Summer is Barbecue Time

One day after summer starts and I’m about to say something sacrilegious. So you might want to usher the children out of the room, close the blinds, and make sure a government drone isn’t loitering overhead before you continue reading. Prepared? Are you sure? Okay, here goes, the great American institution that is barbecue isn’t American at all.

Alright, I apologize. I know that the revelation one of our beloved summer traditions didn’t originate here in the US isn’t quite as shocking as I made it out.  To be honest, nobody really knows where the term barbecue comes from, though there’s speculation that it derives from the Spanish term for a cooking method they witnessed native peoples of the Caribbean using. Due to the abundance of pork in the American south the technique became established by the 1800’s.

To start things off, it’s important to talk a little about the distinction between barbecue and grilling.

Grilling is a method of cookery where food is placed directly on the rack or grate of a grill which uses a heat source such as wood, charcoal, or gas. The best kinds of foods for grilling tend toward meats and poultry (although fish, seafood, and vegetables grilled with the right accessories).

Grill is a high-temperature/dry heat cooking method which means that the meats cooked on a grill should tender and many cooks utilize marinades to help retain moisture.

On the other hand, Barbecue utilizes indirect heat to perform cooking and many smokers designed for barbecue will have a separate firebox to help keep the heat applied to the meat between 200 and 220°F. Cooking times for real barbecue can be as long as 18 hours which helps retain moisture and allows for the use of relatively tough cuts of meat with large amounts of fat and connective tissue (such as pork shoulder).

There are four basic styles of barbecue in America: North Carolina, Kansas City, Texas, and Memphis. Each of these differ in the choice of meat and the way it's prepared for cooking. In North Carolina the preferred method is to slather pork with a vinegar-based barbecue sauce during the cooking process. In Kansas City a combination of dry spices and sugar, commonly referred to as a dry rub, is used to season the meat before cooking. Texan barbecue artists also use dry rubs, but they lean toward choosing cuts of beef for their smokers. And in Memphis sweet and spicy tomato-based sauce sauce mopped over pork is king.

My preference? Well, I'm born and bread in the Midwest so I have a fondness for Memphis and Kansas City barbecue. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing like a properly smoked and seasoned beef brisket and I won't hesitate dig in when I get a chance, but my meat of choice is pork and with a good dry rub and a smoking-hot sauce to finish things off.

Barbecue holds at its smokey heart a kind of roadhouse romance. It's the alchemical art of mixing love with what geography provides poverty allows to create food for the soul. The best pit masters create rub recipes which they guard jealously and pass down through generations. I’m still working on my personal combination, a blend that expresses who I am, my history, and where I come from. It's a journey of discovery that started with a recipe for a ‘foolproof’ rub that I stumbled across on the web and still is evolving to this day and I highly recommend you begin your own exploration. Dig back into your history for flavors and mine your memories and in the end you might cook up something that speaks to your soul.