100 Fun Facts About BBQ

The English word 'barbecue' comes, via Spanish 'barbacoa', from the language of which people?

The Taíno word barbacoa first named a raised rack of sticks, used for sleeping on as well as for curing meat, so it described a piece of furniture long before it meant a feast.

Which country lends its name to a stir-fried 'barbecue' that was actually invented in Taiwan in 1951?

Mongolia never had it: Taiwanese comedian Wu Zhaonan created the dish at an eatery he opened in Taipei in 1951, and it is stir-fried on a searing round griddle rather than barbecued.

In North Carolina, what are the two rival barbecue styles that feud light-heartedly with each other?

Lexington and Eastern fans have fought it out in the legislature: a bill to make Lexington's festival the state's official food festival stalled, so a 2007 law crowned it for the Piedmont Triad only.

In North Carolina's Piedmont, barbecue joints dress 'red slaw' with what in place of a creamy dressing?

Ketchup, or the pit's own tomato-and-vinegar 'dip', colours the chopped cabbage, so the slaw on a western North Carolina barbecue tray is seasoned with the same sauce as the meat.

What makes Memphis-style 'dry' ribs dry?

A spice rub and no sauce is the signature of the Rendezvous, yet ribs came late to it: Charlie Vergos opened the Memphis basement in 1948 selling ham sandwiches, and turned to ribs only in the 1950s.

Which popular pork ribs are cut from the top of the rib cage, where the bones meet the spine?

Baby back ribs are 'baby' only because they are shorter than spare ribs, which come from lower down by the belly; the pigs themselves are fully grown.

Henry Perry, the 'father of Kansas City barbecue', sold his slow-cooked ribs wrapped in what?

Newspaper pages held a 25-cent slab from the pit Perry started in 1908; after he died in 1940 the business passed to Charlie Bryant and then to his brother Arthur, whose name it made famous.

Which supermarket barbecue sauce was created in 1977 by Rich Davis, a child psychiatrist?

KC Masterpiece began as 'K.C. Soul Style Barbecue Sauce'; its thick, molasses-sweet recipe broke with the city's older peppery sauces, and Davis sold it in 1986 to the Kingsford arm of Clorox.

Which Kansas City speciality was once handed out free to customers at Arthur Bryant's counter?

Burnt ends were still free in 1972, when Calvin Trillin wrote that his main course at Bryant's was 'the burned edges of the brisket', pushed aside for anyone to take; the scraps became the star of the city's barbecue.

Central Texas barbecue is usually rubbed with only which two seasonings?

Salt and black pepper suit a style born in immigrant butcher shops around Austin, which smoked the fresh meat that went unsold and sold it by weight, with no sauce needed.

Which immigrant community, settling in Texas in the 1800s, is credited with making smoked brisket popular there?

Jewish delis from Greenville to El Paso were selling smoked brisket by the early 1900s, some fifty years before Black's in Lockhart built a barbecue menu around the cut.

From which part of the cow does brisket come?

The breast or lower chest is hard-working muscle that helps hold up the standing animal, so brisket is laced with connective tissue, turns tender only after hours of slow cooking, and was long one of the cheapest cuts.

Pulled pork is almost always made from which cut?

Shoulder is sold under the misleading name Boston butt, though it comes from the top of the shoulder blade, nowhere near the rear; hours of low, slow cooking break it down until it shreds by hand.

South Carolina's distinctive mustard-based barbecue sauce is traced to settlers from which country?

Germany's emigrants settled around Orangeburg in the mid-1700s and cooked with mustard, which is why the golden sauce rules the Midlands while other parts of the state lean on vinegar or tomato.

North Alabama's signature 'white sauce' is based on what?

Mayonnaise, cider vinegar and pepper made the sauce Bob Gibson created in Decatur in 1925; his cooks dunked smoked chickens in it and joked that the birds were being baptized.

Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce takes its name from a founder's boyhood nickname in which sport?

Basketball earned Dave Raymond the name Sweet Baby Ray; in 1985 the sauce he and his brother Larry made placed second among some 700 entries at a cook-off, and the brothers turned it into a business.

The pink 'smoke ring' under the surface of smoked meat forms when a gas from the fire reacts with which protein?

Myoglobin, the pigment that makes raw meat red, normally browns as it cooks; nitric oxide from the wood smoke binds to it first, so the outer band stays pink however long the meat is smoked.

Which salt, also used on ham and pastrami, lets cooks fake a barbecue smoke ring?

Curing salt carries the nitrite that keeps ham pink, and it pinks barbecue the same way, so the band can be made with no smoker at all and says little about how the meat was cooked.

True 'low and slow' barbecue smoking holds the pit near which temperature for hours on end?

120 °C (250 °F) is gentle enough to give a tough cut's connective tissue hours to break down before the meat dries out, a job that grilling's fierce direct heat is far too quick to do.

George Stephen built the first Weber kettle grill from two sheet-metal halves normally used to make what?

Buoys were being made in the shop where he worked; the story goes that his first fire died for lack of air until a neighbour had him punch holes in the lid, and the round grill was soon nicknamed Sputnik.

In which city was the Weber kettle grill invented?

Chicago's Weber Brothers Metal Works made everything from hinges to wagons; Stephen, fed up with wind and rain ruining meals on open braziers, gave his grill a lid and later bought the firm outright.

Kingsford charcoal is named for Edward G. Kingsford, a relative by marriage of which industrialist?

Henry Ford hated waste, so scrap wood from Model T production was pressed into briquettes and sold through his car dealerships; Kingsford, his cousin's husband, had scouted the Michigan timberland.

Which cartoon dad sells 'propane and propane accessories' and cannot abide grilling over charcoal?

Hank Hill of King of the Hill works at Strickland Propane in Arlen, Texas; the show's writers went to Texas with reporters' notebooks and called on real propane dealers to learn the trade.

What was a traditional Japanese hibachi, literally a 'fire bowl' of glowing charcoal, originally used for?

Heating a room, or at least the hands held over it, was the hibachi's job, with a kettle sometimes set on top; the tabletop grill sold under the name in America borrows only the word.

Which future president's 1769 diary records going 'to a Barbecue' in Alexandria?

George Washington also won eight shillings at cards that day, his ledger shows, and four years later his diary records going to 'a Barbicue of my own giving' near Mount Vernon.

The OED's earliest use of 'barbecue' as a verb is in a 1661 book about which island, newly seized from Spain?

Jamaica Viewed, by the soldier-turned-clergyman Edmund Hickeringill, used the word of supposed cannibals whose victims' flesh was 'forthwith Barbacu'd and eat', so its English debut had nothing to do with a cookout.

In Paul Hogan's 1980s tourism ads for Australia, what did he promise to slip onto the barbie for visitors?

An extra shrimp was a concession to American ears: Australians say prawn and wanted that word in the script, but the US team insisted, and the line became shorthand for Australia abroad.

South Africa's National Braai Day shares 24 September, KwaZulu-Natal's Shaka Day, with which public holiday?

Heritage Day was a compromise: the new Parliament's public holidays bill left Shaka Day off the list, the Inkatha Freedom Party objected, and the date was kept as a day for every South African culture.

At an Argentine asado, what is the grill itself called?

Parrilla names both the iron grill and the steakhouses built around one, which is why Buenos Aires restaurant guides send visitors to 'a parrilla' for dinner; the cook who tends it is the asador.

Which two native Caribbean ingredients form the heart of a jerk marinade?

Allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers grow wild in the island hills where the Maroons, Africans who escaped slavery, are said to have cooked wild pig in buried pits so that no smoke gave their camps away.

What is the most representative dish of Korean barbecue, made from thinly sliced marinated beef?

Bulgogi means 'fire meat'; cooks often grate Asian pear into the marinade because its enzymes break down the meat's fibres, which helps explain why the thin slices turn out so tender.

Which Japanese bar snack, whose name means 'grilled bird', is ordered either 'shio' (salted) or 'tare' (glazed)?

Yakitori is skewered chicken; its tare, a sweet glaze of soy sauce and mirin, drips onto fiercely hot binchotan charcoal and rises back as the smoke that flavours the meat.

Kalua pig, steamed for hours in an underground oven called an imu, is the feast dish of which Pacific islands?

Hawaii's feast, the luau, is named not for the pig but for the young taro leaves always served beside it; kālua itself simply means 'to bake in the ground oven'.

Which Kansas City team is named after the livestock show that stages the 'World Series of Barbecue'?

The Royals salute the American Royal, begun in 1899 as a Hereford cattle show, not any monarch: a fan's winning contest entry cited the city's livestock trade, beating suggestions such as Cowpokes and Mules.

In South Texas, traditional barbacoa slow-cooks which part of the cow in an underground pit?

The head goes in whole at Vera's in Brownsville, which kept its in-ground pit after health rules banned new ones; cheek is the cut most Texans know, and the eyes are prized as 'Mexican caviar'.

Central Texas pit barbecue grew up in Lockhart, Luling and Taylor along which famous cattle route?

The Chisholm Trail owed its traffic to a price gap: after the Civil War a longhorn worth $4 or $5 in Texas could fetch about $40 at the Kansas railheads, so drovers walked millions of cattle north.

What is the traditional centrepiece of a Carolina wedding or church barbecue?

A whole hog, split and roasted over coals, is the oldest form of Carolina barbecue; guests may pick the meat off the pig themselves, which is how the party came to be called a pig pickin'.

Which deep-fried cornmeal side, a fixture of the Carolina barbecue plate, started out alongside fried fish?

Hush puppies closely resemble the 'red horse bread' that Romeo Govan, freed from slavery in South Carolina, fried to go with his catfish from the 1870s; the word itself first appeared in print in 1899.

Which Brazilian style of barbecue is the South American cousin of the asado?

Churrasco comes from Brazil's far south, next door to Uruguay and Argentina, which is why it so resembles the asado; in its steakhouses servers circle with skewers, carving meat onto each plate.

Memphis's World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is part of which annual city festival?

Memphis in May added the contest in 1978 on a vacant lot beside the Orpheum Theatre, with $1,000 in prize money; by 1990 Guinness was listing it as the world's largest barbecue cooking contest.

California's Santa Maria-style barbecue is built around which cut of beef?

Tri-tip used to be ground into hamburger or sold as stew meat; Santa Maria's own story has butcher Bob Schutz selling the triangular cut on its own in the 1950s, grilled over local red oak.

Which president skipped the famous queue at Austin's Franklin Barbecue, then paid for the diners he had jumped?

Barack Obama was the first customer Aaron Franklin ever let jump the line, in July 2014; he made up for it by paying for the two people he had cut in front of, on top of about $300 for his own order.

Which honour did Aaron Franklin win in 2015 as Best Chef: Southwest, a first for any pitmaster?

A James Beard Award in a Best Chef category had never gone to a pitmaster; Franklin, who began by selling brisket from a trailer in 2009, said the win was 'more about barbecue than me'.

The name of Cantonese barbecued pork, char siu, literally means what?

Fork roasted is the literal sense of the two Cantonese characters, caa for fork and siu for roast; today's cooks hang the pork from hooks inside a drum-shaped charcoal oven, then in the shop window.

Which Nobel Peace Prize winner became the public face of South Africa's National Braai Day in 2007?

Desmond Tutu called it 'a very simple idea': whatever their politics, culture or race, South Africans would 'all gather round one fire' and do one thing together.

South Africans jokingly call one kind of braai a 'dop en tjop': in Afrikaans slang, what is a dop?

A drink, or tot, is a dop in South African slang; the word also named the Cape brandy once distilled from grape husks and the 'dop system' of part-paying wine-farm workers in wine. The tjop is simply a chop.

Which cut is most associated with Chicago-style barbecue, served over fries and white bread?

Rib tips, the gristly strip trimmed off spare ribs, were once so cheap that South Side pitmasters could get them free; they are smoked in glass-walled 'aquarium' pits and piled over fries.

Owensboro, Kentucky's International Bar-B-Q Festival is famous for which unusual meat?

Mutton reached the pits with Welsh settlers on the Ohio River, who kept sheep for wool and barbecued the animals once they were past producing it; the festival also stews it into burgoo.

Satay is considered a national dish of Indonesia and which neighbouring country?

The word ultimately traces back to the Tamil 'catai', meaning flesh, reflecting the Indian traders who helped shape the dish.

Which magazine hired Daniel Vaughn in 2013, billing him as the country's first barbecue editor?

Texas Monthly created the job for a Dallas architect who had been reviewing smoked meat on his blog as a hobby; by the magazine's count Vaughn has eaten at more than 1,800 barbecue joints, most of them in Texas.

Which word for a Caribbean pirate originally meant a person who cured wild meat on a grill?

Buccaneer comes from the French boucanier, the user of a boucan, a native grill for roasting meat. English used the word for meat-roasters in the 1660s and for pirates only by the 1680s.

Which former heavyweight boxing champion put his name to a fat-draining electric grill in 1994?

George Foreman only endorsed the grill: the idea came from Michael Boehm of Batavia, Illinois. More than 100 million have been sold since its launch.

Which fast-food chain launched a boneless barbecue pork sandwich shaped like a rack of ribs in 1981?

McDonald's launched the McRib as a limited-time offer, first testing it around Kansas City. The patty is restructured pork pressed into a rib shape, so there is not a bone in it.

Tacos al pastor, carved from a vertical spit, were inspired by immigrants to Mexico from which country?

Lebanon supplied the idea: immigrants brought shawarma to Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the 1920s pork had mostly replaced the original meat.

Despite its name, the restaurant dish Mongolian barbecue was created in the 1950s on which island?

Taiwan is where Wu Zhaonan, a comedian who had fled Beijing, opened a Taipei street stall in 1951. The dish is not Mongolian, nor was it influenced by Mongolian cooking.

Which chemical process between amino acids and sugars gives grilled meat its browned, savoury crust?

The Maillard reaction is named after French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in 1912. Caramelisation is a separate process that browns sugars on their own.

Which uncooked herb sauce of parsley, garlic and oregano is the classic partner of Argentine grilled beef?

Chimichurri is never cooked: the herbs are chopped raw with chilli and olive oil. From Argentina it spread to Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Brazilian tables, then across Latin America.

Which Australian star fronted 1980s tourism adverts promising American visitors seafood from the barbecue?

Paul Hogan filmed the adverts before 'Crocodile Dundee' made him a film star. Australians themselves usually say prawn rather than shrimp, so the wording was aimed squarely at Americans.

Halloumi, a cheese firm enough to grill without melting, traditionally comes from which Mediterranean island?

Cyprus is so tied to halloumi that, under trademark law, cheese sold by that name in the EU or the US must be made there. Its high melting point lets it brown on a grill.

In which film does the Whistle Stop Cafe's much-loved barbecue help hide the fate of a missing man?

Fried Green Tomatoes reveals that the vanished Frank Bennett was barbecued and served to the sheriff hunting for him. The 1991 film is based on a Fannie Flagg novel.

Which nut-bearing hardwood, abundant across the American South, is a classic choice there for smoking pork?

Hickory grows so abundantly in the South that it became a standard barbecue fuel, valued for the flavour it adds. The wood is also a preferred choice for smoking cured meats.

Cooks of the Pacific Northwest traditionally grill salmon on a plank of which aromatic wood?

Cedar planks, mostly western red cedar, were used by the peoples of the Northwest Coast to cook Pacific salmon. Finland has its own plank tradition, a dish whose name means blazing salmon.

Liquid smoke, sold commercially since 1895, is made by doing what to the fumes of burning wood?

Condensing them converts real wood smoke into a water-soluble liquid flavouring. E. H. Wright began the commercial trade in the United States, giving the product its modern name.

Joe Traeger, who ran an Oregon heating company, created a grill in 1985 that burns which fuel?

Wood pellets were invented in the late 1970s as a cheap way to heat homes. Traeger's patent then kept his company the only maker of pellet grills for twenty years.

Slow cooking makes a tough beef brisket tender by breaking down which connective-tissue protein?

Collagen fibres are what make brisket tough to begin with. Long, gentle cooking converts them into soft gelatin, which is why the cut rewards patience.

Charcoal is produced by strongly heating wood in a kiln that is kept short of which gas?

Oxygen is kept to a minimum so the wood chars instead of burning away. The heat drives off water and volatile compounds, leaving a light black residue that is mostly carbon.

Which thick barbecue side dish, once made with squirrel, do both Virginia and Georgia claim to have invented?

Brunswick stew is claimed by Brunswick County in Virginia and by the city of Brunswick in Georgia. Chicken has replaced the squirrel, rabbit and opossum of early recipes.

In which Netflix political drama does Frank Underwood confide in Freddy, owner of a backstreet rib joint?

House of Cards makes Freddy Hayes one of Underwood's few true friends. Reg E. Cathey won an Emmy in 2015 for playing the pitmaster.

Which Missouri city gives its name to pork spare ribs trimmed into a neat rectangle?

St. Louis butchers square off the rack and cut away extra cartilage, which leaves the ribs meatier. The city's pits also serve pork steaks and crisped pig snoots.

Baby back ribs, shorter and more curved than spare ribs, are cut from just below which part of the pig?

The loin sits beside the spine, so back ribs come from the very top of the rib cage, above the spare ribs. Butchers also sell them as loin ribs.

The egg-shaped ceramic cooker sold as the Big Green Egg is a modern version of which traditional Japanese stove?

Kamado is simply the Japanese word for a stove or cooking range, and elsewhere it now covers any ceramic charcoal cooker. The Big Green Egg company was founded in Atlanta in 1974.

Huli-huli chicken, a staple of Hawaiian fundraisers for decades, takes its name from the Hawaiian word for what?

Turn is the meaning of 'huli', doubled because the birds are barbecued on a revolving spit. Ernest Morgado first cooked the dish in 1955, basting it with his mother's sauce recipe.

What name do chefs give to the way a steak's internal temperature keeps rising after the steak leaves the grill?

Carryover cooking can raise the internal temperature by 5 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit, and the larger and denser the cut, the bigger the rise. Recipes have to allow for it.

Which butchery technique flattens a chicken for the grill by cutting out the bird's backbone?

Spatchcocking is a form of butterflying that removes the backbone, and sometimes the breastbone too, so the bird lies flat. The word has appeared in cookbooks since the 18th century.

Which grilled sausage is honoured by a Memorial Day weekend festival in Madison, Wisconsin?

Bratwurst is so tied to Wisconsin that Madison's Brat Fest, launched in 1983, bills itself as the world's largest. The sausage caught on in Sheboygan County in the 1920s.

Coleslaw, the classic barbecue side, takes its name from the words for 'cabbage salad' in which language?

Dutch 'koolsla' joins kool, cabbage, and sla, salad. The word entered American English in the 1790s, when one writer recorded it as 'cold slaw'.

Pit beef, a charcoal-cooked roast sliced thin onto a kaiser roll with horseradish, is a specialty of which US city?

Baltimore sold pit beef from roadside stands on its east side from the 1970s, and the HBO series The Wire gave the sandwich a national profile. The meat is cooked hot and fast and served rare.

Robert C. Baker, creator of upstate New York's Cornell barbecue marinade, also invented which fast-food staple?

Chicken nuggets came out of Baker's Cornell University lab, which published the recipe in 1963, long before any chain sold them. His marinated grilled chicken remains a regional favourite.

Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce takes its name from a nickname its co-creator earned playing which sport?

Basketball earned Dave Raymond the nickname that he and his brother Larry put on their sauce in the early 1980s. The Raymonds sold the business in 2005 for $30 million.

Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, a favourite of Anthony Bourdain, opened its first Kansas City restaurant inside what?

A gas station at 47th Avenue and Mission Road, once a fried-chicken-and-liquor store, became the first Joe's. Bourdain named it among 13 places to eat before you die.

Which Southeast Asian country counts lechon, a suckling pig roasted over charcoal, among its national dishes?

The Philippines shares the dish with Spain, Cuba and Puerto Rico, which have all called it a national dish. Anthony Bourdain declared the pig he ate on the island of Cebu the best ever.

Which vase-shaped clay oven lends its name to a famous South Asian dish of roast marinated chicken?

Tandoor ovens have baked flatbreads such as roti and naan since antiquity, cooking with direct heat and smoke from a fire inside. Armenia has an underground version called a tonir.

Satay, the grilled meat-on-a-stick of Southeast Asia, is most often served with a sauce based on which ingredient?

Peanuts only reached the region from the Americas, carried by the Manila galleon trade. The sauce made from them became one of satay's most recognisable partners.

At a Korean barbecue, diners traditionally wrap the grilled meat in perilla leaves or which salad vegetable?

Lettuce wraps are known as ssam, and diners dress them with ssamjang, a spicy soybean paste, and a scallion salad called pajeori.

Anticuchos, the grilled street kebabs that originated in the Andes, are traditionally made from which part of the cow?

Heart is the classic choice, sold as anticuchos de corazón, although any meat can be used. Bolivian cooks serve theirs with roast potatoes and a spicy sauce.

Which Brazilian steakhouse service has waiters carve meat at the table until diners signal they have had enough?

Rodízio servers bring the meat on tall spits straight from the fire and slice it at the table for a fixed price. Legend credits the idea to a waiter who took meat to the wrong table.

Cochinita pibil, the pit-roasted pork of Mexico's Yucatán, gets its orange-red colour from which spice?

Annatto seed, known in Mexico as achiote, stains the meat a vivid burnt orange. The pork is first marinated in sour citrus juice, then roasted wrapped in banana leaf.

Chelow kabab, grilled meat served on steamed rice, is regarded as the national dish of which country?

Iran probably gained the dish during the Qajar dynasty. It is traditionally served with doogh, a yoghurt-based drink that is sometimes made fizzy with carbonated water.

Suya, spiced meat smoke-grilled on sticks by Hausa cooks, originated in which West African country?

Nigeria is where suya began, though it is now popular across West Africa. The thin slices are marinated in yaji, a fiery Hausa spice mix of chilli, ginger and dried onion.

Binchōtan, the high-grade 'white charcoal' of traditional Japanese cooking, is typically made from which tree?

Oak, specifically the ubame oak, is the usual raw material, and the species is the official tree of Wakayama Prefecture. Kilns finish the firing at around 1,000 °C.

Which canned drink is traditionally stood inside a chicken to hold the bird upright on the grill?

Beer gives beer can chicken its name, though the dish is also known as chicken on a throne. Whether steam from the half-full can adds anything is disputed.

In the United States, what is grilling called when the heat comes from above the food instead of below?

Broiling cooks by thermal radiation from overhead, with the food held in a broiler pan. In the United Kingdom and Ireland the same method is simply called grilling.

A chipotle, the smoky staple of Mexican cooking, is which chilli after it has been ripened and smoke-dried?

Jalapeño chillies stay green for most of the season and ripen to bright red in the fall. Those ripe red pods are the ones smoke-dried into chipotles.

Which deli meat is made by brining beef, coating it in spices, then smoking and steaming it?

Pastrami is cured in brine, rubbed with spices such as garlic, coriander and mustard seed, smoked, and finally steamed until tender. The name is probably borrowed from Romanian.

Which Kansas City-born humorist ranked Arthur Bryant's barbecue joint above every other restaurant on Earth?

Calvin Trillin's rave, written for Playboy, brought international attention to the place Arthur Bryant had run since 1946. President Harry S. Truman was among its diners.

Which Georgia pitmaster and 'BBQ Pitmasters' judge is nicknamed the winningest man in barbecue?

Myron Mixon was named grand champion at the Memphis in May world championship five times between 2001 and 2021. In 2016 he was sworn in as mayor of Unadilla, Georgia.

Burning which component of hardwood releases guaiacol and the other phenols behind the taste of smoked meat?

Lignin, the glue that bonds wood cells together, breaks into smoky, spicy compounds when burnt. Guaiacol supplies most of the smoky taste, while syringol contributes most of the aroma.

Which enzyme found in fresh pineapple is used by cooks and food makers as a meat tenderizer?

Bromelain is present in every part of the fresh pineapple plant, though the commercial extract comes from the stems. Venezuelan chemist Vicente Marcano first isolated it in 1891.

Kingsford, the charcoal briquette brand founded in 1920, was bought in the 1970s by which household-products company?

Clorox, far better known for bleach, acquired the Kingsford Company about half a century after the brand began, adding barbecue fuel to a line-up of cleaning products.

Which author of 'The Barbecue Bible' created the public television series Barbecue University and hosted Primal Grill?

Steven Raichlen has written dozens of books, among them How to Grill and Project Smoke. Barbecue University ran for four seasons from 2003, and Primal Grill followed in 2008.