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Schriftliche Hausarbeit zur Zulassung zum 1. Staatsexamen im Fach Englisch

American Barbecue Culture: Evolution, Challenge and Fate of its Regional Diversity in both the United States and Germany.

Universität Regensburg

Philosophische Fakultät IV

Institut für Amerikanistik und Anglistik

Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel

Verfasser: Sebastian Gotzler

Fächerverbindung: Lehramt Gymnasium Englisch/Geschichte

Matrikelnummer: 1241300

1. April 2012

Adresse: Silberne Fischgasse 14 93047 Regensburg

Telefon: 0176/24915463

Email: sgotzler@msn.com

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1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..3

2. Defining Barbecue………………………………………………………………………....6

2.1 A Short Guide to Cooking Techniques…………………………………………….6

2.2 Etymology………………………………………………………………………….8

2.2.1 The Transformation from Barbacoa to Barbecue ……………………...8

2.2.2 Barbecue – A Noun or a Verb?...............................................................9

3. History of Barbecue………………………………………………………………………11

3.1 Origin and Spreading from Colonial America to the American Revolution……..11

3.2 Introduction of Barbecue into Germany………………………………………….14

4. Regional Styles of Barbecue……………………………………………………………...19

4.1 Virginia – The Cradle of Barbecue……………………………………………….21

4.2 North Carolina – The Great Carolinian Barbecue-Schism……………………….22

4.3 South Carolina – The Mustard Belt………………………………………………25

4.4 Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky……………………………………26

4.5 Tennessee – The Supremacy of Memphis Barbecue……………………………30

4.6 Texas – The “Holy Trinity” of Barbecue………………………………………...32

4.7 Missouri - Kansas City and St. Louis…………………………………………….38

4.8 Other American States and Regions……………………………………………...42

4.8.1 Chicago – Barbecued Street Food………………………………………...43

4.8.2 California – Fusion Barbecue……………………………………………45

4.8.3 New York City – The Late Arrival of Barbecue………………………….48

4.9 German Approach to American Barbecue………………………………………50

5. Competitive Barbecue…………………………………………………………………….53

5.1 Major American Barbecue Associations………………………………………….56

5.2 The German Barbecue Competition Circuit……………………………………...59

5.2.1 The German Barbecue Association………………………………………59

5.2.2 The German Barbecue Championship……………………………………60

6. Conclusion – The Legacy of American Barbecue………………………………………..63

7. Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………65

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1. Introduction

“Barbecue is the quintessential American food, perhaps the only large enough to

reconcile the lies and myths out of which the fabric of our national truth has been woven.

Barbecue, then serves as a metaphor for American culture, bridging and embracing this

nation’s various facets” (Elie Smokestack 135). This quote form Louis Eric Elie raises the

question why Barbecue as cuisine, commonly associated with the American South, of all

notable American cuisines is considered to be the most appropriate and uniquely diverse

representative of national and especially regional culture and identity in the United States,

particularly in a time where the entire American diet is infamously associated with processed

and artificial fast food specialties sold in national restaurant chains. The following will

describe how this diversity of American styles of barbecue emerged, how they evolved,

whether they still today show similar shades of unique regional variation or over time

changed entirely and finally what impact the introduction of this completely alien food had on

a non-American culture like Germany.

The exact definition of barbecue has always been controversially, passionately and

quasi-religiously discussed. “Areas of disagreement include: (1) definition of the South; (2)

definition of barbecue; (3) correct spelling of the word; (4) type of meat; (5) type of cut; (6)

ingredients for sauce; (7) type of pit; (8) type of wood; (9) wet versus dry cooking; (10)” (Elie

Cornbread 61), and so forth. Therefore the first step to truly understand American barbecue is

the attempt to eliminate any misconceptions about it. The first part of the paper is briefly

dedicated to the explanation of both the proper cooking techniques and the etymology of the

term barbecue itself. The technical questions involve the following concepts: the temperature

zone of barbecue, suitable appliances, the fuel, adequate cuts of meat and the concepts of

direct and indirect heat. The etymological part revolves around the origin of the term barbecue

and its evolution from the early 16th century to our contemporary understanding. Also, the

dispute whether barbecue is a verb or a noun has to be settled.

Any “serious study of barbecue must of necessity contain within it a wide range of

insights about American history and culture” (Elie Cornbread 4), especially to better

understand its ongoing popularity and its regional diversification. The time frame of interest

roughly lies between the discovery of the New World and the end of Colonial America. The

introduction of Native American and Caribbean cooking to the Europeans, the adaptation and

transformation of these techniques, especially through the introduction of non-indigenous

flora and livestock like the swine, and most notably the abduction and enslavement of

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thousands of black Africans who predominantly from then took on cooking barbecue for both

themselves and their white masters shaped the way we understand barbecue as we know it

today and its spreading throughout the United States and beyond. Since this paper also is

intended to describe the idiosyncrasies of American barbecue in modern Germany, the history

how this American classic got introduced to central Europe is examined.

The main part of this paper focuses on the distinctive features of both barbecue in the

United States and Germany. The mayor and traditional barbecue regions are without any

doubt situated in the American South, basically the states of the Confederacy, and the

Midwestern United States. Barbecue enthusiasts in these regions take pride in their particular

way of preparing barbecue and passionately and stubbornly are involved in an intraregional

dispute whose barbecue is the one and only way to do it right. There is probably no other food

in the US that stirs up that kind of arguments and emotions. Robert Moss said, that “no one

has debates over which state serves the best chicken fingers” (4). Taking this into account,

one has to acknowledge, that these rivalries should not be taken too serious, because people

from the South also understand that while barbecue generates distinctive interstate identities,

they also agree, that barbecue “is a food that unifies the vast expanse of the American South”

(Elie Cornbread 4) and sets them apart from the remainder of the United States. Those areas

still should not be neglected. Even with the Southerners ridiculing the “Yankees” for their

take on barbecue, one has to concede that especially in recent years, mainly through research

and communication on the internet, people from the North showed great interest and effort in

that matter and are trying to succeed in mastering what a Southerner would call true and good

barbecue, not only through copying it but also by adding their own regional flavors to it. This

evolution of barbecue from an entirely Southern matter to a cuisine that by now people all

over the world create and consume, also begs the question whether barbecue, especially in its

native regions, underwent a homogenization process. With the standardization of food to

appeal to a broader customer base and the competition presented by national chains or

recently upscale barbecue-themed restaurants, particularly small, family-run barbecue

restaurants face the challenge whether to stick to their authentic, traditional and above all

regional ways of cooking barbecue and probably lose business or to adjust to the demands.

Barbecue in Germany might at first glance not fit into this whole scheme, but similar to

northern pitmasters, the small scene of German barbecuers also takes great effort and

ingenuity in cooking barbecue, although they face a range of difficulties of reproducing what

they understand to be authentic American barbecue and may have to settle for suboptimal

results. Nevertheless, barbecue enthusiast from Germany might also be as strange to a

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Southerner as its counterpart from New England or California, but the true question is, if the

Germans managed to develop their own, distinctive regional barbecue culture in a rather short

amount of time.

Mainly on the basis of a selection of representative cookbooks, anthropological works

about barbecue and restaurant guides, these intraregional, intra-national and international

varieties of barbecue will be analyzed. Especially recipes, preferences and availability of

ingredients, different cooking techniques, menus in local barbecue restaurant and of course

the history of how those traditions arose in a designated area, spread and probably changed in

the course of time reveal the most ostensive picture of how barbecue is pursued throughout

the US. Literature about German barbecue, however is almost non-existent. Therefore the

main body of research has to be comprised of internet sources, to an extent personal

experience and few cookbooks and magazines.

“On any given weekend, hundreds of enthusiastic barbecue teams are competing for

prizes in cook-offs throughout the country”. This quote from Mike Mills (165), a highly

successful competitor himself, shows why not only cookbooks with recipes anybody can

reproduce in his backyard or restaurants are the sole sources to define diversities in barbecue.

Especially the fact, that those competitions take place all over the United States, makes

competitive barbecue an indispensable source. Most of these competitions are administered

by one or even more barbecue association with their own set of rules and certified judges. The

rules and regulations of each association may differ a great deal in terms of judging and also

what kinds of meat have to be turned in. This often depends on the origin of the designated

association and thus has to be more precisely examined, since it also provides a deeper insight

of regional features of barbecue. To rule out any misunderstandings in advance: most of the

competitions in the US are sanctioned by the largest barbecue association, the Kansas City

Barbecue Society. But with at least two different major barbecue associations, namely the

International Barbecue Cookers Association (ICBA) and the Memphis Barbecue Network

(MBN) and numerous smaller organizations, the KCBS is far from being a monopolistic

sanctioning body. Drawing a representative picture of the circuit not only in the

overwhelming Southern and Midwestern States, but also in the remainder of the United States

with its rather young, but not less professional scene is the main goal here. Points of interest

are the overall rules, its entrenchment within the local community, the composition of local

and nonresidential participating teams and the attempt to provide a deeper insight what it

takes for participants to compete successfully.

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This begs the question, how the Germans attempt to emulate their American role

models in terms of competitive barbecue. Dozens, maybe hundreds of German grill- and

barbecue clubs do in fact exist, but only one takes on the task of organizing or sanctioning

serious championships, the German Barbecue Association (GBA). Thus, the GBA is

examined by not only comparing it to its American counterparts, which obviously sparked its

formation, but also by its own distinctive characteristics and self-image which most of the

time have to be accounted for by German culture, the struggle of introducing American

barbecue to the German people who are largely not familiar with it and also concrete

commercial interests.

While, as mentioned above, Americans participate in numerous cook-offs with

hundreds or thousands of teams, German barbecue competitions can be counted on the fingers

of one hand. Nevertheless, those competitions, with the annual German Barbecue

Championship being the most remarkable, provide a vivid contrast of how both the Germans

either try to imitate the Americans in some respective fashions or emancipate themselves

altogether, owed to certain German sensitivities. Since especially the German Barbecue

Championship is a platform for every German barbecue team to compete, it is a picturesque

example to describe if and how teams represent their regional culinary heritage and fuse their

own styles of cooking with American barbecue.

2. Defining Barbecue

2.1 A Short Guide to Cooking Techniques

Outside the Southern United States, even in countries which do not belong to the

English language family, barbecue is most of the time synonymous with grilling. Actually,

grilling and barbecue are two very different methods of preparing food that have very little in

common. Grilling is probably the oldest and also most convenient way to cook food in human

history. Only embers or open fire and a grate are required for directly grilling rather small,

tender and flat cuts of meat in a short amount of time with temperatures above 250° Celsius

(Brinkmann et al. 14). Larger cuts of meat or whole animals like chicken or turkeys are

inapplicable for this method, because they would only burn on the outside and stay raw in the

inside, a huge health hazard when cooking poultry.

Indirect grilling on the other hand comes quite close to the concept of barbecuing, or

how Steven Raichlen puts it: “a hybrid method” (Bible 4). The meat is generally placed above

a dripping pan with the coals being located at the periphery and are optionally enriched with

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wood chips to create a typical barbecue flavor. Similar to a convection oven, the food is

cooked through circulating heat in a closed system, most of the time a kettle grill. The

temperatures generally lie between 140° and 180° Celsius (Brinkmann et al. 15), what makes

it possible to cook larger chunks of meat or whole birds over several hours.

Figure 1: Weber 22.5-Inch One-Touch Gold Kettle Grill

The essence of barbecue can be summarized with only two words: low and slow.

Low meaning the temperature, about 90° to 120° Celsius (Brinkmann et al. 15), and slow the

course of time which can take up to 20 hours. The heat source, usually smoldering logs of

wood or also charcoal, is not in the cooking chamber, but attached to it in a special side fire

box. The smoke and ideally constant low heat are ideal to cook all kinds of large pieces of

meat, especially cheaper and tougher cuts which end up succulent and tender at the end of the

process because of the softening of the connective tissue. The devices usually associated with

cooking barbecue are called pits or smokers. The price of top of the line pits with all kinds of

appliances easily can run up to 5- or even 6-digit numbers, but barbecue can be produced in

an enormous number of different appliances like worn out, modified oil drums, ceramic

charcoal cookers and with some effort even in conventional kettle grills.

Figure 2, 3 and 4: typical offset barbecue pit, self-constructed “Ugly Drum Smoker” and a ceramic “Big Green Egg”-smoker

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Smoking is often considered toe be the same as barbecuing. The processes are

closely related, the slight difference however is, that smoking works with different

temperatures. The two distinguishable methods of smoking are cold smoking with

temperatures ranging from 15° to 25° and hot smoking with a temperature from 60° up to

100° Celsius (Brinkmann et al. 17). Both are primarily used to preserve food, while barbecued

food is designated to be consumed right away.

2.2 Etymology

2.2.1 The evolution from “barbacoa” to “barbecue”

The origins of the word barbecue (occasionally also spelled barbeque, barbaque,

barbicue, BBQ, B-B-Que, Bar-B-Q, Bar-B-Que, Bar-B-Cue, 'Cue, 'Que or simply Q) are

generally well researched and established. However, the misconception that barbecue

originated from the French phrase “barbe á queue” is still circulating. Admittedly,

phonetically speaking does it at first glance offer a plausible explanation, and the translation

“from beard to tail” (DeMers 17) can be applied to the common method of cooking whole

animals like hogs in a pit, but scholars and lexicographers agree in dismissing this explanation

as coincidental and the Oxford English Dictionary calls this particular etymology “absurd

conjecture suggested merely by the sound of the word” (Elie Smokestack 26).

In fact, the first encounter with the word barbacoa was when the Spanish

discovered the tribe of the Taino Indians in the Caribbean. The first European account is

believed to come from Gonzalo Fernandez de Ovieda’s book “De la Historia General y

Natural de las Indias” (Elie Smokestack 26) of 1526. He described, that the Taino Indians of

Tierra Firme smoked fish or game on a makeshift frame of wood (the Indians also used for

sleeping) for the means of preservation. Both this framework of wood and also the cooking

process were called barbacoa, at least by de Oviedo, it is unknown whether the Indians used

barbacoa to describe the cooking process or only the framework (Warnes 23).

The Taoni Indians were by far not the only indigenous people of the New World

who used the word barbacoa, European explorers encountered the word several times in a

“number of Amerindian languages before colonial settlement” (Warnes 23), ranging from

New England to South America. The first usage in the English language appeared in Edmund

Hickeringill’s book “Jamaica Viewed” from 1661 with the following: “Some are slain, And

their flesh fortwith Barbacu’s and eat” (Moss 7). From then on it was gradually absorbed into

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the culture and vocabulary of colonial English and finally became barbecue as we know it

today.

2.2.2 Barbecue – a verb or a noun?

When asking different people what they associate with the term barbecue,

one will most likely get several answers and definitions which are not necessarily

compatible. Groups with different cultural and regional backgrounds will claim their

explanation to be the only valid one and passionately defend their point of view,

especially in the South:

“There are more barbecue factions and smoked-meats sects around here, each with it its own hair-splitting distinctions, than there are denominations in the far-flung Judeo-Christian establishment” (Veteto 7)

Does this mean that there is only one valid answer to this question? If yes, how does it

invalidate all the other allegations? Or is there not just one way to describe what barbecue

really means? The discussion whether barbecue is a verb, a noun or an adjective with several

potential meanings is probably the most controversial subject.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, barbecue used as a verb and an adjective is:

Verb (barbecues, barbecuing, barbecued)

[with object]

Cook (food) on a barbecue

(as adjective barbecued) barbecued chicken

Fundamentally, to prepare meats and, on a smaller scale, vegetables in the manner of cooking

it over wood or charcoal, just as mentioned above in the technique section. Barbecue often is

also used synonymously with grilling, solely by people outside the American South who have

little or no experience at all with eating or cooking real barbecued food. The verb Southerners

use to describe the cooking process is “smoking” or simply “cooking”. Officially, the United

States Department of Agriculture, responsible for production, safety, and labeling of food

codified the word and the definition now says:

“Barbecued meats, such as product labeled “Beef Barbecue” or “Barbecued Pork,” shall be cooked by the direct

action of dry heat resulting from the burning of hard wood or the hot coals therefrom for a sufficient period to

assume the usual characteristics of a barbecued article, which include the formation of a brown crust on the

surface and the rendering of surface fat. The product may be basted with a sauce during the cooking process”

(Davis and Kirk 81)

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Barbecue as a noun offers a wider range of possible meanings, it can either be a:

backyard grill

social gathering

dish

People in the South make a clear distinction between a grill, irrelevant whether it is a gas- or

charcoal grill, and a barbecue pit or smoker used for actual barbecuing and smoking. Calling a

grill a barbecue or barbecue grill is widely spread outside the Southern states. Particularly

German retailers and importers have taken the habit of basically branding any grill a BBQ- or

barbecue-grill. Even electrical contact grills and especially gas grills are labeled with the

acronym BBQ to attract new customers. To conclude, it is out of the question to call a device

which is not able to produce real barbecued meat, as mentioned in the technique section, a

barbecue.

The habit of calling barbecue a social, festive gathering held outdoors, often for

political and religious reasons, is older than the United States and often attracted high-profile

members of the upper class. George Washington himself recorded several times in his diary in

the pre-republican era attending barbecues. In these less busy times, having a barbecue

usually meant dug pits in the ground, filled with logs to slow roast entire animals above the

fire (Jamison xiv). Primarily Northeastern Americans today use the non-indigenous term

barbecue to describe their cookouts. The recreational activity of cooking outdoors was

popularized in the North during the first half of the 20th century (Elie Cornbread 92). This can

be largely attributed to enhanced mobility, promotional articles in magazines and the

nationwide construction of outdoor fireplaces. Gradually the term barbecue vernacularized for

these activities and replaced the former customary hot picnic. Northerners of course do not

haul heavy barbecue pits to, for example, a national park or the parking lot of a stadium to

tailgate. It is rather a gathering with grilled meats of any kind like hamburgers and hot dogs.

Ripley Golovin attributes this in her senior thesis on the development of backyard barbecue to

the enormous time cooking real barbecue would take and the attempt to appease whimpering

children (Elie Smokestack 137). Southerners and people from the Midwest today also defy

this explanation. They would never call a party or social gathering a barbecue (even when

“real” barbecue is being served) but would most likely give it a rather graphic name like “pig

picking” or a “rib-off” (Mills xv).

Generally speaking, in the Southern and Midwestern United States, barbecue is

solely understood to be the name of the finished, cooked product. Thus, those regions again

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offer a different and wide range of meanings. Depending on the preference and choice of

certain types of meat, barbecue can exclusively be pork, beef, or both and even rather exotic

meat like mutton. Some regions rather associate barbecue with certain cuts of meat like pork

shoulder, whole hog, ribs, beef brisket, cow’s head1 and even snouts. The KCBS, as the

sanctioning body of hundreds of cook-offs, officially declares pork, beef and also chicken to

be barbecue (Davis KCBS xvii).

Eventually, the question whether only one or more definitions for the word

barbecue exist cannot be answered in a satisfactory way. Merely barbecue being used as a

verb to describe grilling might be rejected as it is misleading. It basically depends on the

geographical and cultural background of a group of people to decide what answer is right or

wrong. Most people are in the end indifferent about these kinds of semantics and accept

several or all answers to be true. In the traditional and original barbecue regions of the South

does a rather revisionist and fundamentalist movement exist, with the aim to solely call

smoked meats (Staten Story) barbecue. In any case, during the further progress of this paper,

barbecue will be used as a verb, adjective as in “barbecued meat” and the dish.

3. History of barbecue

3.1 Origin and Development of Barbecue from the Discovery of the New

World till the End of Colonial America

In order to explain how barbecue eventually became the diverse dish it is today, it

is indispensable to trace back the origins, early history of barbecue and its introduction in

continental America back. A variety of accounts of the mentioning of the word barbecue or

descriptions of barbecue feasts can be found in colonial sources like diaries, travelogues,

anthropological studies or newspaper articles. Barbecue cookbooks or recipes however are

unfortunately quite rare. As described above, we already know how Europeans firstly

acquired both the name and the cooking method of barbecue from the indigenous people. But

what exactly did the first European settlers of America do with that knowledge and what was

their influence on barbecue? How did barbecue, both as a social gathering and as a way of

preparing food, look like before it eventually split up in several different schools of thought

and cooking? The biggest point of interest is however the question, how African American

slaves deeply and persistently shaped barbecue. Finally, in Germany American style barbecue

is steadily gaining popularity in the recent years. Therefore it is crucial to examine how and

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when the Germans adapted this unique and for European circumstances rather alien cooking

technique.

Barbecue in the United States is mostly associated with pork. Since pigs were not

indigenous to the New World, but a persistent, prolific breed and sustainable source of food,

they were first introduced to the Americas in Hispaniola on Columbus’ second Voyage in

1493. The “true father of the American pork industry” (Vann) though is considered to be

Hernando de Soto, who along with 400 soldiers brought the first domestic pigs, descendants

of Columbus’ hogs, to North America, to be exact Tampa Florida, in 1539 at the time of the

Spanish Inquisition when it was a Christian duty to consume pork to prove that one is not a

Jew or a Muslim (Elie Cornbread 23). He also was reportedly the first European to attend a

barbecue feast in North America in 1540, when he and 40 fellow Spaniards raided a Native

American village in today’s Georgia and discovered “venison and turkey smoke roasting on a

barbacoa-like device” (Staten Story). Hernán Cortés later introduced hogs to New Mexico in

1600. These swineherds primarily roamed free in the vicinity of settlements, sustained

themselves and explosively multiplied in numbers within a few years. A substantial number

of these hogs escaped and are the ancestors of today’s feral hogs in the United States. The

Native Americans of North America, who were primarily used to only smoke game and fish,

soon grew very fond of pork and either traded pigs with the Spaniards or stole them from

them (Staten Story). The Spanish on the other hand adopted the barbecue-like cooking

techniques and developed it further to their liking.

The nucleus of American barbecue is not by chance considered to be Virginia.

The first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, was established in 1607. The limited

cargo on the three ships of the first colonists (Jamison 82) also included pigs. Just like the

Spaniards, the English did not fence their livestock in, but left them to their own to gather

food and procreate and later hunted them down like wild animals with “a good return of meat

with minimal care and feeding” (Moss 12). The colony soon flourished and grew rapidly, and

so did the herds of pigs. The plantation owner Ralph Wormeley had “439 heads of cattle, 86

sheep and too many pigs to count” (Moss 13) in 1651. Since the settlers of the New World

came not from a single, homogenous British culture (Moss 11), the colonies in New England

and Virginia had different preferences of cooking techniques and forms of entertainment. The

Virginians predominantly came from southern and western England, with a long tradition of

roasting and spit-cooking meat and an inherent love for social gatherings (Warnes 81-82). The

logical consequence for the Virginians was to blend these familiar and exotic techniques to

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adapt it to their new environment (Elie Smokestack 27). Back in London, Richard Steele

would despise barbecue in 1710 and say: “the Manners of Indian Warness are not becoming

Accomplishments to an English fine Gentleman” (Warnes 84). Those resentments were

widespread in the parent country of the colonies, mainly generated through a sense of racial

superiority, but rather alienated from the reality of colonial life and new developed customs

and the Virginians and later North- and South Carolinians were not deterred by it and carried

on cooking barbecue.

“By the 1750s, outdoor barbecues were one of the chief forms of entertainment”

(Moss 13) in Virginia, accompanied by music, socializing and outdoor games. Apart from

these obvious functions as entertainment, it became part of the political world as well.

Candidates for the position of governor or seats in the Assembly often held barbecues while

their campaigns to attract new voters. George Washington himself spent a large sum of money

on a barbecue in 1758 for his election campaign for the House of Burgesses. While openly

bribing voters with free food and alcohol was considered dishonest, politicians described it as

a “demonstration of a candidate’s generosity and hospitality” (Moss 17) and Washington said:

“I hope no exception was taken to any that voted against me but all were alike treated and had

enough” (Moss 17). These feasts also were seen as a huge distinction between the aristocratic

and lush banquets of the Old World and the public and democratic character of barbecues in

the emerging United States during the Revolutionary War. South American revolutionary

Sebastián Francisco de Miranda wrote after the armistice with Great Britain in 1783 under the

impression of a barbecue in New Bern, North Carolina the following:

Today the suspension of arms and preliminary treaties with England were celebrated. … About one o’clock there was a barbecue … with much rum, which they all ate and drank together – from the leading

people of the area to the very lowest sort – all shaking hands and drinking from the same utensil. It is impossible to conceive of a more purely democratic assembly without seeing it, no matter how much even the Ancient

Greek poets and historians tell us of similar events among the free peoples of Greece” (Warnes 110).

Barbecue and race is deeply intertwined in the culture of the Old South. White,

aristocratic-like landowners and rather poor white folks alike may have been organizing

barbecues, but they were not actually cooking the food. In his Autobiography, Louis Hughes,

a former slave, wrote: “It was said that the slaves could barbecue meats best, and when the

whites had barbecues, slaves always did the cooking” (Elie Cornbread 52) In 1609 a Dutch

Privateer arrived at Jamestown with 1500 captive Africans which he sold to the struggling

colonists (Worgul 60). The introduction of slaves was probably the prime reason for the

economic prosperity of the colonies. Zora Neale Hurston, an American folklorist and

anthropologist argues, that the original barbecue linearly can be traced back to West Africa

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and the Caribbean, where most of the slaves brought to the English colonies came from and

that not Amerindians invented barbecue. Their only contribution was the name and not the

original technique. According to Hurston, the proper technique originated from West Africa,

where “hogs are prepared by taking brown sage and burning off the hair, then washing the

skin thoroughly. The animal is usually roasted whole very much as we barbecue” (Warnes

122). Escaped black slaves on Jamaica during the Spanish occupation, the so-called Maroons,

very likely came in contact with Amerindian settlements where they are believed to first have

been introduced to the term barbecue and exchanged knowledge of how to prepare wild hogs.

These techniques then made it to the South “on the back of African slaves” (DeMers 17),

especially to South Carolina by slaves from Jamaica. Since digging holes for barbecue,

tending the pits or smokehouses over hours in this hot climate was hard labor it was

exclusively a black affair. “Virtually every reference to barbecue in America’s early historical

records mention of the slaves who actually cooked the barbecue” (Worgul 60) The “master

got to eat the best cuts of meat” (Staten Story) like the tenderloin or the hams while the slaves

got the undesired parts like ribs or shoulders. Slaves did not exclusively cook barbecue for

social gatherings of their white masters, they also occasionally were granted by the

slaveholders to cook for their own and often supplied the meat, especially on Christmas and

the 4th of July, to reward their hard work and to “reinforce the image of benevolent masters”

(Moss 63) to better control them. Thus, barbecue also became a form of recreation for the

slaves and they sometimes even were granted to invite slaves over from other plantations.

Louis Hughes noted, that barbecues “acted as a stimulant through the entire year … It

mattered not what trouble or hardship the year had brought, this feast and its attendant

pleasure would dissipate all gloom” (Moss 66). In a contradictory way, barbecues also were

used by the slaves for subversive matters. Virginian slaves often were allowed to hold their

own barbecues and enjoyed a limited amount of free travel. Illegal barbecues with stolen meat

too were not uncommon. These barbecues often were used to conspire against their white

masters and sometimes culminated in minor slave uprisings like Gabrielle’s Rebellion in 1800

(Moss 63-64). Finally, the whites therefore suspended the limited liberties they granted their

slaves.

3.2 Introduction of Barbecue into Germany

While the Americans can look back on a long tradition of cooking barbecue,

Steven Raichlen calls today’s Germany “the Cinderella of European barbecue-unknown and

underappreciated” (Planet 346). According to a study conducted by Tomorrow Focus Media

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Social Trends in 2011, approximately 92% of the surveyed participants like to grill (Kimmel).

Real barbecue however used to lead a marginal existence by a nevertheless enthusiastic and

inquisitive small community. The origins of barbecue in Germany before the 1990s are quite

difficult to trace back due to a lack of reliable sources. Cookbooks on authentic barbecue were

unfortunately only recently published, anthropological works basically non-existent. It is safe

to assume that Germans at first got introduced to barbecue through three different ways: travel

to the United States, the American occupation force and the introduction of American kettle

grills manufactured by the Weber Stephen Products LLC. The biggest impact however was

made at the end of the 20th century by the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent

increased media coverage. One final reason why barbecue is gradually gaining acceptance in

Germany can be attributed to both our massive stock of different kinds of trees which are

suitable for smoking and the long tradition of curing meats.

Germans returning from travels to the United States often tell the story how they

first encountered outlandish looking barbecue pits and sampled barbecue, a kind of food they

never ate before. Those accounts regularly appear in the introduction section of a prominent

German barbecue message board. Nostalgic memories associated with barbecue and their

frustration, that nothing comparable exits in German cuisine, outdoor cooking or gastronomy

and with American companies then considering the German market for kettle grills and

smokers as not sufficiently profitable, people either brought adequate cookers with them,

asked friends or relatives in the US to send them grills or smokers or simply tried to build

them themselves. The number of people doing so was marginal though. Germans likely got

more accustomed to barbecue in the vicinity of American military facilities spread throughout

Germany. The United States Armed Forces employ a large number of German civilians as

contractors on their bases who there had the possibility to sample barbecue and purchase

American cuts of meat and grills and smokers. Other accounts mention the possibility to buy

off used grills and smokers from American Army personnel or the opportunity to shop on post

by befriending U.S soldiers, the latter is highly illegal though. The Weber-Stephen company,

credited with inventing the kettle grill and one of the largest grill and smoker manufacturers in

the world is, especially in today’s Germany, associated with American barbecue. The

company itself did not directly sell its products in Germany until the 1990s. The German

branch was established in 1999 in Ingelheim. From 1977 on, only one single German import

company sold Weber grills on the German market, on a very small scale though (Kamm).

German or European manufactures had at that time no comparable products in their

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repertoire. These three theses are supported by the fact that barbecue is more prominent is

West- than in East Germany.

Figure 5: Distribution of members of the internet-based German Grillsportverein

East Germans naturally had not access to US Army installations, the possibility to make

vacations abroad other than in the states of the Warsaw Pact or the opportunity to purchase

American products.

As mentioned before, the number people of who pursued cooking barbecue through these

three ways is easily assessable. The biggest boost for barbecue in Germany is eventually owed

to the internet. The pioneer in this regard is without any doubt the Grillsportverein (Hör

gsv.de), especially its message board. Four students, bored by the in their opinion dull

German grilling culture, decided to establish the “Grillsportverein” in 1997 (Hör Foundation).

Soon later, they set up a website with recipes and later a forum (Hör Forum), in a time where

the internet was in its infancy and websites dedicated to grilling in Germany were practically

non-existent. The users started to exchange not only, as the name suggests, knowledge about

grilling but also increasingly barbecue on a large scale and with a higher accessibility than

word of mouth marketing. The message board saw a moderate increase in user numbers at the

end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, but with the higher distribution of broadband internet in

Germany, the numbers of users and forum posts increased exponentially. In October 2005, the

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forum had 928 registered users with about 50000 forum posts and a relatively small accession

rate of new members in the low 3-digits area. Contrarily, at the beginning of 2012 the forum

culminated more than 1 million posts made by over 28,000 users and during the summer

months attracts thousands more (Hör Forum).

Figures 6 and 7: Monthly increase of newly registered members of the Grillsportverein

These numbers alone support the conjecture that barbecue in Germany gradually loses its

status of a shadowy existence and becomes more recognized by a broader spectrum of the

German population. Apart from the Grillsportverein, one has to acknowledge that meanwhile

dozens, maybe hundreds, of other websites devoted to barbecue and other highly frequented

message boards, myBBQ.net or the Weststyle Grillforum to name a few, came to existence .

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The increased interest in American barbecue is also reflected by the frequent media

coverage in recent years. Barbecue chefs, caterers, members of message boards and renowned

manufacturers alike were constantly approached, especially during the summer months, by

TV stations and magazines to contribute to broadcasts or articles devoted entirely to the topic

of barbecue to explicitly report about alternatives to the common, in their opinion outdated,

German form of grilling. I myself was asked several times in 2005 and 2006 by various media

representatives to work on TV programs as an expert and eventually appeared two times on

Pro7’s knowledge format “Galileo” and was interviewed by the ZDF during my occupation as

a judge at the Berlin BBQ Championship in 2006. A magazine called Fire&Food, which

entirely focuses on barbecue was launched in 2002 and today still is in circulation. A

remarkable footnote is that especially women’s and lifestyle magazines heavily promote this

new form of cooking outdoors as both a new trend-setting lifestyle and a more health-

conscious alternative to classic grilling by offering low-fat recipes and the fact that by

indirectly cooking food no carcinogenic substances emerge since no fat drips on hot coals

(Weber).

Since barbecue is traditionally cooked with the fuel wood, Germany provides ideal

conditions. With a forest area of over 11 Million hectare, Germany is amongst the biggest

producers of wood in Europe what also accounts for, according to Steven Raichlen, wood

being the fuel of choice in Germany when it comes to grilling (Planet 347) and consequently

smoking meats. Contrarily, cultures with less tree population, for example in North Africa

(Fetcher and Winter Berber-Q 2/2010 41) have no comparable tradition of smoking meats,

neither for curing nor for barbecuing. They rather use energy-efficient charcoal to grill their

food.

This early history of barbecue saw the development of barbecue in a particularly

American way. One might also call it a creole (Mills Introduction) since it saw the “mingling

of Native, Anglo and African cultures” (Elie Smokestack 29). From its birthplace in Virginia

and the Carolinas, barbecue moved westwards with the American settlers who adapted

barbecue to both their new surroundings in terms of climate and vegetation and sometimes

according to the preferences of food settlers from non Anglo-European cultures brought with

them. The basic cooking techniques and principles of barbecue described above basically

remained the same. The African Americans on the other hand helped to spread barbecue

throughout all slave states of the South where they for generations - whites remained

generally ignorant of its mysteries until the turn of the 20 th century (Worgul 60), were the sole

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group of people who actually cooked barbecue. They also were the first opening commercial

barbecue joints and ,basically until the suspension of the Jim Crow laws, were largely

unrivalled by anyone and thus helped to keep the tradition of barbecue alive. Ironically, since

they most of the times were only able to cook the “tougher, more gristle-riddled cuts” (Staten

Story), today barbecue is primarily associated with back then undesirable cuts like ribs or

pork shoulder and are enjoyed by whites and blacks alike. The flow of African Americans

looking for new jobs to northern urban areas after slavery was abolished (DeMers 17) also

helped to spread barbecue beyond the slave states of the American South. Just like the

Northerners eagerly accepted and cultivated barbecue, the Germans were and still are

intrigued with this rather new form of cooking and, primarily through the internet, try to

duplicate and refine barbecue by their own German means with often encountering

difficulties. Apart from that did this enthusiasm also spark a highly profitable barbecue-

related industry in Germany.

4. Regional Styles of Barbecue

The regions commonly associated with traditional barbecue and with an

abundance of barbecue restaurants are “bounded on the north by Missouri, Kentucky and

North Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma to the west, the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Gulf

on the south. (Alfino and Aputo 69).

Figure 8: The core regions of traditional American barbecue

John Shelton Reed highlights in his essay “Barbecue Sociology: The Meat of the Matter”

(Elie Cornbread 82) “drive a hundred miles and barbecue does change. The only constant is

slow-cooking with smoke”. Even within the boundaries of a single state barbecue often

differs. Pitmasters, professional and backyard chefs alike, prefer different animals, cuts,

sauces, wood, side dishes, spices, etc. and “reinforce a “Southern characteristic […] the

devotion to states’ rights and local autonomy” (Elie Cornbread 82), with occasional overlaps

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though. In order to examine how barbecue became as divisive as it is today and to describe

the preferences of local barbecue cooks, it is fundamental to take a closer look how barbecue

got introduced and developed in every single state, region or metropolitan center. White,

English colonists from the first English settlements did not simply in the course of decades

and centuries move westwards and brought a homogenized form of cooking with them. Every

region has, at least in some regards, a unique history of barbecue. Different groups of

European descent like the French, Germans or Czech settled all over the South and

contributed to the development of barbecue with their characteristic culinary skills and

traditions. The influence of the non-white population, namely African Americans and

Mexicans, in that regard is even more significant. As Joel Garreau states in his book “The

Nine Nations of North America” factors like people, topographies, climates and industry in

effect separates the continent into distinguishable nations” (Elie Smokestack 137). Especially

different climates and terrains are significant reasons, why smoked meats in Texas or North

Carolina do not taste alike, even same cuts like ribs. One reason is wood, with each tree genus

flavoring meats differently. Locals naturally use the resources which are abundant in their

area and trees that grow in North Carolina simply would not survive in Texas. Another reason

in that regard is the local flora which influences how barbecued meats are spiced or what side

dishes generally are eaten with barbecue. In contrast, barbecue in the north and the west is as

mentioned not traditional but may also differ depending if one samples barbecue in

California, Chicago or New York City. Therefore it is fundamental to identify the reasons for

the grown interested in barbecue in this area and whether the Southern principles of barbecue

remained the same in these territories or were changed to better fit with the local culinary

tastes or a globalized sense of homogenization.

The Germans on the other side, in some respects similar to northeastern and

northwestern Americans, are in a phase where their hobby of cooking barbecue grew from a

niche pursued by a small number of aficionados to the attention of the public at large, spread

throughout the entire country. The sixteen German states also all have their own culinary

legacy and different preferences for kinds of meat, spices or vegetables, so the question is

what approach they take in cooking barbecue. Do they prefer certain American regional

barbecue styles over others? Do they have the resources to cook American barbecue in terms

of required appliances or ingredients? If not, how do they compensate and substitute for it?

Did a unique German style barbecue develop with a blend of Old World dishes or ingredients

and this new American cooking technique? Is barbecue cooked in Bavaria differently than

barbecue in Schleswig-Holstein? Does the largest minority living in Germany, the Turks, who

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too have a long tradition of roasting meats, have any impact on German barbecue? We have

already heard that barbecue in the US is considered to be pure democratic and accessible for

all social classes or as Mike Mills puts it: “Any good barbecue restaurant will have a parking

lot filled with all kinds of cars, from Mercedes to hunks of junk” (Mills 129). So is that also

true for Germany or is cooking American barbecue here a rather luxurious lifestyle-trend?

4.1 Virginia – The Cradle of Barbecue

Virginia, along with the Carolinas, may be credited with being the birthplace of

American barbecue and still is considered to be one of the core barbecue states, but has oddly

enough not developed a regional, individual style of barbecue in its almost 400 years old

tradition. Robert F. Moss asked “Whatever happened to Virginia Barbecue?” and researched

that through settlers from Virginia who brought barbecue to regions southwestward like

Georgia and Tennessee, references about old-fashioned Virginia barbecues appeared in

newspapers up to the 19th century (Moss 142). The crux is that these are only references to the

old Virginian tradition of having barbecues for the means of social or political gathering and

not a variety of barbecue. The evolution of a distinctive style is often attributed to one or more

legendary barbecue restaurants in an area, which Virginia seemed to have lacked. This does

not indicate though, that Virginia has a shortage of barbecue restaurants, but these often

advertise with serving authentic North Carolina-style barbecue. The indices of recipe books

like Ardie Davis’ and Paul Kirk’s “America’s Best BBQ” virtually never include any

Virginian recipes in contrast to for example Texas or Kansas City (213-218). Anthropological

works about barbecue by authors like Lolis Eric Elie, who excessively tried to document the

diverse barbecue culture “either omit Virginia altogether or lump it in the same category as

North Carolina” (Moss 143). Several Top 10 Best Barbecue Restaurants in America lists exist

either published by newspapers or travelogues or through polls on the internet, but not one

single Virginian barbecue restaurant can be found on any of them. The only reference about

two single recommendable barbecue restaurants in a book on the list of works cited can be

found in Mike and Amy Mills’ “Peace, Love and Barbecue”. In contrast, the same list of

“right respectable restaurants worth a stop” contains 23 entries for Texas (317-323). To

conclude with Rober F. Moss’ words: “People in Virginia still love to eat barbecue, but it just

doesn’t seem to have taken on much of a distinct regional identity” (Moss 142).

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4.2 North Carolina - The Great Carolinian Barbecue-Schism

North Carolinian barbecue, in comparison to Virginia, is today along with Memphis,

Kansas City and Texas known as one of the four major styles of American barbecue (Raichlen

Bible 466), but among these considered to be the “most regional – and localized” (Griffith

82). The question remains, why North Carolina developed a distinctive style of barbecue

which is more famed than its South Carolinian and Virginian counterparts, although all of the

three states alike are considered to be the cradle of American barbecue. North Carolinian

barbecue stands out in many regards compared to other regional variations all over the United

States, especially the sauce of choice is uniquely individual since it often is vinegar-based.

The North Carolinians are even so serious and proud about their barbecue, that “North

Carolina state laws continue to prevent companies from selling barbecue straight from the

fridge” (Warnes 105) as an instant product in supermarkets. Barbecue in North Carolina is not

homogenized though. In the course of time did a great schism between the east, namely in the

Piedmont triad around Lexington, and the west of the coastal area around Goldsboro, Rocky

Mount and Wilson, emerge (Garner Flavored 23). These two styles of barbecue share their

preference for pork, but the cut of choice, the preferred cooking technique or the

complementary barbecue sauces and side dishes may differ substantially. While frowning

upon other, in their opinion peculiar, styles of barbecue outside North Carolina, proponents of

each style within North Carolina are also disdainful towards each other (Garner Flavored

XIII), what sometimes is even called “intraregional warfare” (Garner Flavored xiii),

especially between self-proclaimed barbecue capitols like Wilson or Lexington.

While hosting barbecues in Virginia and South Carolina generally was a white, aristocratic

trait with slaves doing the cooking, North Carolinian barbecues were “with a few exceptions

the occupation of farmers and journeyman, white and black” (Garner Flavored xii). Since the

first settlements were established in northeastern Carolina, the eastern style barbecue can be

considered to be the original. The meat of choice in much of the east is not a single cut of

pork but simply the whole hog cooked for hours in the pits and “eating it in all in a variety of

forms (Jamison50). Bob Melton of Rocky Mount is considered to be the man who established

the tradition of cooking whole hogs in his restaurant in 1922 (Garner Flavored 7), which was

later adopted by most of the restaurants in the area. Pitmasters there claim that the finished

meat is more succulent when the whole animal is cooked. Cooking a whole hog takes a great

effort, especially in maintaining the temperature over a long course of time, the ingredients

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however are generally rather puristic so that they do not overpower the natural flavor of the

meat.

A typical recipe for cooking whole hog in eastern North Carolina basically looks like this:

1 full-grown dressed hog, 120 to 150 pounds, butterflied or split

Salt and black pepper

1 gallon of vinegar sauce

1. Fire up the pit, preferably with a combination of hickory and oak, and bring it to a temperature of 120° 2. Trim any excess fat from the inside, rub the hog thoroughly with the dry spices and lift it onto the pit,

belly side down. 3. Every hour or so, sprinkle on more spices or mop the meat with the vinegar mixture, alternating

between the two applications.4. Maintain a steady cooking temperature of 95° to 120° for 18 to 20 hours, or until the internal

temperature of the meat is about 75° C.5. While the fire dies, allow the hog to sit in the pit for several hours before carving. (Jamison 6, Davis

and Kirk 87)

Most of the sauces in the United States are tomato-based and rather sweet. Eastern North

Carolinians however prefer vinegar-based sauces because of the slow-decaying effect it has

on the meat and use it both as a moisturizer while cooking the hog and as a seasoning for the

finely chopped meat before serving. As recipes for the sauce may differ, it normally contains

the following: white or cider vinegar, brown sugar, salt, pepper and cayenne or ground hot

red chile flakes (Jamison 62 and Raichlen Bible 156). The most traditional side dishes in

eastern North Carolina are coleslaw and Brunswick Stew. The slaw is simply made out of

shredded cabbage with mayonnaise or mayo/mustard and again vinegar and is often used as a

topping for barbecue sandwiches. Brunswick Stew, often called “hash” and served over rice,

is a thick, reddish orange stew with the standard ingredients of chicken, tomatoes, corn,

onions, potatoes and lima beans (Moss 137). On a side note: most commercial barbecue

restaurants in this area use automated, gas controlled barbecue pits. Traditional wood burning

fire pits require a huge amount of labor, especially by the constant demand of refueling them

and keeping a steady temperature and easily can start a fire. With a whole hog taking up to 20

hours, restaurateurs choose the obviously more convenient and safer way. (Elie Smokestack

160)

Lexington- or Piedmont-style barbecue originated, according to Robert F. Moss,

similar to the east in the 1920s through barbecue restaurants (136). Sid Weaver and George

Ridenhour used to cook barbecue for farmers coming into Lexington for court week with

fierce competition from Jess Swicegood. Soon, the demand grew that much that Weaver, who

bought out Ridenhour, and Swicegood made a permanent business out of it and erected

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wooden stands and passed on their legacy by training younger pitmasters and today over 20

barbecue restaurants reside in a town with only 17000 inhabitants (Garner Flavored 49).

While whole hog was and still is preferred in the east, pork shoulder is the meat of choice in

Lexington. John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg give German and German-speaking

immigrants who arrived in this area in the 18th and 19th century credit for this circumstance.

Especially Franconia and the Alsace region in today’s France have a long tradition of slow

roasting pork shoulder, which they call “Schäufele”. The fact, that Weaver, Swicegood and

Ridenhour themselves were of German ancestry supports this theory. The Germans had both a

long tradition of curing meats by smoke and were used to spicing their pork with vinegar.2

The predominant side dish of coleslaw can also be traced back to the German preference for

cabbage. The only non-German or European ingredients which are now incorporated in

western-North Carolina barbecue are tomatoes and peppery spices. The rather huge pork

shoulder itself is generally for commercial reasons cut down into two different pieces of meat:

the so-called Boston butt, the upper part of the shoulder and the picnic, the lower part of the

shoulder. Both parts are adequate for smoking, nevertheless the Boston butt is preferred by

most barbecuers since it contains the least bone. “The renowned Mr. Brown” is in southern

slang the dark, crispy exterior of pork shoulder and is the eponym for this popular western-

Carolinian recipe

1 Boston butt, 6 to 8 poundsRub: Ground black pepper, paprika, turbinado sugar, salt, dry mustard, cayenne

Mopping-sauce: Cider vinegar, ground black pepper, salt, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, cayenne1. Combine the rub ingredients in a small bowl. Massage the pork well with about half the rub.

Transfer the pork to a plastic bag, and refrigerate it overnight2. Before you begin to barbecue, remove the pork from the refrigerator. Pat down the butt with

another coating of rub. Let the pork sit at room temperature for about 45 minutes.3. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95° to 105° C.

4. Stir any remaining rub together with the mop ingredients and 1 cup water in a saucepan and warm the mixture over low heat

5. Transfer the pork to the smoker and cook it for about 1.5 hours per pound, or until it’s falling-apart tender. Mop the pork about once an hour.

6. Remove the pork from the smoker and let it sit for about 15 minutes, until cool enough to handle.

Pull of chunks of the meat, and either shred or chop them as you wish. (Jamison 53-54)

While both barbecue regions in North Carolina serve a peppery, vinegar based sauce with

their barbecue (Mills 111) ketchup is being added to the western version which they call

“Carolina red”. The main ingredients, apart from the ketchup, however, are basically

identical. Classic side dishes are again coleslaw, similar to the western version but also with

additional ketchup and hushpuppies, deep-fried cornmeal batter (Moss 141). Restaurants in

2 Cheryl and Bill Jamison however speculate, that this kind of sauce is a “direct descendent of early English ketchups”, which were made with vinegar but never with tomatoes (Jamison 349)

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the west refrain from using gas-controlled pits and prefer traditional pits fueled with oak and

hickory. Bearing this in mind, one has to acknowledge that cooking a pork shoulder takes by

far less time and effort as smoking an entire hog.

While choices of cuts of meat, the means of cooking and the sauce separates the east

from the west, both regions do have a lot in common. People from the east and the west alike

do prefer to eat pork over any other kind of meat. Both like their pork chopped or pulled and

mixed up with barbecue sauce. The sauces may differ in taste and especially in terms of color,

but they, unlike any other regional barbecue style (except for a few neighboring states), are

entirely vinegar-based. Coleslaw too, is enjoyed in Lexington and the coastal area. Finally,

both regions accommodate a huge range of award-winning, institutional barbecue restaurants,

which are regularly highly recommended in restaurant guides and pride themselves with

catering for celebrities and US-presidents. Interestingly enough, Lolis Eric Elie notes that

“barbecue in North Carolina exists primarily in the towns and smaller cities” (169) and is

therefore a rural phenomenon. While rather huge cities like Memphis, Kansas City or Houston

have a big and vibrant barbecue culture, Charlotte has few listings for barbecue restaurants.

4.3 South Carolina – The Mustard Belt

“The boundary lines that divide the two Carolinas from each other […] have little

significance in the realm of food” (Elie Smokestack 155). This indistinguishability is due to

the fact that for south and north Carolinians alike barbecue is exclusively pork, either whole

hog or shoulder, or in the words of Dotty Griffith: “chicken is chicken, ribs is ribs”.

However, as late as 1940 did the people in South Carolina regularly serve lamb or mutton

(Moss 145) but discontinued this practice. Apart from pork do people and restaurants in both

regions smoke their meats with hickory or oak. What they also have in common is, that not

only restaurants and caterers cook whole hogs, but it also has a long tradition of home-

cooking, what they call “pig picking” (Griffith 84). Popular side dishes in South Carolina are

first and foremost rice, with South Carolina having been one of the biggest rice producers in

colonial America, and hash. While Brunswick stew in North Carolina is sometimes also called

hash, it has little in common with its South Carolinian namesake. Hash in South Carolina

mainly consists of leftover parts of a hog, especially the intestines like the liver, and

vegetables (Moss 145). This utilization of every part of the pig has a long tradition in the

South and fits to the philosophy of barbecue that no part of the pig should be spoiled. The

regions bordering North Carolina also adopted north Carolinian-style sauces. In the northeast

they favor vinegar and pepper sauces while the northwestern region has a preference for

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tomato-based sauces (Mills58). The most popular sauce in South Carolina however is mustard

based. According to Lolis Eric Elie, “South Carolina is the only state in which all three of the

dominant types of barbecue sauce can be found” (Elie Smokestack 155). A typical recipe for a

mustard sauce is very simplistic, just like tomato- or vinegar-based sauces, and contains

basically the same ingredients like the two latter with the addition of yellow mustard. Apart

from that Southern Carolinian barbecue is always overshadowed by North Carolina’s

reputation and recipes rarely occur in common recipe books.

4.4 Georgia, Alabama , Mississippi and Kentucky

The states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky can look back on a long

tradition of barbecue, which basically began as settlers and slaves from Virginia and the

Carolinas spread west- and southwards. Barbecue plays a pivotal and integral role in the

culture and social life of the South, whereas barbecue in these four states is more prominent

than in the remainder of the states of the old Confederacy like Florida or Louisiana3, with the

exception of Texas and Tennessee which will be covered subsequently. Barbecue, too is

popular in Louisiana and Florida, but both states did a) not develop any appreciable style of

barbecue and b) are today rather known for other culinary styles like Cajun, Creole or

Caribbean cooking with an emphasis on seafood. People from Georgia, North Carolina or

Texas alike attend barbecues on any given weekend, eat it at church fundraisers, cook it in

their own backyards, go to restaurants and barbecue festivals can be found throughout all

these states. However, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky never really developed

their own particular ways of cooking barbecue and are in most regards identical with the

North Carolinian style with a few exceptions like the tradition of cooking mutton in parts of

Kentucky. This is of course no criticism but merely an observation. Since the states of the

South share a variety of cultural idiosyncrasies and especially a similar agriculture, the earlier

predominance of pig breeding4 being relevant in this case, it cannot be expected that these

states should have developed an entirely new style of barbecue from scratch. The major

barbecue styles apart from North Carolinian after all came into existence rather later with

entirely different preconditions.

3 Kentucky was of course no seceding state and stayed neutral during the war. Culturally and geographically however does Kentucky belong to the American South.4 According to the censuses of the Department of Agriculture for the year 2007, each of the three states today possesses a significant higher inventory of beef cows than hogs and pigs. Alabama for example had in 2007 a stock of 1,878,171 cattle and calves, including 678,949 beef cows compared to the stock of only 178,275hogs and pigs, In the early phases of their settlement however, pigs were prevalent and a tradition of barbecuing beef never evolved. (USDA)

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The official “state prepared food” of Georgia may be grits (List of U.S state foods),

but barbecue is no less popular. As a food authority from the last century declared, “The

barbecue is to Georgia what a clambake is to Rhode Island, what a roast-beef dinner is to the

English, what canvasback duck is to a Marylander, and what a Saturday night pork-and-beans

is to a Bostonian” (Elie Cornbread 40). Barbecue stands and restaurants opened as early in

Georgia as in North or South Carolina, in the early 20th century to be precise. Atlanta,

Savannah and a number of smaller towns contain a sizeable number of barbecue restaurants

today. The favorite item here is again chopped barbecued pork like hams or pork shoulders.

The famed establishment of Georgian barbecue pioneer, Johnny Harris, however, “features a

rarity in Georgia barbecue: a lamb sandwich, which is served on toasted white bread with

sliced dill pickle” (Moss 146). While the Georgians primarily cook pork, they cannot within

the state agree on a number of barbecue practices. A clear dividing line that separates regions,

similar to North Carolina, within Georgia cannot be drawn. Rufus Jarmon writes in his essay

“Dixie’s Most Disputed Dish” that in not specified Georgian counties, people dispute whether

oak, hickory or pecan is the best barbecuing wood (Elie Cornbread 40). The sauce however is

generally accepted to be ketchup and molasses based, only in parts of northern Georgia does

North Carolinian-style mustard sauce prevail. In terms of popular side dishes, do both the

Georgians and the Virginians claim that Brunswick Stew originated in their home state. The

most plausible explanation however is that it comes from the town of Brunswick in Virginia

(Elie Cornbread). Georgian-style Brunswick differs from its Virginian counterpart mainly in

its meat-content. While the Virginian version is primarily cooked with chicken, the Georgians

use “pork, beef, or chicken, or any combination of the three, along with corn, potatoes, lima

beans and tomatoes” or bell peppers in north Georgia (Moss 147). Another popular side dish

in Georgia is barbecued beans. The name is misleading though as the beans are not smoked in

a barbecue pit along with the meats, but are simply cooked in a pot.

The most widely consumed meat in Alabama is again pork. The pork shoulder is like

in any neighboring state ubiquitous along with pork ribs. Barbecued chicken, however, also is

highly estimated in Alabama, especially in the state’s most famous barbecue restaurant called

“Big Bob Gibson”. While Alabama has the typical vinegar and ketchup-based sauces, a rather

unusual white sauce originated there. The sauce was invented by the grandfather of Don

McLemore, who along with his son-in-law Chris Lilly runs Big Bob Gibson in Decatur,

Alabama. The recipe soon spread all over the state since Mr. McLemore did not make it a

secret. Today it is primarily used on chicken and turkey (Mills 55) and the recipe for

Alabamian barbecued chicken sandwich with white sauce is cooked the following way:

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6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded lightly

12 large slices toasted white bread

6 crisp lettuce leaves

Bread-and-butter pickles or relish

Southern Succor Rub: Ground black pepper, paprika, turbinado sugar, coarse salt, dry mustard, cayenne

Alabama Great White sauce: mayonnaise, cider vinegar, ground black pepper, coarse salt, onion powder, cayenne

1. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95° to 105° C.2. Drizzle the breasts with about one-third of the mop. Transfer the chicken to the smoker

and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, or until cooked through. In a wood-burning pit, turn the breasts after 15 minutes and mop well again. With other smokers, don’t worry about turning the breasts.

3. Assemble the sandwiches, slathering sauce on the side of all the bread slices. Arrange a lettuce leaf on each six bread slices, then top each with a chicken breast and a hearty dollop of relish. Top each with a remaining bread slice, halve, and serve with remaining sauce on the side (Jamison 186-187)

The cooking process of this particular barbecued chicken and a pork shoulder is basically

identical. Self-evidently the time is not as chicken breasts tend to dry up easily. Some

backyard cookers though like to prepare their chicken similar to pulled pork. They cook it

until it falls apart, chop or pull it and serve it in a sandwich. The used wood again is largely

hickory or pecan, the latter also being the official state nut of Alabama (List of U.S state

foods). Traditional side dishes can be potato salad, coleslaw with mustard dressing or beans

(Moss 149).

Boston butt and ribs, cooked over pecan and hickory, are the main barbecue dishes

cooked and served in Mississippi. Apart from that, Mississippi has very few local distinctive

features that set them apart from any other southern style of barbecue, the small number of

recipes and other sources at least leads to this conclusion. The “thick, dark-red barbecue sauce

is characteristic” (Moss 150) in Alabama and can be bought all over the United States and

even overseas like in Germany. In some regions, “goats are slaughtered and dressed,

parboiled in big cast iron laundry kettles over open fires, and then smoked briefly over

charcoal.” (Freeland). Barbecue in general is cooked within the range of temperatures

mentioned in the technique-section over a long course of time. A different school of thought

however exists, which promotes the fast cooking with higher heat of around 180° C, the ribs

will not take several hours and if done right will be crispy on the outside and juicy. The

proponents of “low and slow” reject this method because of the danger of grease fires and the

fear that the product would not be tender enough. A popular recipe from Mississippi however,

Mattie Biven Dennis’ Hattiesburg Mississippi ribs calls for this method and only takes 45

minutes up to an hour (Elie Smokestack 202).To conclude, an excerpt from an interview

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conducted by Tom Freeland with Randy Lepard from “Lep’s BBQ and Ribs” concisely sums

up the status of Mississippi barbecue:

If you had to say what Mississippi barbecue is, do you think that there’s something that really signifies a state tradition of barbecue?

Hmm, Mississippi barbecue. Well, if you drive down the road and you see a black cooker out in front of a business smoking, ninety-nine times out of 100, they’re smoking pork. They’re smoking Boston butts or shoulders or something like that to make pork barbecue—pulled barbecue, chopped barbecue or something to that effect. And that basically is Mississippi barbecue, and it’s pork.

Would you say that there are any similarities to any barbecue, say, in Alabama or—I know Memphis is its own kind of animal, but are there similarities in Mississippi barbecue and Memphis or anyplace else?

No, it’s pretty much—it should be the same. It’s all in how you prepare it, whether they use an open pit with hickory wood or some type of a hard oak wood, pecan wood. A lot of folks use fruit trees—apple wood—just to give it a different flavor. But mostly it’s hickory. In Mississippi that’s where the tree is abundant. So Tennessee barbecue, Alabama barbecue, supposedly it’s all the same (Freeland).

Large barbecue gatherings were held in Kentucky as soon as settlers from Virginia,

North Carolina and Pennsylvania arrived in the late 18th century. Barbecues in frontier states

like Kentucky played a similar recreational and integrative role in Kentucky as in Virginia,

with the difference, that here barbecues were held “for the common benefit” (Moss 29) and

open to all social classes compared to the elitist Virginian festivities. Thanks to a new tariff in

1816 which placed a 25% duty on woolen and cotton products (Dallas tariff), Kentuckians

found it more profitable to herd sheep, especially in the western area around Owensboro

where barbecue means mutton. Mutton meat is commonly not considered to be desirable since

it has a very strong gamy taste and is very tough compared to lamb. So the question is why

mutton became so popular in western Kentucky? The practice of barbecuing mutton came out

of necessity. Sheep grew older, did no longer produce good wool and could not be sold with a

profit because of the taste of its meat (Riches Mutton). So the Kentuckians who would not

want to let the meat go to waste, prepared mutton the way African Americans cooked

undesirable cuts like shoulders and ribs and barbecued the whole animal low and slow over

wood. The finished product is eaten similarly to pulled pork, in a sandwich accompanied with

a vinegary and peppery sauce which the Kentuckians call a “vinegar dip” or a “mutton dip”

and “black sauce”, due to its content of Worcestershire sauce and “Moonshine sauce”, which

contains vodka (Jamison 356 and Riches Mutton). However, today Kentuckians do for the

most part not cook the entire animal but rather selected cuts like mutton shoulder. Restaurants

in Owensboro today offer pork items on their menu, according to Lolis Eric Elie a concession

to people who are new residents in this area (Elie Smokestack 184). A whole array of

barbecue sauces or pastes which enhance the flavor of pork or beef, are made with Kentucky

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bourbon which originated in its namesake Bourbon County. Jim Beam, one of the biggest

bourbon brands in the world, for example launched its own successful line of bourbon-

flavored barbecue sauces. The states signature dish and side dish typically eaten with

barbecue is called burgoo (Moss 116). The origin of the name is contested. Some people

claim that it is of Turkish or French origin, while others claim that it simply derives from the

sloppy pronoun of bird stew (Jamison 372). Owensboro is the self-proclaimed burgoo capital

of the world. “Burgoo, a rich soup/stew of mutton (sometimes beef and/or chicken), tomatoes,

potatoes, onions, carrots, and corn” (Elie Smokestack 183) and it is quite similar to Brunswick

stew. Gradually, the tradition of cooking mutton in Kentucky is demising, with people

preferring pork over this gamy kind of meat and the journalist Calvin Trillian wrote in

“Stalking the Barbecued Mutton” that he fears, that the unique style of mutton barbecue “is

losing out to the competition of Kentucky Fried Chicken and similar fast-food chains (Moss

229).

4.5 Tennessee – The Supremacy of Memphis Barbecue

We have seen how settlers from the original southern thirteen colonies introduced

barbecue to the frontier states. There, and in the home states of barbecue like North Carolina,

the main barbecue styles and regions generally bear the generic name of their respective state.

While cities like Lexington or Owensboro are famed for their distinctive styles of barbecue on

a regional level which originated there, they all alike are as well ascribed to their statewide

schools of barbecue. Memphis however, competing with Kansas City, is known as Americas

barbecue capital, with a distinctive form of barbecue that does not exist anywhere else in the

United States and is the sole location in Tennessee that is generally associated with barbecue.

With over 100 barbecue restaurants and one of the biggest and prestigious cooking contests in

the country, the Memphis in May, “no other city quite compares to Memphis and Kansas City

(Alfino and Aputo 69).” What benefit did Memphis have over other cities in Tennessee like

Nashville to spawn such a high regarded style of barbecue? Finally, what exactly is so unique

about the barbecue cooked in Memphis compared to the other Southern and Midwestern

states?

The most crucial reason why Memphis developed its own style of barbecue was the

migration of African Americans to the city, who, as we already know, had a profound impact

on barbecue wherever they settled. Their population grew from 3,800 at the time of the Civil

War to over 50,000 at the beginning of the 20th century and as Lolis Eric Louie observed,

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today “in the black sections of the city, barbecue pits are more common than lawn furniture”

(Elie Smokestack 10). As the world’s largest timber market, Memphis’ economy not only

drew thousands of African Americans looking for better prospects in, but also “crowds of

weekend visitors” (Moss 151). These masses wanted to be entertained and a vibrant nightlife

developed with dozens of bars and (barbecue-) restaurants. The early barbecue restaurants of

the first half of the 20th century, run by African Americans but sometimes owned by whites,

were more “watering holes” focusing on alcohol than restaurants and served barbecue,

particularly ribs, alongside (Moss 153). Only after the Second World War did those

establishments switch to cooking barbecue exclusively because of the way it flourished. The

barbecue festival and contest Memphis in May also was and still is a huge benefactor for the

popularity of Memphis-style barbecue, but it when it first started in 1978, barbecue already

was well established in Memphis (Elie Smokestack).

All sorts of barbecued meats and seafood can be found in Memphis, but what they

really specialize in is pork shoulder and above all ribs (Raichlen Bible 466). According to

John Egerton in “Southern Food”, did people in Tennessee at the early stages of statehood

hold pigs so dear, that the theft of a pig “could land you in jail for up to fifteen years, three

times longer than the maximum sentence for involuntarily manslaughter (Jamison 64). The

way pork is cooked in Memphis is significantly different from chopped pork in North

Carolina or ribs in Mississippi and Alabama. While all around the South, barbecue is cooked

with hardwood that slowly burns down in a separate fire chamber and flavors the meats by the

penetrating smoke, Memphians and other cooks in Tennessee often let the hardwood burn

separately down and afterwards place the embers directly under the meat (Elie Smokestack

25). The long cooking time and the low temperatures are also predominant here, but a rather

mellow, not too smoky, taste is preferred. What Memphis barbecue is most famous for is the

fact, that no sauce is applied to the meats during the cooking process. In most other regional

variations of barbecue, ribs or shoulders are mopped during the cooking with a vinegary or

tomato-based sauce to prevent them from drying out or are glazed before finished with a

sugary sauce to add flavor through caramelizing. In Memphis, however, sauces are only eaten,

if ever, on the side in order to not spoil the natural taste of the meat, provided that high quality

meat is used. The meats in Memphis are only seasoned with a dry rub that is massaged on the

ribs the night before cooking and again sprinkled over it shortly before serving (Raichlen

Bible 175).

Memphis-Style Ribs

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6 racks of pork ribs (baby back ribs or spareribs)

Dry rub: paprika, ground black pepper, firmly packed dark brown sugar, salt, celery salt, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, dry mustard, ground cumin

1. Remove the thin, papery skin from the rack of each rib. Combine the ingredients for the rub in a small bowl and whisk to mix. Rub two thirds of this mixture over the ribs on both sides, then transfer the ribs

to a roasting pan. Cover and let marinate, in the refrigerator, 4 to 8 hours.2. Using hickory wood, preheat an enclosed pit to 120° C. Place the ribs in the pit and cook them for

approximately 4 hours.3. Fifteen minutes before the end, season the ribs with the remaining rub, sprinkling it on. (Davis and Kirk

51, Raichlen Bible 175-176)

The sauces that may be eaten in Memphis with barbecue mostly “take the high middle ground

between Eastern and Western styles” (Jamison 353), are neither too sweet nor too spicy and

contain tomato sauce and vinegar alike. Straight Bourbon Whiskey-based sauces are, similar

to Kentucky, widespread through the entire state of Tennessee since Lynchburg is the home of

Jack Daniel’s. The company itself, like Jim Beam launched a big barbecue sauce franchise.

Classic side dishes in Memphis are what Mike Mills calls barbecue oddities (Mills 57):

barbecue spaghetti: boiled noodles topped with vegetables and smoked chopped pork shoulder

(Davis and Kirk 80) and barbecued Bologna: rolls of bologna barbecued in the pit and topped

with barbecue sauce (Moss 152).

Barbecue in Tennessee is of course not only confined to Memphis. Cities like Jackson

or Nashville also have a number of barbecue establishments and people all over the rural areas

enjoy cooking barbecue. These regions are however according to Lolis Eric Elie “justifiably

absent from maps of great barbecue capitals (Smokestack 25).” They did not have the benefit

to attract the same number of African Americans as early as Memphis had. Barbecue,

especially commercial, “would not become widespread east of Memphis until well after the

Second World War” (Moss 153). So people from Nashville or Lexington TN had no other

choice but to orientate themselves towards the famous and far older style of Memphis

barbecue.

4.6 Texas – The “Holy Trinity of Barbecue”

“Southern Barbecue is a proud thoroughbred whose bloodlines are easily traced. Texas

barbecue is a feisty mutt with a whole lot of crazy relatives. The Southern barbecue style has

remained largely unchanged over time. Texas barbecue is constantly evolving” (Walsh 16).

Although this statement by Robb Walsh, one of the most renowned authorities on Texan

barbecue, may appear to be quite coarse it vividly describes the exceptional status and

reputation barbecue in Texas holds among the pantheon of Southern barbecue style. In the

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words of John DeMers: “barbecue is the great divider of Southern cultural identity” (14). That

might not necessarily be true for every state of the South. Georgia, Virginia or South Carolina

might have developed their own slight peculiarities concerning barbecue, but they over all

more or less overlap in many regards and share a similar history. Texas, however, developed

such a unique style of barbecue that not only is considered to be one of the four major styles

of barbecue, but also is within divided into three distinctive styles: barbacoa, eastern and

central style. Southerners, with a few mentioned exceptions, barbecue pork. Texans barbecue

pork too, but what they really are known for is barbecuing cow heads, sausages, other cheap

cuts of beef, which is generally synonymous with their style, and their partial dislike for

sauces. These pork and beef barbecue traditions have very different origins.

Long before Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845 it was part of Spain’s

vast American holdings and later belonged to Mexico, so “barbecue spoke Spanish long

before it spoke English” (DeMers 18), until the Texas Revolution and the subsequent

proclamation of the Texas Republic. The Spanish introduced cows and goats into the area of

today’s Texas around the early 16th century and the Spanish and Mexican cowboys, the

vaqueros, resorted to cooking beef and goats since these species were more suited to the

climate than pigs and therefore “the word barbacoa has survived intact and is still used in

Mexico and southern Texas” (Elie Smokestack 26). Barbacoa though means cooking cow

head and goat head in central Texas, since the vaqueros often were paid with undesirable cuts

of beef or goats which were raised entirely for food and not for money. The heads today are

wrapped in aluminum foil and buried in a pit and cooked over coals without any smoke by

“Tejanos” or Mexican-Texans who still make up a large percentage of Texan pitmasters.

After about eight hours the meat is so tender, that it basically falls off the bone and is sold by

the pound as cheek, tongue, brains and eyes (Elie Smokestack 37) with tortillas and salsa.

This authentic practice, however, is slowly dying out because of concerns about the cooking

style expressed by the Health Department. The remaining old-established businesses were

granted “grandfather status” (Walsh 190), meaning only they can carry on burying cow heads

under layers of dirt until they finally choose to close down. A few other places though

transferred this practice to electrical ovens and non-commercial cookers still do it in their

backyards.

The east Texas style of barbecue is very similar to the other southern styles since it

involves primarily barbecued pork. It was introduced by both white settlers and African

American slaves before the Civil War. Many Tennesseans flocked to Texas as early as the

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1830s, constitute for a significant portion of white settlers and probably wanted to “recapture

the flavor of their native state” (Elie Smokestack 25) what meant cooking pork. This is

supported by the fact that at the Battle of Alamo in 1836 most of the people killed were

transplanted settlers from Tennessee, most notably Davy Crockett (Elie Smokestack 25). The

bulk of new settlers however arrived during the “cotton boom” of the 1850s and because of

the thriving cattle industry from all over the South. The myth that barbecue was introduced by

“brave Anglo pioneers and rugged cowboys” (Elie Cornbread 53) though is only partially

true. Slaves, along with Hispanics, picked cotton in Texas as early as the 1800s and

introduced “a deep-rooted barbecue culture” (Moss 159) and by 1860 up to 30% of the state’s

population were African American. After the cotton season was over, slaves were given pigs

or steers they barbecued in pits the way they learned it in their former southern home states.

Many of the former slaves opened barbecue restaurants after the emancipation in eastern

Texas. They way African American cooked and still cook barbecue in Texas also separates

them from their white counterparts. Blacks cook their meats longer than whites who like to

have perfect slices of meat, “in the black east Texan style, they don’t mind serving you a

messy pile of meat debris” (Elie Cornbread 57). While whites held huge barbecues for

thousands of people for any major occasion, blacks are particularly famous for their

celebration of “Juneteenth”. Since communication with Texas was cut off during the final

phase of the Civil war, Texans learned only two months after the surrender of the Confederate

States that the war was over, to be precise on June the 19th. So for the black Texans the

“distinction between humanity and property had been extended to them” (Elie Smokestack

39). Now an official holiday, it is and always was accompanied by cooking barbecue.

However, according to Robb Walsh the whites and Mexicans “have struck up a Faustian

bargain in Texas” (Elie Cornbread 55) with the Mexicans playing the colorful minority who

invented barbecue in Texas, the whites largely cooking it today and “African Americans have

been completely erased from the meta-narrative of Texas history” (Elie Cornbread 57) to

eradicate the inconvenient reminder of slavery. The typical dishes of east Texas style

barbecue do not differ a great deal compared to dishes from any other southern state. Pork

shoulder and ribs are again the main barbecued meats cooked with hickory, oak or pecan,

eaten with a sweet and thick tomato-based sauce and the main side dishes are again coleslaw

and beans.

The kind of barbecue Texas is most famous for is located in central Texas and is also

called “the barbecue belt” (Elie Smokestack 47). The pioneers in Texas were not only,

according to legend, cowboys but also thousands of Germans, Poles and Czechs who

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immigrated to Texas during the second half of the 19th century, especially after the

Revolutions of 1848, and chose Texas to be their new home with a number of them opening

butcher shops and meat markets. Because of the lack of refrigeration a lot of meats that did

not sell, especially less popular cuts, were smoked (Mills 88) or used for sausage-making

(also smoked) just as the butchers did in the Old World. Since poor white, Hispanics or

African American migrant workers, whose number was estimated in 1938 at around six

hundred thousand, (Walsh 154) were not allowed to eat in restaurants these meat markets

were well frequented. Those meat markets today still largely do not resemble restaurants.

They sell their barbecued meats on the spot on butcher paper with crackers and pickles and no

knives or forks, no barbecue sauce (Walsh 97). The epicenters of this style of central-, meat

marked-based barbecue are the towns of Luling and Lockhart. The latter is known as the

capital of Texas barbecue and with a population of only 11000 has four of the oldest, still

operating meat markets of Texas which combined serve up to 250,000 people a year (Mills

90). Barbecue in Texas generally revolves around three different kinds of smoked meats, also

called “The Holy Trinity” (DeMers 22). Along with ribs in the east, sausages in the centre, the

smoked meat central Texas is most known for is beef brisket. Brisket is again a very cheap,

tough and considerably heavy cut of meat which takes hours of cooking to tenderize it.

Barbecuing whole steers had a long tradition in the 19th century, but after the rapid growth of

the cattle industry the market was flooded with beef products (Walsh) what eventually made

beef the most popular kind of meat in Texas Barbecue and “beef brisket tells you immediately

that this is not any other state’s barbecue plate” (Engelhardt 9) in contrast to the centrality of

pork that ties all the other states of the South together. The reason why brisket often is

considered to be the “Holy Grail” (Raichlen Planet 117) of barbecue, apart from the fact that

it is a delicacy, is that it is very hard to master the art of cooking it properly or as Robb Walsh

puts it: “it’s hard to mess up a pork roast but it’s easy to ruin a brisket” (Walsh 211), because

it easily dries out if unattended. There are as many different brisket recipes as there are brisket

cooks. Here is the combination of two popular:

Hill Country Barbecue Brisket

1 beef brisket flat (6 to 8 pounds) with – very important – a cap of fat at least ¼ inch thick

Rub: coarse salt, ground pepper

1. Trim the brisket so as to leave a ¼-inch cap of fat. (Any less and the brisket will dry out, and any more fat will prevent the rub from seasoning the meat.)

2. Prepare your pit: An indirect heat pit with a lid is preferred. We recommend using hardwood such as post oak for heat and smoke. Some woods – mesquite and other types of oak – emit a strong, harsh

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flavor that is undesirable to many people. Try different hardwoods to suit your taste. Heat the pit to 120° to 175° C. The lower the heat, the more smoke, the better the flavor.

3. Place the brisket in the pit and smoke until the meat reaches an internal temperature of 65° C. Then, tightly wrap the brisket in a couple of layers of aluminum foil, crimping the edges to make a hermetic

seal. Return the brisket to the smoker and continue cooking until the brisket is very tender, but not soft, and the internal temperature is about 90°C.

4. Remove the wrapped brisket from the smoker and place it in a warm spot. Let the brisket rest for about 30 minutes. This resting period is very important; during that time, the brisket will reabsorb its juices.5. To serve, unwrap the brisket and thinly slice it (Davis and Kirk 38, Raichlen Planet 117-118)

Some people, especially in the east, like to mop their brisket with a sauce, others do not

use any aluminum foil at all and as we already heard black Americans often prefer to cook

brisket until it is fall-apart tender and eat it in a sandwich. It is a matter of locality and

personal preference. Central Texans want to add the least amount of flavors possible in

order to not overpower it, only salt and pepper to support the natural flavor of beef and

definitely no sauce at all.

Figure 9: Sign in Kreuz Market barbecue restaurant in Lockhart, Texas

Brisket is not the only cut of beef Texans extensively barbecue in central Texas. Before

meat packing transformed from being a predominantly local business to a national

industry, meat markets and butcheries were, as mentioned, more or less obliged to smoke

their cheaper cuts. (Walsh 210) Besides the omnipresent brisket, the meat markets also

smoked other cheaper cuts like chuck and in a larger number beef clod, which basically is

a cow’s shoulder. Beef long ribs too are very popular in Texas, which is mirrored by the

fact that this kind of ribs also is called colloquially Texas ribs (Raichlen Ribs 11). Meat

markets mostly stopped butchering after the 1950s.From then on they were free to order

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not only the cheaper cuts from wholesalers but also more expensive ones, which they

earlier reserved for wealthy costumers. Some restaurants and markets started to feature

cuts with a higher quality like sirloin, but most stuck to cooking the cheaper ones since

they generally hat a higher content of fat. This is especially true for the time of the low-fat

trend of the recent decades with costumers eating more health conscious. This eventually

also led to the trend to feed cattle differently to create leaner meat. The only cuts which

reliably had a high fat-content were brisket and beef clod, other meats are more likely to

dry out in the course of the long process of barbecuing. (Walsh 210).

A broad option of traditional side dishes did not exist in small, local Texan restaurants

until recently. As mentioned, meat markets generally only offered crackers and pickles. Since

today meat markets in smaller towns like Lockhart have no significant local costumer base

but are dependent on tourists or barbecue enthusiasts who are willing to drive hundreds of

miles to sample good barbecue, some also offer a broader range of side dishes like beans,

coleslaw or potato salad. Especially potato salad has a long tradition in Texas because of the

number of German immigrants and often is served at private barbecues. Most recipes are

inspired by its German prototype and often bear German names like “Mama’s potato salad” or

“Hot German potato salad” (Jamison 400).

This trend to please everybody gradually led to the case that most restaurants and meat

markets gave in and “now serve a little bit of everything” (Walsh 73), irrelevant if they are in

east or central Texas or Mexican barbacoa joints. This is also true for the majority of barbecue

restaurants all over the South. Only a few stick to their traditions of only serving a limited

number of local specialties and fewer manage to survive. People cooking barbecue in their

backyard do not have this economic pressure and when browsing through local internet

message boards like Texasbbqrub.com, one has to acknowledge that these people often are the

last instance who keep local traditions like cooking brisket alive but occasionally not shy

away from trying new styles and cuts. The debate what intraregional barbecue style reigns

supreme in Texas actually has been going on for decades, but with this trend of

homogenization and consequent blurring of barbecue styles, Rob Walsh proposes that “the

best way to preserve our traditions is to constantly disagree about what Texas barbecue really

is. As long as there’s some disagreement the distinctions are kept alive” (Walsh 73).

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4.7 Missouri – Kansas City and St. Louis

Kansas City is in a constant quarrel with Memphis over the title of American Barbecue

Capital. While a number of cities, like Lexington in North Carolina or Santa Maria in

California, claim this title, those two are in terms of size and fame the only serious

contestants. These cities show a lot of parallels in questions of size, urban development,

history, minorities, number of barbecue restaurants, their leading role in the state’s barbecue

culture or size of premier barbecue festivals, in the case of Kansas City the “American

Royal”. Other factors like the first introduction of barbecue or the preference of certain meats

and sauces differ completely. Doug Worgul describes Kansas City as “the melting pot of

barbecue cities, the inland beach where every other barbecue style in the country washes up”

(58). Rural Missouri is generally not known for yielding renowned barbecue styles or

restaurants unlike states in the South like North Carolina or Texas where barbecue-

innovations mostly took place in minor cities like Lockhart or Lexington. Besides Kansas

City Missouri is also renowned of the style of barbecue which originated in the state’s second

biggest city, St. Louis. St. Louis was somewhat put in a backwater in the dispute between

Kansas City and Memphis and their respective nationwide fame, but nevertheless gained

courtesy for being the namesake for a special cut of spareribs and the rather uncommon

practice of barbecuing pork snoots.

The Kansas City of the “Wild West” with huge cattle drives, the Kansas City of

glittering nightlife with gambling, jazz and prostitution, the industrial city with packing

houses and railroads and the promised-land for black migrants all alike share the credit for the

development of the most enduring Kansas City – the barbecue capital (Elie Smokestack 141).

Located directly north of the South and northeast of the Southwest, Kansas City is the

rendezvous point of all Southern barbecue traditions. Similar to Memphis, Kansas City is a

river city which boomed in the second half of the 19th century and attracted thousands of

transplanted former slaves looking for better prospects. Before that time, a large number of

escaped slaves became residents of the city, which then was an important station of the

Underground Railroad. While Memphis prospered through timber, Kansas City, as a huge

railroad hub, was the place where farmers from Texas brought their cattle surplus after the

Civil War which eventually made Kansas City the second largest meat-packing city in the

United States after Chicago (Elie Smokestack 141). These factors contributed to the

exponential growth of the city in the late 19th century and especially to the vibrant night-life

since all these groups and transients wanted to be entertained. The barbecue restaurants of the

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early 20th century flourished during the time of the Prohibition after World War I and were

ideal cover-ups for illegal speakeasies. These early restaurants were mainly owned by blacks,

but a few also by whites. The bulk of white residents however moved to newly developed

areas in suburbia since the 1890s what made the inner city of Kansas City predominantly

black where the Kansas City barbecue tradition started (Moss 155) and today, like Memphis,

has over 100 barbecue restaurants.

Kansas City barbecue offers a selection of signature dishes, meats and sauces that

seeks its equal in the entire United States. While brisket is generally associated with Texas

barbecue, the local meat-packing industry provided very cheap beef and the chefs from

Kansas City early on started barbecuing the cheaper cuts. However, brisket in Kansas City is

generally not cooked or served dry but smothered with barbecue sauce. Another barbecued

beef specialty Kansas City is known for are the so-called “burnt ends”. These are “little end

pieces of the brisket that get overdone because they are so thin” (Mills 57) what makes them

quite chewy. They nevertheless are considered to be a delicacy by a number of barbecue

enthusiasts.

Burnt Ends

1 fully barbecued fatty top section of a brisket

Tomato-based barbecue sauce (optional)

1. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95° to 105°C2. Transfer the brisket section to the smoker and cook it for 3 to 4 hours, depending on the size. Let the

brisket sit at room temperature for 10 minutes and then slice or shred it. After you break through the coal-like crust, the meat will pull apart into succulent shreds with chewy, deep-flavored ends. Savor at

once, with barbecue sauce, if you wish (Jamison 108)

This recipe again shows how barbecue cooks try to salvage meat up to the last pit and do not

want anything to go to waste. While the tradition to cook beef in Kansas City stems from

Texas, the city also offers a number of pork dishes inspired by the southwest. Sliced and

pulled pork plus hams are widely available but Kansas City is far more known for its

barbecued ribs. The cooking process itself is fairly similar compared to other pork-regions,

apart from the fact that in Kansas City mostly St. Louis cut spareribs (trimmed of the chine

bone and brisket flap) (Jamison 67) are used and that “Kansas City folks love to make a mess

with ribs, layering them with so much sweet, hot sauce that you’re licking your fingers as

often as you’re licking your chops” (Jamison 67). Rib tips, the “small meaty pieces of the

breast bone that are trimmed off spareribs” (Raichlen Ribs 9) are a Kansas City original.

These cartilaginous ends of spareribs might at first glance not be a desirable meal, but after a

lengthy session of smoking they develop a lot of flavor and are a challenge for any self-

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respecting pitmaster too. Apart from beef and pork, a lot of menus also do feature chicken and

turkey. Sauces contributed a lot to the fame of Kansas City’s barbecue-style with the city

being called “the sauce capital of the country” (Jamison 347). The traditional Kansas City

barbecue sauce is “tomato-based with lots of sugar and molasses” and most store-bought

barbecue sauces today are viscous and overly sugary variations of the Kansas City original.

No other regional barbecue-style barbecue sauce is as widespread in this multi-billion dollar

market (Brooks et al. 2) and the supermarkets in Kansas City itself offer a variety of up to 75

different Kansas-style sauces. The brand KC Masterpiece, which was invented in Kansas

City, today is the largest manufacturer of barbecue sauces in the United States. The wood

pitmasters use in Kansas City is largely hickory since this tree grows plentiful around the city.

Kansas City is also known for its huge variety of side dishes, including French fries, baked

beans, coleslaw, potato salad and pickles (Moss 158). All of these sides can be found in any

other barbecue region, but not in this wide range.

The question whether Memphis or Kansas City is the barbecue capital of the world

ultimately cannot be answered definitely. Both cities have an equally large number of famous

barbecue restaurants, developed unique styles of barbecue and both are considered to

represent one of the four major styles of American barbecue. Kansas City might have a slight

advance over Memphis because of its wider range of signature dishes, its hybrid southern and

southwest-styles and the fact that Kansas City most of the times emerges victorious in polls

on websites like the Zagat Survey which try to answer this question. In the long run, however,

especially the sugary barbecue sauce may do a disservice to the citizens of Kansas City since

it on a regular basis is among the top ten of lists of America’s cities with most overweight

people.

St. Louis was recognized as “America’s Top Grilling City” in the second annual list of

“Top Ten Grilling Cities” by Kingsford, one of the largest manufacturers of charcoal in the

world (St. Louis 101). While St. Louis is overwhelmingly associated with grilling, especially

pork, the city also made seminal contributions to the heterogeneity of American barbecue

styles and dishes. Again, mainly the migration of African Americans leaving their former

homes in the South introduced barbecue to the city which became a major manufacturing

center in the second half of the 19th century (Gregory 44 and 117). One dish that is exclusively

found in St. Louis and its sister-town East St. Louis is crispy pork snoot sandwich. Packing

houses in St. Louis and East St. Louis used to pack the best parts of the hog for selling, while

“the black folks managed to end up with the less desirable portions, chief among the snoot”

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(Elie Smokestack 86). The ways snoots are cooked can be quite different from the traditional

barbecue credo of cooking meat over many hours low and slow with wood or embers in an

enclosed barbecue pit. Pig snoots can be barbecued in a smoker and finished on a grill to

become crisp, grilled over low to medium heat with constant turning to avoid burning them or

simply cooked in a deep fryer.

Barbecued Pig Snoots

12 pig snoots

Barbecue Sauce

1. First, wash the snoots well with cold water, then slice them with a very sharp knife into strips about 2 inches wide. Place the strips in a large pot of water, bring it to boil over medium-high heat, and boil for

about an hour. After they hard boiled, rinse them off well with cold water.2. Set up your grill on low, direct heat, less than 150°C. If your grill allows it, it is best to cook the snoots

12 to 14 inches from the coals. The snoots drip up a lot of grease, and you have to watch them closely as they can flame up and be ruined in a brief moment if the coals are too close. If the coals are farther away, the flame-up just burns itself out without burning the snoots. If you cannotkeep the snoots far

enough from the coals, just use a small amount of charcoal or briquettes to keep the heat low.3. Grill the snoots, turning them often, until they crisp, 1 ½ to 2 hours. Don’t put any sauce on them while

they are cooking, but cover them with any sauce as soon as you take them off the grill if they are to be eaten immediately. (Davis and Kirk 62).

Apart from this trait that most people in the country would probably find rather unappetizing,

St. Louis-style barbecue is well known for ribs. The city provides the name for St. Louis-cut

ribs, which are spareribs “cut from the flattest part […]. The rib tips, skirt, and point are

always removed” (Raichlen Ribs 9).

Figure 10: Rib-tips, St Louis-style ribs and skirt

The ribs have a more uniform shape than normal spareribs, which makes them more

space-saving when cooked in a pit and they also have the bonus of being more tender with the

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gristly and more chewier parts being removed. The cut off piece is commonly known as rib

tips (Raichlen Ribs 9-10). This cut is not only cooked in St. Louis itself but popular in the

entire country, both among restaurateurs and amateur cookers. “The residents of St. Louis

consume more barbecue sauce per capita than any other city in America” (St. Louis-style). St.

Louis-style barbecue sauce is predominantly tomato-based and similarly to Kansas City-style

sauces heavily sweetened with a light acidic note (Raichlen BBQ USA 130-131). Reference

books on the different styles of American barbecue do not go into detail what side dishes are

generally associated with St. Louis. Studying the menus of famous barbecue restaurants in St.

Louis like Smoky O’s or Phil's Bar B Que do not show any special or unusual items but

classic dishes like coleslaw, potato salad or mac&cheese.

4.8 Other States and Regions

When Lolis Eric Elie and Frank Stewart first went on their journey to chronicle the

state of barbecue in the United States during the mid-90s , especially in the South, their initial

thesis was that “this art, so vital to our national identity was dying or at least endangered”

(Elie Smokestack preface). They were insofar right, that old-established, sometimes run-down

but nevertheless legendary barbecue-joints gradually seized to exist and that those who

prevailed often were making compromises and offered a wider range of menu-options to

appeal to a broader base of customers instead of sticking to their local roots and traditions.

What they, however, did not anticipate, was the recent “nostalgic trend” that “has brought

barbecue to relative prominence in places where it was previously little more than a novelty”

(Elie Smokestack preface). While barbecue was long serving as a “visible boundary

distinguishing southerners from other Americans”, it is now also exported to all cardinal

directions of the United States as a contemporary lifestyle.

While hundreds of barbecue restaurants can today be found in every major city all

over the American East, North and Northwest, this new found interest in barbecue can not

only be attributed to be sparked by commercial barbecue enterprises. Californians and New

Yorkers alike recently began to take great interest in cooking barbecue in their own

backyards. With an oversaturation of fast-food restaurants and convenience products from

supermarkets, more and more people try to return to “the old days” and not only embrace their

own local culinary culture but also try to incorporate culinary traditions from all over the

world and from their own country in particular. A notable community of hobbyist food-

enthusiasts, often called “foodies”, developed in recent decades. This group “are amateurs

who simply love food for consumption, study, preparation and news” (Foodie) and often take

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interest in specific items with barbecue being one of them. Books on barbecue by authors like

Steven Raichlen today regularly make it on the New York Times Bestseller list and entire TV-

shows like “BBQ Pitmasters” on TLC or the Food Network’s “Up in Smoke” find a broad

audience. The number of people in Germany who are similarly devoted to anything barbecue-

related is only a tiny fraction compared to the users in the United States. While Germans are

organized in a handful of barbecue forums, Americans can frequent dozens of inter- or intra-

regional message boards. The discussion forum entirely dedicated to a brand of smokers, the

Virtual Weber Bullet for example has over 6500 registered users. The website called “The

Smoke Ring” (www.thesmokering.com) is a comprehensive directory of barbecue related

websites, with a listing of over 1200. The biggest impact on the new enthusiasm of barbecue

however was made by the downward turn of the economy in the 2000s. Restaurateur Charlie

McKenna said, that “all dining is turning away from fine dining” (Pang), but because people

still want to get good food, barbecue is an attractive alternative since mostly the cheaper cuts

of meat are offered in barbecue restaurants.

It should not be forgotten that barbecue existed in parts of the North a substantial

amount of time before this new trend developed. The relatively long tradition of barbecue in

Chicago again can be attributed to the migration of African Americans. Barbecue in parts of

California was introduced by Mexican Americans. Barbecue in other urban centers of the

North also more recently gained more popularity, partially owed to transplanted southerners,

white and black alike, who would not want to abandon eating barbecue in their new homes

and barbecue tradition therefore “underwent such incessant reinvention and could slip into the

routine rhythms of metropolitan life” (Warnes 131).

In the following chapters not only will be explained in detail how the rising popularity

of barbecue can be explained, but also how or whether these new locations for an old form of

cooking changed the way barbecue is cooked and perceived. Did the states which did not

contribute to the firm establishment of barbecue into the American culture stay true to the

roots of it, or did they make it more suitable for their own tastes and environments? Are there

any preferences for certain local Southern styles like Texas barbecue or North Carolinian

barbecue or are they simply mashed up?

4.8.1 Chicago – Barbecued Street Food

“In 1940, 77 percent of the black Americans still lived in the South. Between 1910 and

1970, six and a half million black Americans moved from the South to the North” (Elie

44

Smokestack 81). Most of these African Americans settled, as already described, in prosperous

cities like Kansas City or Memphis and opened barbecue restaurants. Chicago was no

exception. At The end of this emigration wave in the 1970s “urban had become a euphemism

for “black”” (Elie Smokestack 81) and “eating barbecue came to all but mean going to the

black side of town”. In Chicago, the black side of town was and still is the Southside.

Chicago’s development into an industrial center is very similar to Kansas City or Memphis. It

has been a consolidating point for immigrants from southern areas with a long tradition of

barbecuing and attracted hundreds of thousands of settlers from Poland, today’s Czech

Republic and Germany with their old-style wood smoking and sausage making. Chicago also

was the nation’s leading center for meat packing until the 1920s and therefore was never short

of a cheap and plentiful supply of meat, what created the same conditions as in Kansas City.

“The varied traditions and techniques forged in the South might have been combined and

enhanced in Chicago to create an equally compelling culinary art” (Our view). Chicago could

have developed its own iconic barbecued meats, dishes or cooking techniques. This, however,

largely did not happen.

The menus of old-established, mostly African American-run, restaurants in Chicago

are rather homogenized. Peter Engler, a culinary historian, said that barbecue in Chicago is

defined by what they do not serve (Gebert 5:20). There are very few sides, largely only

French fries, and a limited variety of different meats. While Kansas City today offers all kinds

of cuts like pork shoulder, ribs or beef brisket, Chicago is only known for rib-tips, St-Louis

cut ribs and sausages they call “hot links”. This is strange enough, since as noted, Kansas City

and Chicago both were huge centers for meat packing. The tradition of cooking the cheap

scrap rib-tips and ribs can be attributed to the meat packing industry, but it is rather odd that

beef-products did not find their way into Chicago’s barbecue-repertoire. The habit of cooking

sausages however is very similar to central Texas, were it was introduced by central- and east-

European immigrants too.

Chicago, along with Memphis and Kansas City, was and still is known for its vibrant

night-life. While the barbecue restaurants in Memphis and Kansas gradually emancipated

themselves from being bars, offering barbecue on the side, and grew into establishments

cooking barbecue exclusively, Chicago did not overcome its focus on catering for the crowds

roaming the streets at night. On the Southside of Chicago “the barbecue joints don’t open

until about two in the afternoon, and they don’t close until almost midnight” (Elie Smokestack

91). The Chicago barbecue architecture is not designed for seating a lot of patrons, they sell

45

their food to go. That is probably the main reason why barbecue in Chicago is not known for

pork shoulder or brisket, which can take up to 12 to 20 hours to cook. Ribs, rib-tips and

sausages are done in a fraction of this time and can quickly be distributed to customers who

take the food home with them or want to keep on enjoying the night-life. Barbecue here has

more the character of street-food like it is found in any metropolis all around the world what

is supported by the fact that Chicago’s gastronomy is particularly known for foods which can

be cooked and consumed in a shorter amount of time like the Chicago-style hot dog or the

Italian beef sandwich.

However, in recent years did a number of serious barbecue chefs try to introduce

authentic and more diverse barbecue to Chicago. The BBQ Smoque restaurant for example

published a manifesto, in which they heavily complain about the state of barbecue in Chicago.

“When people raised on real BBQ come to Chicago and order up a slab of

ribs at places renowned for BBQ in Chicago, they take a bite and look up with an

expression that is puzzled and forlorn. They’ve been had; they’ve been betrayed. “They

call it BBQ,” they think. It looks like BBQ. “But it ain’t BBQ” (Our view).

In the summer of 2010 in only a 10-week span seven barbecue restaurants open in Chicago

(Pang) and more followed afterwards. These new establishments want to distinguish

themselves from the old restaurants of the more or less segregated Southside. They want to

make barbecue more available in all parts of the city and for all socio-economic classes and

all races. They offer substantially more seating and all styles of southern barbecue. Some of

these new restaurants, however, are part of a rather new movement that can be observed in

any major city across the United States: upscale barbecue. This gentrification of barbecue can

for example be observed in Chicago’s Chicago Q restaurant, with valet service and private

dining spaces. They offer high-quality meats like kobe-brisket or smoked salmon that exceed

the price-range of normal BBBQ-joints substantially.

4.8.2 California – Fusion Barbecue

“California barbecue would seem like an oxymoron. Who ever heard of free-range

ribs? Who ever bothered to put organic micro greens in coleslaw?” (Elie Cornbread 121).

Californian cuisine is commonly associated with heavy Mediterranean, Asian and Latin

influences, consumed by a health-conscious population who as a part of their lifestyle highly

esteem organic and fresh products. However, during the Second Great Migration of African

Americans till the 1970s, when hundreds of thousands left their homes joining in a massive

46

regional diaspora, “California felt the effects along with other Western states” (Gregory 4). In

1970, 12% of Californian residents were originally from the South, with 571,000 of them

being African Americans (Gregory 19). Thousands of Mexican-Americans, the Tejanos, also

immigrated to California, joining the already substantial population of Latinos who lived there

since the days of the Spanish Empire. These conditions, along with California’s climate, are

generally a benevolent factor for the development of an own barbecue-style or at least an

extensive dispersal. However, barbecue in California seems to have been a notable exception

until recently, when it became more popular across the nation. So the question is, what ever

happened in California that barbecue did not establish itself in the last century and how do

Californians today deal with this new lifestyle of cooking barbecue?

As mentioned above, Californians did not create a distinctive barbecue-style. So it

would seem to be contradictory to acknowledge, that a style called “Santa Maria” barbecue

exists on the central coast. In fact, the “local rancheros would host Spanish-style barbecues

each spring for their vanqueros” (Santa) and beef, often the heads, were cooked in earthen

pits, similarly to Texas. It is however disputed whether the style as it is known today is real

barbecue or not. Santa Marian’s now do most notably use tri-tip, a cut of beef from the bottom

sirloin called “Bürgermeisterstück” in Germany. They cook it over coals of native red oak in

a time of approximately 45 minutes until medium-rare. The grills generally have no lids what

means that the meat is less penetrated with smoke and we here see a rather short cooking-

time. While Santa Maria along with Memphis and Kansas City confidently claims the title for

barbecue capital of the United States (Santa), it is questionable if this technique can be

considered to be real barbecue at all or should be called grilling.

The immigration of African Americans to urban centers in California followed basic

patterns compared to Chicago or Kansas City, but cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco,

however, not renowned for southern-style barbecue restaurants. The black immigrants who

settled in Kansas City or Chicago “brought with them their expectations of advancement and

a freer life than In the Jim Crow South, but they did not want to leave their cultural traditions

behind” (Elie Cornbread 128), especially their culinary traditions. This was at first also true

for the African Americans in California and they too developed the pattern of moving to

segregated parts of towns like Los Angeles where soon relegated black musicians created a

night-life similar to Beale Street in Memphis. However, the black cultural center of Los

Angeles, Central Avenue, was in decline in the 1950s as African Americans largely moved to

other parts of the city. The food of the few restaurants who still exist today in this part of Los

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Angeles was described by Lolis Eric Elie as bland and disappointing (Elie Cornbread 123).

According to him, southern culture in California vanished, because of

“the emergence of more militant black politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Younger people, born in California, no longer felt a connection to the barbecued meats and blues music of their Southern-born parents. As they created a culture more reflective of their own experiences, the remnants of Southern culture that flourished in California in

the 1940s and 50s lost much of their potency” (Elie Cornbread 129)

The few older places that exist today in California, most of the time serve a variety of

transplanted Southern barbecue-dishes like chicken, ribs, sliced beef and typical side-dishes

like coleslaw and baked beans, most though offer no pork shoulder and the typical sauce is

sweet and tomato-based (Elie Cornbread 127).

In the recent years however did the Californians increasingly take on cooking

barbecue. California is famous for its fusion-food, they often try to adapt their local culinary

traditions and ingredients to this old southern technique and ambitious restaurateurs opened a

substantial number of new restaurants all over the state. Many Californians claim Asian

ancestry, so it is not surprising that Asia-inspired cooking is centered on the West Coast. The

popularity of this cuisine is not restricted to California and Asian-inspired barbecue is popular

across the entire United States today. Cheryl and Bill Jamison’s West Coast baby Back ribs or

Thai-poon ribs are inspired by the flavors and ingredients of the Asian immigrants and

contain spices like lemongrass, fishsauce, pineapple, soy sauce or five-spice powder (73). The

large Latino community inspired dishes like pork or fish tacos which contain besides smoked

and chopped pork or smoked fish fillets typical, predominantly spicy and acidic Mexican,

ingredients

East L.A. Pork Tacos

Borracho marinade and optional mop: orange juice, tequila, limes, lemon, onion (minced), olive oil, garlic cloves (minced), dried oregano (preferably Mexican), achiote paste, cumin, fiery habanero hot sauce

6 shoulder pork chops

Warm corn tortillas

Chopped onion and cilantro, and lime and orange wedges, for garnish

1. The night before you plan to barbecue, combine the marinade ingredients. Pour the marinade over the pork in a plastic bag and refrigerate.

2. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95° to 105°C.3. Drain the pork, reserving all of the marinade if you plan to baste the meat during cooking. Let the chops

sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.4. Transfer the chops to the smoker. Cook for 2 ½ to 2 ¾ hours, basting at 45-minute intervals in a wood-

burning pit.5. When done, the pork will pull easily away from the fat and bone. Allow the chops to sit at room

temperature for 10 to 15 minutes and pull the pork into shreds. Arrange the pork on a platter with the warm tortillas and garnishes. (Jamison 88)

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People who open barbecue restaurants today in places like Los Angeles or the Bay Area

“are studying barbecue and creating menus designed not just for homesick Texans or

Tennesseans but rather for people whose loyalty is to good food, not regional accuracy”

(Elie Cornbread 127). This of course is also true for other regions like New York.

4.8.3 New York – The Late Arrival of barbecue

New York City’s cuisine can be considered to be a melting pot which represents the

most cuisines of all ethnic groups that are present in the United States. The New York City

Health Department lists roughly 24000 restaurants within its vicinity (NYC Health), with only

39 of them being barbecue restaurants compared to 2462 Chinese or 1049 Italian restaurants.

Only recently did few, mostly new emerging barbecue restaurants, gain nationwide attention

and New Yorkers by now go to great lengths to sample authentic barbecue, what can be

demonstratively observed at local festivals like the Big Apple Barbecue Bloc Party. One

would, however, think that the most populous city in the entire United States offers a greater

variety of a prominent American cuisine, especially because of the fact, that African

Americans migrated to New York in similar numbers like to Chicago or Memphis.

In 1910, almost 92000 African Americans (Sernett 265) lived in New York City and

this number increased excessively after World War 2, with many of them settling in Harlem.

They were, however, largely not able to keep on cooking southern barbecue in joints

compared to Kansas City were old-established restaurants have grown into the fabric of

neighborhoods. The reason is simply the dense population of New York City and to quote the

New York Time’s: “Without smoke, there is no barbecue, and therein lies the problem for

New York: the city environmental codes” (Asimov). Electrical smokers which today allow

safe and convenient barbecuing in confined spaces are a quite recent innovation and

traditional hardwood-burning pits could not be tolerated in dense spaces because of restrictive

fire codes and the pollution of the smoldering smoke. African Americans therefore rather

restricted themselves to bake traditional barbecued foods like ribs in ovens or served different

classic soul-foods like fried chicken. Even with today’s electrical or gas-smokers,

restaurateurs first have to convince a “myriad of inspectors, who seem to have an

inexhaustible supply of rules” (Asimov). Some restaurants chose to smoke their meats in

Long Island and shipped it into the city, but when they arrived most of them were spoiled or

dried out. If restaurateurs however attempt to pass any rule or regulation, they have to invest a

49

substantial amount of money to make everything fire- or smoke-proof and any, however

small, violation might endanger the whole operation with the result that they more likely

refrain from it. A few, however, did take up the challenge in the 1990s and 2000s to open

real-pit locations like the Blue Smoke, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que or the Rack & Soul and offer a

wide variety of Southern classics like pulled pork, beef brisket, sausages or ribs. Interestingly

enough, all owners of these mentioned restaurants are Caucasian. Mike Mills said about them

“Personally, I have always wondered how white men from New York City could possibly be experts on

barbecue. […] this is a diverse group of men and women from several corners of the country. They may have

some different views, but they’re all united in the cause of promoting the tradition and culture of barbecue”

(Mills 252)

The lack of barbecue restaurants, having no traditional barbecue culture and the rise of

“homestyle” and “comfort food” outlets in the recent years culminated in a downright

euphoria of New Yorker’s about anything barbecue-related. This can be vividly demonstrated

on the example of the Big Apple Barbecue Bloc Party which will in 2012 be hosted for the 9th

time. 16 famous pitmasters from the main barbecue regions of the South and Midwest plus

New York offer a wide variety of barbecued foods like brisket, sausage, pulled pork or ribs

and promote their respective regional styles of barbecue. Additionally to food writers and

experts hold seminars on barbecue (Mills 224). Over 125,000 barbecue enthusiasts attended

the event in 2011 and created long lines in front of the vendors, often to the dismay of the

visitors who nevertheless patiently waited to sample food which is hard to obtain in New

York City. These kinds of events only draw similar crowds in the home states of barbecue like

Memphis in May in Tennessee, the Lexington Barbecue Festival in North Carolina or the

American Royal in Kansas City. The Big Apple Barbecue Bloc Party is the only one of its

kind in what the Southerners would call a Yankee-state.

Barbecue in New York City after all still is commonly synonymous with outdoor-

grilling. Unique barbecue-styles most of the time develop and thrive through legendary

barbecue restaurants which New York lacked. A few aficionados from the greater New York

area, or as far in the North as New England, however, who are not just transplanted

Southerners did recently begin to appreciate real barbecue and try to cook it themselves.

Most of them share a similar history how they got introduced to barbecue. Posts by pitmasters

from the East Coast in the introduction sections of barbecue message boards often follow a

similar pattern like:

Newbie from New York: “I am fairly new to the smoking world.  About two years ago i got a Bradley smoker from a family member and never knew much about the whole process.  I am becoming more

50

interested in smoking after trying it occasionally in the past few years on different types of meats and seafood.  I am an outdoor guy, love hunting and fishing so there is no shortage of meat and seafood to experiment with” (Stoner86).

New to smoking in New York: Just recently got a brinkman electric smoker. since getting it on thursday i have been reading on this site every chance i get, WOW there is alot of information here, have also signed up for the ecourse (973).

Since smokers and barbecue-accessories today can be bought all over the internet or are sold

in national chains of outdoor-shops like the “Bass Pro Shops”, a rising number of people,

overwhelmingly men, who have an affection for outdoor-cooking but have no experience in

barbecuing at all, buy barbecue pits to try something new and in large numbers join online

communities to educate themselves on this topic.

4.9 German Approach to American Barbecue

Jim Quessenberry, owner of the “Sauce Beautiful”-brand in Arkansas had a theory

why barbecue recently became so successful in the United States. He says, that

“The European market has fallen in love with it. […] It was something interesting to them, going outside and having an outdoor sport that did not take any exertion. Any time Europeans fall in love with something, you have

a backlash over here” (Elie Smokestack 111)

How the Europeans, in this case the Germans, fell in love with barbecue was already

elaborately explained, the question now is, what the Germans do with their new-found

knowledge, of what they in this great distance and different cultural and historical background

understand American barbecue is. The means how barbecue both was introduced in, for

example, the American Northeast and Germany are in some respects, like being intrigued by

something new or the access of information through the internet comparable. The Germans,

however, have a more significantly different background in respect to Southern culture and a

number of problems acquiring the appropriate resources to recreate an authentic Southern

barbecue-experience.

Barbecue-cookbooks by American authors like Jamie Purivance or Steven Raichlen

today get translated into several different languages, including German, and are highly

successful in Germany. These German editions are in most regards one-to-one translations

from English into German (Raichlen Barbecue 106-110), which means that they do not pay

respect to the availability of certain ingredients. The same difficulties of course also occur

when Germans try to copy recipes directly from English-speaking websites or instructional

videos. Most authentic Southern recipes will at least contain one ingredient that Germans, if

any, have to go great lengths for to acquire. Often, the first obstacle is the required cut of

meat, either pork or beef. German meat-charts look entirely different than their American

51

counterparts5, due to the different culinary traditions. One significant difficulty is in this case

of course the English name of a certain cut which often is hard to explain to German butcher

who most likely has never heard about terms like beef brisket. Cuts that may be identical like

the Tri-Tip and the Bürgermeisterstück are however used in entirely different dishes. While

Californians use high-grade, well aged beef for grilling, Germans braise the in their opinion

undesirable Tri-Tip for hours and serve it as Tafelspitz. The question of quality is probably

the biggest problem for Germans in their effort to reproduce satisfactory results. The United

States Department of Agriculture, in short USDA, operates a voluntary beef grading system

with the in this case relevant grades of “prime” (highest quality), “choice” (high quality) and

“select” (good), based on the amount of intramuscular fat that provides flavor and the age of

the slaughtered cow (Walsh 210). Most commercially available beef in the United States is

labeled with one of these grades for higher transparency, although it is voluntarily. Germany

does not have a similar grading system what has the effect that customers more or less have to

trust their butchers or supermarkets implicitly. Even if German beef was labeled in a similar

fashion, it would not live up to the high standards of American beef. Most beef offered in

Germany today comes from heifers, a young cow before she had her first calf, or young bulls,

which get slaughtered after 16 to 22 months, with both not having enough time to build up

enough intramuscular fat (Brinkmann et al. 36). Most cattle however in Germany is bred for

the milk-industry and worn out cows are frequently slaughtered for the production of beef. In

comparison, the Americans intensively breed suitable races who guarantee high-grade beef

products, like the Angus cattle or kobe-style Wagyu cattle which are widely available

throughout the United States (Otto catalog) and are generally better fed (either grass or corn)

than anywhere else in the world. Breeding cattle for the sole purpose of producing high-grade

meat is less common in Germany since customers often are not willing to pay the

substantially higher price. Devotees of prime beef in Germany often must accept detours to

rural breeders who specialize in popular European cattle like Charolais or Simmenthaler.

The problem of obtaining the right ingredients is closely related with the question of

what Germans wanto to spend on certain products. Mesquite wood is not indigenous to

Germany but can be purchased online or in a number of specialty stores for thrice the money

it would cost in the United States. The 18 ½ -inch Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker costs

approximately 225 Euro in the US and 540 Euro in Germany. Imported American beef, also

available in non-German cuts, is available at the Metro Cash & Carry stores and can almost be

considered to be a luxury-product. These are only a few examples since Germans today

5 See appendix

52

basically can purchase everything online from retailers who import American barbecue

products. So they are challenged with either paying these high prices or trying to substitute

with local products which might, but not necessarily, be of a lesser quality.

What at first glance might seem to be an obstacle for Germans to come close to what

they understand is the real American barbecue-experience also is a chance to become creative

and create a uniquely German barbecue-style and industry. Instead of collectively ordering

barbecue rubs from the United States to safe on shipping costs, Germans have recently began

to create their own products, notably Marco Greulich with his Don Marco’s BBQ Rubs

(Greulich). With hardwoods like mesquite or hickory not being abundant in Germany,

Germans mostly use local woods like the European beech or birch which give smoked meats

an entirely different flavor (Jaeger 27). With barbecue pits being expensive in Germany

compared to the US-market, a number of German and other European manufacturers like

Landmann, Thüros or Outdoorchef today offer a wide range of kettle grills and smokers at a

cheaper price which, admittedly, often resemble form and function of their American

prototypes. A huge number of capable amateur pitmasters simply build their own smokers and

appliances. The do-it-yourself subsections of message boards are highly frequented by people

who want to have some constructive input on their projects or who want to swap blueprints

(Do-it-yourselfgrillsportverein.de).

Germans often also not necessarily want to copy American-style barbecue at all costs

in the first place. American barbecue sauces for example often are heavily sugared and many

recipes recommend basting or glazing meats like ribs during the cooking-process with sweet

sauces or juices. Germans often dislike this sweet taste as they both are not used to it and also

prefer more savory foods. Since Germany also did not have barbecue restaurants which early

on shaped local styles of barbecue, the first opened only recently in 2011, Germans are more

prone to either blend American styles, cook old German dishes in a barbecue pit, get inspired

by other foreign cuisines or create new dishes altogether. The recipe-database of the

Grillsportverein for example provides 29 different recipes for ribs ranging from American-

inspired with sugary glazes to instructions on cooking Bavarian-style ribs with horseradish

and sweet mustard.

Ribs with Sweet Mustard and Horseradish

4 Baby Back Ribs

Dry rub: granulated garlic, salt, coarse pepper

Mopping sauce: sweet mustard, horseradish, lager beer, oil, vinegar, granulated garlic, salt, coarse pepper

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Maple syrup for glazing

1. Rub the ribs with the dry rub and mix the ingredients of the mopping sauce2. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 110° C.

3. Put the ribs on the smoker and mop the ribs after about one hour. Continue doing so every 30 to 45 minutes.

4. After 5 hours of cooking, glaze the ribs with the maple syrup on every side. Serve after 5 ½ hours (Waldwuser).

Barbecue books, recently written by Germans, contain recipes like smoked Leberkäse (Jaeger

120), authentic American brisket (Jaeger 124), tarte flambée from the Alsace region

(Brinkmann et al. 68), bourbon-bbq-beans (Brinkmann et al. 144), duck breast cooked on a

wooden plank (Brinkmann et al. 220), chimichurri-paste from Argentina (Brinkmann et al.

59) or even deserts like smoked pear (Brinkmann et al. 233). In short, there is basically no

identifiable pattern and Germans are not restricted to any style of barbecue.

The question however remains, whether Germans from different regions prefer to cook

their local specialties. Bavarian dishes like pork shanks or pork roast can easily be cooked in a

barbecue pit. Fish from the North Sea is suitable for smoking. People from regions bordering

France have better access to high-quality groceries. Large communities of Turkish-Germans

do exist in cities like Berlin or Cologne and lamb meat is abundant in their stores and

supermarkets. Almost every region in Germany is known for local kinds of sausages which

often can be smoked in barbecue pits. So the answer has to be, that regarding local specialties

do the Germans actually have the required preconditions to develop their own local styles.

However, when observing barbecue forums on the internet, most pitmasters still prefer to

cook American classics like chicken, ribs, pulled pork or occasionally brisket, with their

different adaptations of recipes, and seldom feature distinctively local meats or other

ingredients. Lolis Eric Elie told Mike Mills during an interview, that “in order for a city or a

region to produce good barbecue, you need more people doing it and then you end up with

friendly competition , and that’s how barbecue becomes part of the culture” (Mills 259). It

remains to be seen if this will happen to the whole of Germany and its different regions in

particular.

5. Competitive Barbecue

Up to this point, the establishment, differences and possible tendencies towards

homogenization of the several styles of American barbecue have mostly been analyzed by

their respective local history, questions of ethnic group identity, commercial

institutionalization, interior migration and new alternative means of communication like the

internet. While these provide valid and illustrative material, they partially are not sufficient

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enough to look beyond the horizon of regional boundaries. Today nationwide barbecue

restaurant-chains like “Famous Dave’s” with 37 locations around the United States may exist,

but they lost the trait of offering authentic regional cuisine and their menus include items like

“Texas brisket”, “Georgia chopped pork” or “Southside rib-tips” alike (Anderson). Old-

established barbecue restaurants like Arthur Byrant’s in Kansas City do still cook regional and

authentic barbecue, but they did not expand beyond their state’s or city’s borders and except

for their nationwide fame and tourists sampling their food, they have little points of contract

with other barbecue regions. People may interact with each other today on the internet to

share recipes or give illustrated reports on their last cooking attempts, they however do this

mostly from the privacy of their homes. We have heard about local, public barbecue feasts

like the way they were held in colonial times or today in New York City at the Annual

Barbecue Bloc Party, but none of these events concentrate a similar massive number of

groups with different regional barbecue-backgrounds at one single place like barbecue

competitions do.

Until the 90s, most barbecue competitions were held in the South and Midwest (Mills

165). Today’s biggest Southern barbecue cook-offs, the Memphis in May, The American

Royal in Kansas City, The Lexington Barbecue Festival in North Carolina and the Taylor

International Barbecue Cookoff in Texas were only launched in the late 70s and early 80s

(Moss 232). This time already saw a slight increase in the numbers of competitions held in

these regions. Before that, a small number of competitions did of course exist and they mostly

were “offshoots of county, regional and state fairs” (Deutsch 139). They were low in number

of competitors and did not show the features of today’s professionalism.

In the early days, barbecue contests were pretty bare-bones: contestants slept in pup tents and cooked on Weber kettles and homemade contraptions. (Moss 233)

Carolyn Wells, the executive director of the Kansas City Barbecue Society said, that the

competition circuit grew 10 to 20 percent through the 1980s and 1990s (Moss 232).

According to Robb Walsh, more than 100 barbecue competitions were held in Texas alone in

1996 (Walsh 57), from cook-offs as small as 20 competing teams to competitions with over

100. After September 11th and the consequence that Americans wanted to “spend more

recreational time with family and friends” (Moss 232) and the new barbecue-euphoria, today

“you can find a cook-off in just about every corner of the country” (Mills 165) with dozens

happening simultaneously on every given weekend during the barbecue season which

basically runs from spring to fall. These competitions are often huge public events “often

55

accompanied by food for sale to the public, life music, and games and amusements” (Deutsch

139).

Eric Lolis Erie said that barbecue competitions today “draw competitors from as many

different places as there are attitudes toward the spirit of competition” (Elie Smokestack 122).

So who are these people and why do they take on the burden of driving hundreds of miles on

a regular basis, spending thousands of dollars of money and sacrificing their weekends and

their sleep? One good reason is of course the possibility to win thousands of dollars which are

awarded in prize money in different categories. Competitions are also especially interesting

for barbecue restaurateurs. Owners of barbecue restaurants with a celebrity-like status like

Mile Mills or Myron Mixon accumulated a high number of trophies at some of the most

prestigious competitions in the country, what probably is the best advertising a restaurant can

get. Most people, however, take part for recreational reasons because the odds placing high in

any category at a competition with for example over 450 attending teams from all over the

United States at the American Royal in Kansas City (Mills 165) are astronomical.

“This is my hobby number one. People say, “You must be crazy spending all that money on barbecue contests.”And I say, “What do you do for a hobby?” and they say, “I play golf every weekend.” “Well how

much money does a set of golf clubs cost?” “Anywhere from 180$ to 600$.” That’s what I’ve got invested in the equipment that I use to barbecue. “What’s it cost for a green fee?” “Thirty bucks.” It’ll cost me thirty dollars to come to a barbecue contest and I can bring my wife, my four kids, and we can spend thirty hours together. I say,

“Can you take four kids out on a golf course while you’re playing?” (Elie, Smokestack 126)

Mile Mills claims, that barbecue contests are open for everybody. He said, that “it

doesn’t matter much who you are, how much money you have, where you live, or what you

do for a living” (Mills 165). While this is a very democratic statement it does not change the

fact that competing requires substantial monetary resources unless you cook in a small event

in your vicinity or you are sponsored. Big companies like Federal Express often support teams

because they think it is good advertising (Elie Smokestack 126). Many ambitious teams today

use high-grade products in their competitions to maximize their chances to win. High-prized

wagyu-briskets which cost up to three times more than regular ones are today no great rarity

at competitions. Diana Fick who won the American Royal in Kansas City in 2004 said that

she handpicks her baby back ribs from “Premium Standard Farms” and buys her spices in a

specialty store (Raichlen Ribs 135). People who are not that ambitious still have to pay

entering fees for every category they want to compete in or have to consider gas-prices and

other expenses. While thousands of barbecue teams exist in the United States today, both

amateur and professional, cook-offs are divided by social and especially racial lines (Elie

Cornbread 49). The people competing are in a great extend white suburban middle and

upper-middle class “who are willing to do this as a hobby” (Elie Smokestack 128). At the

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Houston Rodeo Barbecue Cook-off in 2003, only two or three out of over 300 teams were

composed of African Americans (Elie Cornbread 48). Black teams have more difficulties to

find corporate sponsors, which are predominantly white, and their members to a great extend

earn less money than for example a typical white amateur team like “Swine By Design”

whose members are architects and attend cook-offs for fun and often do not come from a

typical traditional barbecue-background (Deutsch 148).

5.1 Major American Barbecue Associations

While this circuit obviously is dominated by white-Americans, the competing teams

still come from all over the United States, both from the traditional barbecue-regions and

party of the country where barbecue only recently was discovered as a recreational hobby.

With them competing directly at larger cook-offs in different states and cities, and the

sometimes hundreds of judges also not being entirely local, it raises the question what effect

this circumstances have on the way teams cook their barbecue. Whether they adapt their

barbecue to the way it is traditionally cooked at the location of the competition, they entirely

stay true to their own style or they all give in to tendencies of nationwide homogenization.

Taking a closer look at the sanctioning bodies of barbecue competitions, especially their sets

of rules, and selected notable cook-offs will give a further insight.

The Kansas City Barbecue Society today is the largest barbecue organization with

over 14000 members (KCBS.us). They also are the biggest sanctioning body of barbecue

contests all over the United States and supervise over 300 competitions annually (Fetcher and

Winter 208). All judges at KCBS competitions have to be certified and instructed by the

society. The four categories which count for the title of Grand Champion are brisket, ribs,

pork (butt, shoulder or picnic) and chicken (Davis, Kirk and Wells 8). The judges have to

evaluate each entry in terms of appearance, taste and tenderness on a score of 2 to 9. It is

blind-judging, which means that the judges do not know whose barbecue they are asserting

because they are contained to a single closed off spot and the food is being served in

Styrofoam container which may only be garnished with lettuce, parsley or cilantro (Mills

166).

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Figure 11: Typical American blind box containing chicken

Grand Champion is in the end the team which cumulated the most points in all four categories together.

The organizers of the Memphis in May competition, today one of the biggest

competitions with 2011 exceeding 250 teams, hundreds of thousands of attending visitors

(Mills 165) and 110,000$ in prize-money, started their own sanctioning body in the mid-80s

and created the Memphis Barbecue Network (Moss 232). The MBN is however significantly

smaller than the KCBS with only sanctioning 39 cook-offs in 2011. The biggest differences

between the two systems are the scoring, the judging-process and the meat-entries. Certified

MBN-judges score on a scale of 8 to 10, amongst other criterions also on tenderness, flavor

and appearance. However, judging at MBN-events is twofold (Mills 166). One group of

judges receives a blind box containing only meat and no garnish at all. Other judges visit the

teams on site and score them also in terms of cleanliness and presentation of their cooking-

area and personal appearance, verbal instruction of the team, grill and smoked food and a

subjective overall impression (Mills 166). The meat-entries are nothing but pork: shoulder,

ribs and whole hog.

Most competitions today use either one of these systems, while the major cook-offs

like the Annual Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational Barbecue or The American

Royal are aligned to the KCBS-system. Most other prominent Southern barbecue associations

like the Texas-based International Barbecue Cookers Association now are of little interest,

since most of them have set of rules similar to the KCBS. However some, yet minor

associations or non-affiliated competitions, did preserve their local character and sanction

events that represent the barbecue style of their respective states. Brady, Texas for example

host the annually World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook-Off (Jamison 155). The Carolina

Q Cup in Columbus South Carolina focuses on the local style of whole hog served with a

mustard-based sauce. Other barbecue associations today exist basically everywhere in the

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United States like the New England Barbecue Society, the Pacific Northwest BBQ

Association, the California BBQ Association or the Utah Barbecue Society and many more

(Staten Competition). These Associations might not be as big as the KCBS, but they still

avidly organize their own, local cook-offs in regions where this circuit did practically not

exist a few decades ago. Different ethnicities too separate themselves from the white-

dominated circuit, some because they feel to be overlooked or for religious reasons. The “100

Black Men of America” organization for example sponsors since 15 years an annual barbecue

competition in Valdosta Georgia. Two of the biggest orthodox Jewish congregations in the

nation, the Baron Hirsch and the Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth, are in Memphis, Tennessee

(Elie Cornbread 97). With the city being considered as a barbecue capital with a

predominance of pork, the Jews nevertheless did not want to be excluded from eating or

cooking barbecue. Because of the strict rules of Jewish Orthodoxy, they started the “World’s

Only Kosher Barbecue Contest” in 1988 (Elie Cornbread 97). The entries are brisket and beef

ribs, the teams are supervised by an orthodox Rabi and the food must at least partially cooked

by a Jew to be kosher.

With now being familiar with the major sanctioning bodies of competitive barbecue,

the question remains, what effect their rules have on regional barbecue traditions. As

mentioned, teams and judges alike come from different regional backgrounds and have

different perceptions what barbecue should taste and look like. Carolyn Wells from the KCBS

said that “everything in barbecue is controversial” (Moss 233) which in theory is true, but the

KCBS too, along with other associations, was responsible for standardizing every single

aspect of a barbecue competition. The four meats teams have to submit are always the same,

regardless if a KCBS-sanctioned event is held in Kansas City or in Alabama. The judges are

carefully instructed and certified to be impartial and objective, which means they have to

some extend set aside their personal tastes, and even have to swear an oath on it (Davis, Kirk

and Wells 18), and are told what “to look for in the meat and sauce” (Elie Cornbread 84).

Every team has the liberty to turn in any part of the chicken in KCBS-events or to use any

sauce they want. However, if a team has any ambitions to win a large cook-off, they have to

play by certain unwritten rules. Judges for example expect to find uniform looking chicken

thighs like in the picture above in their blind box, wings or even whole chicken would not

score as high. The same applies to the presentation of every other course. With the judges

coming from all over the United States, teams cannot apply less common sauces like South

Carolinian mustard sauce.

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“You have to have a sweet sauce and a vinegar sauce. Regardless of what a person does, when he sauces down some meat he’s gonna judge that meat about ninety percent on what that sauce is like. You just can’t help it. Of

you ain’t careful you’ll get into a sauce-judging contest instead of a meat-judging contest” (Elie Smokestack 131)

Germans and other Europeans often too are invited to compete at cook-offs like the Jack

Daniels World Invitational Barbecue Championship. They however do not even come close to

rank in the top since they are not as familiarized with the preferences of a typical judge, have

no experience in preparing blind boxes in a standard way and have to compete against some

of the best barbecue-teams in the United States.

To sum up, larger barbecue competitions intensify the trend that with competing side

by side with pitmasters from all over the country, people are left with less concern for their

own regional styles of barbecue (Moss 233), they “exacerbate the trend towards

homogenization” (Elie Smokestack 131) and the best way to win a competition is by copying

what everybody else seems to do. The fact, that highly successful competitors not

uncommonly open their own barbecue restaurants also is responsible for the influence

competitions have on the barbecue-mainstream since they naturally will serve their award-

winning dishes no matter where they locate their businesses.

These rules of course do not apply for smaller events with predominantly local teams

and judges. Ambitious competitors or the sanctioning bodies also probably should not be

condemned prematurely. They may have contributed to “blurring traditional regional

differences” (Moss 233). But they are both responsible for making barbecue more popular

across the nation and “creating a new generation of pitmasters dedicated to the practice of

slow-smoking meats” (Moss 234), what otherwise would possibly be endangered by the

advent of gas- and electric cookers which are generally not permitted at competitions. The

social aspect also should not be neglected. Most barbecue teams, as already mentioned, do not

just enter those tournaments to at all costs win thousands of dollars of prize money and

bragging rights, they first and foremost want to pursue their hobby and socialize with like-

minded people.

5.2 The German barbecue circuit

5.2.1 The German Barbecue Association

The American and German barbecue circuit could not be more different. While

barbecue competitions existed for decades in the United States, the first and back then only

German barbecue cook-off was organized in 1996. Hundreds of barbecue contests are held

each year in the United States, Germany only knows a small one-digit number today. This

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should however not come surprisingly given the fact that barbecue in Germany only recently

gained widespread popularity. The self-conception, the level of professionalism and the way

competitions are overall organized by the only sanctioning body in Germany, the German

Barbecue Association (GBA), however bears little resemblance to their American

counterparts.

The GBA was founded in 1996 by butchers, caterers and grill-manufacturers in

Hilden, Rhineland (GBA). They are part of the World Barbecue Association, which rather can

be considered to be entirely Eurocentric. They understand themselves to solely represent the

interests of millions of Germans interested in grilling and barbecue. However, only have only

over hundred members compared to the KCBS with over 14000 (Dörge Klein). Nevertheless,

while all over the country more and more local and regional stand-alone grill-contests are

being held, like the Bayrische Grillmeisterschaft or the Stuttgarter Stadtgrillmeisterschaft, the

GBA is the only sanctioning barbecue-centric body which a) organizes a nationwide contest,

the German Barbecue Championship and b) sanctions smaller and local contests. Sven Dörge,

a well-known barbecue caterer from Berlin, too organized a cook-off, the Berlin BBQ, but

discontinued the event in 2010 (Dörge Berlin). Since the German Barbecue Championship is

the only one of its kind today in Germany and certainly the largest, the further focus will lie

on this event.

5.2.2 The German Barbecue Championship

The first German Barbecue Championship was held in 1996, only recently after the

foundation of the GBA. Precise data concerning the average number of attending teams or

rules before the 2000s unfortunately is not available. The number of participating teams since

the 2000s shows by comparison slight fluctuations, the championship in Bad Lippspringe in

2003 attracted 28 teams, the cook-off in Hannoversch Münden in 2003 only 18 and this year’s

competition in Schwäbisch Hall has a starting field of 35 teams (GBA). This also shows us

that the German Barbecue Championship has no fixed venue, the GBA apparently tries to

introduce the novelty of barbecue cook-offs to different regions every year to attract as much

visitors as possible. The participants furthermore are subdivided by the status of being

amateur or professional teams which do not directly compete against each other. Amateurs are

only allowed to have one member with a gastronomical background, while professional teams

can be entirely comprised of caterers, chefs or butchers. An Amateur team which however

achieves to become grand amateur champion twice automatically moves on to the

professional starting field (Fetscher and Winter 2/2008 50). Amateur teams most of the times

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are hobbyist barbecuers comprised of family members, friends or neighbors or skilled and

ambitious people who met each other in internet message boards. The latter today is quite

common and proved to be a reliable recipe for success. While members of such teams often

live hundreds of kilometers apart and therefore have fewer opportunities to meet and practice,

they more than compensate for this by the high individual skill of each selected member.

Professional Teams in the majority of cases compete for commercial reasons as they mostly

are run by catering companies or retailers of barbecue grills and accessories.

The scoring- and judging-system was in some respects inspired by the KCBS- and the

MBN-rules. Each dish is evaluated with a score of one to ten based on appearance of the food,

flavor, consistency and the side dish. The judging process is similar to the MBN-system with

four judges receiving blind boxes and two judges evaluating the food and also the originality

of the decor6 on site. The GBA wants the judges to come from all walks of life, both

restaurateurs and expert-pitmasters and an equal number of laymen like students or

housewives. Since 2010 does the GBA increasingly demand from people who want to judge

to join the association and to attend an instructional course hosted by aligned catering

companies, with the KCBS as a role model which only admits certified judges. In reality do

they however accept everybody who shows interest in judging even without being member or

an instruction, since they are with 79 Euros quite expensive and the GBA each year has a

huge demand for judges, for example 130 in 2010 (Fetscher and Winter 2/2010 32 ). The team

with the most cumulated points in all categories becomes Grand Champion and is awarded

1000 Euro out of the pot of 3350 in 2012 (GBA rules), the team manager of the winning

professional team is granted the title of German King of Grilling. The winners of each

category receive prize-money and may call themselves German Barbecue Champion. This

practice of inflationary creating a number of German Champions is under a lot of criticism,

especially by Grand Champions who think that their overall effort is therefore diminished.

The main difference between The German Barbecue Championship and any

competition in the United States was until recently both the different courses the teams had to

cook and particularly the optical arrangement. Teams had to turn in five different categories,

mostly bratwurst, ribs, chicken, beef hip and dessert with as many side-dishes as they wanted

to use. Chicken and fish did often alternate from year to year. With no restrictions

whatsoever, the teams tried to outperform each other on any possible level like presentation,

exotic ingredients, etc.

6 Not relevant fort the overall rating.

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Figure 12: Seafood course made by the runner-up of the German Barbecue Championship in Gotha 210, TB&The BBQ-Scouts

Nevertheless, the contestants have to cater to the widest range of tastes as possible as the

judges in Germany too are no uniform group. One criteria American judges pay a lot of

attention to is the desired smoky flavor of meats, German judges however are generally not

used to it with the result that most teams are very restrictive in that regard. The GBA today

increasingly tries to gradually emulate the KCBS by both restricting the number of side-dishes

to one and the addition of categories like beef brisket. The dishes in Schwäbisch Hall in 2012

will be bratwurst, spareribs, fish, chicken, beef prime rib and a dessert (GBA). Teams may

submit all courses, but they have to select five what will count for the overall rating. The

World Barbecue Championship in Gronau in 2011 too saw an intensified effort of

Americanizing the event judging from the blind boxes which were decorated with lettuce and

parsley. The final goal of the GBA and the mother-organization WBQA is, by implementing

these kinds of new rules, to attract new associated members and teams from all over the world

to lose their Eurocentric status (Dörge Präsident). Americans however never attended either a

German Barbecue Championship, which is open for all nationalities, or a World

Championship in Europe.

Sven Dörge calls the German Barbecue Association a “small but loud” promoter of

barbecue in Germany (Klein). With the German Barbecue Championship attracting thousands

of visitors in every hosting city and dozens of teams from all over Germany, they certainly

played a pivotal role in spreading barbecue throughout Germany. A clear-cut course how they

see the future of German barbecue is however not identifiable. German grilling-traditions are

for example honored by the inclusion of the bratwurst-category while on the other hand they

now want to attract Americans by including categories like brisket. Ambitious American

teams however have no reason to travel thousands of miles over the Atlantic and therefore

spend a substantial amount of money to participate in a competition they are not familiar with

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while they are able to win significantly more prize-money at any of the larger cook-offs in the

United States. German teams today often demand that the German Barbecue Championship

should either entirely lean towards American standards or go back to the old system where

they had more creative liberties.

6. Conclusion

Elies’ argument of barbecue being a true representative of the nation’s various facets,

can today neither be entirely undermined nor approved. Elie also said, that “Americans never

have been known for their sense of history” (Elie Smokestack 45). America has a dynamic

tradition to constantly reinvent itself. External factors like new waves of immigrants or

globalization and internal struggles about the coexistence of ethnicities or technical

innovations and economic pressure made the United States a country of people who easily

discard old mindsets and traditions. The same applies to American barbecue, which always

has been in a transgression phase. The distinction between the styles of barbecue as discussed

above has only emerged around the turn of the 20th century and represents only one of many

phases of American barbecue history. In colonial times it was largely out of necessity cooked

by slaves. Their status changed and so did barbecue. Barbecue was introduced to new regions

with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and adapted. The renaissance at the end of the

20th century and its subsequent 21st century incarnation as it spread to every corner of the USA

changed barbecue likewise sustainably.

As some Southern traditions today gradually may die out or are blurred, some people

are reminiscing about good old times. They are entitled to complain about the fact that

cooking barbecue often has become more convenient due to the introduction of new

technologies. That traditional, not mainstream, dished like barbecued mutton gradually

disappear, restrictive fire-codes and health-issues make cooking barbecue a more expensive

and complicated venture, that restaurants yield to customer’s demands of a larger range of

menu items and that competitions destroy any sense of regional barbecue identity. They

however forget about the resilience of barbecue. Barbecue may have lost its mythological

character of being a frontier food, but it today is popular and alive as it has never been before.

It has grown with American society and is cooked from Texas to New England. Cooking

barbecue still requires a substantial amount of time and craftsmanship and could have easily

disappeared because of the fierce competition of fast food chains. The main four barbecue

styles are still far from being dead. Barbecue aficionados today take great expenses to travel

to the authentic places where old-fashioned barbecue still is cooked, which also is a notable

64

economic factor for places like Lockhart or Lexington. With non-Southerners today cooking

barbecue, adding ingredients that were once exotic and now are common and openly

combining different styles, time will tell how barbecue will evolve.

Barbecue is the embodiment of American food in the eyes of the Germans. With the

ongoing affinity of anything American, the Germans try to make barbecue their own. They

developed a remarkable infrastructure of anything barbecue-related. Yet, owed to the fact that

barbecue was introduced rather late to Germany we are too in a transition period. Especially

the GBA does not know in what direction they want to go. To help to develop a unique

German approach to barbecue or to simply copy anything the Americans do? In the long run

they have to make up their mind about that question. German hobbyist pitmaster however do

not share that burden, they have the advantage to be able to cook whatever they desire. The

question however is if they in the future develop similar regional styles like the Americans

did.

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67

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70

List of Figures

Figure 1

Irawan, Budi. “ 22.5-Inch One-Touch Gold Kettle Grill.” 24 Sep. 2011. www.bestcharcoalgrillsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/weber-one-touch-gold-22.5-inch.jpg

Figure 2

Grillsportverein BBQ & Grillshop. “Joe’s BBQ-Smoker 16 Zoll Longhorn”. 15 Feb. 2012. <grillsportverein.de/grill-shop/popup_image.php?plD=36&imgID=0&XTCsid=kbt44kbr2prl8mhhjm34bks3q2>

Figure 3

Bauwagen 95. „Ugly Drum Smoker“. 15 Feb. 2012. www.bauwagen95.de/images(uds/ugly_dum_smoker.jpg

Figure 4

Zagers Pool & Spa. “Big Green Egg Ceramic Cooker”. 15 Feb. 2012. <assets1.mytrainsite.com/501228/bge_lg9883---edited.gif>

Figure 5

Hör, Elmar. “Distribution of members of the internet-based German Grillsportverein.” Message to the Author. 16 Feb. 2012. Email

Figures 6 and 7

Hör, Elmar. “Monthly increase of newly registered members of the Grillsportverein.” Message to the Author. 16 Feb. 2012. Email

Figure 8

Ford, Gary D. “Map of the core regions of traditional American barbecue. Modified to omit Florida.” 16 Feb. 2012. <myokeexilelit.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/barbecue-map3.jpg>

Figure 9

Krause, Mariella. “Sign in Kreuz Market barbecue restaurant in Lockhart, Texas.” 24 Jun. 2011. <www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-blog/tip-article/wordpress_uploads/2011/01/kreuz_market.jpg>

Figure 10

Staten, Vince. “Rib-tips, St Louis-style ribs and skirt” 16 Feb. 2012. <amazingribs,com/images/pix/sic_ribsd.jpg>

71

Figure 11

NorthwestBBQ. “Typical American blind box containing chicken.” 6 Jan. 2012. <farm8.staticflickr.com/7168/6649819635_55ce714b20_b.jpg>

Figure 12

Merschl. “Figure 12: Seafood course made by the runner-up of the German Barbecue Championship in Gotha 210, TB&The BBQ-Scouts.” 17 May. 2010. <mybbq.net/forumneu/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=23013>

Appendix

Meat charts and German description in appendix are from the German and English

Wikipedia articles beef/Rindfleisch and pork/Schweinefleisch.

72

Appendix

German Meat Charts

1. Rinderhals 8. Knochendünnung2. Querrippe 9. Bauchlappen3. Rinderbrust 10. Bug4. Fehlrippe 11. Oberschale5. Hochrippe 12. Schliem 6. Roastbeef 13. Hüfte7. Filet 14. Hesse

1. Schweinskopf 8. Filet2. Schweinsbacke 9. Schweinebauch3. Rückenspeck 10. Bauchlappen4. Schweinenacken 11. Schweineschulter 5. Brust 12. Schinken6. Stielkotelett 13. Eisbein7. Lendenkotelett 14. Schweinsfuß

15. Schweineschwanz

73

United States Meat Charts

Plagiatserklärung

74

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