Definitely means different things in different parts of the country. Generally the "Pit Masters" will define it as "low and slow" method of cooking and agree there's variances on whether you use a thick or thin, tomato or mayo sauce, or a dry rub.

Many consider grilling as BBQ. Some, like the Neelys think that adding BBQ sauce makes it "BBQ". To me, neither is true BBQ.

Plus it also depends to what you're referring, whether noun or verb. If you want to go out and get some BBQ, I expect something like ribs, pulled pork (or beef) slow cooked chicken or the like. And to BBQ some ribs, I like a dry rub and long slow cooking.

Braising ribs and the like is not true BBQ, it's braising, though I like braised ribs. And the "Texas Cheat" (wrapping partially cooked meats in foil to keep them from drying out and to force a braise) used by more amateur pit crews (including the Neelys) is not BBQ either to the old time Pit Masters.

Some even refer to a grill as getting out "the BBQ". There's lots of misnomers out there.

Oh, and sauce is a condiment. Popular with many but is not a requirement for BBQ. I used to like "BBQ" drenched in sauce, but now I prefer the taste of the meats and a good dry rub to augment and season it and possibly a little sauce on the side.

If anyone followed America's Next Great Restaurant, it showed the confusion over BBQ and grilling. The hillbillies on there that wanted to do "BBQ", didn't understand the difference until they were nearly booted out. And while they did do what sounded like a great BBQ pulled pork, they had trouble understanding how long it takes to do it right. Then it was the business of grilling something, putting sauce on it and call it BBQ.

We have grilling and we have barbeque. If you are invited to a BBQ around here you can expect large hunks of meat...often a whole hog but also maybe a whole brisket or slabs and slabs of ribs and a couple of cookers....sometimes made out of half an oil drum sometimes fancier. The meat has been treated to a rub and often generous sloshings of "stuff" while cooking....the recipes for the "stuff" often a closely guarded secret.
I live in Iowa....home of the Iowa Pork Producers annual cookout and various other regional pork cooking contests and "fests"....like rib-fest and porkberger cook off and BBQ rib contests.
When invited to someone's home, they might say..."come on over for some steaks on the grill, or I have a leg of lamb I am going to grill....or how about coming over for BBQ chicken...in which case you can bet on a red sauce.
But also you will see BBQ pork on a bun and you know durned well that pig never saw any wood fire or smoker or much of anything but the inside of en oven.
To answer your question...here, BBQ means either red sauce or slow cooked on a grill, with or without a dry rub and smoking hickory, or meat cooked inside with a bottled red sauce...ugh!

Around here, BBQ is pork (usually shoulder) that is cooked long and slow over the fire (either wood, charcoal, or *gasp* gas grill. It is usually served off the bone and may be pulled into shreds or chopped coarse or fine - up to the person doing the chopping. Fries, slaw, and hushpuppies with lots of sweet tea accompany the BBQ pork.

"A BBQ" is a cookout out of doors on a grill or over a wood fire and can be grilled pork chops or tenderloin, beef steaks, fish (for fish tacos), hamburgers/hot dogs, chicken, or other meats or seafood of your choice. Around these parts, "a BBQ" usually means you will be offered baked beans, potato or pasta salad, tossed salad, sliced tomatoes, baked Vidalia onions, chips, pickles, and other foods, with maybe homemade ice cream, strawberry shortcake, s'mores, etc. for dessert. Beverages are more sweet tea, beer, wine, lemonade, etc.

So, if you are invited for "a barbecue" you may not have BBQ pork, but there will be cooking outside and lots of good food, so don't turn down an invitation to either!

Teresa - yep, the one in NC

When I was a kid, BBQ meant sloppy joes, the terms were interchangeable, although most people called the sandwich a BBQ, not a sloppy joe.

Now it means pretty much anything cooked on the grill, with or without BBQ sauce, although chicken can be done in the oven and sauced and it's still barbequed chicken to me.

Annie

I'm from Memphis, and BBQ is pulled pork sandwiches or pork ribs. I've been in California long enough to not cringe when others say BBQ meaning a cook-out with grilled foods. I will accept any invitations. I still find BBQ beef ribs to be almost inedible, I'm afraid.

Here's a rather good guide to regional sauce styles.

Here is a link that might be useful: Regional BBQ sauces

"------Folks can't even agree on how it is spelled. Is it Barbecue, Barbeque, Barbaque, BBQ, B-B-Que, Bar-B-Q, Bar-B-Que, or Bar-B-Cue? (Linguists and historians generally agree that the proper spelling is barbecue because it is derived from the word barbacoa, and that other spellings are colloquial.)----"

To me it means cooking on an open fire. Except chestnuts on an open fire is roasting.

Grilling, I guess you should have a grill.

dcarch

Up here, in BC, "going to a barbecue" or "let's bbq" or "Dick and Jane had a bbq last night" means food cooked outside on a gas grill.

So I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover see?
I just refer to whatever I'm cooking, outside, in my smoker.

"Want to come over for the Stanley Cup Finals, Game One and I'll do up some pulled pork and slaw?" works for everyone, its inclusive.

Whereas demanding that they know what I mean when I phrase it as "Want to come over and watch the Vancouver Canucks lay waste to the pitiful, choking, dirty, no good Boston Bruins in Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals while I do up some barbeque seasoned with the salty tears of Bruin's fans collected only from the south side of the city and harvested in a sustainable manner, carried here by a free range courier service whose driver went to only the best kindergarten and preparatory schools." is kind of pretentious, don't you think?

If I'm invited to a BBQ, I expect something cooked over a grill, these days most likely gas, but could be wood or charcoal.

However I've always considered "true" BBQ something that's cooked low and slow over wood or coals.

If I see a recipe or something on a menu that has the word BBQ in it, I'll assume that regardless of cooking method, it has a flavor profile resembling BBQ'd food.

Personally, true BBQ is not near and dear to my heart, so I don't care what you call your food. I just think that if you sous vide a hunk of meat and finish it by searing it in the oven, or with a torch, or grill it over raging coals, and call any one of those BBQ, there's little difference than someone pan-frying a chicken cutlet, throwing it on a roll and dousing it BBQ sauce, and calling it a BBQ chicken sandwich.

LOL, Metaxa, I guess that IS a little pretentious. But don't take my word for it, to me a "barbeque" can be a sloppy joe! (grin)

Nope, true BBQ is not near and dear to my heart either and I'd as soon have that sloppy joe or the chicken sandwich with BBQ sauce as true "low and slow, cook it a long time with smoky stuff" BBQ. I did have some excellent beef brisket at a BBQ place when I was in Texas, but it wasn't any better to me than nice rare piece of ribeye, slapped on a smoking hot cast iron pan. (shrug)

Annie

My birthday is early August and I WANT A SMOKER. Just told Hubs for the upteenth time. We won't go to Sonny's and there just isn't anywhere else. I love smoked turkey, smoked trout, smoked salmon (his love, but that's fine by me), and smoked chicken. Darn it, I want a smoker. I don't care if you call it BBQ or whatever. Period.

Hope you have had a great birthday, Annie!

Arlene, it's been a HOT birthday! 87F here and I had DQ ice cream for lunch!

Elery has a smoker and I like smoked fish, home smoked bacon, etc., but I don't necessarily think smoked fish or making homemade bacon is BBQ...

Annie

My understanding of BBQ is the same as of LindaC and it's an American dish. Grilling is cooking meat/veggies on a grill using charcoal or gas. Smoking is smoking, not grilling. Cooking in an open fire to me is roasting.

Asian, in general, use the grill and roast method. We slice the meat thinly, marinate and grill them. I wouldn't call that BBQ, that would sound too... non-Asian.

To me, BBQ means someone else is cooking because I am not going to go to all of that trouble to slow cook meat for that long. In Texas, BBQ means beef and may or may not include a sauce, but if it has sauce, it will not be the sweet sauce that is popular in NC and Memphis. I do not remember ever having BBQ pork in Texas, although I have had sausage and chicken at barbecues there. My favorite BBQ pork is made in Yucatan and is called cochinita pibil and always has achiote as an important ingredient. It has a very tart/bitter flavor (from the Seville oranges) that I like. It is difficult to find those oranges here, but if I want to replicate the flavor, I will add limes. I will gag on any BBQ that is remotely sweet.

BBQ is something that I buy - not make.

Lars

Posted by ntt_hou "-------Asian, in general, use the grill and roast method. We slice the meat thinly, marinate and grill them. I wouldn't call that BBQ, that would sound too... non-Asian."

I just talked to a Chinese friend.

Roasted pork, roasted pig, roast duck, etc. All are called in Cinese fire-burned pork, fire-burned pig, fire burned-duck, etc.
dcarch

KC BBQ...Arthur Bryant....the smell for blocks around...Oh My!

Dcarch, since I'm not Chinese and while reading your post, my brain was gearing in English. I had to translate over to my native language.

In my native language, Vietnamese, we have 2 distinguish words for grilling and for roasting. Grilling is cooking with charcoals on a grill or meat sandwiched in grilling case. Roasting is literally translated as "turning". As when meat is skewed and turning in open fire, like campers do.

The Vietnamese word for grilling, n�ớng, is also used for the oven too. Sometimes, we specified method for grilling is used, charcoal grilling or oven grilling.

The word for roasting in Vietnamese is 'quay', turn/turning.

Grilling = nuong (Vietnamese)

LOL Met and good luck to your Canucks......as hard as it is for me to say that.

Around here BBQ means anything cooked on a grill. Actually the term refers to the grill itself and/or to the method, not to the actual food.

I know when we travel trough the South BBQ refers to the actual food.

To me, if you cook meat on the grill or anywhere else, for that matter and put sauce on it, it is barbecue. If you don't put sauce on it...just grilled.

To me, BBQ (the verb) is the act of cooking chicken, pork, or beef products outdoors where these meats are then "flavored" with smoke that is generated during the cooking process from the meat juices and/or burning wood. "Pit" BBQ refers specifically to the technique and product that is produced by cooking at a low temperature (usually Because the chemistry involved in both of these BBQ'ing operations is so different......the prodcuts that are produced will taste completely different. To my taste....."low and slow" is to die for good when it is done properly. That is because of the absolute majic that occurs during the breakdown of the collagen and fats contained in the meat....especially beef and pork. On the other hand, "hot and fast" grilling BBQ develops its flavors primarily from certain "caramelization ractions" that can ONLY OCCUR at a higher cooking temperatures.

Sauces are usually added as an additonal flavor enhancement component to the BBQ'ed products.
BBQ sauce is only a seasoning (like salt and pepper) and is absolutely not necessary to produce excellent tasting BBQ. In fact, to many people (me included) it is a SIN to cover up the great flavor of a brisket or pork ribs that are cooked "low and slow" to perfection. Most sauces will acutally hide that wonderful flavor that took hours to produce. it is like putting ketchup on an excellent piece of prime rib..........rather silly to do so IMO.

Now BBQ sauce makes lots of sense to me when grilling. The higher cooking temperature can turn the sweetners in BBQ sauces into a wonderful sticky gooey lip smacking mess. "low and slow" cooked BBQ cannot duplicate this texture and flavor component because of the low temperature involved.

FYI....... Yesterday I cooked four slabs of pork ribs in my electric smoker (Smokin Tex brand) at 225 degrees F for 4 hours. This type smoker does not use a water pan and will produce true pit-style BBQ. I used one piece of "apple wood" that was the size of a chicken egg to ligthly flavor the meat. The ribs were seasoned with Tony's Mo Spice Cajun Seasoning mix "just before" they were put into the smoker. After 4 hours (no turning or attendance needed) these ribs were absolutely beautiful and ready to eat. However, we wanted "sticky and messy" ribs and for that you need grilling temperatures and a sweet BBQ sauce.

Sooooo........I got me some Kraft Honey (not honey mustard) BBQ sauce from out of the pantry. I added some KC Masterpiece original sauce to it........and then I added the TOP SECRET ingredient that makes ANY BBQ sauce MUCH MO BETTA!!! I'm talkin' bout Jalepeno Pepper Jelly. That is what will make any grilled BBQ become so sticky and goey that you will need to pass out rolls of paper towels. People.....the combination of first cooking those ribs "low and slow" ligthly flavored with applewood smoke....followed by a quick "hot and fast" grilling produced a "sticky and goey" product that was to die for good.

BBQ (noun) produced either "low and slow" or "hot and fast" or even cooked indoors coated or simmered in a sauce......it's all good and it's all BBQ. With the new type smokers and grills that are sold today, anyone can produce BBQ products that are much better than whan can be had at most BBQ restaurants. Try the combination BBQ (verb) technique I've just posted and see for yourself.

Cookshack, Bradley, Masterbuilt, and Smokin Tex all make great electric smokers that will produce true pit-style BBQ (ie. controlled low temperature, and no water pan). And IMO, it is hard to beat both Weber gas and Weber charcoal grills.

Dan
Semper Fi-cus

According to my extensive and authoritative knowledge in homo sapiens culinary archeology; history of cooking goes something like this:

1. Sushi style of cooking was the very first fashionable multicultural cooking style. It was practiced well before the Paleolithic age.

2. Then came zapping food with electricity. This was discovered millions of years ago before microwave was utilized. After lightning struck, plants and animals would be instantly fried. However, it was not certain when pop corn was invented.

3. Sous vide cooking was discovered around the same time. Millions of year ago, it was found that animals accidentally drown themselves in hot springs tasted pretty good. Actually, to this day, cooking food in hot springs is still practice by a few cultures such as in Japan.

2. Then came BBQ, or roasting. After lightning struck, there would be fire and cooking animals on open fire was discovered before there were rocket scientists and leaf blowers. There was no grilling, and you know why.

dcarch