If you take a one and one half inch thick rib eye steak, rub it with garlic, salt, and pepper and pop it on a hot grill over a “one-Mississippi” charcoal fire for about six minutes, then turn it over and let it stay four and a half or five minutes more, you’ll have a great steak. But it won’t be barbeque. The Little League hamburgers or Fourth of July hot dogs are not barbeque, either. They are all “grilled meats”.
From my point of view, and for my purposes in this epistle, barbeque is defined as any meat cooked over low heat provided by a wood fire. Charcoal is a wood product, and will qualify under the definition above, but good barbeque should have the flavor of the wood cooked in and charcoal doesn’t have a consistent taste. I like to think that barbequing was invented to take the less desirable cuts of meat and make them more palatable. That may or may not be true, but, as it’s worked out, most commercial barbeque is done with the cheaper cuts of meat.
They tell me that the word “barbeque” (barbecue is more popular spelling) is from the French. Seems the French fur trappers would split a large animal from “whiskers to tail” place it on a spit, and cook it over a slow fire. Whisker is “barbe” in French, and tail is “queue”, so “barbe” to “queue” became barbequeue. Maybe. The French have been known to take credit, whether or not it is due. Being from Texas, I’d hate to give credit for the invention of barbeque to anyone from outside the state. I'd really like to get the credit up around Lubbock, but Texans were barbequing long before the Comanches let us have the panhandle. I know the French are good cooks, but I just don’t think they invented barbeque. Maybe they just named it.
The more likely story, in my mind, has to do with a rancher named Benito Quintilla, who, right after the Civil War, established a ranch down in the “brush and pear” country south of San Antonio. Ben was an outgoing and friendly fellow who loved people, and loved to party. Several times a year, he would invite the neighbors over to his place for a three or four day affair, singing, dancing, laughing, eating, and drinking. Depending upon the occasion, Ben would cook chickens, turkeys, goats, pigs, steers, or all the above. He constructed a rock-lined fire pit with an ingenious rack system for this purpose. The meat was suspended over mesquite coals until it was tender and juicy, with the unmistakable flavor of the wood cooked through and through.
Big Foot Wallace, a bit long of tooth by then, King Fisher, resplendent in his Bengal Tiger vest and chaps, and Austin High Sheriff Ben Thompson were always there. Several other notables of the day were also regulars at Benito’s place. The whole country heard about the parties, the food, the music, and the dancing. Everyone was anxious to go out to Ben Quintilla’s ranch, which soon became known simply by its brand, the Bar-B-Q.
Out in Hawaii, and all over the Pacific Rim for that matter, the natives have a quaint custom. When they hear that visitors with lots of money are about to show up on a steamship, everybody takes off work and gets ready. They build a fire on the beach and put lava rocks in it and get them red hot. Then they dig a big hole, put the rocks in, cover them with sand and banana leaves, put in a pig (split from barbe to queue), add fruits and veggies, cover the whole thing with banana leaves, and put sand back on top. Next day, when their ship comes in, so to speak, the natives take off most of their clothes, dig up the pig and serve it with rum drinks. They play electric guitars, light torches, and dance the hula until way late at night. The tourist's drink Samoan Fog Cutters, eat the succulent pork, eye the hula dancers, and say, “Boy, Mildred, they sure ain’t got nothing like this back in Little Rock.” They call that a Luau.
On the East Coast, around Chesapeake Bay and on up to Cape Cod, they do essentially the same thing. Here, they let a fire burn down in a pit, then line it with seaweed, add clams, mussels, a lobster or two, corn, onions, and potatoes. They cover it all with seaweed, then dirt, and leave it alone until the next evening. Then the boys and girls show up with blankets, dig up the food, eat and play music. They drink, sing songs, and snuggle up in the blankets until way late at night. They call that a Clam Bake.
At the X.I.T. Cowboy Reunion, up in Dalhart, there are some folks that spend all year gathering chunks of wood, and piling it up on a vacant lot. They get whatever they can find, an old barn door, a mesquite bush stump, some old fence posts, that kind of thing. If you’ve ever been to Dalhart, you know why it takes all year to gather enough wood. Finally, a guy shows up with a backhoe and digs a long trench, like he’s going to lay a water line or something. The ditch is five or six feet deep, maybe two feet wide, and great long-maybe a hundred yards or so. They throw all that wood in the ditch, and set it on fire. Others sack up big chucks of beef in wet burlap bags (we used to call them tow sacks) and when the fire burns down, they throw the meat in, on top of the coals. The ditch is covered with corrugated metal, and that’s covered with dirt. Then everybody goes somewhere and cleans up and leaves the meat to cook for about twenty-four hours. They all get dressed up in tight blue jeans and boots, serve the beef with all the trimmings, play Bob Wills music, drink, eat, and dance until way late at night. They call that a Barbeque.
I am going to stop now, and save the rest for future episodes. I had thought I could write a bit about the history of barbeque, a few notes about backyard smoking, and finish with a quick tour of the famous, and not so famous, barbeque joints in Texas. There is no way I can do that in one letter. I’ll have to do at least two, but more likely three. I will say something about the rituals and showmanship involved in barbeque cook offs, a bit about backyard barbequing, and a tour of barbeque joints in Texas. I will explore the “pit”. How did it come to be called a pit? Did it get its name from the aforementioned pits in the letter. Does it matter? I will probably tell you about the best barbeque cook I ever met. He cooked a chicken so well that it won best brisket at a world class barbeque cook-off.
One more thing. Upon reflection, maybe I misjudged the Frenchmen. The three affairs I mentioned in this conversation all had several things in common. One, they slow cooked some type of meat in a pit. Two, a bunch of attractive, healthy young people got together and ate, danced, and snuggled until “way late at night”. Maybe all this has less to do with “barbe”, and more to do with “queue”. Y'all stay tuned.
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