Barbecue Overview
Barbecue Background
Barbecue (also barbeque, BBQ, Bar-B-Que, or barbie) is a term used to describe both a method and the appropriate tools for cooking food, often meat, with the heat, hot gases, and smoke of a fire. The fuels commonly used to barbecue are smoking wood, hot coals, charcoal, electricity, propane, or natural gas. The cooking process may include application of a vinegar or tomato-based sauce to the meat.
The term as a noun can refer to foods cooked by this method (barbecue ribs), to the cooker itself (barbecuer, barbecue cook, barbecue chef), or to a party that includes such food (we are having a barbecue). The term is also used as a verb for the act of cooking food in this manner (he is babecueing). Barbecue is usually cooked outdoors where the meat is heated by the smoke of wood or charcoal, or with propane or natural gases. Restaurant barbecue may be cooked in large brick or metal ovens specially designed for that purpose.
Barbecue has numerous regional variations in many parts of the world. Notably, in the South and Midwest of the U.S., cooks and chefs consider barbecue to include only indirect methods of cooking where the heat never directly touches the meat, but instead, it travels in an offset path to cook the meat. The more direct, high-heat method or cooking is called grilling. For those who distinguish between the terms, grilling is almost always a fast process over high heat and barbecue is almost always a slow process using indirect heat and/or hot smoke. For example, in a typical home grill, grilled foods are cooked on a grate directly over hot charcoal; while in barbecuing, the coals are dispersed to the sides or at significant distance from the grate. Alternately, an apparatus called a smoker with a separate fire box may be used. Hot smoke is drawn past the meat by convection for very slow cooking under a much lower temperature. This is essentially how barbecue is cooked in most genuine "barbecue" restaurants. Many people consider this to be a separate, distinct cooking process called smoking. The slower methods of cooking break down the collagen in meat and tenderize tougher cuts for easier eating.
