December 2, 2019 • 47 mins
In November, we toured Texas! So we selected the very apt topic of barbecue. Barbecue is deeply tied to language and history and culture, especially in the South – so this episode is about a lot more than meat.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello. Everyone. Back
in November, we went on tour with three stocks in Texas,
and we had an episode that covered a brief history
of barbecue for that tour. So the version of that
(00:23):
that we're sharing with you today was recorded in the
first stop on the tour, which was Austin. That was
just the one that had the cleanest audio quality after
we had listened to it, So enjoy, Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Ve, You Wilson, and I'm
Holly Fry. Usually when we're on tour, we are going
(00:46):
to several different cities in different states and normally distinctly
different parts of the country, like they might be all
on the same coast. But you know, Massachusetts is not
the same as Georgia for examt ample. Yeah, it's weird.
I mean, I've lived in both of those places, so
I feel like I can vouch um. So there's not
(01:07):
often a topic that seems like it could unite all
the places that we're going on a tour, but this
tour is three different cities in Texas, so we thought
maybe we would try to find something a little more texasy.
After some discussion, we landed on the possibly life threatening
decision of barbecue. I may have told my lift driver
(01:31):
that's what we were talking about. He was like, as like, Ken,
if I need you, if I can I get your
numbers so you can call me for a quick getaway
of stuff goes south. Yeah. So normally we just picked
something that sounds like it's going to be fun, and
then sometimes in the process we realize it's kind of complicated.
And also with barbecue, fund maybe also kind of complicated. Uh.
(01:52):
We totally recognize that there are people who don't like
barbecue or don't eat meat at all, and there are
plenty of like atical and uh, environmental reasons to reduce
the amount of meat that we we understand all of this. Um,
but the story of barbecue is really intimately tied to
language and history and culture, especially in the South, especially
(02:15):
in Texas, maybe extra especially in Austin. I think the
first thing that my lift driver said to me when
I got in the car was eat some barbecue while
you're here. Um. Obviously, there are all kinds of barbecue
styles found all over the world, but the focus and
what we're talking about today is really on the United States,
(02:35):
specifically the lower forty eight. So even without getting into
things like Korean bulgogai or Brazilian shiasco or South African bray,
talking about barbecue is like walking into a linguistic and
pedantic mind field. Um. And that is not as some
people might think, just because there are people who were
(02:56):
just gonna as politely as possibly called ignorant jerk faces
um that like to claim that everyone else is ruining
the language with their non understanding of what true barbecue is. Uh.
You know, you all have your steaks in the ground,
it's for sure for sure. Um. Here is a quick
list of some of the things that people argue about
(03:16):
when it comes to the word barbecue. Um. Whether it's
a noun or a verb. Whether it means a style
of cooking or a food that has been cooked using
that style, whether barbecue and grill or synonyms. Whether it
involves cooking yeah, a c We're gonna get there, um,
(03:39):
Whether it involves cooking over direct or indirect heat. What
kind of fuel is used for the flame and if
that fuel is would what kind of wood? Also the
ingredients and what's in the sauce and whether the word
barbecue has a C or a Q in it. We
could go on, there's so much space for pedantry. But really,
(04:01):
the word barbecue has been both a noun and a
verb for almost four hundred years uh, and it's had
multiple definitions going all the way back to its first
use in the English language. And some of those definitions
really don't actually have much to do with food or
cooking at all. Yes, So, the most widely accepted explanation
for where the word barbecue comes from is that it
(04:23):
started with the Spanish word barbecoa, which today English speakers
might more associate with kind of a slow cooked, spicy,
shredded meat. In this case, though, we're talking about a
term that Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo di uh Ivadez said
that he learned from the indigenous Chino people of the Caribbean.
He traveled back and forth between Spain and the America's
(04:44):
a bunch of times in the sixteenth century. He wrote
books on multiple subjects, including Spain's colonial conquest, and in
his fifteen twenty six General and Natural History of the Indies,
he used this word barbacoa to describe a raised frame
of sticks used to store grain. Uh. He was the
(05:05):
first person to use this term in writing. It's not
quite his mouth watering is the way we think of
it today. Soon other Spanish writers were using this same
word to describe similar things that they saw in other
parts of the America's Here's an example from an account
of Hernando de Soto's expeditions, which was written in fifteen
forty and describing what is now southwestern Georgia. Quote, maize
(05:29):
is kept in a barbacoa, which is a house with
wooden sides, like a room, raised aloft on four posts,
and has a floor of cane. So explain that at
the food truck. Eventually, this word did make its way
into English and early chroniclers, and both English and Spanish
and other languages as well all used barbacoa for other
(05:51):
reasons besides just storing grain, including sitting on it and
sleeping on it. And yeah, that last one is actually
what the word barbecue meant in its first written use
in English. In his nine seven Voyage around the World,
the English pirate and explorer William damp Here wrote, quote
the twelfth, in the morning, we crossed a deep river,
(06:14):
passing over it on a tree and marched seven mile
in a low, swampy ground, and came upon the side
of a great deep river, but could not get over.
We built huts upon its banks and lay there all
night upon our barbecues or frames of sticks raised about
three foot from the ground. I have to say, as
(06:36):
somebody who might be like, I'm guessing nine percent reptile DNA,
this doesn't sound bad to me. Um, I would probably
sleep on a barbecue, because I'm cold blooded. Other writers
in the sixteenth century also described people in the Caribbean
and southern North America using the same or similar barbecua
frames to cook food, typically fish or some kind of
(06:58):
what is apparently my people lizards um like iguanas or crocodile,
And eventually that sense of use carried over into the
English word barbecue as well, both as a noun to
describe the frame itself and as a verb to describe
cooking on that frame. But the first written word barbecue
as a verb in English still isn't exactly about food.
(07:21):
It's from a play by past podcast subject Afra Ben,
and that play is called The Widow Ranter or The
History of Bacon in Virginia. Not that kind of Bacon.
It's not that kind of Bacon. The play is about
a different previous podcast subject, which was Bacon's rebellion, so
we have like multiple previous podcast in that one sentence,
(07:44):
all roads lead to barbecue apparently. Um. In Act two,
seen four of that play, Colonel Wellman, deputy governor, is
trying to take Nathaniel Bacon into custody as a rebel,
but Bacon is defended by a rabble, which beats back
Wellman's guards before Bacon steals one of the rebbels swords
and turns them back. The rabble does not give up
(08:05):
and shouts, let's barbecue this fat rogue, uh, meaning the
deputy governor, and Bacon tells them to be gone, but
Wellman says, quote, I'd rather perish by my meanest hand
than oh, my safety poorly to this Bacon. Uh. That
should be this to Bacon. But it's funnier the way
I said it accidentally. Uh. And Bacon is like aces
(08:26):
and he rolls out with the rabble. I like how
the idea of being saved by Nathaniel Bacon is so
objectionable to Wellman that he's just like, just let me die. Though. Yeah,
it's okay, just kill me. So this play was written
in six nine. That means by that point the word
barbecue was commonly known enough in England to show up
in a play and have the audience know what they
(08:47):
were talking about. But at the same time, this still
is not really about food. It's more like they're calling
for a wellman to be tarred and feathered. And also
for anybody who is hung up on whether it is
fell barbecue with a sea or a key afra ben
in that instance spelled it with a sea, and other
spellings in its earliest English uses include barbecue that's with
(09:08):
an o or barbecue with no e. So see you
and that's it. So you will find this evolution from
barbecoa meaning a frame to sleep on or store things
on or cook food on, to barbecue meaning that thing
I just said, or cooking the food on the frame
or eventually the food itself. You find that progression all
(09:30):
over the place. That's pretty much how it's described most
of the time, but there are some naysayers about whether
that's correct, and some of them are more logical than others.
In eighteen twenty nine, the National Intelligencer printed an article
that called Andrew Jackson's supporters of barbecues because they were
quote going the whole hog from the beard barbed to
(09:51):
the q tail. Uh. Some people got kind of glammed
onto that as meaning that there was a French origin
for the word barbecue. And you'll still see that in
some places most of the time. When you do see it,
there's also a note that that's probably not correct. The
Oxford English Dictionary calls it an absurd conjecture. The French
(10:14):
would never put meat on a spit, for one thing. Um.
Culinary historian Michael Twitty has also noted that in the
house a language which is spoken in northern Nigeria, Babaka
which is spelled b a b b a k e,
is used to describe a number of things having to
do with grilling or toasting or cooking over a fire.
(10:34):
And then there's Professor Andrew Warrants of the University of Leeds,
and he wrote a book called Savage Barbecue, Race, Culture,
and the Invention of America's First Food, and he takes uh,
he traces that connotation from barbecoa to barbecue like other
people a lot of other people have done, but he
makes a slightly different argument and it's a little more
involved than we can get into you tonight, because he
(10:55):
wrote an entire book chapter on this argument. But basically
he points out that we shouldn't just discount the idea
that the word barbecue also has some connection to the
word barbaric, because that kind of reflects back to how
the European colonists were viewing the people of the Caribbean
and North America who had been cooking over the fire
when they first got there. So, regardless of the exact etymology,
(11:18):
English people on both sides of the Atlantic definitely described
barbecuing as an indigenous method of food preparation well into
the eighteenth century. For example, on August eighteenth of seventeen
fifty eight, during the French and Indian War, George Washington
wrote a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet in which he
talked about the provisioning of his troops and he said, quote,
(11:39):
we have not an ounce assault provision of any kind here,
and it is impossible to preserve the fresh especially as
we have no salt by any other means than barbecuing
it in the Indian manner. In doing this, nearly half
is lost, so that a party receiving ten days provisions,
will be obliged to live upon little better than five
days allowance of meat a thing impracticable. I have some
(12:02):
questions about this. Losing that much of the meat makes
it sound like either whoever was doing Washington's barbecuing was
really bad at it, or maybe he was describing something
that was more like drying the meat into a jerky
than like barbecuing it. I like how it doesn't occur
to you that someone like me is working the grill
(12:24):
and eating as they go, you're doing a one for
me would just be like, yeah, one for them and
one for me. Detail Yeah, that would be like my
cut for doing the work. Is this not how you guys? Barbecue?
Barbecue is also in Samuel Johnson's seventeen fifty five Dictionary
of the English Language, with two barbecue as a verb
(12:47):
meaning a term used in the West Indies for dressing
a hog hole which, being split to the backbone, is
laid flat upon a large gridiron raised about two foot
upon a charcoal fire with which it is surrounded it
And then Johnson lists barbecue as a noun with a
definition of quote a hog dressed hole in the West
Indian manner. So after all this, Uh, this might be
(13:09):
an unpopular opinion, but I think folks can just relax
about what barbecue means and whether other people are using
it wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary list five different definitions
for the noun and two for the verb. Miriam Webster
lists three different meanings for each and one of those
Oxford English Dictionary definitions is about drying coffee beans, which
(13:34):
we haven't talked about at all. So, uh, we're going
to get to even the much decried use of the
word barbecue as a synonym for grilling. Like we're gonna
get to that part that's been around and somebody's hissock,
I'm just gonna pretend we sold a lot of tickets
to snakes. Uh excited. Uh, it's an audience of slytherin. Um. Anyway,
(14:04):
we're gonna get to how barbecue has been a synonym
for grilling for almost a hundred years. But before we
do that, we're going to talk about another definition that
we haven't even gotten into here and might cause more
snake activity, barbecue as a social event. And we're gonna
get into that, but first we're gonna take a little break.
(14:29):
Sulb culinary historians called barbecue the first truly American food
because it combines these this indigenous cooking frame of the
barbecua and then locally available spices with domesticated food animals
that Europeans introduced to North America, especially pigs and cows
and sheep and goats. UH. African cooking techniques were also
(14:50):
really critical to it, because as the institution of slavery
became more established and more widespread in the America's it
was increasingly likely that the person who was due this
cooking was an enslaved African, and over time, colonial barbecue
went from using a raised frame of sticks to a
pit or a trench that was dug in the ground
and logs were burned alongside the pit until they were
(15:12):
down to coals, and then those coals went into the bottom.
And at first the food was laid out on a
framework of sticks, but eventually people started to use gridirons
or metals fits and the first barbecue sauces were actually
pretty minimal. This might make you sad. They tended to
be also pretty much the same regardless of where exactly
the barbecue was being prepared, so it was usually some
(15:33):
kind of very basic fat like a butter or a lard,
and then a little bit of vinegar and black or
hot pepper, just basically used as a based during cooking,
and that was it. That sounds all right to me
if it's really spicy, I'm no, they're not all right, Okay,
I'm a wass um just sue Wi swas and I can't.
I can't handle the spicy. I'm sorry, I know. So.
(15:55):
Apart from that, there was not a lot of consistency
about what was being cooked because people were pretty much
cooking whatever they had available. There might be several different
types of meat at any given barbecue. Regardless of that detail, though,
it was always a lot of food, so from the beginning,
barbecues were usually community events, and the first written instance
of barbecue with the meaning of a big gathering where
(16:18):
barbecue is being served dates back to August thirty one,
seventeen thirty three, in the Diary of Benjamin Lynde. And
Lynde hasn't he on the end? We don't know if
it was Lynda or Lynde, but we're going with Lynde
for the evening, And he noted, quote fair and hot
brown barbecue hack overset Uh, that is word salad. But
(16:39):
just based on his very basic notations, it's pretty fair
to conclude that he went to a barbecue hosted by
someone named Brown. Uh. George Washington also noted that he
had attended multiple barbecues. Those came up in his diary
several times as well, the first of those being seventeen
sixty nine. When it comes to where these first barbecues
were being Hell, they started in Virginia, mostly because Virginia
(17:03):
was the first permanent English colony in North America. Barbecue
has a food and as a cooking technique, and as
a gathering spread from there through British colonial territory. It
may have also been President President barbecue president. That's how
I feel about it. I would be actually really okay
with that at this point. I'm a longer a vegetarian.
(17:25):
In case that was not clear. Uh. So, barbecue has
a food and a cooking technique and a gathering spread
from Virginia throughout British territory. It might have also been President.
I was going to say it again, this happens in
the studio too, and our producer makes it sound like
I didn't do that. It might have been present in
Florida before Great Britain acquired that from Spain in seventeen
(17:48):
sixty three, as well as possibly other places that were
also controlled by Spain, maybe Texas, who knows. I like
to think that Barbecue was a benevolent and kind president,
I hope, so passing delicious legislation, no one was hungry.
Um there's literally the best cartoon running in my head,
and I wish I could project it to you, but
(18:10):
it's in the style of I'm just a bill. Just
know that. Um. So, although barbecue did make its way
into New England, it fell out of favor there by
the end of the Revolutionary War, and the reasons seemed
to have been largely practical. Barbecuing is time and labor intensive,
and it required people to stand outside tending a pit
(18:32):
for up to twenty four hours. New England has a
shorter season where this is even feasible, as well as
a smaller supply of labor at this time, and just
not as much livestock as other parts of the colonies.
And I would say, no one wants to stand out
in the cold for twenty four hours now, and you know,
maybe the ground is going to be frozen. Maybe there
are a hundred and ten inches of snow on the ground. Um.
(18:54):
Over time, because of all this, barbecue became a lot
more associated with the South, and the South that started
to serve a lot of social purposes. Sometimes it was
just a basic social activity that was supposed to be fun,
at least in theory. John Kirkpatrick was one of George
Washington's secretaries. George Washington is in this show a lot Um.
On July seventeen fifty eight, Kirkpatrick wrote Washington a note
(19:19):
that ended quote to tell you our domestic occurrences would
look silly, and I'll suit your time to peruse. But
we have dull barbecues and yet duller dances. An election
causes a hubbub for a week or so, and then
we are dead. Awhile after that he talks about who
(19:39):
won the most recent elections, and then he wraps up
with some thoughts about how much tobacco cost, which he
included even though he admitted that that was probably not pertinent.
And when he talks about how dollies events are, there's
some part of my brain that I'm like, dude, be
the change, Like shake it up, um, you go dance,
make it fun. Uh. Political barbecues got their start in
(20:02):
Virginia in the late eighteenth century, and it was frowned
upon for candidates at this point to actively campaign the
way we would see today. But one sneaky way around
this was that they could treat voters to a super
delicious event. Um, and some went as far as to
throw big, entire barbecues, but they had to be really
careful about it, because if the whole thing was too lavish,
(20:22):
or too showy, or too obviously tied to a candidate,
people did not like it. Uh. It was not unheard
of for local election committees to actually avoid people's candidacies
entirely if they felt like their barbecue had gone a
little too far. Can you imagine this is too delicious?
You may no longer run for public office? And then
(20:44):
barbecue steps up onto the No. Yeah, I'm going to
sign some orders about deliciousness of sauce. So the criticism
of political barbecues did not just come from the election committees.
This is our favorite part of this episode. Starting in
eighteen twenty seven, somebody writing under the pen name barbecue Sis.
(21:08):
See that's why I was laughing, Barbecues is published a
series of letters against campaign barbecue in the Southern Advocate,
and then two years later, more than a thousand people
in Madison County, Alabama signed a petition against this practice.
I feel like the name barbecue in this is another
great pet name, or it should be a Star Wars character,
(21:29):
and I don't care which, but I'm I'm in it
could be both. This whole campaign against barbecues did not
stop political barbecues, though they were a huge part of
elections in both the eighteen thirties and the eighteen forties,
and they were also held just as celebrations. Francisco de
Miranda fought with Spanish forces against the British during the
Revolutionary War, and on June seventeenth of seventeen eighty three,
(21:51):
he wrote about a barbecue that had been held in
New Bern, North Carolina to celebrate the end of active fighting.
Here's what he said, quote by way of celebration for
this event, starting at one o'clock, there was a barbecue,
a roast pig, and a barrel of rum, from which
the leading officials and citizens of the region promiscuous lee
ate and drank with the meanest and lowest kind of people,
(22:15):
holding hands and drinking from the same cup. It seems
impossible to imagine without seeing it a more purely democratic gathering,
and it conforms to yeah, and it conforms to what
the Greek poets and historians tell us of similar concourses
among those free peoples of Greece. There were some drunks,
some friendly fisticuffs, and one man was injured with that,
(22:41):
and the burning of some empty barrels. As the fact
now it's I put gave myself the French part, and
then I didn't practice ahead of time with that and
the burning of some empty barrels as a footage wide nightfall,
the party ended and everyone retired to sleep. It sounds
like a great night, it does. God, let's have it now. Um.
(23:03):
It was not long after the Revolutionary War formally ended
the barbecues really became an established part of Independence Day celebrations,
with the whole event pretty standard no matter where in
the country you were. It was a day full of
songs and patriotic speeches, readings of the Declaration of Independence,
lots of toasts, and of course the barbecue. Alcohol had
(23:24):
been served at barbecues pretty much since the start of them,
but by the early to mid nineteenth century it had
become a bigger part of the festivities, and that meant
that the Temperance movement and religious denominations that discouraged alcohol
became increasingly critical of barbecues. In eighteen fifteen, several members
of Old Salt River Primitive Baptist Church got in trouble
(23:46):
for going to an Independence Day barbecue, and the question
was put to the whole congregation of whether it was
right or wrong to attend a barbecue, and the congregation
answered that it was wrong again. I bet they didn't
know how to party there. Um. There is also a
widely circulated tale about a traveling Methodist minister named Paul Denton,
(24:06):
who is on my personal enemies list, who in eighteen
thirty six, so you'll see why, in eighteen thirty six
posted announcements about a splendid barbecue. The preparations are being
made to suit all tastes. There will be a good barbecue,
better liquors, and the best gospel. And a man named
Peter Brinson had been paid to arrange the food, and
(24:26):
people kept going to Brinson with questions about the liquor
because it did seem kind of strange for a minister
to have an event where he was going to serve
liquor and like brag about it. Uh. Brinson kept telling
people he was not the boss of that, and that
Denton was the person seeing to the alcohol. So this
barbecue was set up around a spring, and it was
overrun with people. Of course, when you say food and hooch,
(24:47):
people are coming. Um. The crowd was anxious to eat,
and Brinson kept telling them that they had to wait
for the preacher, and finally a colonel in the crowd
demanded that they get on with it. And at that
point Denton showed up and he basically scolded them all
for not waiting for the blessing. And then when the
crowd demanded to know where the liquor was, he said there,
(25:07):
and he pointed to the spring, and then he turned
the whole thing into a temperance sermon. Right, he's on
my enemy list forever. This is my new use of
the time travel machine. Who's to go back and slap
him in the face while I hold a martini? That's
that seems fine. Uh. This story was printed in a
lot of places, but none of them say what the
(25:29):
crowd did at that point. Uh. There were, however, a
lot of temperance activists who started holding barbecues to try
to rally support for their cause, but without tricking people
with the promise of alcohol first. This makes me think
about South Park punch and Pie situation. I don't know it.
Oh Cartman promises people punch and pie to come over
(25:50):
and play this whole event, but he doesn't have punch
of pie. Okay, so uh, Denton is Cartman in this
story if you were watching, sorry we went down that avenue. Um.
It was about this time that it did become a
little bit more common for women to be included in
the white community's barbecues. Today, it is a popular stereotype
that the backyard grill is a man's domain. Whatever. That
(26:13):
is not a new idea, but that idea goes all
the way back to the first barbecue pits. The first
barbecues tended to be fairly rough affairs, with women neither
helping to prepare the food nor helping to eat it.
That is so sad. It wasn't until the nineteenth century
that barbecues were actually considered appropriate for ladies, and even
then it was only some other time, often with separate
(26:34):
seating for them away from the men. This is the
stupidest thing I've ever heard. Like, I can eat a
piece of meat next to a dude. There's no problem there.
They don't. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It
really doesn't, because there was too much fighting and swearing
and drinking. I guess ladies can do all those things.
I know, we know this now. They knew it then too.
They were just they had they had views, uh, wrong,
(26:58):
wrong views. In the middle of the nineteenth century, barbecues
as an event had become really an almost exclusively Southern,
Southern thing. In eighteen fifty one, the Boston Post printed
a piece that started, most of your readers have heard
of a barbecue, but probably few have ever attended one. Yeah,
I'm it's it's only a little bit condescending. Uh. It
(27:22):
went on to describe a barbecue that the writer had
been to that was held in Athens, Georgia for retiring
Speaker of the House Howell Cobb, and the writer, who
signed this piece with the initials E. L. F. Thought
this whole thing was incredibly gross. Uh. Honestly, I have
to agree with him, because he described the people who
were preparing this food, three of whom were black, and
three of whom were white as just incredibly dirty, and
(27:45):
he went on to say, quote as there were neither
towels nor water near them, the cooks made their mouths
answer the double perch purpose of towels and water. Right,
this is worse than when somebody puts the meat on
(28:06):
the grill and then takes it off the grill with
the same spatula. Don't do that. Tracy has very strong
feelings about food safety. I wrote about food safety for
the first two years of my career as a writer. Yeah,
I'm a little more sloppy gloppy about it. I mean,
I don't do that, but like I'm not quite as
flip it. I'll wash it, it'll be fine. I had
(28:28):
like that grandmother that literally said, if you don't eat
a peck of dirt by the time you're one year old,
you will die of disease because you will not have
built up your immunity. It's a very I carry it
with me to the day. Yeah, my brother got salmonella
from a turtle when he was eight, and I'm still traumatized.
That's the best thing I've ever heard. I didn't know
(28:55):
it was going to disrupt the show. Salmonella Turtle is
like I hero. To me, this is the best. It's
a comedy hero. He's with You're all making fun cartoons. Uh.
This person E. L. F that was writing about this
horrific and gross and uncleanly barbecue finished his piece by saying, quote,
as I had seen the cutting up process. Of course
(29:18):
I did not eat any of the dinner, but I
could not help thinking that it was rather a brutal
way of serving a retiring speaker of the United States
House of Representatives. Even though barbecue was not particularly associated
with the more northern part of the country at this point,
Stephen Douglas did try to have a campaign barbecue in
(29:39):
New York City in eighteen sixty. This was the first
political barbecue known to have been held in New York City,
and it apparently went very badly, with the meat itself
being compared to the charred remains of a burned down tenement.
The meats, such as it was, was served with crackers
and bread. There were right there were about three thousand
(30:02):
people in attendance at this horrifying barbecue, and apparently they
were really eager for things to get started. There's an
account from the day that states quote, at the last
patients of As the last patients of the mob began
to expire, and fearful that they might not be able
to get any of the gratuitous supply of roast beef,
they resorted to physical force and tore down the pine
(30:23):
fences and burst into the enclosure. The police were too
small a force to keep the crowd back, and a
most disgraceful scene ensued. This scene involved the crowd falling
onto the tables and turning them over and scaring the
carver away from his post. And then the whole thing
devolved into this combination of a riot and a food fight,
with the crowd throwing things down into the barbecue pit,
(30:46):
and then quote the unruly host seized upon the only
table that had been preserved and began debolishing the provisions
there on, and really the table itself. Of course, Stephen
Douglas lost the election of eighteen sixty uh as did
John C. Breckenridge and John Bell. Abraham Lincoln won, and
the Civil War started not long after, And naturally, because
(31:07):
it had become so closely associated with the South by
this time, barbecue was far more associated with the Confederacy
than with the Union. During the war, with barbecues being
used for things like wartime fundraisers, recruitment events, and troop musters.
So throughout all this, like we said before, most of
the people who had been preparing and cooking all this
barbecue were enslaved Africans, and sometimes they were under the
(31:29):
supervision of a white person, but often it was a
more experienced enslaved person who was in charge of actual cooking.
But enslaved people's experience with barbecue definitely did not end
with fixing food for white people. Many slave owners used
Christmas and Independence Day barbecues as a reward for their
enslaved workforce, but of course that workforce was preparing it
(31:51):
for themselves. Barbecue served a similar purpose during times of
intense labor, so like when it was time to pick
the cotton or shut the corn. Although some slave owners
talked about these barbecues as evidence of their own generosity,
as Frederick Douglas pointed out, this was really a way
to keep enslaved people in line and maintain a facade
(32:11):
of benevolence. There are also accounts of enslaved people arranging
their own secret barbecues with Pilford livestock as an act
of resistance and barbecues were also associated with multiple slave uprisings.
In eighteen hundred, enslaved people in Henrico County, Virginia planned
to take the capital of Richmond with a force of
about two hundred people. They were going to take Governor
(32:33):
James Monroe hostage, and then they were going to negotiate
for the emancipation of everyone in the state. They planned
this uprising over a series of barbecues. This uprising, which
was known as Gabriel's Rebellion, was unfortunately thwarted by heavy
rain and by somebody informing authorities of the plot, and
at least twenty six people were hanged. The final plan
(32:53):
for Nat Turner's Rebellion, which was the deadliest slave reable
in US history, was also put together at a barbecue
on August one, eighteen thirty one. After Abraham Lincoln issued
the Emancipation Proclamation on January one of eighteen sixty three,
newly freed people celebrated with a barbecue, and after the war,
barbecue became a common part of Emancipation Day festivities, with
(33:16):
the exact date of those festivities varying from one place
to another. On June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five, more
than two months after the end of the Civil War
and two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
Major General Gordon Granger took his position as the appointed
military governor of Texas. He issued General Order Number three,
(33:37):
which began, quote, the people of Texas are informed that,
in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the
United States, all slaves are free. That event has come
to be celebrated as Juneteenth with barbecue still yeah yeah, Juneteenth, uh,
with barbecue still a frequent part of that observation. And
after the Civil War, barbecue continued to be a huge
(34:00):
tradition all over the South, and it also moved westward
as the nation expanded. In mad Andrews published an essay
in Harper's Weekly that read, quote, the barbecue is one
of the institutions of the South. To have known it
means happiness. Not to have known it means that the
link in the chain of life has been lost. By then, though,
(34:23):
barbecue was also taking on a more regional character which
is well established today, and we'll get to that after
another quick break. So, for most of barbecue's history it
has been about cooking whatever meat was available slowly over
(34:45):
lower indirect heat. There was not a lot of variety
and the sauces or the sides. A lot of times
it was just served with some bread, maybe some crackers,
like that time in New York. Uh. But in the
nineteenth century a new innovation really started to change that,
and that innovation was the barbecue restaurant. The first barbecue
restaurants were not like a full sit down experience like
(35:07):
you might think of. It was just as likely to
just be a thrown together stand that was by the
side of the road. And it's really hard to say
what the first one of those was or where it
was built, but often the person who was doing the
cooking at such places had kind of come to be
known as the local barbecue guy or the barbecue man,
and was regarded as being especially good at what he did.
(35:28):
One of the reasons it's hard to tell exactly who
was the first UH is that a lot of the
first written references to these restaurants are about when they
burned down in grease fires. Um, So who knows how
long it was there before it caught on fire. Um.
Over time, though, these temporary kind of shacks evolved into
(35:49):
more permanent establishments a lot of times with the pit,
the pit or the trench that had been used evolving
into this uh permanent structure that was made out of brick.
Umcent lost my place on my paper. Uh. It was
after these permanent restaurants really started to establish themselves that
different parts of the United States started to develop their
(36:11):
own regional barbecue styles. And although the United States had
an ice trade thanks primarily to Frederick Tutor, who is
someone we have talked about on our show before, there
just wasn't a lot of refrigeration in the late nineteenth century.
So these first restaurants really had to develop relationships with
local farmers and ranchers who could provide them meet when
they needed it, which they could then cook very promptly
(36:33):
and serve right away. Sauces and side dishes were also
influenced by what was locally popular or available, and then
as the restaurants served these styles of barbecue along with
other accompaniments, people started to expect something similar from other
restaurants too, and this became a whole thing. As examples,
cattle ranching is a huge industry in Texas, as I'm
(36:55):
sure you all know, but not so much and a
lot of other parts of the United States, so, especially
in Central Texas, beef brisket is a popular barbecue dish. Meanwhile,
in North Carolina, where I am from, which at various
points in its history has had more pigs than human
beings and its population, pork barbecue is really the standard,
(37:17):
especially in Lexington style barbecue, which is found in the
more western part of the state. Slaw is a popular
side dish or topping thanks to the presence of cabbage
as a crop in the state that slaw is often
made with ketchup instead of mannai'se y'all are wrong, It's
so good, very idea. Wait, are you a proponent of that? Yeah,
(37:41):
I don't. And it's not a thing you can find anywhere.
Besides that, if you go into anytime you see a
restaurant that says Carolina style barbecue, it's like, that's not
exactly a thing because there's two different styles and they're
not one of them doesn't have that anyway, uh where
I get kind of like I have not even tried this.
(38:03):
South Carolina's German population often gets the credit for its
traditional mustard based barbecue sauce. I would do that before
I would do the catch up slaw. I can tell you, uh,
I like German food. Um so, here's what we're gonna do,
like a quick rundown of all of the most well
known regional barbecues. But honestly, there are a whole lot.
(38:25):
Texas has at least four, North Carolina has two, and
though South Carolina is best known for that mustard based
sauce we just mentioned, there are other regional barbecues and
sauces in that state as well. And that is not
even getting into that disagreement of Tracy referenced earlier. Whose
definitions are right or which way or which city of
(38:45):
Brunswick was the one that actually invented the barbecue side
dish of Brunswick sto and my family. We also made
it in a way that it was the entree. So yeah, yeah,
um so yeah. That you will not have to listen
to us a and its smoked over hickory for fifteen
times with this. But we do want to do though,
is note an outlier in all of that, which is
(39:07):
Kansas City Barbecue. Most there was there was division in
people's responses. This is why there are fisticuffs at barbecue.
Uh So, most of the regional barbecue styles stick to
meet from one kind of animal, maybe two. They might
have several signature preparations of that thing, but it's usually
one thing. In Kansas City, though, they barbecue everything. Henry Perry,
(39:31):
who was born in Memphis, is nicknamed the father of
Kansas City barbecue. In nineteen seventeen, he ran a holiday
ad encouraging people to call on him for all their
barbecued meats that included possum, groundhog, raccoon, beef, pork, and mutton. Uh.
You might not find all of those on a menu
today in Kansas City, but in generally you will find
(39:52):
way more meat variety than you will in the traditional
barbecues of other places. Restaurants are not the only thing
have had such a huge influence on barbecue. For most
of the dish's history, it's been all about cooking meat
slowly over low or indirect heat. But today when people
say they're having a barbecue, they could be talking about,
i know, cooking on a grill with the flame right
(40:14):
under what they're cooking in their own backyard. And that's
really a trend that started all the way back in
the nineteen twenties when architects and designers started building barbecues
in new homes. Uh. At first these were permanent, raised
brick structures, and then portable grills became a thing not
long after that. The heat was a lot more direct
than in a traditional barbecue pit that had been around
(40:36):
for hundreds of years at that point. Um. But for
folks who feel like barbecue should not ever be used
as a synonym for grill, that's a usage that goes
all the way back to about the twenties. So we're
almost that a hundred years of people saying that charcoal brackets, incidentally,
also go back to the nineteen twenties. They were patented
by Oran F. Stafford of the University of Oregon in
(40:56):
ninety six, and then Henry Ford realized that he had
used the wood waste from his automobile plants to make them. Uh.
They were not, however, a commercial success until the nineteen fifties,
and that is when Ford's briquette facility was bought and
renamed Kingsford, after the man that had sold forward his
timberland in the first place. Big Kingsford fan right here. Um.
(41:17):
And that is when Kingsford briquettes started to be sold
in grocery stores, and this person became very excited about it.
At about that same time, home barbecues also got another
jolt as post World War two economic expansion led people,
particularly white people, to move into the suburbs, so more
people had yards, and more yards had barbecues. The webber
(41:38):
grill made its debut in ninety six. Before that point,
home grills did not have lids, so people had to
fight with the wind all the time. Commercially bottled barbecue
sauces also started taking off in the forties and fifties
as well. Before that, it had been common for people
to just make their own. Then the gas grill, which
I know a lot of people think is heretical, that
(42:00):
made its debut in the nineteen sixties. That low and
slow cooked over fire barbecue started to actually struggle a
little bit in the nineteen seventies because it takes a
lot of hardwood to run a barbecue restaurant, and it
got harder and harder to come by and more and
more expensive, and laws that were meant to protect the
environment also made it a lot more challenging to run
(42:21):
a business that required the constant burning of wood. Labor
costs were also on the rise during this time, and
fast food restaurants and home grills had made other foods
like hamburgers and hot dogs a lot more popular, but
that more traditional barbecue has really had a resurgence in
more recent years thanks to competitions and television shows and
(42:41):
just an overall restaurant boom and in some cases a
willingness to slow cook meat by other methods than over
hardwood smoke, which I know a lot of people have
strong feelings about. Brooklyn, New York, even has its own
barbecue now, which the Internet was really really ready. It's
to make fun of. When somebody tweeted a picture have
(43:02):
a very sad looking tray of it in March. None
of you saw this on Twitter. It was literally a
tray with what looked like maybe three pieces of biscuit,
two rolls in like a pickle. I think it's pretty sad.
The Internet was really ready to make fun of that. Yeah,
it was like the sad faced, humble figuring of plates.
It was not okay. It made you go, I'm sorry
(43:25):
animal that gave your life to make that it was.
That was basically the response that the internet had. Uh.
And that is our brief history of Barbecue. Thank you
guys so much for being an amazing Thank you, Thank
you so much to everybody who came out for this show.
(43:45):
All three of these audiences were just amazing. Yep. I
want to tour Texas every time because they were fantastic.
But we also want to make sure that we thank
the staff at the North Door in Austin, Sons of Herman,
Holland Dallas, and Secret Group in Houston all for howing
us and being incredibly lovely and sweet and making this
just an incredibly fun trip. And also thanks so much
(44:06):
to Headcount for being with us for part of the
tour to register people to vote and to provide other
voter information. They are awesome. We've worked with them on
all of our tours so far and we love having them. Yes,
they're Uh. It makes me so happy every time I
see them. Uh just thrills me that we get to
have them at our shows. Uh. Do you have a
(44:26):
little bit of listener mailed around this one? Up? I
sure do. This is from Charlotte. Charlotte says, Hi, Holly
and Tracy, I attended your Houston Live show last night
and it was a delight. Thank you so much for
coming to Houston and sharing your wonderful selves with us
for an evening. Before I lived in Houston, I lived
in Chicago, near the south side of the city, and
I was wondering if in your explorations of regional barbecue
(44:48):
you'd come across Chicago barbecue. I think the story of
barbecue on the South Side is really interesting because it's
largely the product of the Great Migration. As African American
families moved north, they brought barbecue with them and adapted
it to the new urban environment of Chicago, exchanging outdoor
pits for aquarium smokers basically metal and glass tanks where
(45:08):
the meat is cooked. Charlotte then gave us a couple
of links about that no shade to my current home,
but Chicago barbecue is just as delicious as barbecue farther south,
and I believe it tells an important story about how
food culture adapts to and reflects larger changes in the
historical and social environment. Thank you again. I hope you
enjoyed your time in Texas, Charlotte. Thank you so much. Charlotte.
(45:30):
That seemed like an incredibly appropriate email to share. For
the list of real segment of this episode, I did
find a little bit about Chicago barbecue. We talked about this,
uh in the live show during our ad break time
and during the Q and a s that we do
after the show at almost every stop. I originally had
plans to talk about all of the major regional styles
(45:52):
of barbecue in that episode, and we mentioned it briefly
in this one. That turned out to just not be
entirely feasible because there are a lot of them, and
in the context of an audio podcast, the ingredients and
such start to sound a little bit repetitive. UH, So
we did not get into that. But if you're interested
(46:12):
in that kind of information, there is so much stuff
on the web. If you google regional barbecue styles, you
will find lots of different thoughts from various folks about
which ones are the most delicious and and what their
experiences are with them, and lots of articles that highlight
the various regional styles and how they came to be,
(46:34):
which they all have very cool stories, but not ones
that we could uh and really do justice too in
a live show like that. And I also wanted to
shout out to the various folks we've We've heard from
several people who were planning to come to the podcast,
but we're prevented by various circumstances, and we certainly appreciate
you all. Also, do not feel badly if you had
(46:55):
to miss the show because something happened. Uh. Really, you
were there in spirit and now you get to listen
to the episode as an episode of the podcast. So
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, we're at history podcast that I
heart radio dot com, and then we're also all over
social media. Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter,
(47:15):
and Instagram. You can come to our website, which is
missed in History dot com, where you'll find show notes
of all the episodes Holly and I have worked on together,
and the ones for this include the links to all
the things that we read, the books that were part
of it, all of that. Uh. And you can also
get a searchable archive of every episode ever on our website,
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
the iHeart radio app, and anywhere else you get a podcast.
(47:42):
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello. Everyone. Back
in November, we went on tour with three stocks in Texas,
and we had an episode that covered a brief history
of barbecue for that tour. So the version of that
(00:23):
that we're sharing with you today was recorded in the
first stop on the tour, which was Austin. That was
just the one that had the cleanest audio quality after
we had listened to it, So enjoy, Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Ve, You Wilson, and I'm
Holly Fry. Usually when we're on tour, we are going
(00:46):
to several different cities in different states and normally distinctly
different parts of the country, like they might be all
on the same coast. But you know, Massachusetts is not
the same as Georgia for examt ample. Yeah, it's weird.
I mean, I've lived in both of those places, so
I feel like I can vouch um. So there's not
(01:07):
often a topic that seems like it could unite all
the places that we're going on a tour, but this
tour is three different cities in Texas, so we thought
maybe we would try to find something a little more texasy.
After some discussion, we landed on the possibly life threatening
decision of barbecue. I may have told my lift driver
(01:31):
that's what we were talking about. He was like, as like, Ken,
if I need you, if I can I get your
numbers so you can call me for a quick getaway
of stuff goes south. Yeah. So normally we just picked
something that sounds like it's going to be fun, and
then sometimes in the process we realize it's kind of complicated.
And also with barbecue, fund maybe also kind of complicated. Uh.
(01:52):
We totally recognize that there are people who don't like
barbecue or don't eat meat at all, and there are
plenty of like atical and uh, environmental reasons to reduce
the amount of meat that we we understand all of this. Um,
but the story of barbecue is really intimately tied to
language and history and culture, especially in the South, especially
(02:15):
in Texas, maybe extra especially in Austin. I think the
first thing that my lift driver said to me when
I got in the car was eat some barbecue while
you're here. Um. Obviously, there are all kinds of barbecue
styles found all over the world, but the focus and
what we're talking about today is really on the United States,
(02:35):
specifically the lower forty eight. So even without getting into
things like Korean bulgogai or Brazilian shiasco or South African bray,
talking about barbecue is like walking into a linguistic and
pedantic mind field. Um. And that is not as some
people might think, just because there are people who were
(02:56):
just gonna as politely as possibly called ignorant jerk faces
um that like to claim that everyone else is ruining
the language with their non understanding of what true barbecue is. Uh.
You know, you all have your steaks in the ground,
it's for sure for sure. Um. Here is a quick
list of some of the things that people argue about
(03:16):
when it comes to the word barbecue. Um. Whether it's
a noun or a verb. Whether it means a style
of cooking or a food that has been cooked using
that style, whether barbecue and grill or synonyms. Whether it
involves cooking yeah, a c We're gonna get there, um,
(03:39):
Whether it involves cooking over direct or indirect heat. What
kind of fuel is used for the flame and if
that fuel is would what kind of wood? Also the
ingredients and what's in the sauce and whether the word
barbecue has a C or a Q in it. We
could go on, there's so much space for pedantry. But really,
(04:01):
the word barbecue has been both a noun and a
verb for almost four hundred years uh, and it's had
multiple definitions going all the way back to its first
use in the English language. And some of those definitions
really don't actually have much to do with food or
cooking at all. Yes, So, the most widely accepted explanation
for where the word barbecue comes from is that it
(04:23):
started with the Spanish word barbecoa, which today English speakers
might more associate with kind of a slow cooked, spicy,
shredded meat. In this case, though, we're talking about a
term that Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo di uh Ivadez said
that he learned from the indigenous Chino people of the Caribbean.
He traveled back and forth between Spain and the America's
(04:44):
a bunch of times in the sixteenth century. He wrote
books on multiple subjects, including Spain's colonial conquest, and in
his fifteen twenty six General and Natural History of the Indies,
he used this word barbacoa to describe a raised frame
of sticks used to store grain. Uh. He was the
(05:05):
first person to use this term in writing. It's not
quite his mouth watering is the way we think of
it today. Soon other Spanish writers were using this same
word to describe similar things that they saw in other
parts of the America's Here's an example from an account
of Hernando de Soto's expeditions, which was written in fifteen
forty and describing what is now southwestern Georgia. Quote, maize
(05:29):
is kept in a barbacoa, which is a house with
wooden sides, like a room, raised aloft on four posts,
and has a floor of cane. So explain that at
the food truck. Eventually, this word did make its way
into English and early chroniclers, and both English and Spanish
and other languages as well all used barbacoa for other
(05:51):
reasons besides just storing grain, including sitting on it and
sleeping on it. And yeah, that last one is actually
what the word barbecue meant in its first written use
in English. In his nine seven Voyage around the World,
the English pirate and explorer William damp Here wrote, quote
the twelfth, in the morning, we crossed a deep river,
(06:14):
passing over it on a tree and marched seven mile
in a low, swampy ground, and came upon the side
of a great deep river, but could not get over.
We built huts upon its banks and lay there all
night upon our barbecues or frames of sticks raised about
three foot from the ground. I have to say, as
(06:36):
somebody who might be like, I'm guessing nine percent reptile DNA,
this doesn't sound bad to me. Um, I would probably
sleep on a barbecue, because I'm cold blooded. Other writers
in the sixteenth century also described people in the Caribbean
and southern North America using the same or similar barbecua
frames to cook food, typically fish or some kind of
(06:58):
what is apparently my people lizards um like iguanas or crocodile,
And eventually that sense of use carried over into the
English word barbecue as well, both as a noun to
describe the frame itself and as a verb to describe
cooking on that frame. But the first written word barbecue
as a verb in English still isn't exactly about food.
(07:21):
It's from a play by past podcast subject Afra Ben,
and that play is called The Widow Ranter or The
History of Bacon in Virginia. Not that kind of Bacon.
It's not that kind of Bacon. The play is about
a different previous podcast subject, which was Bacon's rebellion, so
we have like multiple previous podcast in that one sentence,
(07:44):
all roads lead to barbecue apparently. Um. In Act two,
seen four of that play, Colonel Wellman, deputy governor, is
trying to take Nathaniel Bacon into custody as a rebel,
but Bacon is defended by a rabble, which beats back
Wellman's guards before Bacon steals one of the rebbels swords
and turns them back. The rabble does not give up
(08:05):
and shouts, let's barbecue this fat rogue, uh, meaning the
deputy governor, and Bacon tells them to be gone, but
Wellman says, quote, I'd rather perish by my meanest hand
than oh, my safety poorly to this Bacon. Uh. That
should be this to Bacon. But it's funnier the way
I said it accidentally. Uh. And Bacon is like aces
(08:26):
and he rolls out with the rabble. I like how
the idea of being saved by Nathaniel Bacon is so
objectionable to Wellman that he's just like, just let me die. Though. Yeah,
it's okay, just kill me. So this play was written
in six nine. That means by that point the word
barbecue was commonly known enough in England to show up
in a play and have the audience know what they
(08:47):
were talking about. But at the same time, this still
is not really about food. It's more like they're calling
for a wellman to be tarred and feathered. And also
for anybody who is hung up on whether it is
fell barbecue with a sea or a key afra ben
in that instance spelled it with a sea, and other
spellings in its earliest English uses include barbecue that's with
(09:08):
an o or barbecue with no e. So see you
and that's it. So you will find this evolution from
barbecoa meaning a frame to sleep on or store things
on or cook food on, to barbecue meaning that thing
I just said, or cooking the food on the frame
or eventually the food itself. You find that progression all
(09:30):
over the place. That's pretty much how it's described most
of the time, but there are some naysayers about whether
that's correct, and some of them are more logical than others.
In eighteen twenty nine, the National Intelligencer printed an article
that called Andrew Jackson's supporters of barbecues because they were
quote going the whole hog from the beard barbed to
(09:51):
the q tail. Uh. Some people got kind of glammed
onto that as meaning that there was a French origin
for the word barbecue. And you'll still see that in
some places most of the time. When you do see it,
there's also a note that that's probably not correct. The
Oxford English Dictionary calls it an absurd conjecture. The French
(10:14):
would never put meat on a spit, for one thing. Um.
Culinary historian Michael Twitty has also noted that in the
house a language which is spoken in northern Nigeria, Babaka
which is spelled b a b b a k e,
is used to describe a number of things having to
do with grilling or toasting or cooking over a fire.
(10:34):
And then there's Professor Andrew Warrants of the University of Leeds,
and he wrote a book called Savage Barbecue, Race, Culture,
and the Invention of America's First Food, and he takes uh,
he traces that connotation from barbecoa to barbecue like other
people a lot of other people have done, but he
makes a slightly different argument and it's a little more
involved than we can get into you tonight, because he
(10:55):
wrote an entire book chapter on this argument. But basically
he points out that we shouldn't just discount the idea
that the word barbecue also has some connection to the
word barbaric, because that kind of reflects back to how
the European colonists were viewing the people of the Caribbean
and North America who had been cooking over the fire
when they first got there. So, regardless of the exact etymology,
(11:18):
English people on both sides of the Atlantic definitely described
barbecuing as an indigenous method of food preparation well into
the eighteenth century. For example, on August eighteenth of seventeen
fifty eight, during the French and Indian War, George Washington
wrote a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet in which he
talked about the provisioning of his troops and he said, quote,
(11:39):
we have not an ounce assault provision of any kind here,
and it is impossible to preserve the fresh especially as
we have no salt by any other means than barbecuing
it in the Indian manner. In doing this, nearly half
is lost, so that a party receiving ten days provisions,
will be obliged to live upon little better than five
days allowance of meat a thing impracticable. I have some
(12:02):
questions about this. Losing that much of the meat makes
it sound like either whoever was doing Washington's barbecuing was
really bad at it, or maybe he was describing something
that was more like drying the meat into a jerky
than like barbecuing it. I like how it doesn't occur
to you that someone like me is working the grill
(12:24):
and eating as they go, you're doing a one for
me would just be like, yeah, one for them and
one for me. Detail Yeah, that would be like my
cut for doing the work. Is this not how you guys? Barbecue?
Barbecue is also in Samuel Johnson's seventeen fifty five Dictionary
of the English Language, with two barbecue as a verb
(12:47):
meaning a term used in the West Indies for dressing
a hog hole which, being split to the backbone, is
laid flat upon a large gridiron raised about two foot
upon a charcoal fire with which it is surrounded it
And then Johnson lists barbecue as a noun with a
definition of quote a hog dressed hole in the West
Indian manner. So after all this, Uh, this might be
(13:09):
an unpopular opinion, but I think folks can just relax
about what barbecue means and whether other people are using
it wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary list five different definitions
for the noun and two for the verb. Miriam Webster
lists three different meanings for each and one of those
Oxford English Dictionary definitions is about drying coffee beans, which
(13:34):
we haven't talked about at all. So, uh, we're going
to get to even the much decried use of the
word barbecue as a synonym for grilling. Like we're gonna
get to that part that's been around and somebody's hissock,
I'm just gonna pretend we sold a lot of tickets
to snakes. Uh excited. Uh, it's an audience of slytherin. Um. Anyway,
(14:04):
we're gonna get to how barbecue has been a synonym
for grilling for almost a hundred years. But before we
do that, we're going to talk about another definition that
we haven't even gotten into here and might cause more
snake activity, barbecue as a social event. And we're gonna
get into that, but first we're gonna take a little break.
(14:29):
Sulb culinary historians called barbecue the first truly American food
because it combines these this indigenous cooking frame of the
barbecua and then locally available spices with domesticated food animals
that Europeans introduced to North America, especially pigs and cows
and sheep and goats. UH. African cooking techniques were also
(14:50):
really critical to it, because as the institution of slavery
became more established and more widespread in the America's it
was increasingly likely that the person who was due this
cooking was an enslaved African, and over time, colonial barbecue
went from using a raised frame of sticks to a
pit or a trench that was dug in the ground
and logs were burned alongside the pit until they were
(15:12):
down to coals, and then those coals went into the bottom.
And at first the food was laid out on a
framework of sticks, but eventually people started to use gridirons
or metals fits and the first barbecue sauces were actually
pretty minimal. This might make you sad. They tended to
be also pretty much the same regardless of where exactly
the barbecue was being prepared, so it was usually some
(15:33):
kind of very basic fat like a butter or a lard,
and then a little bit of vinegar and black or
hot pepper, just basically used as a based during cooking,
and that was it. That sounds all right to me
if it's really spicy, I'm no, they're not all right, Okay,
I'm a wass um just sue Wi swas and I can't.
I can't handle the spicy. I'm sorry, I know. So.
(15:55):
Apart from that, there was not a lot of consistency
about what was being cooked because people were pretty much
cooking whatever they had available. There might be several different
types of meat at any given barbecue. Regardless of that detail, though,
it was always a lot of food, so from the beginning,
barbecues were usually community events, and the first written instance
of barbecue with the meaning of a big gathering where
(16:18):
barbecue is being served dates back to August thirty one,
seventeen thirty three, in the Diary of Benjamin Lynde. And
Lynde hasn't he on the end? We don't know if
it was Lynda or Lynde, but we're going with Lynde
for the evening, And he noted, quote fair and hot
brown barbecue hack overset Uh, that is word salad. But
(16:39):
just based on his very basic notations, it's pretty fair
to conclude that he went to a barbecue hosted by
someone named Brown. Uh. George Washington also noted that he
had attended multiple barbecues. Those came up in his diary
several times as well, the first of those being seventeen
sixty nine. When it comes to where these first barbecues
were being Hell, they started in Virginia, mostly because Virginia
(17:03):
was the first permanent English colony in North America. Barbecue
has a food and as a cooking technique, and as
a gathering spread from there through British colonial territory. It
may have also been President President barbecue president. That's how
I feel about it. I would be actually really okay
with that at this point. I'm a longer a vegetarian.
(17:25):
In case that was not clear. Uh. So, barbecue has
a food and a cooking technique and a gathering spread
from Virginia throughout British territory. It might have also been President.
I was going to say it again, this happens in
the studio too, and our producer makes it sound like
I didn't do that. It might have been present in
Florida before Great Britain acquired that from Spain in seventeen
(17:48):
sixty three, as well as possibly other places that were
also controlled by Spain, maybe Texas, who knows. I like
to think that Barbecue was a benevolent and kind president,
I hope, so passing delicious legislation, no one was hungry.
Um there's literally the best cartoon running in my head,
and I wish I could project it to you, but
(18:10):
it's in the style of I'm just a bill. Just
know that. Um. So, although barbecue did make its way
into New England, it fell out of favor there by
the end of the Revolutionary War, and the reasons seemed
to have been largely practical. Barbecuing is time and labor intensive,
and it required people to stand outside tending a pit
(18:32):
for up to twenty four hours. New England has a
shorter season where this is even feasible, as well as
a smaller supply of labor at this time, and just
not as much livestock as other parts of the colonies.
And I would say, no one wants to stand out
in the cold for twenty four hours now, and you know,
maybe the ground is going to be frozen. Maybe there
are a hundred and ten inches of snow on the ground. Um.
(18:54):
Over time, because of all this, barbecue became a lot
more associated with the South, and the South that started
to serve a lot of social purposes. Sometimes it was
just a basic social activity that was supposed to be fun,
at least in theory. John Kirkpatrick was one of George
Washington's secretaries. George Washington is in this show a lot Um.
On July seventeen fifty eight, Kirkpatrick wrote Washington a note
(19:19):
that ended quote to tell you our domestic occurrences would
look silly, and I'll suit your time to peruse. But
we have dull barbecues and yet duller dances. An election
causes a hubbub for a week or so, and then
we are dead. Awhile after that he talks about who
(19:39):
won the most recent elections, and then he wraps up
with some thoughts about how much tobacco cost, which he
included even though he admitted that that was probably not pertinent.
And when he talks about how dollies events are, there's
some part of my brain that I'm like, dude, be
the change, Like shake it up, um, you go dance,
make it fun. Uh. Political barbecues got their start in
(20:02):
Virginia in the late eighteenth century, and it was frowned
upon for candidates at this point to actively campaign the
way we would see today. But one sneaky way around
this was that they could treat voters to a super
delicious event. Um, and some went as far as to
throw big, entire barbecues, but they had to be really
careful about it, because if the whole thing was too lavish,
(20:22):
or too showy, or too obviously tied to a candidate,
people did not like it. Uh. It was not unheard
of for local election committees to actually avoid people's candidacies
entirely if they felt like their barbecue had gone a
little too far. Can you imagine this is too delicious?
You may no longer run for public office? And then
(20:44):
barbecue steps up onto the No. Yeah, I'm going to
sign some orders about deliciousness of sauce. So the criticism
of political barbecues did not just come from the election committees.
This is our favorite part of this episode. Starting in
eighteen twenty seven, somebody writing under the pen name barbecue Sis.
(21:08):
See that's why I was laughing, Barbecues is published a
series of letters against campaign barbecue in the Southern Advocate,
and then two years later, more than a thousand people
in Madison County, Alabama signed a petition against this practice.
I feel like the name barbecue in this is another
great pet name, or it should be a Star Wars character,
(21:29):
and I don't care which, but I'm I'm in it
could be both. This whole campaign against barbecues did not
stop political barbecues, though they were a huge part of
elections in both the eighteen thirties and the eighteen forties,
and they were also held just as celebrations. Francisco de
Miranda fought with Spanish forces against the British during the
Revolutionary War, and on June seventeenth of seventeen eighty three,
(21:51):
he wrote about a barbecue that had been held in
New Bern, North Carolina to celebrate the end of active fighting.
Here's what he said, quote by way of celebration for
this event, starting at one o'clock, there was a barbecue,
a roast pig, and a barrel of rum, from which
the leading officials and citizens of the region promiscuous lee
ate and drank with the meanest and lowest kind of people,
(22:15):
holding hands and drinking from the same cup. It seems
impossible to imagine without seeing it a more purely democratic gathering,
and it conforms to yeah, and it conforms to what
the Greek poets and historians tell us of similar concourses
among those free peoples of Greece. There were some drunks,
some friendly fisticuffs, and one man was injured with that,
(22:41):
and the burning of some empty barrels. As the fact
now it's I put gave myself the French part, and
then I didn't practice ahead of time with that and
the burning of some empty barrels as a footage wide nightfall,
the party ended and everyone retired to sleep. It sounds
like a great night, it does. God, let's have it now. Um.
(23:03):
It was not long after the Revolutionary War formally ended
the barbecues really became an established part of Independence Day celebrations,
with the whole event pretty standard no matter where in
the country you were. It was a day full of
songs and patriotic speeches, readings of the Declaration of Independence,
lots of toasts, and of course the barbecue. Alcohol had
(23:24):
been served at barbecues pretty much since the start of them,
but by the early to mid nineteenth century it had
become a bigger part of the festivities, and that meant
that the Temperance movement and religious denominations that discouraged alcohol
became increasingly critical of barbecues. In eighteen fifteen, several members
of Old Salt River Primitive Baptist Church got in trouble
(23:46):
for going to an Independence Day barbecue, and the question
was put to the whole congregation of whether it was
right or wrong to attend a barbecue, and the congregation
answered that it was wrong again. I bet they didn't
know how to party there. Um. There is also a
widely circulated tale about a traveling Methodist minister named Paul Denton,
(24:06):
who is on my personal enemies list, who in eighteen
thirty six, so you'll see why, in eighteen thirty six
posted announcements about a splendid barbecue. The preparations are being
made to suit all tastes. There will be a good barbecue,
better liquors, and the best gospel. And a man named
Peter Brinson had been paid to arrange the food, and
(24:26):
people kept going to Brinson with questions about the liquor
because it did seem kind of strange for a minister
to have an event where he was going to serve
liquor and like brag about it. Uh. Brinson kept telling
people he was not the boss of that, and that
Denton was the person seeing to the alcohol. So this
barbecue was set up around a spring, and it was
overrun with people. Of course, when you say food and hooch,
(24:47):
people are coming. Um. The crowd was anxious to eat,
and Brinson kept telling them that they had to wait
for the preacher, and finally a colonel in the crowd
demanded that they get on with it. And at that
point Denton showed up and he basically scolded them all
for not waiting for the blessing. And then when the
crowd demanded to know where the liquor was, he said there,
(25:07):
and he pointed to the spring, and then he turned
the whole thing into a temperance sermon. Right, he's on
my enemy list forever. This is my new use of
the time travel machine. Who's to go back and slap
him in the face while I hold a martini? That's
that seems fine. Uh. This story was printed in a
lot of places, but none of them say what the
(25:29):
crowd did at that point. Uh. There were, however, a
lot of temperance activists who started holding barbecues to try
to rally support for their cause, but without tricking people
with the promise of alcohol first. This makes me think
about South Park punch and Pie situation. I don't know it.
Oh Cartman promises people punch and pie to come over
(25:50):
and play this whole event, but he doesn't have punch
of pie. Okay, so uh, Denton is Cartman in this
story if you were watching, sorry we went down that avenue. Um.
It was about this time that it did become a
little bit more common for women to be included in
the white community's barbecues. Today, it is a popular stereotype
that the backyard grill is a man's domain. Whatever. That
(26:13):
is not a new idea, but that idea goes all
the way back to the first barbecue pits. The first
barbecues tended to be fairly rough affairs, with women neither
helping to prepare the food nor helping to eat it.
That is so sad. It wasn't until the nineteenth century
that barbecues were actually considered appropriate for ladies, and even
then it was only some other time, often with separate
(26:34):
seating for them away from the men. This is the
stupidest thing I've ever heard. Like, I can eat a
piece of meat next to a dude. There's no problem there.
They don't. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It
really doesn't, because there was too much fighting and swearing
and drinking. I guess ladies can do all those things.
I know, we know this now. They knew it then too.
They were just they had they had views, uh, wrong,
(26:58):
wrong views. In the middle of the nineteenth century, barbecues
as an event had become really an almost exclusively Southern,
Southern thing. In eighteen fifty one, the Boston Post printed
a piece that started, most of your readers have heard
of a barbecue, but probably few have ever attended one. Yeah,
I'm it's it's only a little bit condescending. Uh. It
(27:22):
went on to describe a barbecue that the writer had
been to that was held in Athens, Georgia for retiring
Speaker of the House Howell Cobb, and the writer, who
signed this piece with the initials E. L. F. Thought
this whole thing was incredibly gross. Uh. Honestly, I have
to agree with him, because he described the people who
were preparing this food, three of whom were black, and
three of whom were white as just incredibly dirty, and
(27:45):
he went on to say, quote as there were neither
towels nor water near them, the cooks made their mouths
answer the double perch purpose of towels and water. Right,
this is worse than when somebody puts the meat on
(28:06):
the grill and then takes it off the grill with
the same spatula. Don't do that. Tracy has very strong
feelings about food safety. I wrote about food safety for
the first two years of my career as a writer. Yeah,
I'm a little more sloppy gloppy about it. I mean,
I don't do that, but like I'm not quite as
flip it. I'll wash it, it'll be fine. I had
(28:28):
like that grandmother that literally said, if you don't eat
a peck of dirt by the time you're one year old,
you will die of disease because you will not have
built up your immunity. It's a very I carry it
with me to the day. Yeah, my brother got salmonella
from a turtle when he was eight, and I'm still traumatized.
That's the best thing I've ever heard. I didn't know
(28:55):
it was going to disrupt the show. Salmonella Turtle is
like I hero. To me, this is the best. It's
a comedy hero. He's with You're all making fun cartoons. Uh.
This person E. L. F that was writing about this
horrific and gross and uncleanly barbecue finished his piece by saying, quote,
as I had seen the cutting up process. Of course
(29:18):
I did not eat any of the dinner, but I
could not help thinking that it was rather a brutal
way of serving a retiring speaker of the United States
House of Representatives. Even though barbecue was not particularly associated
with the more northern part of the country at this point,
Stephen Douglas did try to have a campaign barbecue in
(29:39):
New York City in eighteen sixty. This was the first
political barbecue known to have been held in New York City,
and it apparently went very badly, with the meat itself
being compared to the charred remains of a burned down tenement.
The meats, such as it was, was served with crackers
and bread. There were right there were about three thousand
(30:02):
people in attendance at this horrifying barbecue, and apparently they
were really eager for things to get started. There's an
account from the day that states quote, at the last
patients of As the last patients of the mob began
to expire, and fearful that they might not be able
to get any of the gratuitous supply of roast beef,
they resorted to physical force and tore down the pine
(30:23):
fences and burst into the enclosure. The police were too
small a force to keep the crowd back, and a
most disgraceful scene ensued. This scene involved the crowd falling
onto the tables and turning them over and scaring the
carver away from his post. And then the whole thing
devolved into this combination of a riot and a food fight,
with the crowd throwing things down into the barbecue pit,
(30:46):
and then quote the unruly host seized upon the only
table that had been preserved and began debolishing the provisions
there on, and really the table itself. Of course, Stephen
Douglas lost the election of eighteen sixty uh as did
John C. Breckenridge and John Bell. Abraham Lincoln won, and
the Civil War started not long after, And naturally, because
(31:07):
it had become so closely associated with the South by
this time, barbecue was far more associated with the Confederacy
than with the Union. During the war, with barbecues being
used for things like wartime fundraisers, recruitment events, and troop musters.
So throughout all this, like we said before, most of
the people who had been preparing and cooking all this
barbecue were enslaved Africans, and sometimes they were under the
(31:29):
supervision of a white person, but often it was a
more experienced enslaved person who was in charge of actual cooking.
But enslaved people's experience with barbecue definitely did not end
with fixing food for white people. Many slave owners used
Christmas and Independence Day barbecues as a reward for their
enslaved workforce, but of course that workforce was preparing it
(31:51):
for themselves. Barbecue served a similar purpose during times of
intense labor, so like when it was time to pick
the cotton or shut the corn. Although some slave owners
talked about these barbecues as evidence of their own generosity,
as Frederick Douglas pointed out, this was really a way
to keep enslaved people in line and maintain a facade
(32:11):
of benevolence. There are also accounts of enslaved people arranging
their own secret barbecues with Pilford livestock as an act
of resistance and barbecues were also associated with multiple slave uprisings.
In eighteen hundred, enslaved people in Henrico County, Virginia planned
to take the capital of Richmond with a force of
about two hundred people. They were going to take Governor
(32:33):
James Monroe hostage, and then they were going to negotiate
for the emancipation of everyone in the state. They planned
this uprising over a series of barbecues. This uprising, which
was known as Gabriel's Rebellion, was unfortunately thwarted by heavy
rain and by somebody informing authorities of the plot, and
at least twenty six people were hanged. The final plan
(32:53):
for Nat Turner's Rebellion, which was the deadliest slave reable
in US history, was also put together at a barbecue
on August one, eighteen thirty one. After Abraham Lincoln issued
the Emancipation Proclamation on January one of eighteen sixty three,
newly freed people celebrated with a barbecue, and after the war,
barbecue became a common part of Emancipation Day festivities, with
(33:16):
the exact date of those festivities varying from one place
to another. On June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five, more
than two months after the end of the Civil War
and two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
Major General Gordon Granger took his position as the appointed
military governor of Texas. He issued General Order Number three,
(33:37):
which began, quote, the people of Texas are informed that,
in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the
United States, all slaves are free. That event has come
to be celebrated as Juneteenth with barbecue still yeah yeah, Juneteenth, uh,
with barbecue still a frequent part of that observation. And
after the Civil War, barbecue continued to be a huge
(34:00):
tradition all over the South, and it also moved westward
as the nation expanded. In mad Andrews published an essay
in Harper's Weekly that read, quote, the barbecue is one
of the institutions of the South. To have known it
means happiness. Not to have known it means that the
link in the chain of life has been lost. By then, though,
(34:23):
barbecue was also taking on a more regional character which
is well established today, and we'll get to that after
another quick break. So, for most of barbecue's history it
has been about cooking whatever meat was available slowly over
(34:45):
lower indirect heat. There was not a lot of variety
and the sauces or the sides. A lot of times
it was just served with some bread, maybe some crackers,
like that time in New York. Uh. But in the
nineteenth century a new innovation really started to change that,
and that innovation was the barbecue restaurant. The first barbecue
restaurants were not like a full sit down experience like
(35:07):
you might think of. It was just as likely to
just be a thrown together stand that was by the
side of the road. And it's really hard to say
what the first one of those was or where it
was built, but often the person who was doing the
cooking at such places had kind of come to be
known as the local barbecue guy or the barbecue man,
and was regarded as being especially good at what he did.
(35:28):
One of the reasons it's hard to tell exactly who
was the first UH is that a lot of the
first written references to these restaurants are about when they
burned down in grease fires. Um, So who knows how
long it was there before it caught on fire. Um.
Over time, though, these temporary kind of shacks evolved into
(35:49):
more permanent establishments a lot of times with the pit,
the pit or the trench that had been used evolving
into this uh permanent structure that was made out of brick.
Umcent lost my place on my paper. Uh. It was
after these permanent restaurants really started to establish themselves that
different parts of the United States started to develop their
(36:11):
own regional barbecue styles. And although the United States had
an ice trade thanks primarily to Frederick Tutor, who is
someone we have talked about on our show before, there
just wasn't a lot of refrigeration in the late nineteenth century.
So these first restaurants really had to develop relationships with
local farmers and ranchers who could provide them meet when
they needed it, which they could then cook very promptly
(36:33):
and serve right away. Sauces and side dishes were also
influenced by what was locally popular or available, and then
as the restaurants served these styles of barbecue along with
other accompaniments, people started to expect something similar from other
restaurants too, and this became a whole thing. As examples,
cattle ranching is a huge industry in Texas, as I'm
(36:55):
sure you all know, but not so much and a
lot of other parts of the United States, so, especially
in Central Texas, beef brisket is a popular barbecue dish. Meanwhile,
in North Carolina, where I am from, which at various
points in its history has had more pigs than human
beings and its population, pork barbecue is really the standard,
(37:17):
especially in Lexington style barbecue, which is found in the
more western part of the state. Slaw is a popular
side dish or topping thanks to the presence of cabbage
as a crop in the state that slaw is often
made with ketchup instead of mannai'se y'all are wrong, It's
so good, very idea. Wait, are you a proponent of that? Yeah,
(37:41):
I don't. And it's not a thing you can find anywhere.
Besides that, if you go into anytime you see a
restaurant that says Carolina style barbecue, it's like, that's not
exactly a thing because there's two different styles and they're
not one of them doesn't have that anyway, uh where
I get kind of like I have not even tried this.
(38:03):
South Carolina's German population often gets the credit for its
traditional mustard based barbecue sauce. I would do that before
I would do the catch up slaw. I can tell you, uh,
I like German food. Um so, here's what we're gonna do,
like a quick rundown of all of the most well
known regional barbecues. But honestly, there are a whole lot.
(38:25):
Texas has at least four, North Carolina has two, and
though South Carolina is best known for that mustard based
sauce we just mentioned, there are other regional barbecues and
sauces in that state as well. And that is not
even getting into that disagreement of Tracy referenced earlier. Whose
definitions are right or which way or which city of
(38:45):
Brunswick was the one that actually invented the barbecue side
dish of Brunswick sto and my family. We also made
it in a way that it was the entree. So yeah, yeah,
um so yeah. That you will not have to listen
to us a and its smoked over hickory for fifteen
times with this. But we do want to do though,
is note an outlier in all of that, which is
(39:07):
Kansas City Barbecue. Most there was there was division in
people's responses. This is why there are fisticuffs at barbecue.
Uh So, most of the regional barbecue styles stick to
meet from one kind of animal, maybe two. They might
have several signature preparations of that thing, but it's usually
one thing. In Kansas City, though, they barbecue everything. Henry Perry,
(39:31):
who was born in Memphis, is nicknamed the father of
Kansas City barbecue. In nineteen seventeen, he ran a holiday
ad encouraging people to call on him for all their
barbecued meats that included possum, groundhog, raccoon, beef, pork, and mutton. Uh.
You might not find all of those on a menu
today in Kansas City, but in generally you will find
(39:52):
way more meat variety than you will in the traditional
barbecues of other places. Restaurants are not the only thing
have had such a huge influence on barbecue. For most
of the dish's history, it's been all about cooking meat
slowly over low or indirect heat. But today when people
say they're having a barbecue, they could be talking about,
i know, cooking on a grill with the flame right
(40:14):
under what they're cooking in their own backyard. And that's
really a trend that started all the way back in
the nineteen twenties when architects and designers started building barbecues
in new homes. Uh. At first these were permanent, raised
brick structures, and then portable grills became a thing not
long after that. The heat was a lot more direct
than in a traditional barbecue pit that had been around
(40:36):
for hundreds of years at that point. Um. But for
folks who feel like barbecue should not ever be used
as a synonym for grill, that's a usage that goes
all the way back to about the twenties. So we're
almost that a hundred years of people saying that charcoal brackets, incidentally,
also go back to the nineteen twenties. They were patented
by Oran F. Stafford of the University of Oregon in
(40:56):
ninety six, and then Henry Ford realized that he had
used the wood waste from his automobile plants to make them. Uh.
They were not, however, a commercial success until the nineteen fifties,
and that is when Ford's briquette facility was bought and
renamed Kingsford, after the man that had sold forward his
timberland in the first place. Big Kingsford fan right here. Um.
(41:17):
And that is when Kingsford briquettes started to be sold
in grocery stores, and this person became very excited about it.
At about that same time, home barbecues also got another
jolt as post World War two economic expansion led people,
particularly white people, to move into the suburbs, so more
people had yards, and more yards had barbecues. The webber
(41:38):
grill made its debut in ninety six. Before that point,
home grills did not have lids, so people had to
fight with the wind all the time. Commercially bottled barbecue
sauces also started taking off in the forties and fifties
as well. Before that, it had been common for people
to just make their own. Then the gas grill, which
I know a lot of people think is heretical, that
(42:00):
made its debut in the nineteen sixties. That low and
slow cooked over fire barbecue started to actually struggle a
little bit in the nineteen seventies because it takes a
lot of hardwood to run a barbecue restaurant, and it
got harder and harder to come by and more and
more expensive, and laws that were meant to protect the
environment also made it a lot more challenging to run
(42:21):
a business that required the constant burning of wood. Labor
costs were also on the rise during this time, and
fast food restaurants and home grills had made other foods
like hamburgers and hot dogs a lot more popular, but
that more traditional barbecue has really had a resurgence in
more recent years thanks to competitions and television shows and
(42:41):
just an overall restaurant boom and in some cases a
willingness to slow cook meat by other methods than over
hardwood smoke, which I know a lot of people have
strong feelings about. Brooklyn, New York, even has its own
barbecue now, which the Internet was really really ready. It's
to make fun of. When somebody tweeted a picture have
(43:02):
a very sad looking tray of it in March. None
of you saw this on Twitter. It was literally a
tray with what looked like maybe three pieces of biscuit,
two rolls in like a pickle. I think it's pretty sad.
The Internet was really ready to make fun of that. Yeah,
it was like the sad faced, humble figuring of plates.
It was not okay. It made you go, I'm sorry
(43:25):
animal that gave your life to make that it was.
That was basically the response that the internet had. Uh.
And that is our brief history of Barbecue. Thank you
guys so much for being an amazing Thank you, Thank
you so much to everybody who came out for this show.
(43:45):
All three of these audiences were just amazing. Yep. I
want to tour Texas every time because they were fantastic.
But we also want to make sure that we thank
the staff at the North Door in Austin, Sons of Herman,
Holland Dallas, and Secret Group in Houston all for howing
us and being incredibly lovely and sweet and making this
just an incredibly fun trip. And also thanks so much
(44:06):
to Headcount for being with us for part of the
tour to register people to vote and to provide other
voter information. They are awesome. We've worked with them on
all of our tours so far and we love having them. Yes,
they're Uh. It makes me so happy every time I
see them. Uh just thrills me that we get to
have them at our shows. Uh. Do you have a
(44:26):
little bit of listener mailed around this one? Up? I
sure do. This is from Charlotte. Charlotte says, Hi, Holly
and Tracy, I attended your Houston Live show last night
and it was a delight. Thank you so much for
coming to Houston and sharing your wonderful selves with us
for an evening. Before I lived in Houston, I lived
in Chicago, near the south side of the city, and
I was wondering if in your explorations of regional barbecue
(44:48):
you'd come across Chicago barbecue. I think the story of
barbecue on the South Side is really interesting because it's
largely the product of the Great Migration. As African American
families moved north, they brought barbecue with them and adapted
it to the new urban environment of Chicago, exchanging outdoor
pits for aquarium smokers basically metal and glass tanks where
(45:08):
the meat is cooked. Charlotte then gave us a couple
of links about that no shade to my current home,
but Chicago barbecue is just as delicious as barbecue farther south,
and I believe it tells an important story about how
food culture adapts to and reflects larger changes in the
historical and social environment. Thank you again. I hope you
enjoyed your time in Texas, Charlotte. Thank you so much. Charlotte.
(45:30):
That seemed like an incredibly appropriate email to share. For
the list of real segment of this episode, I did
find a little bit about Chicago barbecue. We talked about this,
uh in the live show during our ad break time
and during the Q and a s that we do
after the show at almost every stop. I originally had
plans to talk about all of the major regional styles
(45:52):
of barbecue in that episode, and we mentioned it briefly
in this one. That turned out to just not be
entirely feasible because there are a lot of them, and
in the context of an audio podcast, the ingredients and
such start to sound a little bit repetitive. UH, So
we did not get into that. But if you're interested
(46:12):
in that kind of information, there is so much stuff
on the web. If you google regional barbecue styles, you
will find lots of different thoughts from various folks about
which ones are the most delicious and and what their
experiences are with them, and lots of articles that highlight
the various regional styles and how they came to be,
(46:34):
which they all have very cool stories, but not ones
that we could uh and really do justice too in
a live show like that. And I also wanted to
shout out to the various folks we've We've heard from
several people who were planning to come to the podcast,
but we're prevented by various circumstances, and we certainly appreciate
you all. Also, do not feel badly if you had
(46:55):
to miss the show because something happened. Uh. Really, you
were there in spirit and now you get to listen
to the episode as an episode of the podcast. So
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, we're at history podcast that I
heart radio dot com, and then we're also all over
social media. Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter,
(47:15):
and Instagram. You can come to our website, which is
missed in History dot com, where you'll find show notes
of all the episodes Holly and I have worked on together,
and the ones for this include the links to all
the things that we read, the books that were part
of it, all of that. Uh. And you can also
get a searchable archive of every episode ever on our website,
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
the iHeart radio app, and anywhere else you get a podcast.
(47:42):
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com