

Example of this definition: "At the Fourth of July barbecue we'll be cooking ribs, steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs, and marshmallows. Anything we can fit on the grill."

2) Barbecue, Noun. In much of North and South Carolina barbecue is traditionally limited to pulled pork, usually from a whole hog or pork shoulder (a.k.a. pork butt), usually served on a hamburger bun, often topped with cole slaw. Some of these folks maintain that ribs are not barbecue.

Example: "Let's go git some barbecue at the pig pickin'."

3) Barbecue, Noun. A smoke-cooking device. Purists usually restrict their definition to an outdoor oven that allows the food to cook "low and slow" with both wood smoke and heat. To see some typical examples, click here.

Example: "Santa brought me a cast iron barbecue with Michelin tires this year."

4) Barbecue, Noun. Any outdoor cooking device. This broader, more popular definition includes a wide range of cooking devices whose heat sources can include gas and electricity.

Example: "Honey, the hibachi barbecue finally fell apart. Why don't we spring for a Weber kettle?"

5) Barbecue, Noun. An indoor cooker that generates wood smoke. This definition can include gas or electric cookers used by restaurants. To see some typical examples, click here.

Example: "Yessir, Mr. Restaurateur, with the Plug-N-Play Electric Barbecue you don't even need a chef, and you can still hang out a sign that says 'Barbecue' on it."

6) Korean Barbecue, Noun. Korean barbecue is usually thin cut beef rib meat, and it is typically grilled by the diners over a hibachi in the center of the table.

Example: "You can cook this barbecue beef yourself in two minutes and we can still charge you as if we had done the cooking."

7) Chinese Barbecue, Noun. Chinese barbecue is marinated and roasted in an oven. Although it used to be smoked centuries ago, hardly anybody smokes it anymore. Some restaurants use charcoal, but most use gas.

Example. "You no like that dish mister. Have some barbecue ribs, please. Very popular."

8) Barbecue, Noun. Jazz slang for a beautiful woman. The classic 1927 instrumental jazz tune by Louis Armstrong and his future wife Lil Hardin, "Struttin' with Some Barbecue", does not refer to a promenade with a pulled pork sandwich. Far from it.

Example: "Mighty tasty barbecue you had at the Cotton Club last night, my brother."

9) Kentucky Barbecue, Noun. An event in Kentucky at which is served burgoo. Burgoo is a complex savory stew that is cooked in a large cast iron cauldron over an open flame in Northern Kentucky, especially around Owensboro. It contains meat, usually mutton, potatoes, onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots, corn, celery, and cabbage. Don't be surprised to find beef, pork, chicken, or possum in your bowl along with lima beans, okra, bell pepper, and vinegar. Many restaurants serve burgoo, but the best is said to come from church socials. This is gonna really rile the folks who are trying to re-define barbecue, but, although classic burgoo is cooked over an open flame outdoors, the food is never in touch with fire!

Example: "The Saint Rocco's Church Barbecue will be Sunday after services and will feature our famous burgoo."

10) Barbecue, Verb. The act of cooking with a barbecue device.

Example: "Tonight I'm going to barbecue that damn dog iffen he don't shut up."

11) Barbecue, Adjective. Describing food cooked on a barbecue device.

Example: "I love barbecue tofu!"

12) Barbecue, Adjective. The flavor of Kansas City style, ketchup-based sauce.

Example: "Tonight's special is barbecue salmon. It is pan seared and then baked with barbecue sauce."

13) Barbecue, Bureaucratese. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 9, Chapter III, Part 319, Subpart C, Section 319.80, revised: 1/1/1985 "Barbecued meats, such as product labeled 'Beef Barbecue' or 'Barbecued Pork' shall be cooked by the direct action of dry heat resulting from the burning of hard wood or the hot coals therefrom for a sufficient period to assume the usual characteristics of a barbecued article, which include the formation of a brown crust on the surface and the rendering of surface fat. The product may be basted with a sauce during the cooking process. The weight of barbecued meat shall not exceed 70 percent of the weight of the fresh uncooked meat." This is the definition used by the rules of the Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS).

Example: "I'm sorry Mr. Lay, but you cannot label those things 'Barbecue Carrot Chips.'"

Summary

We'll let author Barry Foy sum it up. In his hilarious book, The Devil's Food Dictionary, to be published in September 2008, he defines hundreds of food terms. Barbecue, he explains, is a term for "one or another of several approaches to cooking one or another type of food, usually meat except when it is something else, which make use of one or another cooking technique that most often involves smoke, though not always, and in which a sauce of one sort or another plays either an essential, a prominent, or a negligible role. Barbecue has a nearly fanatical following in North America, particularly in the southern United States, where it carries a lore rich in history, culture, and the sort of factionalism that often leads to gunplay."

This page revised 8/31/08

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