Barbecue Blog

Every spring, North Americans gear up their grill, stock up on the meat and prepare for many mouth-watering barbecues. But how much do we really know about the art of barbecuing? From the familiar pastime’s origins to surprising tips and tactics, this list will provide you with all the information you need to wow your friends at the next neighbourhood barbecue!

1) Barbecues originated in pig-pickin’s, feasts that were common in the Southern United States prior to the Civil War. Whole pigs were cooked and eaten by the crowd.

2) “Smoking” was used as far as 6000 years ago in order to make meats safe to eat and store. The meat was exposed to smoke and low heat in order to prevent bacteria and enzymes from growing.

3) In Australia, a barbecue is commonly referred to as a barbie. The famous statement “I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you,” which appeared in Australian tourism advertisements, is often used to refer to the country.

4) What most North Americans partake in today isn’t actually barbecuing. Barbecuing is cooking at temperatures around the boiling point of water (180-220F) for a longer time period, in order to make the meat tender while preserving its natural juices. Today, the method most commonly used is in fact broiling: cooking at 475-700F in much less time.

5) According to the Barbecue Industry Association, half of all marshmallows eaten in the U.S. have been toasted over a grill.

6) For an easy way to check how much propane you have left, bring your bathroom scale outside and weigh the gas tank.

7) The origin of the word barbecue is unclear. Some believe it came from the American-Indian word barbacoa for a wood on which foods were cooked. Others say it came from the french words “de barbe à queue,” meaning “whiskers to tail.”

To add a smokey flavour to your gas-grill-cooked foods or foods cooked inside the house, use “liquid smoke.” A condensation of actual smoke, this product can be easily added to your barbecue marinade or sauce.

9) Brisket, the extremely hard cut of meat taken from a cow’s chest, takes one to two hours per pound to barbecue. That’s an average 12 hours on the grill for a basic 8-pound piece!

10) Kansas City, Missouri and Lexington, North Carolina both claim to be the barbecue capitals of the world. Memphis, meanwhile, stakes a claim to being the pork barbecue capital.

Now you’re set to impress!

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What would grilling or barbecue be without barbecue sauce? Either slowly cooking into the meat in a barbecue, or forming a thick tasty glaze on grilled food, outdoor cooking just would not be the same without a good barbecue sauce.

Barbecue sauces vary from region to region, and from chef to chef. If you go to North Carolina, you’d find a thin, vinegar based sauce, soaking into the thin shreds of pulled pork. In Kansas City, they like their sauce thick and sweet. If you go to Texas, you’ll find a thinner sauce than you’d find in Kansas City, and less sweet.

Barbecue sauces are usually categorized according to their base. Sauces can be based on ketchup, tomato sauce, mustard, vinegar, even mayonnaise. Depending on the base, and the preference of the cook, they can be thick or thin, sweet, sour, spicy, mild, or any combination.

A basic sauce consists of several elements, each adding another layer of flavor and complexity to the sauce. First of all is the base, as stated above, that can be tomato sauce, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, or mayonnaise. Or if you want to experiment, you can try something different. The next element is the sweetener. Usually, this is brown sugar or molasses, but you can also use fruit juice, or any other sweet flavor. The sweetener helps to take the edge of of the next flavor… sour. Lemon juice and lime juice can be added for a sour tang, or vinegar will do the trick. Aromatics, herbs, and spices add another layer of flavor to the barbecue sauce. Onion and garlic are common aromatics.

You can buy sauces at the store. You’ll probably find at least a dozen brands and flavors at your local grocery store. But nothing beats a good homemade barbecue sauce. If you want to create your own barbecue sauce, it isn’t hard. Just choose your base, and the rest of the flavors that you want, and start experimenting. A good barbecue sauce will have a balanced blend of flavors to it, sweet, sour, smoky, spicy. Just add a little bit of each ingredient at a time until you get the blend that you want. You can always add more, but you can’t take away, so just add a little bit at a time. Feel free to experiment with your sauce, people have added coffee, cola, cherries, and other ingredients that you wouldn’t think to find in a barbecue sauce. If you want, you can buy a sauce at the store, and then doctor the sauce with your own additions, to suit your own tastes.

A quick note on storage. You can store the barbecue sauce in a sealed container in your refrigerator for a few days. If you want to keep the sauce longer than that, you’ll need to learn some canning techniques, to sterilize the food and containers, and properly process the sauce.

How you use the barbecue sauce depends a lot on the sauce itself. Most barbecue sauces can be used at the table as a dipping sauce for food. But different types of sauces are used differently in cooking. Thin sauces can be used as a marinade for the meat before grilling, and can also be applied during the cooking proces. Thicker sauces, especially those with a lot of sugar should not be applied to the food until the last few minutes of cooking time, or they could burn. If you are doing a true barbecue, however, cooking the meat slowly for a long time, you can get away with putting some of the sauce on the meat at the beginning of the cooking time, as the lower temperature would be less likely to burn the sauce.

A good outdoor cookout just isn’t the same without a good, flavorful barbecue sauce. Get in the kitchen, and whip up a batch, and brush it on your steaks or chicken for an element of flavor that just screams barbecue.

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North Americans have a special affinity with spring, because this is the time when they prepare some of the most delicious barbecue rib recipes. The meat is definitely tasty, but the history of barbecue recipes is equally interesting. Before Civil War, the barbecue was introduced in the pig-pickin’s feast. This feast was common in the Southern States. Not only a whole pig was cooked, but it was eaten by a number of people who joined the feast.

Smoking which is a term commonly used for barbecue recipes was first used 6000 years ago. This was considered as a safe way to cook the meat. The meat was generally cooked in low heat so that all the bacteria were dead. In Australia, the term barbecue is replaced by Barbie that almost became iconic when it appeared in the tourism brochures of Australia. There is doubt about the origin of the word barbecue. There are some who feel that it originated from ‘barbacoa’, an American-Indian word which means wood. The wood is used to cook food. There are some who love the European connection and feel that it came from French ‘de barbe a queue’ which simply means ‘whiskers to tail’. Now when you enjoy the lovely barbecue rib recipes, you can think of these fun facts.

Brisket which is hard meat taken from the chest of the cow has to be cooked for 12 hours so that the meat becomes tender and juicy. If you want to visit the barbecue capitals, you have to visit Missouri, North Carolina, Kansas City, and Lexington.

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In the late 1800’s when the cowboys had nothing to eat other than Brisket which was nothing more than hard beef meat, they had to think of ways of improvising on the food. Cattle barons were more interested on their profits than the welfare of the cowboys, so they had to learn to survive. Soon they knew that if the brisket was cooked for 5-7 hours, it would make the flesh tender. But there was a trick to these early barbecue recipes. The brisket was to be cooked in low heat.

It was a well-hidden trade secret for years. And that is why Texas became the undisputed maker of some of the best barbecue recipes all over the world. Later chefs made other improvisations. The meat was cooked in a smoker so that meat was cooked slowly. However the taste was undeniably the best. If you are in a hurry, you can always cook the Brisket. It can be cooked in 200 degrees in the oven. After it is done partially, it can be transferred to the smoker where the slow heat would give the flesh their tenderness.

Some of the early cooks loved to cook the meat in a grill. A grill can be used to cook beef, pork and chicken and either charcoal or gas was used as fuel. After the meat was grilled, a thick coat of barbecue sauce was applied which would make the meat tastier. There is one thing that should be remembered while cooking barbecued chicken recipes. Generally the outside gets burned even before the inside of the chicken is cooked properly. In order to avoid this, only a little amount of black pepper and salt should be used for seasoning. The black pepper and salt should be ground. Once the chicken gets the grill marks, it must be removed immediately from the grill and sauce should be applied.

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