Cooking with your chiminea or firebowl
The fascinating history of barbecues
Apr
Are you ready for the amazing history of barbecues?
We’re nothing without fire. Humanity would have starved, frozen and been eaten long before we became what we are now if it wasn’t for fire. We harnessed fire to make protein easier to digest than uncooked meats, giving us more energy to fuel our big brains and come up with creative solutions for survival. We gathered around fires to tells stories, socialise, fall in love, exchange goods and share information. We carried fire with us out of Africa and across the globe. And we’ve never lost the habit. The barbecue story rumbles on… and on.
Discover the remarkable history of barbecues
We know from the sheer number of chimeneas, fire pits, fire bowls and barbecues we sell that people are still hooked on real flames, even though humans have found alternative ways to keep warm and cook food. So lets reel time back into the distant past and see what’s what. Check this out, and admire the BBQ models we’ve peppered throughout this post!
The history of barbecues
Barbecues have been around for literally thousands of years, everything from super-simple cooking over an open fire to sophisticated machines that skilled chefs swear by for their sheer versatility. Their most ancient origins are in cooking over an open fire, something we’ve been doing since pre-history.
We first mastered fire around a million years ago, sparking the great human success story. Archaeologists reckon we used to roast meat on sticks or laid meat over hot coals to both preserve it and give it more flavour. That’s probably why our mouths still water automatically at the prospect of of meats sizzling away over the flames. Apparently there are clear signs of large-scale pit roasting on ancient Paleolithic and Neolithic sites, revealing how barbecuing goes DNA-deep.
Traces of indigenous smoking and pit cooking are found across the Americas, the Caribbean and into Polynesia. In fact the Caribbean Taino People are the ones who originated the word ‘barbecue’, westernised from their word ‘barbacoa’, which describes their way of slow-cooking meat over wooden frames. Native American tribes like the Arawak and Timucua used smoke and indirect heat to preserve meat to take them through the winters and hard times. And the ancient Polynesian Imu people used clever earth ovens, a lot like Hawaiian kālua, to bake meats wrapped in leaves using hot stones.
In the 1500s Spanish invaders adopted the barbacoa tradition of slow-roasting meat in Mexico, the home of the chiminea, an outdoor heater and cooker design that goes back at least 400 years. They apparently loved tender lamb wrapped in fragrant maguey leaves. In the Caribbean they developed a taste for hot spicy food, making super-hot jerk seasoning marinated with Scotch Bonnet peppers and all-spice. If you’ve ever tasted one of those peppers, some of the hottest on earth, you won’t forget the dramatic pleasure-pain of the burn in a hurry!
The USA’s infamous Southern BBQ came about when enslaved Africans and other indigenous people brought their influence to the white invaders’ cuisine, refining the pit-smoking techniques used through the 1700s and 1800s by settlers. In Texas settlers from Germany and Eastern Europe turned beef brisket and sausages into big BBQ favourites. In North and South Carolina whole hogs served with piquant vinegary sauces were the name of the game. In Kansas they majored more on tomatoey sauces to go with a wide variety of meats. And after the US’s civil war BBQ pits were sociable places, especially popular with African Americans.
In Brazil we have Churrasco, skewered meats made popular by Portuguese settlers and Gaúcho cowboys from the 1500s onwards. In Argentina and Uruguay there’s a practice called Asado involving grilling an entire animal, something blending Spanish invader and indigenous BBQ methods. And in Asia barbecuing took off in a completely different direction. In Japan Yakitori and Robatayaki led the way. Yakitori is a tasty type of skewered chicken dating back to the 1600s, the Edo Period, and Robatayaki – also called hearth cooking – goes back even further into the dim and distant past.
Korea’s Gogigui and Bulgogi have very different origins. The marinated beef BBQ dish called Bulgogi goes way, way back to the Goguryeo era, between 37 BCE and 668 CE, but korea’s signature Gogigui recipe took over as the most popular after 1945, cooked on board a tabletop grill. In China they’ve been loving Peking Duck since the Ming Dynasty in the 1300s. Mongolian Khorkhog is cooked on searingly hot stones inside a sealed container. Every culture had their own way of BBQing food to perfection.
You’ll probably recognise the classic Indian Tandoor and Seekh Kebab BBQ dishes, cooking in clay ovens called tandoori since the Mughals ruled in the 1500s. But you probably won’t know this: kebabs hail from Persia, spread across the globe via ancient trade routes like the Silk Road.
Then there’s Africa. In North Africa we have Mechoui and Tagine cuisine, Mechoui being a whole lamb roasted in a pit, a tradition that started with the Berber people. You’ll also find tasty grilled meats called Brochettes, grilled the familiar way over charcoal. Moving down the continent to South Africa we have the Braii culture, brought in by Dutch settlers in the 1600s and enhanced by the indigenous Khoisan influence focusing on cooking over an open fire. These days the Braii is a strong national tradition.
And so to Europe where, in the Med, Souvlaki and Espetada remain hot favourites. Rolling back time, the Ancient Greeks made Obeliskoi, basically meats grilled on skewers. Portuguese Espetada, AKA meat cooked with bay leaves on skewers, dates back to the 1400s, and in Germany and Austria there’s still a focus on sausages like Schwenker and Würstel. Schwenker is a marinated pork neck steak from the Saarland region and Würstel is special type of Vienna sausage. Oh, and let’s not forget grilled Bratwurst sausages, a big hit eaten with enormous steins of cold lager, a dish originating in Medieval times.
From the 20th century to today, the modern BBQ trend quickly took hold. Globalisation helped spread the word, as did radio, TV and the movies. American-style BBQing is the most popular style these days, along with the ‘barbies’ beloved by our friends Down Under and treats like Korean fusion BBQ food. Weirdly, in the USA, they even hold BBQ competitions. The Kansas City BBQ Society, for example, has more or less turned cooking over fire into a sport.
Technology like gas-fired and electric grills hit the BBQ world during the 1950s, followed by pellet smokers. These days, as you can see from our enormous collection of BBQ models, there’s a huge choice of styles and sizes, from permanent masonry barbecues like this monster, to powerful portable BBQs for camping and outdoor adventures away from home.
So… that was our potted history of barbecues. If you like the look of the models we sell, fill your boots for a tasty summer of foodie fun. You can reply on the performance and quality of our carefully-chosen barbies.
