Barbecue
Barbecue or barbeque (often shortened to BBQ in the UK, US, and Canada; barbie or barby in Australia and New Zealand; and braai in South Africa) is a term used with significant regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods that employ live fire and smoke to cook the food.[1] The term is also generally applied to the devices associated with those methods, the broader cuisines that these methods produce, and the meals or gatherings at which this style of food is cooked and served. The cooking methods associated with barbecuing vary significantly but most involve outdoor cooking.
This article is about the cuisine. For the cooking appliance, see Barbecue grill. For other uses, see Barbecue (disambiguation).The various regional variations of barbecue can be broadly categorized into those methods which use direct and those which use indirect heating.[1] Indirect barbecues are associated with North American cuisine, in which meat is heated by roasting or smoking over wood or charcoal.[2] These methods of barbecue involve cooking using smoke at low temperatures and long cooking times, for several hours. Elsewhere, barbecuing more commonly refers to the more direct application of heat, grilling of food over hot coals or a gas fire.[1] This technique is usually done over direct, dry heat or a hot fire for a few minutes. Within these broader categorizations are further national and regional differences.[2]
Spanish explorer Gonzalo Fernández De Oviedo y Valdés was the first to use the word barbecoa in print in Spain in 1526 in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española (2nd Edition) of the Real Academia Española. After Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, the Spaniards apparently found Taíno roasting meat over a grill consisting of a wooden framework resting on sticks above a fire. This framework was also used to store food above ground and for sleeping. The flames and smoke rose and enveloped the meat, giving it a certain flavor.[8] Spaniards called the framework a barbacoa.
Another form of barbacoa involves digging a hole in the ground, burning logs in it and placing stones in it to absorb and retain heat. Large cuts of meat, often wrapped in leaves, often a whole goat or lamb—above a pot so the juices can be used to make a broth. It is then covered with maguey leaves and coal, and set alight. The cooking process takes a few hours. Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, described this method of roasting alligators among the "Mosquito people" (Miskito people) on his journeys to Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Mosquito Coast, in his narrative The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.[9]
Linguists have suggested the word was loaned successively into Spanish, then Portuguese, French, and English. In the form barbacado, the word was used in English in 1648 by the supposed Beauchamp Plantagenet in the tract A description of the province of New Albion: "the Indians in stead of salt doe barbecado or dry and smoak fish".[10]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use in modern form was in 1661, in Edmund Hickeringill's Jamaica Viewed: "Some are slain, And their flesh forthwith Barbacu'd and eat";[5] it also appears in 1672 in the writings of John Lederer following his travels in the North American southeast in 1669–1670.[11]
The first known use as a noun was in 1697 by the English buccaneer William Dampier. In his New Voyage Round the World, Dampier wrote, "and lay there all night, upon our Borbecu's, or frames of Sticks, raised about 3 foot [0.91 m] from the Ground".[12]
As early as the 1730s, New England Puritans were familiar with barbecue, as on 4 November 1731, New London, Connecticut, resident Joshua Hempstead wrote in his diary: "I was at Madm Winthrops at an Entertainment, or Treat of Colln [Colonel] or Samll Brownes a Barbaqued."[13] Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary gave the following definitions:[14]
While the standard modern English spelling of the word is barbecue, variations including barbeque and truncations such as bar-b-q or BBQ may also be found.[15] The spelling barbeque is given in Merriam-Webster as a variant, whereas the Oxford Dictionaries explain that it is a misspelling which is not accepted in standard English and is best avoided.[16][17] In the Southeastern United States, the word barbecue is used predominantly as a noun referring to roast pork, while in the Southwestern states cuts of beef are often cooked.[18]
Associations[edit]
Because the word barbecue came from native groups, Europeans gave it "savage connotations".[19]: 24 This association with barbarians and "savages" is strengthened by Edmund Hickeringill's work Jamaica Viewed: with All the Ports, Harbours, and their Several Soundings, Towns, and Settlements through its descriptions of cannibalism. However, according to Andrew Warnes, there is very little proof that Hickeringill's tale of cannibalism in the Caribbean is even remotely true.[19]: 32 Another notable false depiction of cannibalistic barbecues appears in Theodor de Bry's Great Voyages, which in Warnes's eyes, "present smoke cookery as a custom quintessential to an underlying savagery [...] that everywhere contains within it a potential for cannibalistic violence".[19]: 36 Today, people in the US associate barbecue with "classic Americana".[19]: 3
Other uses[edit]
The term barbecue is also used to designate a flavor added to food items, the most prominent of which are potato chips.[36]