Posts Tagged ‘history of barbecue’
Smoking Out the History of BBQ Cooking
It’s a summer staple across the continent and an all year round favorite in the sunny south. But BBQ cooking has a long, intriguing history that’s actually debated with passion in some circles.
The First Smoked Meat?
Folks who call themselves “true barbecue” enthusiasts would define the process as smoking beef or pork outdoors. Most likely this originated from Native Americans, who did it out of necessity.
When they were successful on a hunt it was important to either eat the meat quickly or preserve it to enjoy later on. Spanish explorers found that the natives used the sun to preserve their meat, building racks over small fires to smoke away the insects and other pests during the process.
Ingeniously, the Natives were also doing what many of us today would call BBQ or smoking their dinner. Did the Spanish introduce spices to the recipe or were the Natives already using them?
Indigenous people of the West Indies called this process “barbacoa,” which could be where the modern term came from. You can enjoy it (without having to hunt for your food) with the Big Green Egg or the Viking C4 Outdoor Cooker, two of the smokers available at Outdora.
