This article will likely be in the June KCBS Bull Sheet but fits well with our philosophy here so I'm posting it for general reading.
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What Is It About Barbeque, Anyway?
By
Gordon Hubbell
KCBS MCBJ & CTC 30439
Food just flat enchants us, have you noticed? If you doubt it, look at the several cable TV channels that have sprung up in the last few years totally dedicated to it. And that doesn’t include all the cooking shows on all the other channels or the “reality” shows that pop up on food themes featuring food gurus. We are a nation of foodies! We watch it, we cook it, we eat it. We dote on it. We adore it. We’ve made it as central to our life as politics and religion. It defines us!
But even more interesting is how “barbecue” (I put quotation marks around it because there are so many absolutely futile definitions of it) seems to be the central aspect of so many of our televised food programs. Even the shows that aren’t about barbeque seem to always have something “outdoorsy” or even blatantly rubbed, smoked, slathered with sauce or grilled. What is our obsession with this indefinable cuisine?
I think the central, core, gist, nut, down-deep, driving thing in the American populace that always gets us around to barbeque sooner or later is that everyone loves it! I’ve thought about it a lot and I really can’t recall ever meeting, feeding, or sharing a meal with anyone who didn’t at least “like” barbeque in some form or another. We’ll “talk barbeque” at the drop of a hat and be totally unabashed about sharing cooking tips, recipes or even likes and dislikes for all of its many, many variations. It is a conversation and a language unto itself. Anyone can participate and everybody has an opinion!
Like apple pie, hotdogs, and hamburgers (all of which can be cooked in the great outdoors on a variety of fired up devices), barbeque is America, Americana, and American through and through. Yes, it could have coincidentally started from some open-air broiling apparatus in Spain or the Caribbean. A puff of mesquite smoke may have blown across the border from South America. Some Frenchman might have sniffed a charcoal briquette or two while sipping an aperitif. However, I will brazenly state that barbeque, by construction, intention, adoption and absolute obsession is American food, through and through! No other nation celebrates the concept of outdoor cookery the way we do here in the USA.
There is another aspect of barbeque that is a little delicate to deal with – it has a pronounced masculine side. Most (but certainly not all) barbeque cooks are male. That doesn’t mean one has to be of the Y chromosome persuasion to be good at it, but there is certainly something about it that particularly interests the male of the species and, in fact, many of those masculine examples would never dream of tying on an apron and baking a cake, but they’d fire up a mess of charcoal and slap a steak on the grill, slather up a batch of wings, or smoke a brisket at the drop of a hat. Maybe it’s the fire and the smoke. Maybe it’s just being outdoors. Maybe it goes deeper and there’s something genetic wherein our caveman ancestors dragged home a haunch of critter and then cooked it over a fire to feed the family and it lodged in our DNA. Heredity can be a powerful thing.
Maybe we love barbeque because of the flavors. Think about it. They really run the gamut. Rubs can be tangy, tart, salty, and even carry a nip of heat. Sauces blend sweet and sour with every conceivable spice combination we can think of. Smoke of all kinds adds a note of difference to whatever we bathe in it. Add it all up and most other foods don’t begin to have the potential delicious complexity of a barbequed rib! The flavor profile isn’t even definable. Some forms of barbeque are sweet, some sour, some hot, some simply meaty. The total effect, though, is stellar and ultimately appealing! And, it is hard to create the same set of flavors over and over, reliably. It takes considerable skill, dedication and attention to detail to keep producing a favorite mix – leading to my central point: Barbeque lends itself beautifully and perfectly to competition! Who among us is the best? It is a quest of epic proportions, pursued by thousands and enjoyed by millions.
Yes, there are other food competitions. There are competitions for restaurant chefs, for chili, for recipes using certain food manufacturer’s goods and even competitions for decorating cakes! But, these contests don’t draw huge crowds to a park on a hot Saturday afternoon. They don’t create acres of sweet hickory smoke. They don’t attract the motorcycle, farm machine, music, or antique car crowd or even folks who just want to mill around the city square and gawk at food, each other, and lots of other stuff. Other foods don’t have the universal appeal that makes a whole family pack into the car and head out in search of a bite of something potentially wonderful that everybody loves. But barbeque does! It is messy and sticks to your fingers and your chin. You like to wash it down with something cold and fizzy. It may warm you up a bit. You may wear some of it before you’re through. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s a carnival on a plate, folks!
Barbeque is just exciting and perfect proof that God loves us. It isn’t just a way to cook, it’s a way of life. It’s an obsession of flavor and a passion for competition. Win a prize in a barbeque contest and you’re at least a local legend. And, you know what? Anyone can give it a shot. There are no barriers or stringent requirements for lengthy pedigrees or prerequisite courses or training. No snobs. The playing field is level. Learning to be a good barbeque cook or judge isn’t easy but anyone who wants to take a shot at it can do so. That’s the best part -- everybody wins!
