subject: The History Of Barbecue Sauce- How The Spanish Inquisition Influenced Southern Style Barbecue Sauce [print this page] It was the Spanish who introduced the Americas and the American Indians to the pig. In return, the Indians instructed the Spanish on how to slowly cook the meat, and cure it with vinegar and spices, by smoking the meat over an open fire. So it was within this fateful gathering of these two cultures that barbecue began in America- dating all the way back to the early 1500's.
One of the first colonies in the Americas, to begin with, was North Carolina. The first Spanish explorers that you read about in the history books in all actuality were Conquistadors who were into gold as a conquest, not colonization.
The actual Spanish colonists arrived earlier in the beginning of the 1500's located themselves in South Carolina where they named it Santa Elena. They established in what is now called Port Royal within the county of Beaufort.
Their colony lasted for close to twenty years with a fort that occupied several cannons, a church and bakery, a hardware store, and a pottery shop and over five hundred colonists with well over a hundred families. It became the first place that the white man first learned how to prepare and eat barbecue.
Therefore, people were eating and preparing barbecues with barbecue sauces in South Carolina long before the states name had been given to this area by the English colonists.
South Carolina is the only state in America that you can experience all four styles of barbecue sauce that have cultural roots within the German, Scottish, Irish, and Native Americans influences. Within this state, the true invention and art of barbecuing began, so one cannot actually say that they have experienced the totality of the barbecue experience if they have not ventured to this state.
Basically, you cannot call yourself a barbecue connoisseur if you have not completed your barbecue conquest by taking a visit to South Carolina where the art of this cooking activity and barbecue sauce tradition continues in both its purest and most diversified styles.
So, now that you know the true history of how barbecue originated and how it is connected to the Spanish Inquisition, you can look at the art of barbecue and barbecue sauce with much more appreciation. This should mean that you will feel more inspired to research these historical southern barbecue sauce recipes and put them into practice. Y'all will not be sorry!
