BBQ

Sorry it’s been so long between posts. I had a lovely weekend at John McCain’s cook-out. By the way, it was not a barbecue! Sticking a piece of meat over an open flame is just grilling. Nothing wrong with that, but BBQ is something completely different.

Looking for support, I found at article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24506502/ “The great barbecue debate: It’s all about the sauce
Squabble over what makes the best grilling marinade spans time and place”

Here’s what my anonymous expert from the AP (yes, I have no idea who the writer is, but since he or she agrees with me, the writer is obviously and expert) has to say:

“tossing a couple T-bones on your rinky-dink hibachi with the wobbly legs and charcoal brickets isn’t barbecue.
The manufacturer may call it a BBQ. Your recipe may even call it that. But that’s really grilling. And to suggest otherwise might get you a skewer in the eye from true barbecue aficionados.
Unlike the torch-and-flip of grilling, barbecue is a more laborious process: cooking at low temperatures for hours, turning the meat into a succulent, fall-off-the-bone mouthful of tastiness.”

The article also discusses the sauces which predominate in different geographic regions. I was interested to learn that sauces generally get sweeter the further west you go.

Oh, and one more interesting tidbit. “ Homer — the poet, not the cartoon character — refers to a form of barbecue in his epic works, and the term generally is believed to be a derivative of “barbacoa,” a West Indian word used to describe slow-cooking meat over hot coals.”