Soul food
Any South African describing what a braai is to someone who doesn’t speak the local lingo would probably automatically substitute the word “barbecue”. After all, even an Australian or an American can relate to that. To the English it would probably bring back memories of cooking pork sausages (“bangers”) while huddling under an umbrella and choking on the smoke of a badly made fire.
No South African worth their salt would even consider what the Americans do – grilling vienna sausages and hamburger patties – a real braai. But that merely illustrates the lack of understanding of different nation’s cultures – because wieners and burgers on a gas grill is not barbecue. Barbecue – or BBQ – is something totally different, especially to a Texan or a Southerner. What’s been described above is grilling. BBQ is serious business!
Cooking meat over a fire is something man has done since he first wore skins, communicated by grunting, whacked things over the head with stone hand axes or wooden clubs and caught food by laying traps for woolly Mammoths. Grilling is nothing new. So where did barbecuing come from?
It’s believed to have originated around the Caribbean. When the Spaniards “discovered” that America was on the other side of the ocean and was just ripe for the plucking and the plundering, they also found some native peoples. These indigenous inhabitants had developed a way of preserving meat by drying it out over smoky fires. Not only did this help prolong the shelf life, it prevented it from spoiling and becoming infested with nasty bugs. These Caribbean natives had a word for what they did: barba- coa. It is widely believed that this is the origin of the word barbecue.
Time magazine reported in 2009 that the real deal southern BBQ involves indirect heat, usually a wood fire, and a lot of patience because cooking times were anything from 12 to 18 hours. And pork is generally the preferred meat. There are numerous reasons for that too. Pigs were introduced to the Americas by the Spanish colonists who settled in what is now South Carolina in the late 1500’s. Pigs were a low maintenance meat source. They could roam free and forage in the wild and, when the colonists needed meat, they were relatively easy to catch.
Having caught the hog, the whole beast would be utilised – and that feeds into the second key element of BBQ, the social and sociable nature of the tradition. Processing a pig is a task that requires lots of hands. So neighbours would invariably have been invited to assist. Large numbers of people could be fed in a rather convivial event involving fire, smoke, laughter and sharing. Tough cuts could be rendered tender by long, slow cooking and the use of vibrant spices and seasonings – cayenne pepper, molasses, vinegar, tomato ketchup, black pepper and salt.
Neighbourhood barbecues were fairly common when groups of people got together during the American colonial period but it was the decades preceding the Civil War which really laid the foundations for the modern practice. Southern plantation bosses and owners would frequently hold festive barbecues for their slaves. During the colonial period the free ranging pigs were quite lean and stringy.
Once folks started farming them and fattening them up with corn, southern pork became more of a staple food. And more hogs meant more BBQs.
Barbecues were almost ubiquitous at church picnics as it was popular and a relatively inexpensive way of feeding large numbers of people. Naturally politicians were quick to realise what a bonus this was and BBQ became a staple of political rallies. (And in the finest tradition of opportunism, many people simply went along for the free food!) To this day, church and political barbecues remain a core tradition in many Southern communities. “Barbecue is the dish which binds together the taste of both the people of the big house and the poorest occupants of the back end of the broken-down barn” wrote journalist Jonathan Daniels in the mid-1900s.
BBQ joints became more formalised when the practice grew from just being a one-man operation, conducted on weekends to something resembling a restaurant. Gone were the days of the corrugated iron roof and concrete floors. Along came tables and chairs – and with the automobile and the mass movement of people, barbeque spread far and wide throughout the continental United States.
One source of information, Egerton, stated that: “Perhaps because much of its trade consisted of take-out orders, the barbecue restaurant was an interracial meeting place long before the forced integration of the 1950’s and 1960’s.” But segregation existed and even gave rise to oft-quoted case law in America, namely that of Newman v. Piggy Park Enterprises. The court ruled that a chain of five barbecue restaurants (Piggy Park Enterprises) unlawfully discriminated against African-American patrons.
There are four broad styles of barbecue according to Time magazine: North Carolina; Memphis, Tennessee; Kansas City and Texas.
In North Carolina the whole hog is smoked in a vinegar-based sauce while Memphis, Tennessee, is renowned for pulled pork shoulder with a sweet tomato-based sauce that is either eaten on its own or heaped in a generous pile atop a hamburger bun as a sandwich. Kansas City folks prefer the ribs cooked in a dry rub while Texan BBQ is beef, not pork – and that beef is generally brisket.
“Because barbecue doesn’t require expensive cuts of meat – why bother when you’re just going to slather it in sauce and cook it ’til it falls off the bone? – it became a dietary staple for impoverished Southern blacks, who frequently paired it with vegetables like fried okra and sweet potatoes,” wrote Time magazine. “The first half of the 20th century saw a mass migration of African-Americans from the rural South to Northern cities, and as they moved, they took their recipes with them. By the 1950’s, black-owned barbecue joints had sprouted in nearly every city in America. Along with fried chicken, corn bread and hush puppies, barbecue came to be known as a ‘soul food’ dish. To this day, there is a strong connection between the cuisine and the African-American community.”
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