CALF_News_October_November_2020

46 CALF News • October | November 2020 • www.calfnews.net GRILL H O T O F F T H E A C A L F N E W S B B Q P A R T Y A HISTORY OF BARBEQUE A ccording to a 2016 survey by The Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Asso- ciation, three-quarters of adults in the United States own a grill or a smoker. Obviously, cooking over flame is not new – the earliest definitive evidence of the control of fire by a human ances- tor goes back around 2 million years. However, the backyard barbecue is a distinct cultural phenomenon. Grill- ing has a fascinating history in the United States that predates European settlement, and has been intimately linked to culture, politics and historical By Heidi Wiechert and Lance Geiger, The History Guy Contributing Editors events. It is history that deserves to be remembered. In the culinary world and among certain grill connoisseurs, there is an important difference between “grilling” and “barbequing.” The general idea is that grilling is performed with the lid up and heat applied only to one side of the food at a time, while barbequing is slow cooking with the lid closed, providing heat all around. The difference between the two is important if you are considering what kind of grill you want to purchase, or if you need a conversation starter at a Fourth of July cookout. It also has some meaning to history, in that various regions developed their own cuisine, and the method of cooking is important to those distinctions. But the history of both grilling and barbequing are intrinsically linked, and most Americans use the terms inter- changeably. Barbecuing is not limited to the United States and that claim would be an insult to the cuisine of Asian cultures. Korean bulgogi, or marinated meat cooked on a grill, has been around for thousands of years. Throughout history, meat was rare and expensive and usually cooked into soup. If a family had the luxury of eating meat that was not cooked into soup, then they wanted to prepare it in the tastiest way possible. The meat would be thinly sliced, marinated and cooked over a fire. However, what is commonly called “Korean barbeque” today, largely developed since the 1980s, deviates from traditional methods and has lots of western influence. Similarly, cultural traditions of roast- ing meats over fire were common in China, Europe and the Middle East, dating back to prehistory. Documented recipes and instructions for meat roast- ing date back to the Middle Ages. Though the culinary method of cook- ing meat over an open flame isn’t unique to the United States, barbecuing does have a particular history here. In 1985, author Steve Smith wrote in his article, “The Rhetoric of Barbeque: A Southern Right and Ritual,” in the journal, Studies in Popular Culture, that “in many respects barbeque is taken as seriously as reli- gion.” He describes the different regional styles of barbeque in the American South as “barbeque cults.” While barbeque has a particular significance here, the method and tradi- tion in North America well predates the