A method of cooking meat very slowly over coals was adopted by the early European settlers in North America and called barbecue. When it is done, the tender meat is chopped or shredded, topped with sauce that varies from region to region, and often made into a sandwich with a soft roll and some cole slaw. As with so many cooking methods, there is great debate among purists over what constitutes real barbecue, but none over its stature as a delicious and uniquely American dish.

There's a certain deliciously American dish that takes hours to prepare, with specialized cooking equipment and fuel, and by a master chef who has trained for years to make it taste just right. It's beloved of U.S. presidents and governors, writers and ranchers, and many regular folk besides; you'll find people traveling hundreds of miles just for one delectable taste. But this is one American food you probably can’t find in Paris or London or Hong Kong or Istanbul, or in any of the "best" restaurants anywhere in the world. Instead, you'll have to travel to places like Fayetteville, Arkansas, Wilson, North Carolina, or Waxahatchee, Texas. And just what is this most American of dishes, so hard to come by outside the United States, yet so deliciously available within its borders?

That dish is barbecue...

No! no! no! the cry goes up. Everyone has barbecue! Look at Armenian grilled lamb, or Cantonese barbecued duck, or shrimp on the “barbie” in Australia. Nearly every culture around the world that uses fire has barbecue, you say. And you’d be almost right.

SOMETHIING SPECIIAL
We're talking about a special kind of barbecue here—an arcane method of cooking meat very slowly over coals, the roots of which go far back into the American past. It is a cooking method so unusual that when the first Europeans in the New World saw it, they couldn’t quite believe it.

As one Frenchman put it in 1564: “A Caribbee has been known, on returning home from fishing fatigued and pressed with hunger, to have the patience to wait the roasting of a fish on a wooden grate fixed two feet above the ground, over a fire so small as sometimes to require the whole day to dress it.” The natives called their wooden grate a “babracot,” referring to the wooden framework used to cook meat, which the conquering Spanish turned into “barbacoa.”

DELIICIIOUSLY ADDIICTIIVE
That long, slow cooking process—12-16 hours is not unusual—renders the toughest cut of meat falling-off-thebone tender while imbuing it through and through with the tantalizing flavor and aroma of hardwood smoke. It is a food so deliciously addictive that no one who has tasted it would be surprised to hear about the elderly man in Lexington, North Carolina, who has been ordering the same dinner at his favorite “barbecue joint” every night, six days a week (the restaurant is closed on Sunday), week in and week out, for the past 15 years.

The early European settlers took to this odd style of meat cookery very quickly. By the time George Washington became the first U.S. president, barbecue parties were old hat. But the first president was not the last to enjoy this mode of entertainment, an ideally American way to socialize and conduct politics at the same time: President Lyndon Baines Johnson was famous for his Texas barbecues in the mid-1960s, where food and “business” were served up in equal portions. And still today, through large swaths of the South, Midwest, and West, barbecue and politics go together like ... smoke and coals.

The barbecue that George Washington was eating in the 1700s was probably the same kind of barbecue that is cooked along the southeastern seaboard of the United States today. In this traditional style a whole hog is split and gutted, splayed out over a barbecue “pit” (either a hole dug in the ground covered with a grill, or a large brick or metal container covered with a grill) and cooked 12 hours or more over hardwood coals that are continuously shoveled under the meat. A few cooks might baste the cooking meat with some spices and oil, but in general the long journey over the open coals and a little salt provide the only seasoning. When it is done, the tender meat is chopped or shredded (never sliced), topped with a simple sharp hot sauce made from vinegar and red peppers, and often made into a sandwich with a soft roll and some cole slaw.

ARGUMENTS ABOUT EVERYTHIING
Many barbecue purists will insist that this ancient style is the only “real” barbecue. But nearly all barbecue fans are purists of one sort or another, and nearly all of them think their own favorite barbecue is the best. A pit master (an experienced barbecue chef ) from the eastern seaboard who cooks “whole hog” will scoff at those who cook pork shoulders in western North Carolina, who in turn will turn up their noses at those who cook pork ribs in Tennessee, who in turn are shocked by the mutton barbecuers of Kentucky, who are in turn appalled by the smoky beef barbecue in Texas. Sniffs one North Carolina pork shoulder cooking gentleman when asked about Texas barbecue: “It might taste good, but it’s not what we’d call real barbecue.” Of course, his exquisitely barbecued pork shoulders are dismissed by an eastern pit master who says, “If you don’t use the whole hog, it’s not barbecue.”

But then barbecue aficionados can get into some pretty stiff arguments about pretty much everything having to do with their art. After deciding on the kind and cut of meat to be cooked, the next question is: What kind of wood should be burned? In the Southeast, it’s often hickory, but others swear by oak. In Texas it’s likely to be mesquite. And when you get to the people who don’t use wood at all, but use cooking gas (known as “gassers” by the “log burners”), well, “might as well put the meat in the kitchen oven and make a nice pork roast out of it. It sure as hell ain’t what I’d call barbecue!” says Smokey Pitts, of the Society for the Preservation of Traditional Southern Barbecue.

Then there’s the issue of whether the cooking pit should be open to the air (“open pit barbecue”) or covered to retain the smoke (“closed pit barbecue”). Closed pit partisans like the extra smoky taste their method gives and point with pride to the reddish “smoke ring” that forms in meat as a result of a chemical reaction between the smoke and the protein. But not everyone thinks that’s a good thing. According to barbecue expert Bob Garner, meat that is barbecued to perfection “is delicately flavored by smoke – not overcome by it like something dragged from a burning house.” Closed pit tends to be the popular style in the cowboy Western range of barbecue cookery – Texas, Kansas, and Missouri, while open pit is the style in the southeastern United States and among traditionalists.

And then there’s the issue of the barbecue sauce. Supermarket barbecue sauce tends to be of the thick, spicy, tomato ketchup-based variety, and that style is indeed popular in Kansas and other areas of the Midwest. But most North Carolina sauces are thin and vinegary, spiced only with red pepper. South Carolina is famous for its mustard-based sauces. And some hard-core Texas beef barbecue joints serve no sauce at all with their smokey ‘cue...and sneer at any outsiders innocent enough to ask for it.

A MAN’’S JOB
Two other things are unique about barbecue in the American food scene: First of all, it is a cooking style practiced almost entirely by men. Part of the reason for this is that old-fashioned barbecue is just plain backbreaking work, dirty and tiring. Logs have to be cut, split, and hauled; coals have to be shoveled; large cuts of meat have to be tended over smoking coals for hours. But the real reason men tend to be the barbecue experts may be much simpler: “Barbecue is just one of those things that men like to do to stay up all night and drink,” claims Bob Garner.

The other interesting fact about American barbecue is that while most pit masters are men, they are just as likely to be African-American men as European-Americans. African slaves were probably cooking the barbecue that George Washington enjoyed in the 1700s, and their descendants carried barbecue cookery with them as they migrated west in the 1800s, and then up into the Northern and Western states. In places like North Carolina and Texas, a strong European-American barbecue tradition has flourished.

In recent years, barbecue has gone competitive. From around the country contestants gather in wildly popular barbecue “cook-offs” in Kansas City, or Owensboro, Kentucky, or Memphis, Tennessee. They come—with their own highly complicated portable pits and secret recipes for barbecue sauce—to cook, socialize, watch other pit masters, compete for cash prizes and prestigious awards – and to talk and eat barbecue.

Authentic American barbecue may be hard to find outside the United States. And within it there may be arguments about what constitutes real barbecue. But whether it’s delicately smoky “whole hawg” from North Carolina; or smoky ribs sticky with sauce from Georgia; or deeply flavored mutton from Kentucky; or spicy “burnt ends” (the crispy parts of barbecued steak) from Kansas City; or the heavily smoked beef brisket from Texas—it’s all uniquely American, and it sure does taste good. One barbecue enthusiast summed it up when he said, “The best barbecue? It’s the one that’s sitting in front of me right now.”