Is it anything that gets cooked over a grill?
Does it have to be “slow cooked”?
Is it anything with “barbecue sauce” on it?
Just where do you draw the line on what “real barbecue” is?
Wood, charcoal, or gas?
Hickory or mesquite?
Beef or pork?
Ribs or brisket?
The Church of Barbecue has many schisms. Before taking communion, you need to find out what denomination your guests belong to.
Personally, I am quite ecumenical. As long as someone else is doing the cooking, I will take their word for it.
I’ll agree with people who call something barbecue if it’s cooked outside but not over a campfire. Beyond that I don’t care at all. I save my energy for frappe vs milkshake arguing instead.
I’m not picky, but we just don’t call anything but pulled pork “barbecue”.
Smoked ribs = “Ribs”
Smoked brisket = “Brisket”
If we smoke chicken, we’d either call it that or “barbecue chicken”.
Anything on the grill is refered to as grilled. If someone from up North calls that barbecue, it can create a bit of confusion. We don’t get upset about it though.
I’m not that picky. I do know what proper barbecue is, but it’s not worth the effort to make the distinction.
Anything cooked on the charcoal grill is ‘grilled’ or ‘charcoal grilled’. But if there is BBQ sauce involved, then it is ‘barbecued’. Yes, it’s just grilled and happens to have BBQ sauce; but I use the shorthand anyway.
It’s all good. As long as there are enough napkins around.
I’m picky about what I call barbecue, and what barbecuing is. But I understand the concept that anything cooked on a grill, or ruined by cooking it with barbecue sauce is called barbecue. In the end, how it tastes is what matters, not how you cook it. But in a discussion of cooking among cooks, I tend to become a fundamentalist on some subjects like barbecue. There are plenty of other terms that can be more accurate as mentioned above. I tend to talk about ‘smoking’ and ‘grilling’ as opposed to saying ‘barbecuing’. And it’s a given that I’m talking about wood or charcoal, not gas.
As long as it’s not being applied to something boiled (say), it’s fine by me.
I’m with mbh, if the chef calls it barbecue, it’s barbecue. It may not be good barbecue, mind you.
I see no point, however, in declaring that this meat is barbecue or that sauce is barbecue or that length of cooking is barbecue, as it’s quite clear that regardless of my feelings on the matter, they’re all going to keep calling it barbecue. So I consider barbecue to be an umbrella term that encompasses several varieties and styles of meats and cooking techniques. If I need to get more specific in discussions, I will.
I don’t care what’s called what to be honest. You can have what might more honestly be called smoked, or a rub, or you can have boiled and basted, you can have basted and partially carbonized, you can have vinegar or mustard or tomato based sauces and so on and so on. On charcoal, on propane, on your hippy solar cooker…
And it can be pork, or beef, or chicken or whatever protein you like.
To me the big distinction is whether that particular style/method is EXCUTED well. If a bunch of mustard based fans think your mustard based execution is good FOR THAT STYLE then its good and if you wanna call it BBQ, have at it IMO. If not, well then its just not good and don’t call it anything other than yuk.
I like em all. What should be called what is just something to hopefully just have fun argueing about when you have nothing better to do.
I’m enjoying the variety of replies and the leniency some are showing to other people’s versions of the term(s).
To go at the issue slightly differently, when you see a sign at some joint advertising “barbecue” (in any of its spellings) just what are you expecting to be offered if you go inside?
If a new acquaintance invites you over to “have a barbecue” what do you anticipate will be the fare?
I’m picky about it but it’s certainly not something I’m going to argue with someone about. I can grill burgers on the same cooking device I barbecue my rips. Grilling is done with a higher more direct heat and barbecue is done with a lower indirect heat and hopefully some smoke.
It depends on where I am. I would expect a bbq joint in North Carolina to adhere to different standards than one in Georgia or one in the midwest.
Same as above. It would depend on where I am and where they’re from. If they’re originally from Louisiana and they moved here to Minnesota, I would expect a different style than if they had been born and raised here all their life.
No, although I will allow it in context. When somebody says “I’m going to have a barbecue” around here, I generally take it to mean in the general sense of a cookout. When I say it, it’s more specific.
Generally, yes. But see above
Absolutely not. Barbecue doesn’t even have to have barbecue sauce on it.
For me, there needs to be wood in the process, and the cooking technique should be slow (as in taking at least an hour, more like three to six for ribs, and six to whatever for primal cuts, usually at a temperature range from 200 to about 300 at the high end, 225 being a sort-of agreed-upon standard.) That’s pretty much the defining characteristics for me. Food in a slow cooker slopped with barbecue sauce is not “barbecue.” It’s meat with barbecue sauce.
A minor distinction for me. If its just cooked on the grill, its grilling. Now you can sprinkle some spices on it or perhaps its marinaded in salad dressing or soy sauce or teriaki sauce or some other kind of sauce and to me it is still grilling. Now, once something like BBQ sauce shows up or a proper slow smoked rub or stuff like that then to me if falls under the wide umbrella of what can roughly be called BBQ even though the purists have more strict definitions.
A hamburge patty grilled is a grilled hamburger patty. A grilled hamburger patty with ketchup slathered on it while its cooking is still grilled (and nasty). A hamburger patty grilled with something resembling a BBQ sauce on it while grilling (or afterwards if you wanna push it) is IMO technically a BBQed hamburger patty.
Not all BBQ has a BBQ sauce floating around somewhere. But, IMO if there IS a BBQ sauce of some sort being used it is a form of BBQ.
Not noticeably picky about the heat source. Wood, charcoal, propane or electric with those little flavor pucks - it all produces tasty meals when the cook knows what needs to be done. Anything cooked over high direct heat is grilling and not BBQ.
For me “BBQ” means rubbed and slow smoked beef brisket. BBQ without a spice rub is smoked brisket. Slow smoked pork shoulder, with or without a spice rub, is simply “pulled pork”. Ribs of all kinds are simply “ribs”. Chicken is always grilled. The thought of slow smoked chicken just seems wrong.
Sauce is trickier for me. Don’t get me wrong, I like sauce and I use it often. Honey sweet or mouth puckering vinegary all have their place. BUT - the following is an absolute.
GOOD SAUCE DOES NOT MAKE GOOD BBQ
If your BBQ is not right before it gets sauced then it’ll never be right after.
Low and slow. Period. End of sentence.
Grilling isn’t even close, and BBQ is not a noun. Other than that, I’m somewhat ecumenical. Somewhat. Arkansas and South Carolina practice heresy and if there was a God, I’m sure she would support another crusade. Ironically (for me at least) the best BBQ’d meats are often sold at places with massive amounts of religious paraphenalia on the walls - calendars, icons, freznel Jesi, etc.
The meat doesn’t matter. Pork, beef, chicken (tricky), emu, T. Rex…as long at it is cooked low and slow, preferably but not exclusively over wood, I’m there with my napkin tucked in and my mouth watering.
As for sauce…part of me loves the pulled pork slathered with North Carolina style sauce. The other part of me thinks people who put sauce on their meat are trying to hide something.
You’re going to have to elucidate here. Wood has to, IMHO, somehow be part of the process. I’ll even allow straight charcoal and gas-barbecue cookers that use wood pellets for the smoke flavor, but that wood flavor is part of barbecue. Otherwise, you just have slow-cooked meat.
It’s not barbecued by any reasonable definition of the word. Maybe you could call it a “BBQ” patty with some wiggle room about it being “BBQ” and not “barbecue,” but it’s certainly not “barbecued” as an adjective form of the verb “to barbecue.” That’s like saying putting steak sauce on a hamburger makes it steak.
I’m curious about this, and I know it’s a thread asking for opinions, but is salt & pepper enough of a spice rub? Because that’s all some of the most famous Texas brisket barbecues use.
For me, barbecue is a type of smoking. Cold smoking is 100F and below. Hot smoking goes up to around 175 or so. Anything beyond that (and below around 300F) is barbecuing. You can just think of barbecuing as a type of hot smoking method, if you want.