Is there anything similar to American BBQ in Europe?

[paul_alex]

Some scientists estimate fire has been used to cook food for at least 1.6 million years.

I don't think any one group can claim to have "invented" bbq cooking.

True. I also just read The Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook and it confirms Germans/Czechs used to smoke sausage + pork loins in the old world. I am guessing the excess of beef led to the smoking of brisket, clod, and beef ribs. Doesn't seem like they need anybody to teach them to smoke meats.

 

[olaf]

My opinion would be that there was definitely a black influence in recent history as this was a time when we moved most of our cooking indoors while slaves were still outside. Still doesn't change the fact that our early diets would have been mostly vegetarian. I doubt that slaves got very much meat to cook or the time to slow roast anything. Maybe after the war

 

[paul_alex]

My opinion would be that there was definitely a black influence in recent history as this was a time when we moved most of our cooking indoors while slaves were still outside. Still doesn't change the fact that our early diets would have been mostly vegetarian. I doubt that slaves got very much meat to cook or the time to slow roast anything. Maybe after the war

I think I read that new sanitary regulations around the turn of the 20th century led to people adopting indoor smokers and the German-Czech meat market model won out over the open pit BBQ done by African Americans.

Slaves in the South did do the roasting for big events. But I really doubt they did all the cooking of roasted meats and there was certainly input from their owners into what they cooked.

 

[51Phantom]

I love watching Pitmaster X videos on Youtube. He is in the Netherlands I believe.

 

[paul_alex]

Barbecue in Black and White

Cowgirls are taking turns climbing onto the stage and turning around to display their denim-clad derrieres to the audience. It's the Miss Blue Jeans Contest at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo barbecue cook-off. When a woman wiggles provocatively, the men wave their cowboy hats in the air...

www.houstonpress.com

I guess whites were never pitmasters?

 

[littleboss]

True. I also just read The Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook and it confirms Germans/Czechs used to smoke sausage + pork loins in the old world. I am guessing the excess of beef led to the smoking of brisket, clod, and beef ribs. Doesn't seem like they need anybody to teach them to smoke meats.

Yeah that is true for sure, since both Germans and Czechs wont miss sausage on their barbecues.

 

[Humo18]

Even Central TX BBQ has its origins in slaves?

What about whole hog? Didn't the Germans in the Carolinas come from a tradition of roasting whole pigs (spanferkel) or individual cuts (mutzbraten)? Did the Spanish have cohinillo before arriving in the new world?

Yes the spanish roasted suckling pigs (cochinillo) over open fire way before Columbus (or Vikings?) Arrived in America. Suckling and pig roasting has been recorded as far back as the Roman era in frescos art.

 

[negolien]

HAHAHHAHAH not touching the slave part of this thread with a pole except to say pretty sure people were simmering crappy pieces of meat long before American slaves were around. I guess he could be talking about Egyptian slaves which would be us Jews /shrug. Poor education system in the us rears its
head again lol

I would be interested in roasts Europeans do. We got Uk and down under types, but I don't see many members for the continent. Do we have a breakdown of members?

 

[Smoke-Chem BBQ]

I received for Christmas a copy of "Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue", by Adrian Miller. If you want a scholarly treatment of American BBQ, this is for you. 300 pages, lots of footnotes, the 'references' section is 17 or 18 pages, single spaced, and there are a few recipes thrown in. I'm enjoying it.

Black Smoke

I'm not all the way through the book yet, but I think the author's thesis is that while African Americans may be the single largest contributor to the evolution of what we now call BBQ in the US, there have been many, many important contributors along the way. He gives a lot of credit to the indigenous people in North America, and I think every other contributing group mentioned in this thread (German, Czech, other European, African, etc) is discussed. Every culture that cooks meat over flame has made contributions to the art, though the extent to which those contributions influence American BBQ is quite variable.

 

[PolishDeli]

This thread again.
Let's call a spade a spade. The OP is obsessed with finding a european orgin story for bbq, while erasing african and indigenous contributions from the art form.
It's dumb.

American history can be taught through the lens of bbq. It is an amalgamation of culinary traditions with substituded ingredients. Why is that a bad thing?