With its smoky, slow-roasted meat, it’s no wonder barbecue is America’s most beloved meal. But what is the origin of our favorite backyard cooking technique? This week we take a look back to the roots of barbeque, a style of cuisine that has shaped Kansas City’s culinary landscape since the early 1900s.
When Western European settlers first arrived in North America, they brought their homeland’s roasting and smoking methods with them. As they settled in pocket communities, they adapted these techniques to their local ingredients, and the American barbecue tradition was born.
The term barbecue derives from the word barbacoa, a type of elevated wooden platform that Native Americans used to preserve or roast their wild hogs. Columbus encountered barbacoas in the Caribbean when he first arrived, and the use of this method spread from there to the Americas.
On plantations, the American barbecue tradition developed in tandem with slavery. Both the white settlers and the freed slaves were big fans of barbecue, and George Washington’s diaries are aflutter with references to attending barbecues. As the nation expanded west along the Gulf of Mexico and north along the Mississippi River, the barbecue culture moved with it, and it eventually embraced African-American communities in the South. Black pitmasters were able to pass their knowledge of the art on to younger generations, and barbecue became an important facet of Southern culture.
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