Keepers of the flame: in defence of real barbecue

By Arthur House

Men drink beers on the patio, one eye on the ball game. They delve into mega-packs of processed meat, chucking burgers and sausages on a gas-powered grill. Wives prepare salads, kids run around. It starts to rain. This is what most of us picture when we think of a barbecue: a polite suburban event with defined gender roles.

It would be easy to forget that real barbecue is one of the world’s greatest cuisines, as well as its oldest. Early man discovered that meat, when cooked near a smoking fire rather than directly over it, would undergo a miraculous alchemy. Everyone, everywhere, has barbecued, whether with pits, spits or racks. The Arab Bedouin use sand ovens; the Japanese, porcelain containers. But nowhere does the barbecue flame burn brighter than in the southern states of America.