[RegulatorCountry]

Pit cooked barbecue in every variety and in all its glory is utterly American, with the earliest renditions from the Virginia and Carolina colonies being introduced to the English by natives. The early sauce, which has morphed considerably region by region due to availability of ingredients and the suitability of differing lovestock, began as the Elizabethan “catsup,” which was herbs and spices occasionally with mushrooms in vinegar. Only eastern NC style remains anywhere near this early origin, with pork because pigs were well suited to forage in a forest seemingly without end. Other foods with a similar provenance would be cornbread and grits.

I’ve said before that Thanksgiving Dinner should authentically be barbecue, it’s as American as you get, with just stray touches of Europe here and there, that have been so thoroughly fused and modified that they’ve become unique to place as well.

[JRandomFreeper]

Pit cooked barbecue is as old as cavemen. Abos in Australia do it. Eskimos do it. Everbody in the world does it. My daughter's Cambodian father-in-law did a traditional in-ground pit pig BBQ for the birth of our first grandson on that side of the family.

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

Hell, even the name BBQ is based on the word barbacoa which is the Spanish bastardization of the original Caribbean word.

Besides breads and sauces, I focused on food history in culinary school.

/johnny

[muawiyah]

The Indians around the MidAtlantic were big on smoked meat. When the English came the Indians were already well equipped to do any meat you wanted, plus EUROPEAN PORK.

The Spanish had been in the habit of turning breeding pairs of pigs loose all up and down the coast and the consequence of that was that by the time they got around to doing something they already had cured hams ready and waiting.

Between 1598 and 1604 most of the Spanish settlers/explorers/miners moved out of this region to better pickings elsewhere. But the Indians kept on making Virginia ham for the newer settlers to come.