Re: "Only smoking is proper barbecuing." Discuss
Posted: 06 Jul 2012, 12:03
Possibly not but then you are getting an american interpretation of BBQ - you can't tell an Aussie that his gas grilling isn't BBQing.
Here's what I came up with. Pull up a chair.
Two things here, barbecuing and smoking. I think it’s a good idea to look at it both ways, to see if barbecuing is smoking, and whether smoking is barbecuing.
Barbecues
Barbecue definitions:
Oxford English Dictionary (the world’s premier English language dictionary):
• meal or gathering at which meat, fish, or other food is cooked out of doors on a rack over an open fire or on a special appliance: in the evening there was a barbecue [as modifier]: a barbecue area
• a rack or appliance used for the preparation of food at a barbecue: food was placed to sizzle on the barbecue
• [mass noun] North American food cooked on a barbecue: all the barbecue he could eat
Webster’s Dictionary (the premier American reference):
• to roast or broil on a rack or a revolving spit, over or before a source of heat (as hot coals)
Okay so linguistically, there’s no link in our current language between barbecuing and smoking. When people across the English speaking world say ‘barbecue’, the vast majority of them do not mean smoking.
Conclusion - when most people say 'barbecue', and what dictionaries define as 'barbecue', it's not smoking.
Etymology
The word ‘barbecue’ is thought to come from ‘barbacoa’ a form of cooking developed in the Caribbean, which involved cooking a whole sheep over an open fire, or in a pit covered with leaves, or steamed. Both the flavour and preserving of the meat was achieved through seasoning with a spice made from the leaves of the cassava plant, not through smoke.
Various forms of barbecue:
South Africa – Braai, an open grill.
Mediterranean – Souvlaki, an open grill.
Asia/Arabia – Kabob (kebab), meat cooked on skewers over an open grill.
South America – Asado, an open grill.
Australia – Barbecue almost always on a hot plate, or over an open grill.
It’s just a personal opinion, but I think it’s perhaps a just a little bit much to tell the South Africans, Argentineans, Greeks and Australians that they’re not really barbecuing.
Traditionally, these cultures have used charcoal instead of wood for over two thousand years, and more. There are many reasons for this, but one is to avoid adding an unwanted smokey flavour to food.
Finally, when people wheel out their Weber, disposable barbecue, or whatever, statistically the vast majority use charcoal, and only a very few add wood chips, or any other form of smoke.
So, it’s pretty clear that to say you’re not barbecuing unless you’re smoking is a complete non-starter. It is not supported by usage, tradition, or common practice. The original word didn’t mean smoking, the current definition in the English language (both dictionary and common usage) don’t mean smoking, and most ‘barbecue’ traditions around the world don’t involve smoking.
Smoking
Smoking food has been common in many cultures for thousands of years. It’s been used to preserve food and alter its flavour by people all over the planet. We have smoked cheeses, smoked fish (like kippers), paprika, and smoked pork products, like some bacons, hams, etc.
In almost all of these cases, making smokey bacon, kippers, paprika or smoked cheese, the process is never called barbecuing, and never has been.
In most cultures which practice smoking some foods, they also have a quite separate tradition of barbecuing over open fires, and the two have often traditionally only rarely had anything to do with each other.
For example, a Spanish barbecue is usually an open, masonry type, which has grown up alongside, but completely separate to the production of smoked paprika. In Great Britain the tradition of smoking kippers and pork grew up alongside but completely separately to the tradition of roasting – originally on a spit over/next to an open fire.
In other words, traditionally, smoking and barbecuing have usually been quite different things, often co-existing quite separately within a culture.
Using smoke to add flavour when barbecuing.
However, it’s true to say that barbecues have sometimes added smoke to food, almost always by using wood as the fuel source, or putting wood chips or pieces on the charcoal being used on an open grill, but occasionally with a closed oven to trap the smoke for a more smokey flavour. But looked at in terms of different styles of barbecue across the world, and the numbers of people barbecuing in different ways, it’s fair to say that adding smoke in a closed environment when barbecuing is very much a minority activity.
So where does the tradition of cooking slowly over smoke as a barbecue come from?
The tradition is thought to have started with the ‘cattle drives’ of the late 19th Century. You couldn’t feed a bunch of hungry cowboys nothing, and you couldn’t afford to feed them prime sirloin steak every night, so the bosses would give them cheap cuts of meat, like brisket, or ribs of pork (left over after the main cuts had been removed) which they had to cook slowly. There is some debate about this - see below.
So, whilst ‘grilling/roasting’ (kebabs, roast beef) and ‘smoking’ (kippers) had been around for thousands of years, the marrying of cooking over an enclosed fire, and adding wood as a flavour, is a little over a hundred years old, and exclusively American. In history thee have been one or two exceptions, but they have no link to the American tradition of 'barbecuing'.
Not surprisingly, the idea that “If you’re not smoking in an enclosed smoking oven, then it’s not proper barbecuing” is an American invention, and a very new one at that. It’s an idea which ignores the original Caribbean barbecue, as well as barbecuing techniques from across the world, and throughout history.
Let’s bring this all together.
It’s most accurate to say:
1 - Smoking, in itself, isn’t barbecuing. It’s quite possible to smoke without barbecuing; indeed that’s traditionally almost always been the case.
2 – Barbecuing traditionally has only rarely involved smoking, and most cultures which ‘barbecue’ today, whether it’s a braai, an asado, kebabs, or an Australian barbecue, don’t smoke their food.
3 – Smokey flavour can be added using a barbecue.
4 - It is possible to say that "Only smoking is proper barbecuing" if you only take the very recent American definition, and ignore just about every other form of barbecue, including the tradition where the word barbecue was taken.
In conclusion, it’s completely inaccurate to say that only smoking is proper barbecuing. It’s more accurate to say almost the exact opposite; that smoking usually isn’t barbecuing, but that smoking is a technique which can be applied to barbecuing if required.
Steve W
