Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of BBQ

Starting point is 00:00:00 Many of the foods that people associate with America didn't actually originate in the United States. Hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza are all things that were popularized in the U.S., but they didn't originate there. However, there is one form of cuisine which is uniquely American, barbecue. While it is American, it developed with influences from Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans. Learn more about barbecue, how it developed and its regional differences on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:00:54 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Before I get into a discussion of barbecue, I should probably define my terms of it. When I said barbecue is a uniquely American. cuisine, you might be thinking that there's Korean barbecue, Japanese barbecue, and many others. As you'll see, those are very different forms of cooking compared to American barbecue. The word barbecue was associated with those styles of cooking by Americans after the fact. Likewise, cooking meat over a fire is as old as humanity itself.

Starting point is 00:01:31 Grilling, roasting, or broiling really isn't something that has any particular origin. However, cooking over an open fire really isn't barbecue, even though it's often called that. What do many people call barbecue is really a lot of people. just grilling. The origins of barbecue stem back to the native people who lived in the Caribbean before Europeans arrived, the Taino. These were the people who lived on what is today, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The Taino had a method of cooking where they would put fish on sticks over a pit fire that they called a Barabiku, which meant sacred pit in their language. They would create a wooden rack over the pit where they would put fish on it where it would be

Starting point is 00:02:06 cooked by the fire and the smoke. When the Spanish arrived, they found this form of cooking to have a unique taste, and they called the rack which the meat was put upon a barbacoa. This slow pit cooking is really the defining characteristic of what would become American barbecue. This method of cooking over a pit, it turned out, was quite common amongst the native peoples in the Americas, in South, North, and Central America, and it was adopted by the Europeans who settled in the region, particularly in the area we call the South today in the United States. As early as 1540, the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reported having roasted pig over a barbacoa with the Chick-Saw tribe in what is today the state of Tennessee.

Starting point is 00:02:44 The cooking method of slow roasting over an open pit spread to the north and became popular in the British colonies. The Spanish word barbacoa eventually became barbecue in English, and it didn't just refer to the rack used in cooking anymore, but to the method of cooking itself. It was also used to describe an event. A barbecue was something that was held and would often be a celebration. Many linguists think that the word may have actually gone from Spanish to Portuguese to French to English. We know by the 1650s there were laws in Virginia regarding setting off cannons during a barbecue, and by the early 18th century, barbecued pig was popular during social gatherings in New England. In 1756, the English writer Samuel Johnson had an entry for barbecue in his dictionary as both a noun and a verb.

Starting point is 00:03:27 The verb to barbecue was defined as, quote, a term for dressing a whole hog. And the noun barbecue was defined as, quote, a hog dressed whole. Even at this early time, barbecuing was closely associated with pork to a point where that is almost what it was defined as. Barbecuing was thought of by most people back in Europe as a rather barbaric practice,

Starting point is 00:03:48 whereas American colonists adopted it in one of the first major cultural splits between Americans and British. Here I should note that pigs are not native to the Americas. They were brought over by Europeans. Pigs, unlike cows, were really easy animals to keep. On many farms, you could just keep a pig off nothing but food scraps and other waste items from farming.

Starting point is 00:04:06 In the South, they would often just let pigs roam free and fend for themselves. They could easily feed themselves by scavenging in the forest. When they did need to harvest one, you just needed to hunt one down, which was really easy to do. Much of the innovation in barbecue occurred in the South before the Civil War. There are estimates that before the Civil War, Southern states had consumed five times as much pork as beef. When a hog was butchered on a plantation, the best cuts would usually go to the big house, and the toughest worst cuts were often given to slaves. Over time, the slaves learned how to cook these cuts of meat such that the tough meat became extremely tender.

Starting point is 00:04:40 It was done through slow cooking over wood with plenty of smoke. These slaves managed to take the cheapest cuts of meat and turn them into delicacies. These barbecue cooks became the first true pit masters. They mastered the art of slow cooking pork and passed this knowledge down from generation to generation. The term pulled pork actually comes from this period. Most people think it describes shredded pork, which is just pulled apart. However, slaves in the South would often just pull pieces of pork directly off the carcass as it was being cooked, which often took hours. Something which many people still do today if you happen to be around when the pork is being cooked.

Starting point is 00:05:15 Also in the 19th century, as the country spread west, barbecues spread west as well. Smoking meats turned out to be a great method of preservation, which was one of the reasons why the original Native Americans used this cooking technique. Barbecues also became furbly entrenched as something which was done for special occasions. election rallies, church gatherings, and other celebrations were often centered around a barbecue. After the Civil War, barbecuing went from a simple way of cooking pork and developed into multiple regional cuisines. Freed slaves, who had much of the practical knowledge of barbecuing and pit roasting, took this knowledge with them as they migrated to the north and to the west. Now we need to bring something up which I haven't mentioned yet. Sources.

Starting point is 00:05:54 The very first barbecue sauces were really just designed to keep meat moist while being cooked. They were often very simple and consisted of non-examined. nothing more than butter, vinegar, wine, or even water. The first reference to a special barbecue sauce was in 1867 by a Confederate widow named Mrs. A. P. Hill. She published Mrs. Hill's new cookbook and gave in it the following recipe. Quote, sauce for barbecues. Melt a half a pound of butter, stir into it a large tablespoon of mustard, half a teaspoon of red pepper, one of black, salt to taste, add vinegar until the sauce has a strong acid taste. The quality of vinegar will depend on the strength

Starting point is 00:06:29 of it. As soon as the meat becomes hot, begin to baste and continue basting frequently until it is done. Pour over the meat any sauce that remains, end quote. For those of you familiar with sauces, you might have realized that this really doesn't sound like any barbecue sauce you've probably ever had. The rise of barbecue sauces was one of the reasons for the development of regional divisions in American barbecue. For those of you not from the United States, there isn't one single American style of barbecue. There are several regional variations with four primary ones, and people from those regions are passionate about their barbecue being the best. The first major barbecue style is the Carolinas.

Starting point is 00:07:06 The defining characteristic of Carolina Barbecue is its sauce, which is mustard and vinegar-based. The use of mustard originally came from German immigrants who heavily used mustard as an ingredient. Carolina Barbecue is almost exclusively pork and usually a whole roasted pig. I remember driving through South Carolina and I drove past a hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint out in the middle of nowhere. I turned the car around to stop and eat. It was my first Carolina barbecue experience, and it was fantastic. The second major barbecue style has to be the Memphis Barbecue. Memphis is located on the Mississippi River, and so there's a wide variety of goods and people coming through the city.

Starting point is 00:07:42 Memphis Barbecue is defined by its tomato-based sauce. You can find other meats in Memphis Barbecue, but it's mostly pork. In particular, it's usually pulled pork in a pulled pork sandwich and often ribs as well. In addition to the tomato-based sauce, you can also find Memphis-style dry ribs, which uses a dry rub instead of a wet sauce. The third style of barbecue is the Texas Barbecue. Texas Barbecue is really different from the rest of the country. Texas Barbecue is much more reliant on beef rather than pork.

Starting point is 00:08:10 The defining meat is slow-cooked brisket, which is naturally really tough. You'll often find sausages as well, which is another carryover from German immigrants who settled in the region. Texas sauces also tend to be more vinegar-based. The final major barbecue style is Kansas City Barbecue. You can think of Kansas City Barbecue as a cross between Memphis and Texas. Kansas City used to be a meatpacking hub so you could find a wide variety of meats, including brisket and ribs. The sauces tend to be very sweet and are the most popular style of barbecue sauce in the country. The classic Kansas City meat is burnt ends.

Starting point is 00:08:43 There are many smaller regional variations as well, including Maryland, St. Louis, Georgia, East Texas, and Central Texas. I should give special mention to two types of American barbecue that don't fit into traditional American barbecue categories. The first would be a Louisiana Boucherie. This is a Cajun and Creole tradition where a hog would be butchered as a community event. Every part of the pig would be eaten, but it isn't a whole hog roasting like you would see elsewhere. I actually got to attend one in a Mardi Gras celebration a few years ago in Lafayette, Louisiana. And it was a fantastic experience. The other special mention has to go to Hawaii.

Starting point is 00:09:17 Hawaiian barbecue, or Polynesian pit cooking more generally, developed completely separately from barbecue in the mainland United States. A Hawaiian luau involves a pig roasted on an open pit, but pretty much everything else about the experience is different. American barbecue has gone from something which was done informally for special occasions to a true culinary art form. But if you want to eat the best sushi in the world, you can visit a Michelin Star restaurant in Japan. If you want to eat the best French cuisine, you can visit a Michelin Star restaurant in France. However, there has never once in history been a barbecue restaurant given a Michelin Star. If you want to find really good barbecue, you're going to have to find it at places which are not at all fancy. Look for a place that has a large pile of wood outside.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Some of the best barbecue restaurants are only open during said times and on certain days. They will make a limited amount of food, and when they're out, they're done. Most of the food will be sold to locals who are usually the only ones who even know about it. You want to look for places that slow cook their pork for at least 16 to 24 hours. These long cooking times are one of the reasons why it's so hard for regular restaurants to do barbecue properly. You can certainly find some good barbecue restaurants in big cities. Rodney Scott is probably the best-known pit master in the country. He has restaurants in Charleston, Birmingham, and Atlanta. Likewise, even small regional chains like Gates Barbecue or Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City

Starting point is 00:10:37 are places that I'll certainly go out of my way to visit when I'm in town. Today, most forms of cuisine can now be found all over the world. However, in the course of my admittedly pretty extensive travels, I have found very few American barbecue restaurants which truly provide an authentic experience. And by few, I mean zero. They do exist, but they often have to cut corners, usually with how the barbecue pit is run. I've been to barbecue restaurants in places like Bangkok, Tel Aviv, and Vienna, and I have to confess I have been pretty disappointed every time. But I'm also sure that people from every country think the exact same thing about their cuisine. As I mentioned at the start, slow-cooked pit-roasted barbecue is one of the only truly

Starting point is 00:11:17 original American cuisines. The best and only real way to experience the century's old tradition is to get yourself to a real barbecue shack. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Sandra J. Pearson over at Podchaser. She writes, positively addicting.

Starting point is 00:11:44 A fun, interesting way to learn and expand your mind. In other words, mind-blowing. Thanks, Sandra. just a word of warning. The Everything Everywhere Daily podcast is addictive and is now registered as a Class 1 addictive substance. Withdraw symptoms have been known to be fatal. Remember, if you leave a review over at Podchester until the end of April,

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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of BBQ

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