The Barbecue In Barbecue Sauce Part 1

Barbecue is a particularly western ritual

Barbecue is a particularly western ritual. Though there are variations on the theme worldwide the preoccupation with summer barbecue seems to be a truly American (both North and South) pastime. It is hard to imagine going to a picnic, a family reunion, a church gathering, or even a county fair without imagining the smell of meat mixed with smoke and some type of barbecue sauce.

The general consensus is that the term barbecue (or barbeque) derives from a group of people called the Taino in the Caribbean, who called their version "barbacoa", meaning "sacred fire pit." The Taino dug a pit and placed a pot on the bottom to catch the dripping juices of the meat that cooked above it. Coals and leaves of the maguey tree were then lit and a couple of hours later, there would be a great feast. Sounds something like your backyard last weekend, doesn't it?

This was a long-standing tradition which was met with great approval by the European explorers who did not know how to barbecue and found this, among other truly American specialties like sugar, rum and tobacco, to be a wonderfully satisfying experience. As the settlers began to move northward from the Caribbean to the mainland US they took this cooking style with them. It is notable that for quite a long time barbecue and barbecue sauce was a uniquely "Southern" experience, likely born of the proximity to the islands of the Caribbean.

In the early days of the US colonies most of the meat barbecued was pork. Since the process of slow-cook barbecue ended up breaking down the collagen in the meat and made the meat literally fall off the bones, less than prime cuts could be used to great effect. Cattle ranches were not very prevalent in the South since cotton was king, and pigs were let run semi-wild until it was time to hunt one down for a barbecue. Since they were not corn fed or pampered for plumpness, the pigs tended to be tough and stringy, perfect for the remedying art of the barbecue and barbecue sauce.

This system allowed for low maintenance production of a ready food source for when it was needed. The hunting, preparing, cooking and subsequent eating was quite an occasion for all involved. It usually was a time for festivity and celebration and these "pig pickin's" ultimately became common as a time to gather and became intertwined with political events, church functions and any large social production and were the basis of the traditional Southern barbecue.

by: John Schnieder

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