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Defining Barbecue


Fat Guy

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One example of the imprecise use of 'barbecue' is in the title of Steve Raichlen's bood "The Barbecue Bible." I love the book, but relatively few of the recipes have anything to do with the definitions of barbecue (slow, low temp, smoke, etc.) discussed here. In fact the text of the book discusses grilling much more frequently (and correctly) than it does barbecuing. I have to believe that the editor just like the alliteration of the title.

Most women don't seem to know how much flour to use so it gets so thick you have to chop it off the plate with a knife and it tastes like wallpaper paste....Just why cream sauce is bitched up so often is an all-time mytery to me, because it's so easy to make and can be used as the basis for such a variety of really delicious food.

- Victor Bergeron, Trader Vic's Book of Food & Drink, 1946

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Widespread incorrect usage doesn't make that usage correct; it makes it something that should be corrected.

Now we're veering from food to linguistics/lexicology. I've checked with my mom, a leading computational linguist, and your statement is a matter of some debate among linguists and lexicologists.

The original meaning of barbecue (from dict.org), i.e. the Guiana Indian meaning, is "a frame on which all kinds of flesh and fish are roasted or smoke-dried". They would argue that your definition is incorrect, since it refers to the food and not the tool.

My mom said:

This is a longstanding argument.  If we use "their" to refer to "singular" does that mean that "their" will become a correct usage even though it's plural. Language is flexible.  The French Academy would say "Non" but we have no overriding authority so the correct usage is what is accepted as correct. When the New York Times starts using "it's" as a possessive, then you know that the distinction between "it's" and "its" is failing and will eventually disappear.  I would say [Fat Guy] is probably fighting a losing battle.  People refer to barbecue when they mean anything grilled, which is not in my opinion correct, but understandable. It's a useful distinction for people who know the difference, but not for people who don't.  Like the difference between sauting and frying.  But I agree with him/her that food writers should use the correct terminology!  Because they are creating the standard as they write.

Sorry to get so pedantic... :wink:

-

Scott

From one linguist to another (your mother), I would say that among linguists, there is no debate. Usage is as usage does. Only grammar mavens argue about lexical proscription.

BTW, growing up in SE MA, we never went out for BBQ once, even though we travelled far and wide to eat out. I doubt that anyone in my town, nay, my region knew where a BBQ joint (as we now know it) might be.

BBQ chicken, in that time and place, was chicken grilled in oil drums until the skin was blackened and the meat at the bone was not done enough.

FG has his work cut out for him. Man the barricades!

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1. I think most of us would agree that words do not correspond with reality.

2. Despite 1, I think most of us would agree that words are not completely arbitrary--i.e., we wouldn't venture into a naive solipsism.

3. Most of us would agree that meaning, as Katherine hints at, is dependent upon usage.

4. Most of us would agree that there are different *communities* (even within the same language) of users.

5. Perhaps we should consider two usage communities within the context of this thread:

A. Common everyday usage = barbecue, BBQ, or whatever is putting food on a fire or adding a "bbq" sauce, etc.

B. "Expert" usage = something along the lines of "grilling" is like "roasting" & "bbq'ing" is like "braising."

6. All attempts to conflate meaning between lay audiences & experts is doomed to failure.

7. And there will still be disagreement.

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BTW, growing up in SE MA, we never went out for BBQ once, even though we travelled far and wide to eat out. I doubt that anyone in my town, nay, my region knew where a BBQ joint (as we now know it) might be.

Nonetheless, if you type barbecue and variants into SuperPages and limit the results to Maine you get:

Beale Street Barbeque

Augusta, ME 04330

(207) 622-8899

Beale Street Barbeque & Grill

215 Water Street, Bath, ME 04530

(207) 442-9514

Beale Street Barbeque & Grill

90 Waterman Drive, South Portland, ME 04106

(207) 767-0130

(This place can be found at http://mainebbq.com/ )

Habaneros Barbecue

10 Western Avenue, Kennebunk, ME 04043

(207) 967-9740

Lil Piggys Barbeque

745 Main, Rockport, ME 04856

(207) 594-4485

Norman & Timothy's Southern Barbecue

135 Bennett Drive, Caribou, ME 04736

(207) 492-0139

Stick To Your Ribs Barbecue & Drive In

18 Bath Road, Brunswick, ME 04011

(207) 729-9439

Big Mikes Road House BBQ

Route 26 North, South Paris, ME 04281

(207) 743-5880

Little Dan's BBQ

Route 202, Monmouth, ME 04259

(207) 933-2227

Two Knights BBQ

60 Newport Road, Corinna, ME 04928

Spring Creek Bar-B-Q

26 Greenville Road, Monson, ME 04464

(207) 997-7025

Texas Outlaw Bar-B-Q

179 New County Road, Rockland, ME 04841

(207) 594-0600

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Putting barbecue sauce on meat does not make it barbecue.

Putting lobster sauce on shrimp does not make it lobster.

(Note: Lobster sauce does not contain lobster, and is only called that because it is one of the traditional sauces served with lobster. in some Chinese cuisines.)

So barbecue sauce is a condiment that is sometimes served with barbecue... not a requisite of the type of food at all.

I can make barbecue from a pork butt, with little or no seasoning, and without sauce. Start with a great butt, and cook it right, and anything you put on it is considered a "finishing" sauce.

I hold with the definition that barbecue is the product (not the equipment) that is the result of lengthy, low temperature cooking over wood or coals (also called "low and slow" cooking technique.)

I have several cookers on my patio. One is a (mostly unused these days) Ducane gas grill, and one is a Kamado cooker.. Of the two devices only the latter is really suited for producing barbecue.

In years past, I saw an FDA or USDA definition of barbecue, and it's pretty much what I described. I'm trying to find a link to that definition... as it's the... well, offical US government position on the topic < s >

Edited by alanz (log)
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True but how many do you think were there when Katherine was growing up. there.  Not how many have popped up within the past 5 years.

Perhaps none. But these days, even in the remotest parts of the North (some of those Maine locations are what you find in the dictionary under "remotest parts of the North"), you are likely to find barbecue joints or at least joints referring to themselves that way. And for as long as I can remember, in the major cities in the North (where most of the population is concentrated) there have been plenty of barbecue places. I don't know if there's a Web site that allows a search of, say, a 1970s-era New York or Chicago business directory, but I assure you you'd find plenty of barbecue/bbq/bar-b-q restaurants.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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True but how many do you think were there when Katherine was growing up. there.  Not how many have popped up within the past 5 years.

Perhaps none. But these days, even in the remotest parts of the North (some of those Maine locations are what you find in the dictionary under "remotest parts of the North"), you are likely to find barbecue joints or at least joints referring to themselves that way. And for as long as I can remember, in the major cities in the North (where most of the population is concentrated) there have been plenty of barbecue places. I don't know if there's a Web site that allows a search of, say, a 1970s-era New York or Chicago business directory, but I assure you you'd find plenty of barbecue/bbq/bar-b-q restaurants.

I'll let you handle that research. Realize that your world will always be skewed by your NYC upbringing, while mine will be skewed from being raised by wolves in northwestern PA.

Dean McCord

VarmintBites

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I definitely didn't have a normal upbringing, but I had probably a typical Manhattan middle class upbringing -- which would be somewhat indicative of a Northeastern urban upbringing. What I can say from that perspective is that within three blocks of my house (aka .15 of a mile) there has for as long as I remember been at least one "bbq" place (which is on its third or fourth name but is still there) and sometimes I think as many as three. However, I had zero comprehension of any sort of specific Southern barbecue styles until -- and I remember this event with great clarity -- my friend from grade school and high school, who had gone to Duke, made an emergency phone call to me a couple of days into college and told me the story of the horror of his first encounter with North Carolina barbecue. "They have this stuff, they call it 'barbecue.' It's messed up, dude. They eat it out of plastic tubs like it's ice cream. And they have pig pickin's and nobody knows what a Jew is -- they say 'I Jewed him down' and don't even realize it's an insult." And it's not like I had never been to the South. I'd been to Memphis, to various places in Alabama (remember my mother used to live there), and even spent a month at a summer program at Wake Forest. But while I'd had ribs in Memphis (which were better than the ribs on the Upper West Side), I never once in North Carolina got served barbecue -- we ate university cafeteria food and the one or two times we went out we had chain-restaurant food. Which doesn't mean anything, but it's my personal experience of how I heard the use of the word over time.

Steven A. Shaw aka "Fat Guy"
Co-founder, Society for Culinary Arts & Letters, sshaw@egstaff.org
Proud signatory to the eG Ethics code
Director, New Media Studies, International Culinary Center (take my food-blogging course)

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Those who labor to create real barbecue deserve to have that term properly utilized by those who care about good food, and especially by those who write and communicate about food.

Oh brother. I give up. Have fun manning the pits.

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spinning slowly ,round and round it goes ..till its nice and juicy=BBQ

Nah, that's rotisserie < s >

Though it's often a technique used in making barbecue, to keep the cooking even if there is no container large enough to enclose the beast.

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I'll go with "most people are wrong" on that one.

But that's the very problem with coming up with a definition in the first place. Put a plate of chopped pork seasoned with vinegar and red pepper in front of each of 1,000 North Carolinians. Assume that the pork was cooked over a gas cooker without the use of wood. Don't tell them how it was cooked. Ask them to identify the product in front of them. You'll get 998 responses of "barbecue" (the 2 holdouts just moved here from NY and wouldn't recognize any barbecue). They call it barbecue because of what it is, not how it was cooked. It may be a lesser version of barbecue, but to call it anything different is inappropriate.

Then again, if you merely scramble eggs and call it soufflé it's still scrambled eggs... regardless of whether or not your guests can tell the difference.

Something can taste like barbecue, and look like barbecue, but isn't.

It would be hard for me to consider the McRibs sandwich of a few years back (some indeterminate rib shaped reconstituted meat thing on a bun) barbecue, but I'm sure there are some who would.

So one can boil up a brisket, slice it or pull it, slather it in a tomato based "bbq" sauce... it's still not barbecue. It might taste fine, but as has been said: "It is what it is" < s >

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I believe "low and slow" has been around for millenia,without sauce.

In the boundries of that definition I have BBQ'ed a handful of times in my

life,the rest of the time I just grilled and added sugar to a sauce,for that BBQ'ed look. IMO

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True but how many do you think were there when Katherine was growing up. there.  Not how many have popped up within the past 5 years.

True, there are currently a number of places that call themselves "BBQ" in Maine. The ones I'm familiar with on your list are regular restaurants that grill meat. I know of a couple of would-be BBQ joints that didn't make your list.

This is all new, though, not at all indigenous, any more than a good Thai place would be.

I sincerely doubt that any of these were in existence when I was growing up in SE Massachusetts in the 60's.

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Those who labor to create real barbecue deserve to have that term properly utilized by those who care about good food, and especially by those who write and communicate about food.

Why not start small -- get people to understand the differing between bbq'ing and grilling. Then work on the important stuff.

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Curiosity got to me, and I looked up barbecue and barbeque online using MacDict. The definitions at least should provide more food for thought. :biggrin:

Barbecue \Bar"be*cue\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Barbecued}; p. pr. &

vb. n. {Barbecuing}.]

1. To dry or cure by exposure on a frame or gridiron.

            They use little or no salt, but barbecue their game

            and fish in the smoke.                --Stedman.

2. To roast or broil whole, as an ox or hog.

            Send me, gods, a whole hog barbecued. --Pope.

Barbecue \Bar"be*cue\ (b[aum]"b[-e]*k[=u]), n. [in the language

of Indians of Guiana, a frame on which all kinds of flesh and

fish are roasted or smoke-dried.]

1. A hog, ox, or other large animal roasted or broiled whole

      for a feast.

2. A social entertainment, where many people assemble,

      usually in the open air, at which one or more large

      animals are roasted or broiled whole.

3. A floor, on which coffee beans are sun-dried.

(From Webster's)

barbeque [syn: barbecue]

  n 1: meat that has been barbecued or grilled in a highly seasoned

          sauce [syn: {barbeque}]

  2: a cookout in which food is cooked over an open fire;

        especially a whole animal carcass roasted on a spit [syn:

        {barbeque}]

  3: a rack to hold meat for cooking over hot charcoal usually

        out of doors [syn: {barbeque}]

  v : cook outdoors on a barbecue grill; "let's barbecue that

      meat"; "We cooked out in the forest" [syn: {cook out}]

from WordNet r (1.7)

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