When I think about traditional barbecue as practiced by Native Americans, I picture smaller cuts of meat being smoked on a raised framework over a slow fire, or large chunks of meat wrapped up and cooked in trenches filled with burning hardwood coals. History has shown me that some Native Americans had a third way […]
Some Thoughts on Barbecue and Love
Dearly beloved, we are gathered in this post to celebrate the union of love and barbecue. With the summer wedding season in full swing, love is in the air—and it is increasingly followed by the perfume of burning wood and smoking meat. Once confined to the South, more and more wedding rehearsal dinners and receptions across the […]
Does a Clambake Count as Barbecue?
Trying to define barbecue often sets off a fireworks display that rivals anything you saw on the 4th of July. In the spirit of stoking that fire, I ask, should the New England clambake fit under barbecue’s big tent? Though barbecue is now the consensus meal for Independence Day celebrations in much of the country, it’s […]
Bison—Barbecue’s Next Frontier?
July is National Bison Month, and bison meat is roaming in from barbe-culture’s fringes to its mainstream. However, barbecue purveyors tend to offer just bison ribs and forsake the rest of the animal. (You may have had a bison burger—they’re pretty tasty for such a lean meat—but that is, of course, not barbecue.) There’s a lesson to […]