Bring on the BBQs

DINING GUIDEBring on the By Julia Romano Backyard It’s a universal fact that the most popular way to bring people together is with food. Everyone Barbecues loves a delicious meal, and sharing one with those we endear is commonly something that people most enjoy doing together. Summer months in Rhode Island have historically provided a chance for people to bond over food, while creating pleasant memories.

By Julia Romano

As we are all too well aware, the COVID-19 onslaught took from us more than we ever could have imagined. With no prior warning, the coronavirus health debacle has prevented us from coming together, even in the outdoors, where in Little Rhody, we look forward to and even crave doing during the summer months.

Operation Warp Speed has enabled the country to be very close to putting the pandemic behind us, taking o the face masks, and breathing in fresh air. This is especially true in the sense of being able to congregate with friends and family and returning to spending time together savoring our favorite fare, while thinking about anything but the health crisis of the last eighteen months.

When it comes to summer socializing and food, some of the most mouth watering favorites are cooked over a grill in many backyard barbecues. Barbecue (or barbeque) (BBQ) is a term used with signi cant regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods which use live re, coal, and smoke to cook the food. Pork, beef, and chicken are grilled to perfection, while basted with one’s own spices and sauces, creating juicy, tender barbecue. There is no concrete information about who rst thought of the notion of BBQ. The word barbecue has pretty much the same meaning across all languages. Even in Hindi, the word barbecue means meat that has been grilled in a highly seasoned sauce, according to the Hindi-English dictionary online.

The word “barbecue” is believed to have originated from the Taino Indian word “barbacoca,” referring to a tool used for cooking over the open ame or the term “sacred re pit.” Other historians have said that the word could have also come from the French expression “barbe e queue” - which translates literally as “whiskers to tail.” In the days of Imperialism and exploration, it’s likely that French explorers took part in di erent types of skewering and kabobs. During that time, it was commonplace for French people to gather around a re, eating some type of critter on a stick that we would cringe at today.

In some countries like the Philippines, street vendors will actually now take the bits of food we don’t typically eat, such as the innards, and fry them up over an open ame as a tasty snack. Enough said about that!

became a favorite food of Americans in the late 1900s, when ranchers made their way with their cattle across the Midwest. Cowboys didn’t slaughter their own cows for themselves, but saved most of the good meat for their customers, restaurants, and butcher shops. They used the le overs, which were the tougher parts of the animal, and cooked them for their own meals. This meat was so tough that it had to be cooked for hours and hours on end in order to be tender enough to eat.

To understand BBQ’s origins in America, we have to take into account African American history. In the Deep South of America, African Americans who were usually only given le overs to eat a er a hard day’s work, created deep barbecue pits that worked to so en the meat by cooking all day, creating the most avorful long-cooked meat in the country, such as pulled pork. Today, we can’t imagine BBQ without this classic dish, even though it was born out of poverty and the innovation of African Americans throughout early American history.

Barbequing history is a fascinating subject because cultures all over the world have had di erent types of barbequing throughout time and within each culture, there are di erent barbecue sauce styles by region.

Many BBQs include ribs (pork or beef), pulled pork, and chicken, with side dishes including beans, potato • The most popular holidays for barbecuing are: July 4th (76 percent), Memorial Day (62 percent), and Labor Day (62 percent). • The most popular avors of BBQ sauce are hickory, followed by mesquite, honey, and then spicy-hot.

• BBQs have been a White House tradition since Thomas Je erson. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, hosted the rst BBQ at the White House that featured Texas-style barbecued ribs. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter hosted a “pig pickin’” for about 500 guests, including visiting foreign dignitaries. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, also, were avid barbecuers who entertained with BBQs at their ranch.

• The largest attendance at a BBQ was 45,252 people at an event organized by Estado de Nuevo Leon (Mexico) at Parque Fundidora in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, on August 18th, 2013.

• BBQ competitions have been taking place since at least 1959. The rst one is believed to have taken place in Hawaii just a few months a er it became a state, and was only for men. Twenty- ve men entered the cook-o , competing for the grand prize of $10,000 (about $80,000 today). There have also been television shows featuring people cooking up their best BBQ recipes to compete for signi cant prizes.