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What is Barbecue?

BBQ holds a romantic allure.We take meat and apply heat and the smoke of a wood-burning fire to create a fantastic tasting food item. There's something primitive and attractive about this way of cooking.

Unlike grilling a steak or a pork chop, smoking meat requires patience and a learned talent which becomes an instinctive method cooking.

Everyone has their own taste profile that they enjoy, that is why we have favorite restaurants for specific items. Our differences in tastes are due to regions, ethnicity, even from what we grew up eating what our parents liked. I never ate broccoli, turnip, or squash until I was 24, simply because my parents didn't like it. I was afraid to try it, and it wasn't until after I was married that I actually tried it in the privacy of our own home. Great food items sometimes passes us by with our learned habits and perceptions, this is true even with BBQ.

There are many people in the world who do not know what constitutes good BBQ. Many actually like what we would consider to be mediocre or bad BBQ as great food. Some people think the McRib is good BBQ while others think just an application of sauce makes the item "BBQ".

Good BBQ is determined by the eating/dining experiences of the taster and/or the perceived view of what the cook thinks is BBQ. I don't think there is a definitive answer to what good BBQ is. Basically, If you like it, then it's good, at least to you.

What I tend to see is that those who consider mediocre BBQ to be terrific are those who don't cook their own. Those who consider it to be marginally acceptable or bad are those who do cooked their own BBQ.

The bottom line is that if it were a simple process that anyone could do in a cookie cutter method, everyone would be cooking in the same type of cooker, and all have similar foods.

Our differences in tastes and preferences are what keep the craft alive, always looking for something different to try or to make.

Before I met my mentor and discovered what BBQ was, I used to think BBQ was cooking on a gas grill while inviting friends and family to join us.
 
I have a pretty loose definition I guess, based on feel.

Pit Barrel Cooker with charcoal and no added wood = BBQ

Gasser with smokewood added, cooked outside, lawn chair applicable = BBQ as long as it's not direct grilling

Cooking a tri-tip indirect on a Weber Kettle with a smokenator at low temp, then searing at the end = BBQ, but barely. Doing the same thing on a gasser however would not be BBQ in this case

Smoking a prime rib slow and low then searing = BBQ as well as long as there's smokewood, lump, or charcoal.

Pepper Stout Beef = BBQ

Smoking a thanksgiving turkey = BBQ

Neither fuel type, cook time, temp, or type of meat are necessary OR sufficient to call it BBQ for the most part, but more of the spirit of the cook with some consideration of those elements. It needs at least some of them.
 
smoke ninja said:
Never heard folks use the term bbq for burgers and dogs. I have however heard them say they ate burgers and dogs at a bbq.
Click to expand...

In PA at least western PA that is very common for hot dogs and hamburgers to be called BBQ.

Here it is the main event. Gas grill is a bbq and hot dogs and hamburgers are the common thing made.

I only don't do this because my wife got me a weber kettle grill and then I had seen Myron Mixon on Pitmasters and well I decided to try smoking meat since I found out I could smoke on a kettle grill. I rarely make hot dogs and I don't make burgers.
 
For most of the un-initiated, bbq means done on a gas or charcoal grill and hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken as the meats of choice. People around here will throw chicken in an electric roaster, slather it with a commercial bbq sauce and call it BBQ. That all being said, reading' this forum has expanded my definition of BBQ from what I thought is was.
 
Rusty Kettle said:
About the sauce comment I have had someone disagree with me that dry ribs are bbq and have said that it is not bbq without sauce. Interestingly enough he is a transplant from Texas... I really didn't know what to think of that one.

I love dry ribs myself. I think sauce can overpower the flavors easily so no sauce prevents that. I only make sauce for comps and family and friends. I prefer all bbq dry rubs only.
Click to expand...
That person may have been from Texas but he had no idea about what Q is and didn't even understand what Texans think about the sauce subject. Generally speaking... in Texas sauce is not required and most of the sauces that you'll find served with traditional Texas style BBQ (if there is any) is a thin, brothy liquid with a little sweetness and a peppery kick,... more or less something to compliment rather than dominate the flavor of the meat.:wink:
Oh, I almost forgot to mention... down here BBQ is considered slow smoked meat off of an indirect cooker of some sort (with REAL wood smoke involved) where as the use of direct heat (gas or charcoal briquettes) constitutes "grilling".:-D
 
Anything that comes off one of my outdoor cookers is BBQ to me. Smoked or not, sauced or not.
 
lays-barbecue.png
 
oldbill said:
Oh, I almost forgot to mention... down here BBQ is considered slow smoked meat off of an indirect cooker of some sort (with REAL wood smoke involved) where as the use of direct heat (gas or charcoal briquettes) constitutes "grilling".:-D
Click to expand...


Funny thing is the "indirect heat" is a relatively new thing, even in Texas.
 
Demosthenes9 said:
Funny thing is the "indirect heat" is a relatively new thing, even in Texas.
Click to expand...
Well I see your point since in the old days true "pit" BBQ was made on a spit or a grate, over hot wood coals and was in fact getting direct heat. It was however, raised high above the coals and it was a slow cooking process, the meat wasn't so close to the coals or open flames that it was quickly charred, so it was direct,... yet indirect cooking.
Around the the late 1800s to the turn of the 20th century, the first drum and offset style cookers were developed by oil workers as portable cookers out in the fields. The indirect design caught on and at about the same time a variation of it was being used by German immigrants in their meat markets to preserve meat (in the days before refrigeration), to extend it's shelf life.
At Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas you can see brick, indirect cookers being operated just like the first one built in 1900, fueled with post oak splits which are burned in the firebox at the end of the pits. The draft of the tall smoke stacks on the cookers pull the heat and smoke through the cookers and provide perfect heat to the meat being cooked.
https://www.kreuzmarket.com/about-kreuz-barbecue-lockhart-texas/

An excerpt from Wikipedia on the origins of BBQ!:-D
Barbecue Tradition...
The first ingredient in the barbecue tradition was the meat. Pigs came to the Americas with the Spanish explorers, and quickly turned feral. This provided the most widely used meat used in most barbecue, pork ribs, as well as the pork shoulder for pulled pork.[1] The techniques used in barbecue are hot smoking and smoke cooking. Hot smoking is where the meat is cooked with a wood fire, over indirect heat, at temperatures between 120 and 180 F (49 and 82 C), and smoke cooking is cooking over indirect fire at higher temperatures. Unlike cold smoking, which preserves meat and takes days of exposure to the smoke, hot smoking and smoke cooking are cooking processes. While much faster than cold smoking, the cooking process still takes hours, as many as 18. The long, slow cooking process leaves the meat tender and juicy.[2][9]

The next ingredient in barbecue is the wood. Since the wood smoke flavors the food, the particular type of wood influences the process; different woods impart different flavors, so availability of various woods for smoking influences the taste of the barbecue in different regions.
Hard woods such as hickory, mesquite, pecan and the different varieties of oak impart a strong smoke flavor.
Maple, alder, and fruit woods such as apple, pear, and cherry impart a milder, sweeter taste.
Stronger flavored woods are used for pork and beef, while the lighter flavored woods are used for fish and poultry. More exotic smoke generating ingredients can be found in some recipes; grapevine adds a sweet flavor, and sassafras, a major flavor in root beer, adds its distinctive taste to the smoke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_in_the_United_States
 
oldbill said:
Well I see your point since in the old days true "pit" BBQ was made on a spit or a grate, over hot wood coals and was in fact getting direct heat. It was however, raised high above the coals and it was a slow cooking process, the meat wasn't so close to the coals or open flames that it was quickly charred, so it was direct,... yet indirect cooking.
Around the the late 1800s to the turn of the 20th century, the first drum and offset style cookers were developed by oil workers as portable cookers out in the fields. The indirect design caught on and at about the same time a variation of it was being used by German immigrants in their meat markets to preserve meat (in the days before refrigeration), to extend it's shelf life.
At Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas you can see brick, indirect cookers being operated just like the first one built in 1900, fueled with post oak splits which are burned in the firebox at the end of the pits. The draft of the tall smoke stacks on the cookers pull the heat and smoke through the cookers and provide perfect heat to the meat being cooked.
https://www.kreuzmarket.com/about-kreuz-barbecue-lockhart-texas/

An excerpt from Wikipedia on the origins of BBQ!:-D
Barbecue Tradition...
The first ingredient in the barbecue tradition was the meat. Pigs came to the Americas with the Spanish explorers, and quickly turned feral. This provided the most widely used meat used in most barbecue, pork ribs, as well as the pork shoulder for pulled pork.[1] The techniques used in barbecue are hot smoking and smoke cooking. Hot smoking is where the meat is cooked with a wood fire, over indirect heat, at temperatures between 120 and 180 F (49 and 82 C), and smoke cooking is cooking over indirect fire at higher temperatures. Unlike cold smoking, which preserves meat and takes days of exposure to the smoke, hot smoking and smoke cooking are cooking processes. While much faster than cold smoking, the cooking process still takes hours, as many as 18. The long, slow cooking process leaves the meat tender and juicy.[2][9]

The next ingredient in barbecue is the wood. Since the wood smoke flavors the food, the particular type of wood influences the process; different woods impart different flavors, so availability of various woods for smoking influences the taste of the barbecue in different regions.
Hard woods such as hickory, mesquite, pecan and the different varieties of oak impart a strong smoke flavor.
Maple, alder, and fruit woods such as apple, pear, and cherry impart a milder, sweeter taste.
Stronger flavored woods are used for pork and beef, while the lighter flavored woods are used for fish and poultry. More exotic smoke generating ingredients can be found in some recipes; grapevine adds a sweet flavor, and sassafras, a major flavor in root beer, adds its distinctive taste to the smoke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_in_the_United_States
Click to expand...





I think Meathead did a pretty good job answering this question over at Amazingribs.

http://amazingribs.com/BBQ_articles/barbecue_defined.html
 
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