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Schriftliche Hausarbeit zur Zulassung zum 1. Staatsexamen im Fach Englisch

American Barbecue Culture: Evolution, Challenge and Fate of its Regional Diversity in both the United States and Germany.

Universitt Regensburg Philosophische Fakultt IV Institut fr Amerikanistik und Anglistik Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel Verfasser: Sebastian Gotzler Fcherverbindung: Lehramt Gymnasium Englisch/Geschichte Matrikelnummer: 1241300 1. April 2012

Adresse: Silberne Fischgasse 14 93047 Regensburg Telefon: 0176/24915463 Email: sgotzler@msn.com

1. Introduction..3 2. Defining Barbecue....6 2.1 A Short Guide to Cooking Techniques.6 2.2 Etymology.8 2.2.1 2.2.2 The Transformation from Barbacoa to Barbecue ...8 Barbecue A Noun or a Verb?...............................................................9

3. History of Barbecue11 3.1 Origin and Spreading from Colonial America to the American Revolution..11 3.2 Introduction of Barbecue into Germany.14 4. Regional Styles of Barbecue...19 4.1 Virginia The Cradle of Barbecue.21 4.2 North Carolina The Great Carolinian Barbecue-Schism.22 4.3 South Carolina The Mustard Belt25 4.4 Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky26 4.5 Tennessee The Supremacy of Memphis Barbecue30 4.6 Texas The Holy Trinity of Barbecue...32 4.7 Missouri - Kansas City and St. Louis.38 4.8 Other American States and Regions...42 4.8.1 4.8.2 4.8.3 Chicago Barbecued Street Food...43 California Fusion Barbecue45 New York City The Late Arrival of Barbecue.48

4.9 German Approach to American Barbecue50 5. Competitive Barbecue.53 5.1 Major American Barbecue Associations.56 5.2 The German Barbecue Competition Circuit...59 5.2.1 5.2.2 The German Barbecue Association59 The German Barbecue Championship60

6. Conclusion The Legacy of American Barbecue..63 7. Works Cited65

1. Introduction Barbecue is the quintessential American food, perhaps the only large enough to reconcile the lies and myths out of which the fabric of our national truth has been woven. Barbecue, then serves as a metaphor for American culture, bridging and embracing this nations various facets (Elie Smokestack 135). This quote form Louis Eric Elie raises the question why Barbecue as cuisine, commonly associated with the American South, of all notable American cuisines is considered to be the most appropriate and uniquely diverse representative of national and especially regional culture and identity in the United States, particularly in a time where the entire American diet is infamously associated with processed and artificial fast food specialties sold in national restaurant chains. The following will describe how this diversity of American styles of barbecue emerged, how they evolved, whether they still today show similar shades of unique regional variation or over time changed entirely and finally what impact the introduction of this completely alien food had on a non-American culture like Germany. The exact definition of barbecue has always been controversially, passionately and quasi-religiously discussed. Areas of disagreement include: (1) definition of the South; (2) definition of barbecue; (3) correct spelling of the word; (4) type of meat; (5) type of cut; (6) ingredients for sauce; (7) type of pit; (8) type of wood; (9) wet versus dry cooking; (10) (Elie Cornbread 61), and so forth. Therefore the first step to truly understand American barbecue is the attempt to eliminate any misconceptions about it. The first part of the paper is briefly dedicated to the explanation of both the proper cooking techniques and the etymology of the term barbecue itself. The technical questions involve the following concepts: the temperature zone of barbecue, suitable appliances, the fuel, adequate cuts of meat and the concepts of direct and indirect heat. The etymological part revolves around the origin of the term barbecue and its evolution from the early 16th century to our contemporary understanding. Also, the dispute whether barbecue is a verb or a noun has to be settled. Any serious study of barbecue must of necessity contain within it a wide range of insights about American history and culture (Elie Cornbread 4), especially to better understand its ongoing popularity and its regional diversification. The time frame of interest roughly lies between the discovery of the New World and the end of Colonial America. The introduction of Native American and Caribbean cooking to the Europeans, the adaptation and transformation of these techniques, especially through the introduction of non-indigenous flora and livestock like the swine, and most notably the abduction and enslavement of

thousands of black Africans who predominantly from then took on cooking barbecue for both themselves and their white masters shaped the way we understand barbecue as we know it today and its spreading throughout the United States and beyond. Since this paper also is intended to describe the idiosyncrasies of American barbecue in modern Germany, the history how this American classic got introduced to central Europe is examined. The main part of this paper focuses on the distinctive features of both barbecue in the United States and Germany. The mayor and traditional barbecue regions are without any doubt situated in the American South, basically the states of the Confederacy, and the Midwestern United States. Barbecue enthusiasts in these regions take pride in their particular way of preparing barbecue and passionately and stubbornly are involved in an intraregional dispute whose barbecue is the one and only way to do it right. There is probably no other food in the US that stirs up that kind of arguments and emotions. Robert Moss said, that no one has debates over which state serves the best chicken fingers (4). Taking this into account, one has to acknowledge, that these rivalries should not be taken too serious, because people from the South also understand that while barbecue generates distinctive interstate identities, they also agree, that barbecue is a food that unifies the vast expanse of the American South (Elie Cornbread 4) and sets them apart from the remainder of the United States. Those areas still should not be neglected. Even with the Southerners ridiculing the Yankees for their take on barbecue, one has to concede that especially in recent years, mainly through research and communication on the internet, people from the North showed great interest and effort in that matter and are trying to succeed in mastering what a Southerner would call true and good barbecue, not only through copying it but also by adding their own regional flavors to it. This evolution of barbecue from an entirely Southern matter to a cuisine that by now people all over the world create and consume, also begs the question whether barbecue, especially in its native regions, underwent a homogenization process. With the standardization of food to appeal to a broader customer base and the competition presented by national chains or recently upscale barbecue-themed restaurants, particularly small, family-run barbecue restaurants face the challenge whether to stick to their authentic, traditional and above all regional ways of cooking barbecue and probably lose business or to adjust to the demands. Barbecue in Germany might at first glance not fit into this whole scheme, but similar to northern pitmasters, the small scene of German barbecuers also takes great effort and ingenuity in cooking barbecue, although they face a range of difficulties of reproducing what they understand to be authentic American barbecue and may have to settle for suboptimal results. Nevertheless, barbecue enthusiast from Germany might also be as strange to a

Southerner as its counterpart from New England or California, but the true question is, if the Germans managed to develop their own, distinctive regional barbecue culture in a rather short amount of time. Mainly on the basis of a selection of representative cookbooks, anthropological works about barbecue and restaurant guides, these intraregional, intra-national and international varieties of barbecue will be analyzed. Especially recipes, preferences and availability of ingredients, different cooking techniques, menus in local barbecue restaurant and of course the history of how those traditions arose in a designated area, spread and probably changed in the course of time reveal the most ostensive picture of how barbecue is pursued throughout the US. Literature about German barbecue, however is almost non-existent. Therefore the main body of research has to be comprised of internet sources, to an extent personal experience and few cookbooks and magazines. On any given weekend, hundreds of enthusiastic barbecue teams are competing for prizes in cook-offs throughout the country. This quote from Mike Mills (165), a highly successful competitor himself, shows why not only cookbooks with recipes anybody can reproduce in his backyard or restaurants are the sole sources to define diversities in barbecue. Especially the fact, that those competitions take place all over the United States, makes competitive barbecue an indispensable source. Most of these competitions are administered by one or even more barbecue association with their own set of rules and certified judges. The rules and regulations of each association may differ a great deal in terms of judging and also what kinds of meat have to be turned in. This often depends on the origin of the designated association and thus has to be more precisely examined, since it also provides a deeper insight of regional features of barbecue. To rule out any misunderstandings in advance: most of the competitions in the US are sanctioned by the largest barbecue association, the Kansas City Barbecue Society. But with at least two different major barbecue associations, namely the International Barbecue Cookers Association (ICBA) and the Memphis Barbecue Network (MBN) and numerous smaller organizations, the KCBS is far from being a monopolistic sanctioning body. Drawing a representative picture of the circuit not only in the overwhelming Southern and Midwestern States, but also in the remainder of the United States with its rather young, but not less professional scene is the main goal here. Points of interest are the overall rules, its entrenchment within the local community, the composition of local and nonresidential participating teams and the attempt to provide a deeper insight what it takes for participants to compete successfully.

This begs the question, how the Germans attempt to emulate their American role models in terms of competitive barbecue. Dozens, maybe hundreds of German grill- and barbecue clubs do in fact exist, but only one takes on the task of organizing or sanctioning serious championships, the German Barbecue Association (GBA). Thus, the GBA is examined by not only comparing it to its American counterparts, which obviously sparked its formation, but also by its own distinctive characteristics and self-image which most of the time have to be accounted for by German culture, the struggle of introducing American barbecue to the German people who are largely not familiar with it and also concrete commercial interests. While, as mentioned above, Americans participate in numerous cook-offs with hundreds or thousands of teams, German barbecue competitions can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Nevertheless, those competitions, with the annual German Barbecue Championship being the most remarkable, provide a vivid contrast of how both the Germans either try to imitate the Americans in some respective fashions or emancipate themselves altogether, owed to certain German sensitivities. Since especially the German Barbecue Championship is a platform for every German barbecue team to compete, it is a picturesque example to describe if and how teams represent their regional culinary heritage and fuse their own styles of cooking with American barbecue. 2. Defining Barbecue 2.1 A Short Guide to Cooking Techniques Outside the Southern United States, even in countries which do not belong to the English language family, barbecue is most of the time synonymous with grilling. Actually, grilling and barbecue are two very different methods of preparing food that have very little in common. Grilling is probably the oldest and also most convenient way to cook food in human history. Only embers or open fire and a grate are required for directly grilling rather small, tender and flat cuts of meat in a short amount of time with temperatures above 250 Celsius (Brinkmann et al. 14). Larger cuts of meat or whole animals like chicken or turkeys are inapplicable for this method, because they would only burn on the outside and stay raw in the inside, a huge health hazard when cooking poultry. Indirect grilling on the other hand comes quite close to the concept of barbecuing, or how Steven Raichlen puts it: a hybrid method (Bible 4). The meat is generally placed above a dripping pan with the coals being located at the periphery and are optionally enriched with

wood chips to create a typical barbecue flavor. Similar to a convection oven, the food is cooked through circulating heat in a closed system, most of the time a kettle grill. The temperatures generally lie between 140 and 180 Celsius (Brinkmann et al. 15), what makes it possible to cook larger chunks of meat or whole birds over several hours.

Figure 1: Weber 22.5-Inch One-Touch Gold Kettle Grill The essence of barbecue can be summarized with only two words: low and slow. Low meaning the temperature, about 90 to 120 Celsius (Brinkmann et al. 15), and slow the course of time which can take up to 20 hours. The heat source, usually smoldering logs of wood or also charcoal, is not in the cooking chamber, but attached to it in a special side fire box. The smoke and ideally constant low heat are ideal to cook all kinds of large pieces of meat, especially cheaper and tougher cuts which end up succulent and tender at the end of the process because of the softening of the connective tissue. The devices usually associated with cooking barbecue are called pits or smokers. The price of top of the line pits with all kinds of appliances easily can run up to 5- or even 6-digit numbers, but barbecue can be produced in an enormous number of different appliances like worn out, modified oil drums, ceramic charcoal cookers and with some effort even in conventional kettle grills.

Figure 2, 3 and 4: typical offset barbecue pit, self-constructed Ugly Drum Smoker and a ceramic Big Green Egg-smoker

Smoking is often considered toe be the same as barbecuing. The processes are closely related, the slight difference however is, that smoking works with different temperatures. The two distinguishable methods of smoking are cold smoking with temperatures ranging from 15 to 25 and hot smoking with a temperature from 60 up to 100 Celsius (Brinkmann et al. 17). Both are primarily used to preserve food, while barbecued food is designated to be consumed right away. 2.2 Etymology 2.2.1 The evolution from barbacoa to barbecue The origins of the word barbecue (occasionally also spelled barbeque, barbaque, barbicue, BBQ, B-B-Que, Bar-B-Q, Bar-B-Que, Bar-B-Cue, 'Cue, 'Que or simply Q) are generally well researched and established. However, the misconception that barbecue originated from the French phrase barbe queue is still circulating. Admittedly, phonetically speaking does it at first glance offer a plausible explanation, and the translation from beard to tail (DeMers 17) can be applied to the common method of cooking whole animals like hogs in a pit, but scholars and lexicographers agree in dismissing this explanation as coincidental and the Oxford English Dictionary calls this particular etymology absurd conjecture suggested merely by the sound of the word (Elie Smokestack 26). In fact, the first encounter with the word barbacoa was when the Spanish discovered the tribe of the Taino Indians in the Caribbean. The first European account is believed to come from Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedas book De la Historia General y Natural de las Indias (Elie Smokestack 26) of 1526. He described, that the Taino Indians of Tierra Firme smoked fish or game on a makeshift frame of wood (the Indians also used for sleeping) for the means of preservation. Both this framework of wood and also the cooking process were called barbacoa, at least by de Oviedo, it is unknown whether the Indians used barbacoa to describe the cooking process or only the framework (Warnes 23). The Taoni Indians were by far not the only indigenous people of the New World who used the word barbacoa, European explorers encountered the word several times in a number of Amerindian languages before colonial settlement (Warnes 23), ranging from New England to South America. The first usage in the English language appeared in Edmund Hickeringills book Jamaica Viewed from 1661 with the following: Some are slain, And their flesh fortwith Barbacus and eat (Moss 7). From then on it was gradually absorbed into

the culture and vocabulary of colonial English and finally became barbecue as we know it today. 2.2.2 Barbecue a verb or a noun? When asking different people what they associate with the term barbecue, one will most likely get several answers and definitions which are not necessarily compatible. Groups with different cultural and regional backgrounds will claim their explanation to be the only valid one and passionately defend their point of view, especially in the South:
There are more barbecue factions and smoked-meats sects around here, each with it its own hair-splitting distinctions, than there are denominations in the far-flung Judeo-Christian establishment (Veteto 7)

Does this mean that there is only one valid answer to this question? If yes, how does it invalidate all the other allegations? Or is there not just one way to describe what barbecue really means? The discussion whether barbecue is a verb, a noun or an adjective with several potential meanings is probably the most controversial subject. According to the Oxford Dictionary, barbecue used as a verb and an adjective is:
Verb (barbecues, barbecuing, barbecued) [with object] Cook (food) on a barbecue (as adjective barbecued) barbecued chicken

Fundamentally, to prepare meats and, on a smaller scale, vegetables in the manner of cooking it over wood or charcoal, just as mentioned above in the technique section. Barbecue often is also used synonymously with grilling, solely by people outside the American South who have little or no experience at all with eating or cooking real barbecued food. The verb Southerners use to describe the cooking process is smoking or simply cooking. Officially, the United States Department of Agriculture, responsible for production, safety, and labeling of food codified the word and the definition now says:
Barbecued meats, such as product labeled Beef Barbecue or Barbecued Pork, shall be cooked by the direct action of dry heat resulting from the burning of hard wood or the hot coals therefrom for a sufficient period to assume the usual characteristics of a barbecued article, which include the formation of a brown crust on the surface and the rendering of surface fat. The product may be basted with a sauce during the cooking process (Davis and Kirk 81)

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Barbecue as a noun offers a wider range of possible meanings, it can either be a: backyard grill social gathering dish

People in the South make a clear distinction between a grill, irrelevant whether it is a gas- or charcoal grill, and a barbecue pit or smoker used for actual barbecuing and smoking. Calling a grill a barbecue or barbecue grill is widely spread outside the Southern states. Particularly German retailers and importers have taken the habit of basically branding any grill a BBQ- or barbecue-grill. Even electrical contact grills and especially gas grills are labeled with the acronym BBQ to attract new customers. To conclude, it is out of the question to call a device which is not able to produce real barbecued meat, as mentioned in the technique section, a barbecue. The habit of calling barbecue a social, festive gathering held outdoors, often for political and religious reasons, is older than the United States and often attracted high-profile members of the upper class. George Washington himself recorded several times in his diary in the pre-republican era attending barbecues. In these less busy times, having a barbecue usually meant dug pits in the ground, filled with logs to slow roast entire animals above the fire (Jamison xiv). Primarily Northeastern Americans today use the non-indigenous term barbecue to describe their cookouts. The recreational activity of cooking outdoors was popularized in the North during the first half of the 20th century (Elie Cornbread 92). This can be largely attributed to enhanced mobility, promotional articles in magazines and the nationwide construction of outdoor fireplaces. Gradually the term barbecue vernacularized for these activities and replaced the former customary hot picnic. Northerners of course do not haul heavy barbecue pits to, for example, a national park or the parking lot of a stadium to tailgate. It is rather a gathering with grilled meats of any kind like hamburgers and hot dogs. Ripley Golovin attributes this in her senior thesis on the development of backyard barbecue to the enormous time cooking real barbecue would take and the attempt to appease whimpering children (Elie Smokestack 137). Southerners and people from the Midwest today also defy this explanation. They would never call a party or social gathering a barbecue (even when real barbecue is being served) but would most likely give it a rather graphic name like pig picking or a rib-off (Mills xv). Generally speaking, in the Southern and Midwestern United States, barbecue is solely understood to be the name of the finished, cooked product. Thus, those regions again

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offer a different and wide range of meanings. Depending on the preference and choice of certain types of meat, barbecue can exclusively be pork, beef, or both and even rather exotic meat like mutton. Some regions rather associate barbecue with certain cuts of meat like pork shoulder, whole hog, ribs, beef brisket, cows head1 and even snouts. The KCBS, as the sanctioning body of hundreds of cook-offs, officially declares pork, beef and also chicken to be barbecue (Davis KCBS xvii). Eventually, the question whether only one or more definitions for the word barbecue exist cannot be answered in a satisfactory way. Merely barbecue being used as a verb to describe grilling might be rejected as it is misleading. It basically depends on the geographical and cultural background of a group of people to decide what answer is right or wrong. Most people are in the end indifferent about these kinds of semantics and accept several or all answers to be true. In the traditional and original barbecue regions of the South does a rather revisionist and fundamentalist movement exist, with the aim to solely call smoked meats (Staten Story) barbecue. In any case, during the further progress of this paper, barbecue will be used as a verb, adjective as in barbecued meat and the dish. 3. History of barbecue 3.1 Origin and Development of Barbecue from the Discovery of the New World till the End of Colonial America In order to explain how barbecue eventually became the diverse dish it is today, it is indispensable to trace back the origins, early history of barbecue and its introduction in continental America back. A variety of accounts of the mentioning of the word barbecue or descriptions of barbecue feasts can be found in colonial sources like diaries, travelogues, anthropological studies or newspaper articles. Barbecue cookbooks or recipes however are unfortunately quite rare. As described above, we already know how Europeans firstly acquired both the name and the cooking method of barbecue from the indigenous people. But what exactly did the first European settlers of America do with that knowledge and what was their influence on barbecue? How did barbecue, both as a social gathering and as a way of preparing food, look like before it eventually split up in several different schools of thought and cooking? The biggest point of interest is however the question, how African American slaves deeply and persistently shaped barbecue. Finally, in Germany American style barbecue

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is steadily gaining popularity in the recent years. Therefore it is crucial to examine how and when the Germans adapted this unique and for European circumstances rather alien cooking technique. Barbecue in the United States is mostly associated with pork. Since pigs were not indigenous to the New World, but a persistent, prolific breed and sustainable source of food, they were first introduced to the Americas in Hispaniola on Columbus second Voyage in 1493. The true father of the American pork industry (Vann) though is considered to be Hernando de Soto, who along with 400 soldiers brought the first domestic pigs, descendants of Columbus hogs, to North America, to be exact Tampa Florida, in 1539 at the time of the Spanish Inquisition when it was a Christian duty to consume pork to prove that one is not a Jew or a Muslim (Elie Cornbread 23). He also was reportedly the first European to attend a barbecue feast in North America in 1540, when he and 40 fellow Spaniards raided a Native American village in todays Georgia and discovered venison and turkey smoke roasting on a barbacoa-like device (Staten Story). Hernn Corts later introduced hogs to New Mexico in 1600. These swineherds primarily roamed free in the vicinity of settlements, sustained themselves and explosively multiplied in numbers within a few years. A substantial number of these hogs escaped and are the ancestors of todays feral hogs in the United States. The Native Americans of North America, who were primarily used to only smoke game and fish, soon grew very fond of pork and either traded pigs with the Spaniards or stole them from them (Staten Story). The Spanish on the other hand adopted the barbecue-like cooking techniques and developed it further to their liking. The nucleus of American barbecue is not by chance considered to be Virginia. The first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, was established in 1607. The limited cargo on the three ships of the first colonists (Jamison 82) also included pigs. Just like the Spaniards, the English did not fence their livestock in, but left them to their own to gather food and procreate and later hunted them down like wild animals with a good return of meat with minimal care and feeding (Moss 12). The colony soon flourished and grew rapidly, and so did the herds of pigs. The plantation owner Ralph Wormeley had 439 heads of cattle, 86 sheep and too many pigs to count (Moss 13) in 1651. Since the settlers of the New World came not from a single, homogenous British culture (Moss 11), the colonies in New England and Virginia had different preferences of cooking techniques and forms of entertainment. The Virginians predominantly came from southern and western England, with a long tradition of roasting and spit-cooking meat and an inherent love for social gatherings (Warnes 81-82). The

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logical consequence for the Virginians was to blend these familiar and exotic techniques to adapt it to their new environment (Elie Smokestack 27). Back in London, Richard Steele would despise barbecue in 1710 and say: the Manners of Indian Warness are not becoming Accomplishments to an English fine Gentleman (Warnes 84). Those resentments were widespread in the parent country of the colonies, mainly generated through a sense of racial superiority, but rather alienated from the reality of colonial life and new developed customs and the Virginians and later North- and South Carolinians were not deterred by it and carried on cooking barbecue. By the 1750s, outdoor barbecues were one of the chief forms of entertainment (Moss 13) in Virginia, accompanied by music, socializing and outdoor games. Apart from these obvious functions as entertainment, it became part of the political world as well. Candidates for the position of governor or seats in the Assembly often held barbecues while their campaigns to attract new voters. George Washington himself spent a large sum of money on a barbecue in 1758 for his election campaign for the House of Burgesses. While openly bribing voters with free food and alcohol was considered dishonest, politicians described it as a demonstration of a candidates generosity and hospitality (Moss 17) and Washington said: I hope no exception was taken to any that voted against me but all were alike treated and had enough (Moss 17). These feasts also were seen as a huge distinction between the aristocratic and lush banquets of the Old World and the public and democratic character of barbecues in the emerging United States during the Revolutionary War. South American revolutionary Sebastin Francisco de Miranda wrote after the armistice with Great Britain in 1783 under the impression of a barbecue in New Bern, North Carolina the following:
Today the suspension of arms and preliminary treaties with England were celebrated. About one oclock there was a barbecue with much rum, which they all ate and drank together from the leading people of the area to the very lowest sort all shaking hands and drinking from the same utensil. It is impossible to conceive of a more purely democratic assembly without seeing it, no matter how much even the Ancient Greek poets and historians tell us of similar events among the free peoples of Greece (Warnes 110).

Barbecue and race is deeply intertwined in the culture of the Old South. White, aristocratic-like landowners and rather poor white folks alike may have been organizing barbecues, but they were not actually cooking the food. In his Autobiography, Louis Hughes, a former slave, wrote: It was said that the slaves could barbecue meats best, and when the whites had barbecues, slaves always did the cooking (Elie Cornbread 52) In 1609 a Dutch Privateer arrived at Jamestown with 1500 captive Africans which he sold to the struggling colonists (Worgul 60). The introduction of slaves was probably the prime reason for the economic prosperity of the colonies. Zora Neale Hurston, an American folklorist and

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anthropologist argues, that the original barbecue linearly can be traced back to West Africa and the Caribbean, where most of the slaves brought to the English colonies came from and that not Amerindians invented barbecue. Their only contribution was the name and not the original technique. According to Hurston, the proper technique originated from West Africa, where hogs are prepared by taking brown sage and burning off the hair, then washing the skin thoroughly. The animal is usually roasted whole very much as we barbecue (Warnes 122). Escaped black slaves on Jamaica during the Spanish occupation, the so-called Maroons, very likely came in contact with Amerindian settlements where they are believed to first have been introduced to the term barbecue and exchanged knowledge of how to prepare wild hogs. These techniques then made it to the South on the back of African slaves (DeMers 17), especially to South Carolina by slaves from Jamaica. Since digging holes for barbecue, tending the pits or smokehouses over hours in this hot climate was hard labor it was exclusively a black affair. Virtually every reference to barbecue in Americas early historical records mention of the slaves who actually cooked the barbecue (Worgul 60) The master got to eat the best cuts of meat (Staten Story) like the tenderloin or the hams while the slaves got the undesired parts like ribs or shoulders. Slaves did not exclusively cook barbecue for social gatherings of their white masters, they also occasionally were granted by the slaveholders to cook for their own and often supplied the meat, especially on Christmas and the 4th of July, to reward their hard work and to reinforce the image of benevolent masters (Moss 63) to better control them. Thus, barbecue also became a form of recreation for the slaves and they sometimes even were granted to invite slaves over from other plantations. Louis Hughes noted, that barbecues acted as a stimulant through the entire year It mattered not what trouble or hardship the year had brought, this feast and its attendant pleasure would dissipate all gloom (Moss 66). In a contradictory way, barbecues also were used by the slaves for subversive matters. Virginian slaves often were allowed to hold their own barbecues and enjoyed a limited amount of free travel. Illegal barbecues with stolen meat too were not uncommon. These barbecues often were used to conspire against their white masters and sometimes culminated in minor slave uprisings like Gabrielles Rebellion in 1800 (Moss 63-64). Finally, the whites therefore suspended the limited liberties they granted their slaves. 3.2 Introduction of Barbecue into Germany While the Americans can look back on a long tradition of cooking barbecue, Steven Raichlen calls todays Germany the Cinderella of European barbecue-unknown and

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underappreciated (Planet 346). According to a study conducted by Tomorrow Focus Media Social Trends in 2011, approximately 92% of the surveyed participants like to grill (Kimmel). Real barbecue however used to lead a marginal existence by a nevertheless enthusiastic and inquisitive small community. The origins of barbecue in Germany before the 1990s are quite difficult to trace back due to a lack of reliable sources. Cookbooks on authentic barbecue were unfortunately only recently published, anthropological works basically non-existent. It is safe to assume that Germans at first got introduced to barbecue through three different ways: travel to the United States, the American occupation force and the introduction of American kettle grills manufactured by the Weber Stephen Products LLC. The biggest impact however was made at the end of the 20th century by the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent increased media coverage. One final reason why barbecue is gradually gaining acceptance in Germany can be attributed to both our massive stock of different kinds of trees which are suitable for smoking and the long tradition of curing meats. Germans returning from travels to the United States often tell the story how they first encountered outlandish looking barbecue pits and sampled barbecue, a kind of food they never ate before. Those accounts regularly appear in the introduction section of a prominent German barbecue message board. Nostalgic memories associated with barbecue and their frustration, that nothing comparable exits in German cuisine, outdoor cooking or gastronomy and with American companies then considering the German market for kettle grills and smokers as not sufficiently profitable, people either brought adequate cookers with them, asked friends or relatives in the US to send them grills or smokers or simply tried to build them themselves. The number of people doing so was marginal though. Germans likely got more accustomed to barbecue in the vicinity of American military facilities spread throughout Germany. The United States Armed Forces employ a large number of German civilians as contractors on their bases who there had the possibility to sample barbecue and purchase American cuts of meat and grills and smokers. Other accounts mention the possibility to buy off used grills and smokers from American Army personnel or the opportunity to shop on post by befriending U.S soldiers, the latter is highly illegal though. The Weber-Stephen company, credited with inventing the kettle grill and one of the largest grill and smoker manufacturers in the world is, especially in todays Germany, associated with American barbecue. The company itself did not directly sell its products in Germany until the 1990s. The German branch was established in 1999 in Ingelheim. From 1977 on, only one single German import company sold Weber grills on the German market, on a very small scale though (Kamm). German or European manufactures had at that time no comparable products in their

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repertoire. These three theses are supported by the fact that barbecue is more prominent is West- than in East Germany.

Figure 5: Distribution of members of the internet-based German Grillsportverein East Germans naturally had not access to US Army installations, the possibility to make vacations abroad other than in the states of the Warsaw Pact or the opportunity to purchase American products. As mentioned before, the number people of who pursued cooking barbecue through these three ways is easily assessable. The biggest boost for barbecue in Germany is eventually owed to the internet. The pioneer in this regard is without any doubt the Grillsportverein (Hr gsv.de), especially its message board. Four students, bored by the in their opinion dull German grilling culture, decided to establish the Grillsportverein in 1997 (Hr Foundation). Soon later, they set up a website with recipes and later a forum (Hr Forum), in a time where the internet was in its infancy and websites dedicated to grilling in Germany were practically non-existent. The users started to exchange not only, as the name suggests, knowledge about grilling but also increasingly barbecue on a large scale and with a higher accessibility than word of mouth marketing. The message board saw a moderate increase in user numbers at the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s, but with the higher distribution of broadband internet in Germany, the numbers of users and forum posts increased exponentially. In October 2005, the

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forum had 928 registered users with about 50000 forum posts and a relatively small accession rate of new members in the low 3-digits area. Contrarily, at the beginning of 2012 the forum culminated more than 1 million posts made by over 28,000 users and during the summer months attracts thousands more (Hr Forum).

Figures 6 and 7: Monthly increase of newly registered members of the Grillsportverein These numbers alone support the conjecture that barbecue in Germany gradually loses its status of a shadowy existence and becomes more recognized by a broader spectrum of the German population. Apart from the Grillsportverein, one has to acknowledge that meanwhile dozens, maybe hundreds, of other websites devoted to barbecue and other highly frequented message boards, myBBQ.net or the Weststyle Grillforum to name a few, came to existence .

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The increased interest in American barbecue is also reflected by the frequent media coverage in recent years. Barbecue chefs, caterers, members of message boards and renowned manufacturers alike were constantly approached, especially during the summer months, by TV stations and magazines to contribute to broadcasts or articles devoted entirely to the topic of barbecue to explicitly report about alternatives to the common, in their opinion outdated, German form of grilling. I myself was asked several times in 2005 and 2006 by various media representatives to work on TV programs as an expert and eventually appeared two times on Pro7s knowledge format Galileo and was interviewed by the ZDF during my occupation as a judge at the Berlin BBQ Championship in 2006. A magazine called Fire&Food, which entirely focuses on barbecue was launched in 2002 and today still is in circulation. A remarkable footnote is that especially womens and lifestyle magazines heavily promote this new form of cooking outdoors as both a new trend-setting lifestyle and a more healthconscious alternative to classic grilling by offering low-fat recipes and the fact that by indirectly cooking food no carcinogenic substances emerge since no fat drips on hot coals (Weber). Since barbecue is traditionally cooked with the fuel wood, Germany provides ideal conditions. With a forest area of over 11 Million hectare, Germany is amongst the biggest producers of wood in Europe what also accounts for, according to Steven Raichlen, wood being the fuel of choice in Germany when it comes to grilling (Planet 347) and consequently smoking meats. Contrarily, cultures with less tree population, for example in North Africa (Fetcher and Winter Berber-Q 2/2010 41) have no comparable tradition of smoking meats, neither for curing nor for barbecuing. They rather use energy-efficient charcoal to grill their food. This early history of barbecue saw the development of barbecue in a particularly American way. One might also call it a creole (Mills Introduction) since it saw the mingling of Native, Anglo and African cultures (Elie Smokestack 29). From its birthplace in Virginia and the Carolinas, barbecue moved westwards with the American settlers who adapted barbecue to both their new surroundings in terms of climate and vegetation and sometimes according to the preferences of food settlers from non Anglo-European cultures brought with them. The basic cooking techniques and principles of barbecue described above basically remained the same. The African Americans on the other hand helped to spread barbecue throughout all slave states of the South where they for generations - whites remained generally ignorant of its mysteries until the turn of the 20th century (Worgul 60), were the sole

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group of people who actually cooked barbecue. They also were the first opening commercial barbecue joints and ,basically until the suspension of the Jim Crow laws, were largely unrivalled by anyone and thus helped to keep the tradition of barbecue alive. Ironically, since they most of the times were only able to cook the tougher, more gristle-riddled cuts (Staten Story), today barbecue is primarily associated with back then undesirable cuts like ribs or pork shoulder and are enjoyed by whites and blacks alike. The flow of African Americans looking for new jobs to northern urban areas after slavery was abolished (DeMers 17) also helped to spread barbecue beyond the slave states of the American South. Just like the Northerners eagerly accepted and cultivated barbecue, the Germans were and still are intrigued with this rather new form of cooking and, primarily through the internet, try to duplicate and refine barbecue by their own German means with often encountering difficulties. Apart from that did this enthusiasm also spark a highly profitable barbecuerelated industry in Germany. 4. Regional Styles of Barbecue The regions commonly associated with traditional barbecue and with an abundance of barbecue restaurants are bounded on the north by Missouri, Kentucky and North Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma to the west, the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Gulf on the south. (Alfino and Aputo 69).

Figure 8: The core regions of traditional American barbecue John Shelton Reed highlights in his essay Barbecue Sociology: The Meat of the Matter (Elie Cornbread 82) drive a hundred miles and barbecue does change. The only constant is slow-cooking with smoke. Even within the boundaries of a single state barbecue often differs. Pitmasters, professional and backyard chefs alike, prefer different animals, cuts, sauces, wood, side dishes, spices, etc. and reinforce a Southern characteristic [] the devotion to states rights and local autonomy (Elie Cornbread 82), with occasional overlaps

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though. In order to examine how barbecue became as divisive as it is today and to describe the preferences of local barbecue cooks, it is fundamental to take a closer look how barbecue got introduced and developed in every single state, region or metropolitan center. White, English colonists from the first English settlements did not simply in the course of decades and centuries move westwards and brought a homogenized form of cooking with them. Every region has, at least in some regards, a unique history of barbecue. Different groups of European descent like the French, Germans or Czech settled all over the South and contributed to the development of barbecue with their characteristic culinary skills and traditions. The influence of the non-white population, namely African Americans and Mexicans, in that regard is even more significant. As Joel Garreau states in his book The Nine Nations of North America factors like people, topographies, climates and industry in effect separates the continent into distinguishable nations (Elie Smokestack 137). Especially different climates and terrains are significant reasons, why smoked meats in Texas or North Carolina do not taste alike, even same cuts like ribs. One reason is wood, with each tree genus flavoring meats differently. Locals naturally use the resources which are abundant in their area and trees that grow in North Carolina simply would not survive in Texas. Another reason in that regard is the local flora which influences how barbecued meats are spiced or what side dishes generally are eaten with barbecue. In contrast, barbecue in the north and the west is as mentioned not traditional but may also differ depending if one samples barbecue in California, Chicago or New York City. Therefore it is fundamental to identify the reasons for the grown interested in barbecue in this area and whether the Southern principles of barbecue remained the same in these territories or were changed to better fit with the local culinary tastes or a globalized sense of homogenization. The Germans on the other side, in some respects similar to northeastern and northwestern Americans, are in a phase where their hobby of cooking barbecue grew from a niche pursued by a small number of aficionados to the attention of the public at large, spread throughout the entire country. The sixteen German states also all have their own culinary legacy and different preferences for kinds of meat, spices or vegetables, so the question is what approach they take in cooking barbecue. Do they prefer certain American regional barbecue styles over others? Do they have the resources to cook American barbecue in terms of required appliances or ingredients? If not, how do they compensate and substitute for it? Did a unique German style barbecue develop with a blend of Old World dishes or ingredients and this new American cooking technique? Is barbecue cooked in Bavaria differently than barbecue in Schleswig-Holstein? Does the largest minority living in Germany, the Turks, who

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too have a long tradition of roasting meats, have any impact on German barbecue? We have already heard that barbecue in the US is considered to be pure democratic and accessible for all social classes or as Mike Mills puts it: Any good barbecue restaurant will have a parking lot filled with all kinds of cars, from Mercedes to hunks of junk (Mills 129). So is that also true for Germany or is cooking American barbecue here a rather luxurious lifestyle-trend? 4.1 Virginia The Cradle of Barbecue Virginia, along with the Carolinas, may be credited with being the birthplace of American barbecue and still is considered to be one of the core barbecue states, but has oddly enough not developed a regional, individual style of barbecue in its almost 400 years old tradition. Robert F. Moss asked Whatever happened to Virginia Barbecue? and researched that through settlers from Virginia who brought barbecue to regions southwestward like Georgia and Tennessee, references about old-fashioned Virginia barbecues appeared in newspapers up to the 19th century (Moss 142). The crux is that these are only references to the old Virginian tradition of having barbecues for the means of social or political gathering and not a variety of barbecue. The evolution of a distinctive style is often attributed to one or more legendary barbecue restaurants in an area, which Virginia seemed to have lacked. This does not indicate though, that Virginia has a shortage of barbecue restaurants, but these often advertise with serving authentic North Carolina-style barbecue. The indices of recipe books like Ardie Davis and Paul Kirks Americas Best BBQ virtually never include any Virginian recipes in contrast to for example Texas or Kansas City (213-218). Anthropological works about barbecue by authors like Lolis Eric Elie, who excessively tried to document the diverse barbecue culture either omit Virginia altogether or lump it in the same category as North Carolina (Moss 143). Several Top 10 Best Barbecue Restaurants in America lists exist either published by newspapers or travelogues or through polls on the internet, but not one single Virginian barbecue restaurant can be found on any of them. The only reference about two single recommendable barbecue restaurants in a book on the list of works cited can be found in Mike and Amy Mills Peace, Love and Barbecue. In contrast, the same list of right respectable restaurants worth a stop contains 23 entries for Texas (317-323). To conclude with Rober F. Moss words: People in Virginia still love to eat barbecue, but it just doesnt seem to have taken on much of a distinct regional identity (Moss 142).

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4.2 North Carolina - The Great Carolinian Barbecue-Schism North Carolinian barbecue, in comparison to Virginia, is today along with Memphis, Kansas City and Texas known as one of the four major styles of American barbecue (Raichlen Bible 466), but among these considered to be the most regional and localized (Griffith 82). The question remains, why North Carolina developed a distinctive style of barbecue which is more famed than its South Carolinian and Virginian counterparts, although all of the three states alike are considered to be the cradle of American barbecue. North Carolinian barbecue stands out in many regards compared to other regional variations all over the United States, especially the sauce of choice is uniquely individual since it often is vinegar-based. The North Carolinians are even so serious and proud about their barbecue, that North Carolina state laws continue to prevent companies from selling barbecue straight from the fridge (Warnes 105) as an instant product in supermarkets. Barbecue in North Carolina is not homogenized though. In the course of time did a great schism between the east, namely in the Piedmont triad around Lexington, and the west of the coastal area around Goldsboro, Rocky Mount and Wilson, emerge (Garner Flavored 23). These two styles of barbecue share their preference for pork, but the cut of choice, the preferred cooking technique or the complementary barbecue sauces and side dishes may differ substantially. While frowning upon other, in their opinion peculiar, styles of barbecue outside North Carolina, proponents of each style within North Carolina are also disdainful towards each other (Garner Flavored XIII), what sometimes is even called intraregional warfare (Garner Flavored xiii), especially between self-proclaimed barbecue capitols like Wilson or Lexington. While hosting barbecues in Virginia and South Carolina generally was a white, aristocratic trait with slaves doing the cooking, North Carolinian barbecues were with a few exceptions the occupation of farmers and journeyman, white and black (Garner Flavored xii). Since the first settlements were established in northeastern Carolina, the eastern style barbecue can be considered to be the original. The meat of choice in much of the east is not a single cut of pork but simply the whole hog cooked for hours in the pits and eating it in all in a variety of forms (Jamison50). Bob Melton of Rocky Mount is considered to be the man who established the tradition of cooking whole hogs in his restaurant in 1922 (Garner Flavored 7), which was later adopted by most of the restaurants in the area. Pitmasters there claim that the finished meat is more succulent when the whole animal is cooked. Cooking a whole hog takes a great effort, especially in maintaining the temperature over a long course of time, the ingredients

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however are generally rather puristic so that they do not overpower the natural flavor of the meat. A typical recipe for cooking whole hog in eastern North Carolina basically looks like this:
1 full-grown dressed hog, 120 to 150 pounds, butterflied or split Salt and black pepper 1 gallon of vinegar sauce 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Fire up the pit, preferably with a combination of hickory and oak, and bring it to a temperature of 120 Trim any excess fat from the inside, rub the hog thoroughly with the dry spices and lift it onto the pit, belly side down. Every hour or so, sprinkle on more spices or mop the meat with the vinegar mixture, alternating between the two applications. Maintain a steady cooking temperature of 95 to 120 for 18 to 20 hours, or until the internal temperature of the meat is about 75 C. While the fire dies, allow the hog to sit in the pit for several hours before carving. (Jamison 6, Davis and Kirk 87)

Most of the sauces in the United States are tomato-based and rather sweet. Eastern North Carolinians however prefer vinegar-based sauces because of the slow-decaying effect it has on the meat and use it both as a moisturizer while cooking the hog and as a seasoning for the finely chopped meat before serving. As recipes for the sauce may differ, it normally contains the following: white or cider vinegar, brown sugar, salt, pepper and cayenne or ground hot red chile flakes (Jamison 62 and Raichlen Bible 156). The most traditional side dishes in eastern North Carolina are coleslaw and Brunswick Stew. The slaw is simply made out of shredded cabbage with mayonnaise or mayo/mustard and again vinegar and is often used as a topping for barbecue sandwiches. Brunswick Stew, often called hash and served over rice, is a thick, reddish orange stew with the standard ingredients of chicken, tomatoes, corn, onions, potatoes and lima beans (Moss 137). On a side note: most commercial barbecue restaurants in this area use automated, gas controlled barbecue pits. Traditional wood burning fire pits require a huge amount of labor, especially by the constant demand of refueling them and keeping a steady temperature and easily can start a fire. With a whole hog taking up to 20 hours, restaurateurs choose the obviously more convenient and safer way. (Elie Smokestack 160) Lexington- or Piedmont-style barbecue originated, according to Robert F. Moss, similar to the east in the 1920s through barbecue restaurants (136). Sid Weaver and George Ridenhour used to cook barbecue for farmers coming into Lexington for court week with fierce competition from Jess Swicegood. Soon, the demand grew that much that Weaver, who bought out Ridenhour, and Swicegood made a permanent business out of it and erected

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wooden stands and passed on their legacy by training younger pitmasters and today over 20 barbecue restaurants reside in a town with only 17000 inhabitants (Garner Flavored 49). While whole hog was and still is preferred in the east, pork shoulder is the meat of choice in Lexington. John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg give German and German-speaking immigrants who arrived in this area in the 18th and 19th century credit for this circumstance. Especially Franconia and the Alsace region in todays France have a long tradition of slow roasting pork shoulder, which they call Schufele. The fact, that Weaver, Swicegood and Ridenhour themselves were of German ancestry supports this theory. The Germans had both a long tradition of curing meats by smoke and were used to spicing their pork with vinegar.2 The predominant side dish of coleslaw can also be traced back to the German preference for cabbage. The only non-German or European ingredients which are now incorporated in western-North Carolina barbecue are tomatoes and peppery spices. The rather huge pork shoulder itself is generally for commercial reasons cut down into two different pieces of meat: the so-called Boston butt, the upper part of the shoulder and the picnic, the lower part of the shoulder. Both parts are adequate for smoking, nevertheless the Boston butt is preferred by most barbecuers since it contains the least bone. The renowned Mr. Brown is in southern slang the dark, crispy exterior of pork shoulder and is the eponym for this popular westernCarolinian recipe
1 Boston butt, 6 to 8 pounds Rub: Ground black pepper, paprika, turbinado sugar, salt, dry mustard, cayenne Mopping-sauce: Cider vinegar, ground black pepper, salt, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, cayenne 1. Combine the rub ingredients in a small bowl. Massage the pork well with about half the rub. Transfer the pork to a plastic bag, and refrigerate it overnight 2. Before you begin to barbecue, remove the pork from the refrigerator. Pat down the butt with another coating of rub. Let the pork sit at room temperature for about 45 minutes. 3. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95 to 105 C. 4. Stir any remaining rub together with the mop ingredients and 1 cup water in a saucepan and warm the mixture over low heat 5. Transfer the pork to the smoker and cook it for about 1.5 hours per pound, or until its falling-apart tender. Mop the pork about once an hour. 6. Remove the pork from the smoker and let it sit for about 15 minutes, until cool enough to handle. Pull of chunks of the meat, and either shred or chop them as you wish. (Jamison 53-54)

While both barbecue regions in North Carolina serve a peppery, vinegar based sauce with their barbecue (Mills 111) ketchup is being added to the western version which they call Carolina red. The main ingredients, apart from the ketchup, however, are basically identical. Classic side dishes are again coleslaw, similar to the western version but also with

Cheryl and Bill Jamison however speculate, that this kind of sauce is a direct descendent of early English ketchups, which were made with vinegar but never with tomatoes (Jamison 349)

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additional ketchup and hushpuppies, deep-fried cornmeal batter (Moss 141). Restaurants in the west refrain from using gas-controlled pits and prefer traditional pits fueled with oak and hickory. Bearing this in mind, one has to acknowledge that cooking a pork shoulder takes by far less time and effort as smoking an entire hog. While choices of cuts of meat, the means of cooking and the sauce separates the east from the west, both regions do have a lot in common. People from the east and the west alike do prefer to eat pork over any other kind of meat. Both like their pork chopped or pulled and mixed up with barbecue sauce. The sauces may differ in taste and especially in terms of color, but they, unlike any other regional barbecue style (except for a few neighboring states), are entirely vinegar-based. Coleslaw too, is enjoyed in Lexington and the coastal area. Finally, both regions accommodate a huge range of award-winning, institutional barbecue restaurants, which are regularly highly recommended in restaurant guides and pride themselves with catering for celebrities and US-presidents. Interestingly enough, Lolis Eric Elie notes that barbecue in North Carolina exists primarily in the towns and smaller cities (169) and is therefore a rural phenomenon. While rather huge cities like Memphis, Kansas City or Houston have a big and vibrant barbecue culture, Charlotte has few listings for barbecue restaurants. 4.3 South Carolina The Mustard Belt The boundary lines that divide the two Carolinas from each other [] have little significance in the realm of food (Elie Smokestack 155). This indistinguishability is due to the fact that for south and north Carolinians alike barbecue is exclusively pork, either whole hog or shoulder, or in the words of Dotty Griffith: chicken is chicken, ribs is ribs. However, as late as 1940 did the people in South Carolina regularly serve lamb or mutton (Moss 145) but discontinued this practice. Apart from pork do people and restaurants in both regions smoke their meats with hickory or oak. What they also have in common is, that not only restaurants and caterers cook whole hogs, but it also has a long tradition of homecooking, what they call pig picking (Griffith 84). Popular side dishes in South Carolina are first and foremost rice, with South Carolina having been one of the biggest rice producers in colonial America, and hash. While Brunswick stew in North Carolina is sometimes also called hash, it has little in common with its South Carolinian namesake. Hash in South Carolina mainly consists of leftover parts of a hog, especially the intestines like the liver, and vegetables (Moss 145). This utilization of every part of the pig has a long tradition in the South and fits to the philosophy of barbecue that no part of the pig should be spoiled. The regions bordering North Carolina also adopted north Carolinian-style sauces. In the northeast

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they favor vinegar and pepper sauces while the northwestern region has a preference for tomato-based sauces (Mills58). The most popular sauce in South Carolina however is mustard based. According to Lolis Eric Elie, South Carolina is the only state in which all three of the dominant types of barbecue sauce can be found (Elie Smokestack 155). A typical recipe for a mustard sauce is very simplistic, just like tomato- or vinegar-based sauces, and contains basically the same ingredients like the two latter with the addition of yellow mustard. Apart from that Southern Carolinian barbecue is always overshadowed by North Carolinas reputation and recipes rarely occur in common recipe books. 4.4 Georgia, Alabama , Mississippi and Kentucky The states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky can look back on a long tradition of barbecue, which basically began as settlers and slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas spread west- and southwards. Barbecue plays a pivotal and integral role in the culture and social life of the South, whereas barbecue in these four states is more prominent than in the remainder of the states of the old Confederacy like Florida or Louisiana3, with the exception of Texas and Tennessee which will be covered subsequently. Barbecue, too is popular in Louisiana and Florida, but both states did a) not develop any appreciable style of barbecue and b) are today rather known for other culinary styles like Cajun, Creole or Caribbean cooking with an emphasis on seafood. People from Georgia, North Carolina or Texas alike attend barbecues on any given weekend, eat it at church fundraisers, cook it in their own backyards, go to restaurants and barbecue festivals can be found throughout all these states. However, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky never really developed their own particular ways of cooking barbecue and are in most regards identical with the North Carolinian style with a few exceptions like the tradition of cooking mutton in parts of Kentucky. This is of course no criticism but merely an observation. Since the states of the South share a variety of cultural idiosyncrasies and especially a similar agriculture, the earlier predominance of pig breeding4 being relevant in this case, it cannot be expected that these states should have developed an entirely new style of barbecue from scratch. The major barbecue styles apart from North Carolinian after all came into existence rather later with entirely different preconditions.
3

Kentucky was of course no seceding state and stayed neutral during the war. Culturally and geographically however does Kentucky belong to the American South. 4 According to the censuses of the Department of Agriculture for the year 2007, each of the three states today possesses a significant higher inventory of beef cows than hogs and pigs. Alabama for example had in 2007 a stock of 1,878,171 cattle and calves, including 678,949 beef cows compared to the stock of only 178,275hogs and pigs, In the early phases of their settlement however, pigs were prevalent and a tradition of barbecuing beef never evolved. (USDA)

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The official state prepared food of Georgia may be grits (List of U.S state foods), but barbecue is no less popular. As a food authority from the last century declared, The barbecue is to Georgia what a clambake is to Rhode Island, what a roast-beef dinner is to the English, what canvasback duck is to a Marylander, and what a Saturday night pork-and-beans is to a Bostonian (Elie Cornbread 40). Barbecue stands and restaurants opened as early in Georgia as in North or South Carolina, in the early 20th century to be precise. Atlanta, Savannah and a number of smaller towns contain a sizeable number of barbecue restaurants today. The favorite item here is again chopped barbecued pork like hams or pork shoulders. The famed establishment of Georgian barbecue pioneer, Johnny Harris, however, features a rarity in Georgia barbecue: a lamb sandwich, which is served on toasted white bread with sliced dill pickle (Moss 146). While the Georgians primarily cook pork, they cannot within the state agree on a number of barbecue practices. A clear dividing line that separates regions, similar to North Carolina, within Georgia cannot be drawn. Rufus Jarmon writes in his essay Dixies Most Disputed Dish that in not specified Georgian counties, people dispute whether oak, hickory or pecan is the best barbecuing wood (Elie Cornbread 40). The sauce however is generally accepted to be ketchup and molasses based, only in parts of northern Georgia does North Carolinian-style mustard sauce prevail. In terms of popular side dishes, do both the Georgians and the Virginians claim that Brunswick Stew originated in their home state. The most plausible explanation however is that it comes from the town of Brunswick in Virginia (Elie Cornbread). Georgian-style Brunswick differs from its Virginian counterpart mainly in its meat-content. While the Virginian version is primarily cooked with chicken, the Georgians use pork, beef, or chicken, or any combination of the three, along with corn, potatoes, lima beans and tomatoes or bell peppers in north Georgia (Moss 147). Another popular side dish in Georgia is barbecued beans. The name is misleading though as the beans are not smoked in a barbecue pit along with the meats, but are simply cooked in a pot. The most widely consumed meat in Alabama is again pork. The pork shoulder is like in any neighboring state ubiquitous along with pork ribs. Barbecued chicken, however, also is highly estimated in Alabama, especially in the states most famous barbecue restaurant called Big Bob Gibson. While Alabama has the typical vinegar and ketchup-based sauces, a rather unusual white sauce originated there. The sauce was invented by the grandfather of Don McLemore, who along with his son-in-law Chris Lilly runs Big Bob Gibson in Decatur, Alabama. The recipe soon spread all over the state since Mr. McLemore did not make it a secret. Today it is primarily used on chicken and turkey (Mills 55) and the recipe for Alabamian barbecued chicken sandwich with white sauce is cooked the following way:

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6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded lightly 12 large slices toasted white bread 6 crisp lettuce leaves Bread-and-butter pickles or relish Southern Succor Rub: Ground black pepper, paprika, turbinado sugar, coarse salt, dry mustard, cayenne Alabama Great White sauce: mayonnaise, cider vinegar, ground black pepper, coarse salt, onion powder, cayenne 1. 2. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95 to 105 C. Drizzle the breasts with about one-third of the mop. Transfer the chicken to the smoker and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, or until cooked through. In a wood-burning pit, turn the breasts after 15 minutes and mop well again. With other smokers, dont worry about turning the breasts. Assemble the sandwiches, slathering sauce on the side of all the bread slices. Arrange a lettuce leaf on each six bread slices, then top each with a chicken breast and a hearty dollop of relish. Top each with a remaining bread slice, halve, and serve with remaining sauce on the side (Jamison 186-187)

3.

The cooking process of this particular barbecued chicken and a pork shoulder is basically identical. Self-evidently the time is not as chicken breasts tend to dry up easily. Some backyard cookers though like to prepare their chicken similar to pulled pork. They cook it until it falls apart, chop or pull it and serve it in a sandwich. The used wood again is largely hickory or pecan, the latter also being the official state nut of Alabama (List of U.S state foods). Traditional side dishes can be potato salad, coleslaw with mustard dressing or beans (Moss 149). Boston butt and ribs, cooked over pecan and hickory, are the main barbecue dishes cooked and served in Mississippi. Apart from that, Mississippi has very few local distinctive features that set them apart from any other southern style of barbecue, the small number of recipes and other sources at least leads to this conclusion. The thick, dark-red barbecue sauce is characteristic (Moss 150) in Alabama and can be bought all over the United States and even overseas like in Germany. In some regions, goats are slaughtered and dressed, parboiled in big cast iron laundry kettles over open fires, and then smoked briefly over charcoal. (Freeland). Barbecue in general is cooked within the range of temperatures mentioned in the technique-section over a long course of time. A different school of thought however exists, which promotes the fast cooking with higher heat of around 180 C, the ribs will not take several hours and if done right will be crispy on the outside and juicy. The proponents of low and slow reject this method because of the danger of grease fires and the fear that the product would not be tender enough. A popular recipe from Mississippi however, Mattie Biven Dennis Hattiesburg Mississippi ribs calls for this method and only takes 45 minutes up to an hour (Elie Smokestack 202).To conclude, an excerpt from an interview

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conducted by Tom Freeland with Randy Lepard from Leps BBQ and Ribs concisely sums up the status of Mississippi barbecue:
If you had to say what Mississippi barbecue is, do you think that theres something that really signifies a state tradition of barbecue? Hmm, Mississippi barbecue. Well, if you drive down the road and you see a black cooker out in front of a business smoking, ninety-nine times out of 100, theyre smoking pork. Theyre smoking Boston butts or shoulders or something like that to make pork barbecuepulled barbecue, chopped barbecue or something to that effect. And that basically is Mississippi barbecue, and its pork. Would you say that there are any similarities to any barbecue, say, in Alabama orI know Memphis is its own kind of animal, but are there similarities in Mississippi barbecue and Memphis or anyplace else? No, its pretty muchit should be the same. Its all in how you prepare it, whether they use an open pit with hickory wood or some type of a hard oak wood, pecan wood. A lot of folks use fruit treesapple woodjust to give it a different flavor. But mostly its hickory. In Mississippi thats where the tree is abundant. So Tennessee barbecue, Alabama barbecue, supposedly its all the same (Freeland).

Large barbecue gatherings were held in Kentucky as soon as settlers from Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania arrived in the late 18th century. Barbecues in frontier states like Kentucky played a similar recreational and integrative role in Kentucky as in Virginia, with the difference, that here barbecues were held for the common benefit (Moss 29) and open to all social classes compared to the elitist Virginian festivities. Thanks to a new tariff in 1816 which placed a 25% duty on woolen and cotton products (Dallas tariff), Kentuckians found it more profitable to herd sheep, especially in the western area around Owensboro where barbecue means mutton. Mutton meat is commonly not considered to be desirable since it has a very strong gamy taste and is very tough compared to lamb. So the question is why mutton became so popular in western Kentucky? The practice of barbecuing mutton came out of necessity. Sheep grew older, did no longer produce good wool and could not be sold with a profit because of the taste of its meat (Riches Mutton). So the Kentuckians who would not want to let the meat go to waste, prepared mutton the way African Americans cooked undesirable cuts like shoulders and ribs and barbecued the whole animal low and slow over wood. The finished product is eaten similarly to pulled pork, in a sandwich accompanied with a vinegary and peppery sauce which the Kentuckians call a vinegar dip or a mutton dip and black sauce, due to its content of Worcestershire sauce and Moonshine sauce, which contains vodka (Jamison 356 and Riches Mutton). However, today Kentuckians do for the most part not cook the entire animal but rather selected cuts like mutton shoulder. Restaurants in Owensboro today offer pork items on their menu, according to Lolis Eric Elie a concession to people who are new residents in this area (Elie Smokestack 184). A whole array of barbecue sauces or pastes which enhance the flavor of pork or beef, are made with Kentucky

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bourbon which originated in its namesake Bourbon County. Jim Beam, one of the biggest bourbon brands in the world, for example launched its own successful line of bourbonflavored barbecue sauces. The states signature dish and side dish typically eaten with barbecue is called burgoo (Moss 116). The origin of the name is contested. Some people claim that it is of Turkish or French origin, while others claim that it simply derives from the sloppy pronoun of bird stew (Jamison 372). Owensboro is the self-proclaimed burgoo capital of the world. Burgoo, a rich soup/stew of mutton (sometimes beef and/or chicken), tomatoes, potatoes, onions, carrots, and corn (Elie Smokestack 183) and it is quite similar to Brunswick stew. Gradually, the tradition of cooking mutton in Kentucky is demising, with people preferring pork over this gamy kind of meat and the journalist Calvin Trillian wrote in Stalking the Barbecued Mutton that he fears, that the unique style of mutton barbecue is losing out to the competition of Kentucky Fried Chicken and similar fast-food chains (Moss 229). 4.5 Tennessee The Supremacy of Memphis Barbecue We have seen how settlers from the original southern thirteen colonies introduced barbecue to the frontier states. There, and in the home states of barbecue like North Carolina, the main barbecue styles and regions generally bear the generic name of their respective state. While cities like Lexington or Owensboro are famed for their distinctive styles of barbecue on a regional level which originated there, they all alike are as well ascribed to their statewide schools of barbecue. Memphis however, competing with Kansas City, is known as Americas barbecue capital, with a distinctive form of barbecue that does not exist anywhere else in the United States and is the sole location in Tennessee that is generally associated with barbecue. With over 100 barbecue restaurants and one of the biggest and prestigious cooking contests in the country, the Memphis in May, no other city quite compares to Memphis and Kansas City (Alfino and Aputo 69). What benefit did Memphis have over other cities in Tennessee like Nashville to spawn such a high regarded style of barbecue? Finally, what exactly is so unique about the barbecue cooked in Memphis compared to the other Southern and Midwestern states? The most crucial reason why Memphis developed its own style of barbecue was the migration of African Americans to the city, who, as we already know, had a profound impact on barbecue wherever they settled. Their population grew from 3,800 at the time of the Civil War to over 50,000 at the beginning of the 20th century and as Lolis Eric Louie observed,

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today in the black sections of the city, barbecue pits are more common than lawn furniture (Elie Smokestack 10). As the worlds largest timber market, Memphis economy not only drew thousands of African Americans looking for better prospects in, but also crowds of weekend visitors (Moss 151). These masses wanted to be entertained and a vibrant nightlife developed with dozens of bars and (barbecue-) restaurants. The early barbecue restaurants of the first half of the 20th century, run by African Americans but sometimes owned by whites, were more watering holes focusing on alcohol than restaurants and served barbecue, particularly ribs, alongside (Moss 153). Only after the Second World War did those establishments switch to cooking barbecue exclusively because of the way it flourished. The barbecue festival and contest Memphis in May also was and still is a huge benefactor for the popularity of Memphis-style barbecue, but it when it first started in 1978, barbecue already was well established in Memphis (Elie Smokestack). All sorts of barbecued meats and seafood can be found in Memphis, but what they really specialize in is pork shoulder and above all ribs (Raichlen Bible 466). According to John Egerton in Southern Food, did people in Tennessee at the early stages of statehood hold pigs so dear, that the theft of a pig could land you in jail for up to fifteen years, three times longer than the maximum sentence for involuntarily manslaughter (Jamison 64). The way pork is cooked in Memphis is significantly different from chopped pork in North Carolina or ribs in Mississippi and Alabama. While all around the South, barbecue is cooked with hardwood that slowly burns down in a separate fire chamber and flavors the meats by the penetrating smoke, Memphians and other cooks in Tennessee often let the hardwood burn separately down and afterwards place the embers directly under the meat (Elie Smokestack 25). The long cooking time and the low temperatures are also predominant here, but a rather mellow, not too smoky, taste is preferred. What Memphis barbecue is most famous for is the fact, that no sauce is applied to the meats during the cooking process. In most other regional variations of barbecue, ribs or shoulders are mopped during the cooking with a vinegary or tomato-based sauce to prevent them from drying out or are glazed before finished with a sugary sauce to add flavor through caramelizing. In Memphis, however, sauces are only eaten, if ever, on the side in order to not spoil the natural taste of the meat, provided that high quality meat is used. The meats in Memphis are only seasoned with a dry rub that is massaged on the ribs the night before cooking and again sprinkled over it shortly before serving (Raichlen Bible 175).
Memphis-Style Ribs

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6 racks of pork ribs (baby back ribs or spareribs) Dry rub: paprika, ground black pepper, firmly packed dark brown sugar, salt, celery salt, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, dry mustard, ground cumin Remove the thin, papery skin from the rack of each rib. Combine the ingredients for the rub in a small bowl and whisk to mix. Rub two thirds of this mixture over the ribs on both sides, then transfer the ribs to a roasting pan. Cover and let marinate, in the refrigerator, 4 to 8 hours. 2. Using hickory wood, preheat an enclosed pit to 120 C. Place the ribs in the pit and cook them for approximately 4 hours. 3. Fifteen minutes before the end, season the ribs with the remaining rub, sprinkling it on. (Davis and Kirk 51, Raichlen Bible 175-176) 1.

The sauces that may be eaten in Memphis with barbecue mostly take the high middle ground between Eastern and Western styles (Jamison 353), are neither too sweet nor too spicy and contain tomato sauce and vinegar alike. Straight Bourbon Whiskey-based sauces are, similar to Kentucky, widespread through the entire state of Tennessee since Lynchburg is the home of Jack Daniels. The company itself, like Jim Beam launched a big barbecue sauce franchise. Classic side dishes in Memphis are what Mike Mills calls barbecue oddities (Mills 57): barbecue spaghetti: boiled noodles topped with vegetables and smoked chopped pork shoulder (Davis and Kirk 80) and barbecued Bologna: rolls of bologna barbecued in the pit and topped with barbecue sauce (Moss 152). Barbecue in Tennessee is of course not only confined to Memphis. Cities like Jackson or Nashville also have a number of barbecue establishments and people all over the rural areas enjoy cooking barbecue. These regions are however according to Lolis Eric Elie justifiably absent from maps of great barbecue capitals (Smokestack 25). They did not have the benefit to attract the same number of African Americans as early as Memphis had. Barbecue, especially commercial, would not become widespread east of Memphis until well after the Second World War (Moss 153). So people from Nashville or Lexington TN had no other choice but to orientate themselves towards the famous and far older style of Memphis barbecue. 4.6 Texas The Holy Trinity of Barbecue Southern Barbecue is a proud thoroughbred whose bloodlines are easily traced. Texas barbecue is a feisty mutt with a whole lot of crazy relatives. The Southern barbecue style has remained largely unchanged over time. Texas barbecue is constantly evolving (Walsh 16). Although this statement by Robb Walsh, one of the most renowned authorities on Texan barbecue, may appear to be quite coarse it vividly describes the exceptional status and reputation barbecue in Texas holds among the pantheon of Southern barbecue style. In the

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words of John DeMers: barbecue is the great divider of Southern cultural identity (14). That might not necessarily be true for every state of the South. Georgia, Virginia or South Carolina might have developed their own slight peculiarities concerning barbecue, but they over all more or less overlap in many regards and share a similar history. Texas, however, developed such a unique style of barbecue that not only is considered to be one of the four major styles of barbecue, but also is within divided into three distinctive styles: barbacoa, eastern and central style. Southerners, with a few mentioned exceptions, barbecue pork. Texans barbecue pork too, but what they really are known for is barbecuing cow heads, sausages, other cheap cuts of beef, which is generally synonymous with their style, and their partial dislike for sauces. These pork and beef barbecue traditions have very different origins. Long before Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845 it was part of Spains vast American holdings and later belonged to Mexico, so barbecue spoke Spanish long before it spoke English (DeMers 18), until the Texas Revolution and the subsequent proclamation of the Texas Republic. The Spanish introduced cows and goats into the area of todays Texas around the early 16th century and the Spanish and Mexican cowboys, the vaqueros, resorted to cooking beef and goats since these species were more suited to the climate than pigs and therefore the word barbacoa has survived intact and is still used in Mexico and southern Texas (Elie Smokestack 26). Barbacoa though means cooking cow head and goat head in central Texas, since the vaqueros often were paid with undesirable cuts of beef or goats which were raised entirely for food and not for money. The heads today are wrapped in aluminum foil and buried in a pit and cooked over coals without any smoke by Tejanos or Mexican-Texans who still make up a large percentage of Texan pitmasters. After about eight hours the meat is so tender, that it basically falls off the bone and is sold by the pound as cheek, tongue, brains and eyes (Elie Smokestack 37) with tortillas and salsa. This authentic practice, however, is slowly dying out because of concerns about the cooking style expressed by the Health Department. The remaining old-established businesses were granted grandfather status (Walsh 190), meaning only they can carry on burying cow heads under layers of dirt until they finally choose to close down. A few other places though transferred this practice to electrical ovens and non-commercial cookers still do it in their backyards. The east Texas style of barbecue is very similar to the other southern styles since it involves primarily barbecued pork. It was introduced by both white settlers and African American slaves before the Civil War. Many Tennesseans flocked to Texas as early as the

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1830s, constitute for a significant portion of white settlers and probably wanted to recapture the flavor of their native state (Elie Smokestack 25) what meant cooking pork. This is supported by the fact that at the Battle of Alamo in 1836 most of the people killed were transplanted settlers from Tennessee, most notably Davy Crockett (Elie Smokestack 25). The bulk of new settlers however arrived during the cotton boom of the 1850s and because of the thriving cattle industry from all over the South. The myth that barbecue was introduced by brave Anglo pioneers and rugged cowboys (Elie Cornbread 53) though is only partially true. Slaves, along with Hispanics, picked cotton in Texas as early as the 1800s and introduced a deep-rooted barbecue culture (Moss 159) and by 1860 up to 30% of the states population were African American. After the cotton season was over, slaves were given pigs or steers they barbecued in pits the way they learned it in their former southern home states. Many of the former slaves opened barbecue restaurants after the emancipation in eastern Texas. They way African American cooked and still cook barbecue in Texas also separates them from their white counterparts. Blacks cook their meats longer than whites who like to have perfect slices of meat, in the black east Texan style, they dont mind serving you a messy pile of meat debris (Elie Cornbread 57). While whites held huge barbecues for thousands of people for any major occasion, blacks are particularly famous for their celebration of Juneteenth. Since communication with Texas was cut off during the final phase of the Civil war, Texans learned only two months after the surrender of the Confederate States that the war was over, to be precise on June the 19th. So for the black Texans the distinction between humanity and property had been extended to them (Elie Smokestack 39). Now an official holiday, it is and always was accompanied by cooking barbecue. However, according to Robb Walsh the whites and Mexicans have struck up a Faustian bargain in Texas (Elie Cornbread 55) with the Mexicans playing the colorful minority who invented barbecue in Texas, the whites largely cooking it today and African Americans have been completely erased from the meta-narrative of Texas history (Elie Cornbread 57) to eradicate the inconvenient reminder of slavery. The typical dishes of east Texas style barbecue do not differ a great deal compared to dishes from any other southern state. Pork shoulder and ribs are again the main barbecued meats cooked with hickory, oak or pecan, eaten with a sweet and thick tomato-based sauce and the main side dishes are again coleslaw and beans. The kind of barbecue Texas is most famous for is located in central Texas and is also called the barbecue belt (Elie Smokestack 47). The pioneers in Texas were not only, according to legend, cowboys but also thousands of Germans, Poles and Czechs who

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immigrated to Texas during the second half of the 19th century, especially after the Revolutions of 1848, and chose Texas to be their new home with a number of them opening butcher shops and meat markets. Because of the lack of refrigeration a lot of meats that did not sell, especially less popular cuts, were smoked (Mills 88) or used for sausage-making (also smoked) just as the butchers did in the Old World. Since poor white, Hispanics or African American migrant workers, whose number was estimated in 1938 at around six hundred thousand, (Walsh 154) were not allowed to eat in restaurants these meat markets were well frequented. Those meat markets today still largely do not resemble restaurants. They sell their barbecued meats on the spot on butcher paper with crackers and pickles and no knives or forks, no barbecue sauce (Walsh 97). The epicenters of this style of central-, meat marked-based barbecue are the towns of Luling and Lockhart. The latter is known as the capital of Texas barbecue and with a population of only 11000 has four of the oldest, still operating meat markets of Texas which combined serve up to 250,000 people a year (Mills 90). Barbecue in Texas generally revolves around three different kinds of smoked meats, also called The Holy Trinity (DeMers 22). Along with ribs in the east, sausages in the centre, the smoked meat central Texas is most known for is beef brisket. Brisket is again a very cheap, tough and considerably heavy cut of meat which takes hours of cooking to tenderize it. Barbecuing whole steers had a long tradition in the 19th century, but after the rapid growth of the cattle industry the market was flooded with beef products (Walsh) what eventually made beef the most popular kind of meat in Texas Barbecue and beef brisket tells you immediately that this is not any other states barbecue plate (Engelhardt 9) in contrast to the centrality of pork that ties all the other states of the South together. The reason why brisket often is considered to be the Holy Grail (Raichlen Planet 117) of barbecue, apart from the fact that it is a delicacy, is that it is very hard to master the art of cooking it properly or as Robb Walsh puts it: its hard to mess up a pork roast but its easy to ruin a brisket (Walsh 211), because it easily dries out if unattended. There are as many different brisket recipes as there are brisket cooks. Here is the combination of two popular:
Hill Country Barbecue Brisket 1 beef brisket flat (6 to 8 pounds) with very important a cap of fat at least inch thick Rub: coarse salt, ground pepper 1. Trim the brisket so as to leave a -inch cap of fat. (Any less and the brisket will dry out, and any more fat will prevent the rub from seasoning the meat.) 2. Prepare your pit: An indirect heat pit with a lid is preferred. We recommend using hardwood such as post oak for heat and smoke. Some woods mesquite and other types of oak emit a strong, harsh

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flavor that is undesirable to many people. Try different hardwoods to suit your taste. Heat the pit to 120 to 175 C. The lower the heat, the more smoke, the better the flavor. 3. Place the brisket in the pit and smoke until the meat reaches an internal temperature of 65 C. Then, tightly wrap the brisket in a couple of layers of aluminum foil, crimping the edges to make a hermetic seal. Return the brisket to the smoker and continue cooking until the brisket is very tender, but not soft, and the internal temperature is about 90C. 4. Remove the wrapped brisket from the smoker and place it in a warm spot. Let the brisket rest for about 30 minutes. This resting period is very important; during that time, the brisket will reabsorb its juices. 5. To serve, unwrap the brisket and thinly slice it (Davis and Kirk 38, Raichlen Planet 117-118)

Some people, especially in the east, like to mop their brisket with a sauce, others do not use any aluminum foil at all and as we already heard black Americans often prefer to cook brisket until it is fall-apart tender and eat it in a sandwich. It is a matter of locality and personal preference. Central Texans want to add the least amount of flavors possible in order to not overpower it, only salt and pepper to support the natural flavor of beef and definitely no sauce at all.

Figure 9: Sign in Kreuz Market barbecue restaurant in Lockhart, Texas Brisket is not the only cut of beef Texans extensively barbecue in central Texas. Before meat packing transformed from being a predominantly local business to a national industry, meat markets and butcheries were, as mentioned, more or less obliged to smoke their cheaper cuts. (Walsh 210) Besides the omnipresent brisket, the meat markets also smoked other cheaper cuts like chuck and in a larger number beef clod, which basically is a cows shoulder. Beef long ribs too are very popular in Texas, which is mirrored by the fact that this kind of ribs also is called colloquially Texas ribs (Raichlen Ribs 11). Meat markets mostly stopped butchering after the 1950s.From then on they were free to order

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not only the cheaper cuts from wholesalers but also more expensive ones, which they earlier reserved for wealthy costumers. Some restaurants and markets started to feature cuts with a higher quality like sirloin, but most stuck to cooking the cheaper ones since they generally hat a higher content of fat. This is especially true for the time of the low-fat trend of the recent decades with costumers eating more health conscious. This eventually also led to the trend to feed cattle differently to create leaner meat. The only cuts which reliably had a high fat-content were brisket and beef clod, other meats are more likely to dry out in the course of the long process of barbecuing. (Walsh 210). A broad option of traditional side dishes did not exist in small, local Texan restaurants until recently. As mentioned, meat markets generally only offered crackers and pickles. Since today meat markets in smaller towns like Lockhart have no significant local costumer base but are dependent on tourists or barbecue enthusiasts who are willing to drive hundreds of miles to sample good barbecue, some also offer a broader range of side dishes like beans, coleslaw or potato salad. Especially potato salad has a long tradition in Texas because of the number of German immigrants and often is served at private barbecues. Most recipes are inspired by its German prototype and often bear German names like Mamas potato salad or Hot German potato salad (Jamison 400). This trend to please everybody gradually led to the case that most restaurants and meat markets gave in and now serve a little bit of everything (Walsh 73), irrelevant if they are in east or central Texas or Mexican barbacoa joints. This is also true for the majority of barbecue restaurants all over the South. Only a few stick to their traditions of only serving a limited number of local specialties and fewer manage to survive. People cooking barbecue in their backyard do not have this economic pressure and when browsing through local internet message boards like Texasbbqrub.com, one has to acknowledge that these people often are the last instance who keep local traditions like cooking brisket alive but occasionally not shy away from trying new styles and cuts. The debate what intraregional barbecue style reigns supreme in Texas actually has been going on for decades, but with this trend of homogenization and consequent blurring of barbecue styles, Rob Walsh proposes that the best way to preserve our traditions is to constantly disagree about what Texas barbecue really is. As long as theres some disagreement the distinctions are kept alive (Walsh 73).

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4.7 Missouri Kansas City and St. Louis Kansas City is in a constant quarrel with Memphis over the title of American Barbecue Capital. While a number of cities, like Lexington in North Carolina or Santa Maria in California, claim this title, those two are in terms of size and fame the only serious contestants. These cities show a lot of parallels in questions of size, urban development, history, minorities, number of barbecue restaurants, their leading role in the states barbecue culture or size of premier barbecue festivals, in the case of Kansas City the American Royal. Other factors like the first introduction of barbecue or the preference of certain meats and sauces differ completely. Doug Worgul describes Kansas City as the melting pot of barbecue cities, the inland beach where every other barbecue style in the country washes up (58). Rural Missouri is generally not known for yielding renowned barbecue styles or restaurants unlike states in the South like North Carolina or Texas where barbecueinnovations mostly took place in minor cities like Lockhart or Lexington. Besides Kansas City Missouri is also renowned of the style of barbecue which originated in the states second biggest city, St. Louis. St. Louis was somewhat put in a backwater in the dispute between Kansas City and Memphis and their respective nationwide fame, but nevertheless gained courtesy for being the namesake for a special cut of spareribs and the rather uncommon practice of barbecuing pork snoots. The Kansas City of the Wild West with huge cattle drives, the Kansas City of glittering nightlife with gambling, jazz and prostitution, the industrial city with packing houses and railroads and the promised-land for black migrants all alike share the credit for the development of the most enduring Kansas City the barbecue capital (Elie Smokestack 141). Located directly north of the South and northeast of the Southwest, Kansas City is the rendezvous point of all Southern barbecue traditions. Similar to Memphis, Kansas City is a river city which boomed in the second half of the 19th century and attracted thousands of transplanted former slaves looking for better prospects. Before that time, a large number of escaped slaves became residents of the city, which then was an important station of the Underground Railroad. While Memphis prospered through timber, Kansas City, as a huge railroad hub, was the place where farmers from Texas brought their cattle surplus after the Civil War which eventually made Kansas City the second largest meat-packing city in the United States after Chicago (Elie Smokestack 141). These factors contributed to the exponential growth of the city in the late 19th century and especially to the vibrant night-life since all these groups and transients wanted to be entertained. The barbecue restaurants of the

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early 20th century flourished during the time of the Prohibition after World War I and were ideal cover-ups for illegal speakeasies. These early restaurants were mainly owned by blacks, but a few also by whites. The bulk of white residents however moved to newly developed areas in suburbia since the 1890s what made the inner city of Kansas City predominantly black where the Kansas City barbecue tradition started (Moss 155) and today, like Memphis, has over 100 barbecue restaurants. Kansas City barbecue offers a selection of signature dishes, meats and sauces that seeks its equal in the entire United States. While brisket is generally associated with Texas barbecue, the local meat-packing industry provided very cheap beef and the chefs from Kansas City early on started barbecuing the cheaper cuts. However, brisket in Kansas City is generally not cooked or served dry but smothered with barbecue sauce. Another barbecued beef specialty Kansas City is known for are the so-called burnt ends. These are little end pieces of the brisket that get overdone because they are so thin (Mills 57) what makes them quite chewy. They nevertheless are considered to be a delicacy by a number of barbecue enthusiasts.
Burnt Ends 1 fully barbecued fatty top section of a brisket Tomato-based barbecue sauce (optional) 2. 1. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95 to 105C Transfer the brisket section to the smoker and cook it for 3 to 4 hours, depending on the size. Let the brisket sit at room temperature for 10 minutes and then slice or shred it. After you break through the coal-like crust, the meat will pull apart into succulent shreds with chewy, deep-flavored ends. Savor at once, with barbecue sauce, if you wish (Jamison 108)

This recipe again shows how barbecue cooks try to salvage meat up to the last pit and do not want anything to go to waste. While the tradition to cook beef in Kansas City stems from Texas, the city also offers a number of pork dishes inspired by the southwest. Sliced and pulled pork plus hams are widely available but Kansas City is far more known for its barbecued ribs. The cooking process itself is fairly similar compared to other pork-regions, apart from the fact that in Kansas City mostly St. Louis cut spareribs (trimmed of the chine bone and brisket flap) (Jamison 67) are used and that Kansas City folks love to make a mess with ribs, layering them with so much sweet, hot sauce that youre licking your fingers as often as youre licking your chops (Jamison 67). Rib tips, the small meaty pieces of the breast bone that are trimmed off spareribs (Raichlen Ribs 9) are a Kansas City original. These cartilaginous ends of spareribs might at first glance not be a desirable meal, but after a lengthy session of smoking they develop a lot of flavor and are a challenge for any self-

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respecting pitmaster too. Apart from beef and pork, a lot of menus also do feature chicken and turkey. Sauces contributed a lot to the fame of Kansas Citys barbecue-style with the city being called the sauce capital of the country (Jamison 347). The traditional Kansas City barbecue sauce is tomato-based with lots of sugar and molasses and most store-bought barbecue sauces today are viscous and overly sugary variations of the Kansas City original. No other regional barbecue-style barbecue sauce is as widespread in this multi-billion dollar market (Brooks et al. 2) and the supermarkets in Kansas City itself offer a variety of up to 75 different Kansas-style sauces. The brand KC Masterpiece, which was invented in Kansas City, today is the largest manufacturer of barbecue sauces in the United States. The wood pitmasters use in Kansas City is largely hickory since this tree grows plentiful around the city. Kansas City is also known for its huge variety of side dishes, including French fries, baked beans, coleslaw, potato salad and pickles (Moss 158). All of these sides can be found in any other barbecue region, but not in this wide range. The question whether Memphis or Kansas City is the barbecue capital of the world ultimately cannot be answered definitely. Both cities have an equally large number of famous barbecue restaurants, developed unique styles of barbecue and both are considered to represent one of the four major styles of American barbecue. Kansas City might have a slight advance over Memphis because of its wider range of signature dishes, its hybrid southern and southwest-styles and the fact that Kansas City most of the times emerges victorious in polls on websites like the Zagat Survey which try to answer this question. In the long run, however, especially the sugary barbecue sauce may do a disservice to the citizens of Kansas City since it on a regular basis is among the top ten of lists of Americas cities with most overweight people. St. Louis was recognized as Americas Top Grilling City in the second annual list of Top Ten Grilling Cities by Kingsford, one of the largest manufacturers of charcoal in the world (St. Louis 101). While St. Louis is overwhelmingly associated with grilling, especially pork, the city also made seminal contributions to the heterogeneity of American barbecue styles and dishes. Again, mainly the migration of African Americans leaving their former homes in the South introduced barbecue to the city which became a major manufacturing center in the second half of the 19th century (Gregory 44 and 117). One dish that is exclusively found in St. Louis and its sister-town East St. Louis is crispy pork snoot sandwich. Packing houses in St. Louis and East St. Louis used to pack the best parts of the hog for selling, while the black folks managed to end up with the less desirable portions,

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chief among the snoot (Elie Smokestack 86). The ways snoots are cooked can be quite different from the traditional barbecue credo of cooking meat over many hours low and slow with wood or embers in an enclosed barbecue pit. Pig snoots can be barbecued in a smoker and finished on a grill to become crisp, grilled over low to medium heat with constant turning to avoid burning them or simply cooked in a deep fryer.
Barbecued Pig Snoots 12 pig snoots Barbecue Sauce First, wash the snoots well with cold water, then slice them with a very sharp knife into strips about 2 inches wide. Place the strips in a large pot of water, bring it to boil over medium-high heat, and boil for about an hour. After they hard boiled, rinse them off well with cold water. 2. Set up your grill on low, direct heat, less than 150C. If your grill allows it, it is best to cook the snoots 12 to 14 inches from the coals. The snoots drip up a lot of grease, and you have to watch them closely as they can flame up and be ruined in a brief moment if the coals are too close. If the coals are farther away, the flame-up just burns itself out without burning the snoots. If you cannotkeep the snoots far enough from the coals, just use a small amount of charcoal or briquettes to keep the heat low. 3. Grill the snoots, turning them often, until they crisp, 1 to 2 hours. Dont put any sauce on them while they are cooking, but cover them with any sauce as soon as you take them off the grill if they are to be eaten immediately. (Davis and Kirk 62). 1.

Apart from this trait that most people in the country would probably find rather unappetizing, St. Louis-style barbecue is well known for ribs. The city provides the name for St. Louis-cut ribs, which are spareribs cut from the flattest part []. The rib tips, skirt, and point are always removed (Raichlen Ribs 9).

Figure 10: Rib-tips, St Louis-style ribs and skirt The ribs have a more uniform shape than normal spareribs, which makes them more space-saving when cooked in a pit and they also have the bonus of being more tender with the

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gristly and more chewier parts being removed. The cut off piece is commonly known as rib tips (Raichlen Ribs 9-10). This cut is not only cooked in St. Louis itself but popular in the entire country, both among restaurateurs and amateur cookers. The residents of St. Louis consume more barbecue sauce per capita than any other city in America (St. Louis-style). St. Louis-style barbecue sauce is predominantly tomato-based and similarly to Kansas City-style sauces heavily sweetened with a light acidic note (Raichlen BBQ USA 130-131). Reference books on the different styles of American barbecue do not go into detail what side dishes are generally associated with St. Louis. Studying the menus of famous barbecue restaurants in St. Louis like Smoky Os or Phil's Bar B Que do not show any special or unusual items but classic dishes like coleslaw, potato salad or mac&cheese. 4.8 Other States and Regions When Lolis Eric Elie and Frank Stewart first went on their journey to chronicle the state of barbecue in the United States during the mid-90s , especially in the South, their initial thesis was that this art, so vital to our national identity was dying or at least endangered (Elie Smokestack preface). They were insofar right, that old-established, sometimes run-down but nevertheless legendary barbecue-joints gradually seized to exist and that those who prevailed often were making compromises and offered a wider range of menu-options to appeal to a broader base of customers instead of sticking to their local roots and traditions. What they, however, did not anticipate, was the recent nostalgic trend that has brought barbecue to relative prominence in places where it was previously little more than a novelty (Elie Smokestack preface). While barbecue was long serving as a visible boundary distinguishing southerners from other Americans, it is now also exported to all cardinal directions of the United States as a contemporary lifestyle. While hundreds of barbecue restaurants can today be found in every major city all over the American East, North and Northwest, this new found interest in barbecue can not only be attributed to be sparked by commercial barbecue enterprises. Californians and New Yorkers alike recently began to take great interest in cooking barbecue in their own backyards. With an oversaturation of fast-food restaurants and convenience products from supermarkets, more and more people try to return to the old days and not only embrace their own local culinary culture but also try to incorporate culinary traditions from all over the world and from their own country in particular. A notable community of hobbyist foodenthusiasts, often called foodies, developed in recent decades. This group are amateurs who simply love food for consumption, study, preparation and news (Foodie) and often take

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interest in specific items with barbecue being one of them. Books on barbecue by authors like Steven Raichlen today regularly make it on the New York Times Bestseller list and entire TVshows like BBQ Pitmasters on TLC or the Food Networks Up in Smoke find a broad audience. The number of people in Germany who are similarly devoted to anything barbecuerelated is only a tiny fraction compared to the users in the United States. While Germans are organized in a handful of barbecue forums, Americans can frequent dozens of inter- or intraregional message boards. The discussion forum entirely dedicated to a brand of smokers, the Virtual Weber Bullet for example has over 6500 registered users. The website called The Smoke Ring (www.thesmokering.com) is a comprehensive directory of barbecue related websites, with a listing of over 1200. The biggest impact on the new enthusiasm of barbecue however was made by the downward turn of the economy in the 2000s. Restaurateur Charlie McKenna said, that all dining is turning away from fine dining (Pang), but because people still want to get good food, barbecue is an attractive alternative since mostly the cheaper cuts of meat are offered in barbecue restaurants. It should not be forgotten that barbecue existed in parts of the North a substantial amount of time before this new trend developed. The relatively long tradition of barbecue in Chicago again can be attributed to the migration of African Americans. Barbecue in parts of California was introduced by Mexican Americans. Barbecue in other urban centers of the North also more recently gained more popularity, partially owed to transplanted southerners, white and black alike, who would not want to abandon eating barbecue in their new homes and barbecue tradition therefore underwent such incessant reinvention and could slip into the routine rhythms of metropolitan life (Warnes 131). In the following chapters not only will be explained in detail how the rising popularity of barbecue can be explained, but also how or whether these new locations for an old form of cooking changed the way barbecue is cooked and perceived. Did the states which did not contribute to the firm establishment of barbecue into the American culture stay true to the roots of it, or did they make it more suitable for their own tastes and environments? Are there any preferences for certain local Southern styles like Texas barbecue or North Carolinian barbecue or are they simply mashed up? 4.8.1 Chicago Barbecued Street Food

In 1940, 77 percent of the black Americans still lived in the South. Between 1910 and 1970, six and a half million black Americans moved from the South to the North (Elie

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Smokestack 81). Most of these African Americans settled, as already described, in prosperous cities like Kansas City or Memphis and opened barbecue restaurants. Chicago was no exception. At The end of this emigration wave in the 1970s urban had become a euphemism for black (Elie Smokestack 81) and eating barbecue came to all but mean going to the black side of town. In Chicago, the black side of town was and still is the Southside. Chicagos development into an industrial center is very similar to Kansas City or Memphis. It has been a consolidating point for immigrants from southern areas with a long tradition of barbecuing and attracted hundreds of thousands of settlers from Poland, todays Czech Republic and Germany with their old-style wood smoking and sausage making. Chicago also was the nations leading center for meat packing until the 1920s and therefore was never short of a cheap and plentiful supply of meat, what created the same conditions as in Kansas City. The varied traditions and techniques forged in the South might have been combined and enhanced in Chicago to create an equally compelling culinary art (Our view). Chicago could have developed its own iconic barbecued meats, dishes or cooking techniques. This, however, largely did not happen. The menus of old-established, mostly African American-run, restaurants in Chicago are rather homogenized. Peter Engler, a culinary historian, said that barbecue in Chicago is defined by what they do not serve (Gebert 5:20). There are very few sides, largely only French fries, and a limited variety of different meats. While Kansas City today offers all kinds of cuts like pork shoulder, ribs or beef brisket, Chicago is only known for rib-tips, St-Louis cut ribs and sausages they call hot links. This is strange enough, since as noted, Kansas City and Chicago both were huge centers for meat packing. The tradition of cooking the cheap scrap rib-tips and ribs can be attributed to the meat packing industry, but it is rather odd that beef-products did not find their way into Chicagos barbecue-repertoire. The habit of cooking sausages however is very similar to central Texas, were it was introduced by central- and eastEuropean immigrants too. Chicago, along with Memphis and Kansas City, was and still is known for its vibrant night-life. While the barbecue restaurants in Memphis and Kansas gradually emancipated themselves from being bars, offering barbecue on the side, and grew into establishments cooking barbecue exclusively, Chicago did not overcome its focus on catering for the crowds roaming the streets at night. On the Southside of Chicago the barbecue joints dont open until about two in the afternoon, and they dont close until almost midnight (Elie Smokestack 91). The Chicago barbecue architecture is not designed for seating a lot of patrons, they sell

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their food to go. That is probably the main reason why barbecue in Chicago is not known for pork shoulder or brisket, which can take up to 12 to 20 hours to cook. Ribs, rib-tips and sausages are done in a fraction of this time and can quickly be distributed to customers who take the food home with them or want to keep on enjoying the night-life. Barbecue here has more the character of street-food like it is found in any metropolis all around the world what is supported by the fact that Chicagos gastronomy is particularly known for foods which can be cooked and consumed in a shorter amount of time like the Chicago-style hot dog or the Italian beef sandwich. However, in recent years did a number of serious barbecue chefs try to introduce authentic and more diverse barbecue to Chicago. The BBQ Smoque restaurant for example published a manifesto, in which they heavily complain about the state of barbecue in Chicago.
When people raised on real BBQ come to Chicago and order up a slab of ribs at places renowned for BBQ in Chicago, they take a bite and look up with an expression that is puzzled and forlorn. Theyve been had; theyve been betrayed. They call it BBQ, they think. It looks like BBQ. But it aint BBQ (Our view).

In the summer of 2010 in only a 10-week span seven barbecue restaurants open in Chicago (Pang) and more followed afterwards. These new establishments want to distinguish themselves from the old restaurants of the more or less segregated Southside. They want to make barbecue more available in all parts of the city and for all socio-economic classes and all races. They offer substantially more seating and all styles of southern barbecue. Some of these new restaurants, however, are part of a rather new movement that can be observed in any major city across the United States: upscale barbecue. This gentrification of barbecue can for example be observed in Chicagos Chicago Q restaurant, with valet service and private dining spaces. They offer high-quality meats like kobe-brisket or smoked salmon that exceed the price-range of normal BBBQ-joints substantially. 4.8.2 California Fusion Barbecue

California barbecue would seem like an oxymoron. Who ever heard of free-range ribs? Who ever bothered to put organic micro greens in coleslaw? (Elie Cornbread 121). Californian cuisine is commonly associated with heavy Mediterranean, Asian and Latin influences, consumed by a health-conscious population who as a part of their lifestyle highly esteem organic and fresh products. However, during the Second Great Migration of African Americans till the 1970s, when hundreds of thousands left their homes joining in a massive

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regional diaspora, California felt the effects along with other Western states (Gregory 4). In 1970, 12% of Californian residents were originally from the South, with 571,000 of them being African Americans (Gregory 19). Thousands of Mexican-Americans, the Tejanos, also immigrated to California, joining the already substantial population of Latinos who lived there since the days of the Spanish Empire. These conditions, along with Californias climate, are generally a benevolent factor for the development of an own barbecue-style or at least an extensive dispersal. However, barbecue in California seems to have been a notable exception until recently, when it became more popular across the nation. So the question is, what ever happened in California that barbecue did not establish itself in the last century and how do Californians today deal with this new lifestyle of cooking barbecue? As mentioned above, Californians did not create a distinctive barbecue-style. So it would seem to be contradictory to acknowledge, that a style called Santa Maria barbecue exists on the central coast. In fact, the local rancheros would host Spanish-style barbecues each spring for their vanqueros (Santa) and beef, often the heads, were cooked in earthen pits, similarly to Texas. It is however disputed whether the style as it is known today is real barbecue or not. Santa Marians now do most notably use tri-tip, a cut of beef from the bottom sirloin called Brgermeisterstck in Germany. They cook it over coals of native red oak in a time of approximately 45 minutes until medium-rare. The grills generally have no lids what means that the meat is less penetrated with smoke and we here see a rather short cookingtime. While Santa Maria along with Memphis and Kansas City confidently claims the title for barbecue capital of the United States (Santa), it is questionable if this technique can be considered to be real barbecue at all or should be called grilling. The immigration of African Americans to urban centers in California followed basic patterns compared to Chicago or Kansas City, but cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, however, not renowned for southern-style barbecue restaurants. The black immigrants who settled in Kansas City or Chicago brought with them their expectations of advancement and a freer life than In the Jim Crow South, but they did not want to leave their cultural traditions behind (Elie Cornbread 128), especially their culinary traditions. This was at first also true for the African Americans in California and they too developed the pattern of moving to segregated parts of towns like Los Angeles where soon relegated black musicians created a night-life similar to Beale Street in Memphis. However, the black cultural center of Los Angeles, Central Avenue, was in decline in the 1950s as African Americans largely moved to other parts of the city. The food of the few restaurants who still exist today in this part of Los

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Angeles was described by Lolis Eric Elie as bland and disappointing (Elie Cornbread 123). According to him, southern culture in California vanished, because of
the emergence of more militant black politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Younger people, born in California, no longer felt a connection to the barbecued meats and blues music of their Southern-born parents. As they created a culture more reflective of their own experiences, the remnants of Southern culture that flourished in California in the 1940s and 50s lost much of their potency (Elie Cornbread 129)

The few older places that exist today in California, most of the time serve a variety of transplanted Southern barbecue-dishes like chicken, ribs, sliced beef and typical side-dishes like coleslaw and baked beans, most though offer no pork shoulder and the typical sauce is sweet and tomato-based (Elie Cornbread 127). In the recent years however did the Californians increasingly take on cooking barbecue. California is famous for its fusion-food, they often try to adapt their local culinary traditions and ingredients to this old southern technique and ambitious restaurateurs opened a substantial number of new restaurants all over the state. Many Californians claim Asian ancestry, so it is not surprising that Asia-inspired cooking is centered on the West Coast. The popularity of this cuisine is not restricted to California and Asian-inspired barbecue is popular across the entire United States today. Cheryl and Bill Jamisons West Coast baby Back ribs or Thai-poon ribs are inspired by the flavors and ingredients of the Asian immigrants and contain spices like lemongrass, fishsauce, pineapple, soy sauce or five-spice powder (73). The large Latino community inspired dishes like pork or fish tacos which contain besides smoked and chopped pork or smoked fish fillets typical, predominantly spicy and acidic Mexican, ingredients
East L.A. Pork Tacos Borracho marinade and optional mop: orange juice, tequila, limes, lemon, onion (minced), olive oil, garlic cloves (minced), dried oregano (preferably Mexican), achiote paste, cumin, fiery habanero hot sauce 6 shoulder pork chops Warm corn tortillas Chopped onion and cilantro, and lime and orange wedges, for garnish The night before you plan to barbecue, combine the marinade ingredients. Pour the marinade over the pork in a plastic bag and refrigerate. 2. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 95 to 105C. 3. Drain the pork, reserving all of the marinade if you plan to baste the meat during cooking. Let the chops sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. 4. Transfer the chops to the smoker. Cook for 2 to 2 hours, basting at 45-minute intervals in a woodburning pit. 5. When done, the pork will pull easily away from the fat and bone. Allow the chops to sit at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes and pull the pork into shreds. Arrange the pork on a platter with the warm tortillas and garnishes. (Jamison 88) 1.

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People who open barbecue restaurants today in places like Los Angeles or the Bay Area are studying barbecue and creating menus designed not just for homesick Texans or Tennesseans but rather for people whose loyalty is to good food, not regional accuracy (Elie Cornbread 127). This of course is also true for other regions like New York.

4.8.3

New York The Late Arrival of barbecue

New York Citys cuisine can be considered to be a melting pot which represents the most cuisines of all ethnic groups that are present in the United States. The New York City Health Department lists roughly 24000 restaurants within its vicinity (NYC Health), with only 39 of them being barbecue restaurants compared to 2462 Chinese or 1049 Italian restaurants. Only recently did few, mostly new emerging barbecue restaurants, gain nationwide attention and New Yorkers by now go to great lengths to sample authentic barbecue, what can be demonstratively observed at local festivals like the Big Apple Barbecue Bloc Party. One would, however, think that the most populous city in the entire United States offers a greater variety of a prominent American cuisine, especially because of the fact, that African Americans migrated to New York in similar numbers like to Chicago or Memphis. In 1910, almost 92000 African Americans (Sernett 265) lived in New York City and this number increased excessively after World War 2, with many of them settling in Harlem. They were, however, largely not able to keep on cooking southern barbecue in joints compared to Kansas City were old-established restaurants have grown into the fabric of neighborhoods. The reason is simply the dense population of New York City and to quote the New York Times: Without smoke, there is no barbecue, and therein lies the problem for New York: the city environmental codes (Asimov). Electrical smokers which today allow safe and convenient barbecuing in confined spaces are a quite recent innovation and traditional hardwood-burning pits could not be tolerated in dense spaces because of restrictive fire codes and the pollution of the smoldering smoke. African Americans therefore rather restricted themselves to bake traditional barbecued foods like ribs in ovens or served different classic soul-foods like fried chicken. Even with todays electrical or gas-smokers, restaurateurs first have to convince a myriad of inspectors, who seem to have an inexhaustible supply of rules (Asimov). Some restaurants chose to smoke their meats in Long Island and shipped it into the city, but when they arrived most of them were spoiled or dried out. If restaurateurs however attempt to pass any rule or regulation, they have to invest a

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substantial amount of money to make everything fire- or smoke-proof and any, however small, violation might endanger the whole operation with the result that they more likely refrain from it. A few, however, did take up the challenge in the 1990s and 2000s to open real-pit locations like the Blue Smoke, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que or the Rack & Soul and offer a wide variety of Southern classics like pulled pork, beef brisket, sausages or ribs. Interestingly enough, all owners of these mentioned restaurants are Caucasian. Mike Mills said about them
Personally, I have always wondered how white men from New York City could possibly be experts on barbecue. [] this is a diverse group of men and women from several corners of the country. They may have some different views, but theyre all united in the cause of promoting the tradition and culture of barbecue (Mills 252)

The lack of barbecue restaurants, having no traditional barbecue culture and the rise of homestyle and comfort food outlets in the recent years culminated in a downright euphoria of New Yorkers about anything barbecue-related. This can be vividly demonstrated on the example of the Big Apple Barbecue Bloc Party which will in 2012 be hosted for the 9th time. 16 famous pitmasters from the main barbecue regions of the South and Midwest plus New York offer a wide variety of barbecued foods like brisket, sausage, pulled pork or ribs and promote their respective regional styles of barbecue. Additionally to food writers and experts hold seminars on barbecue (Mills 224). Over 125,000 barbecue enthusiasts attended the event in 2011 and created long lines in front of the vendors, often to the dismay of the visitors who nevertheless patiently waited to sample food which is hard to obtain in New York City. These kinds of events only draw similar crowds in the home states of barbecue like Memphis in May in Tennessee, the Lexington Barbecue Festival in North Carolina or the American Royal in Kansas City. The Big Apple Barbecue Bloc Party is the only one of its kind in what the Southerners would call a Yankee-state. Barbecue in New York City after all still is commonly synonymous with outdoorgrilling. Unique barbecue-styles most of the time develop and thrive through legendary barbecue restaurants which New York lacked. A few aficionados from the greater New York area, or as far in the North as New England, however, who are not just transplanted Southerners did recently begin to appreciate real barbecue and try to cook it themselves. Most of them share a similar history how they got introduced to barbecue. Posts by pitmasters from the East Coast in the introduction sections of barbecue message boards often follow a similar pattern like:
Newbie from New York: I am fairly new to the smoking world. About two years ago i got a Bradley smoker from a family member and never knew much about the whole process. I am becoming more

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interested in smoking after trying it occasionally in the past few years on different types of meats and seafood. I am an outdoor guy, love hunting and fishing so there is no shortage of meat and seafood to experiment with (Stoner86). New to smoking in New York: Just recently got a brinkman electric smoker. since getting it on thursday i have been reading on this site every chance i get, WOW there is alot of information here, have also signed up for the ecourse (973).

Since smokers and barbecue-accessories today can be bought all over the internet or are sold in national chains of outdoor-shops like the Bass Pro Shops, a rising number of people, overwhelmingly men, who have an affection for outdoor-cooking but have no experience in barbecuing at all, buy barbecue pits to try something new and in large numbers join online communities to educate themselves on this topic. 4.9 German Approach to American Barbecue Jim Quessenberry, owner of the Sauce Beautiful-brand in Arkansas had a theory why barbecue recently became so successful in the United States. He says, that
The European market has fallen in love with it. [] It was something interesting to them, going outside and having an outdoor sport that did not take any exertion. Any time Europeans fall in love with something, you have a backlash over here (Elie Smokestack 111)

How the Europeans, in this case the Germans, fell in love with barbecue was already elaborately explained, the question now is, what the Germans do with their new-found knowledge, of what they in this great distance and different cultural and historical background understand American barbecue is. The means how barbecue both was introduced in, for example, the American Northeast and Germany are in some respects, like being intrigued by something new or the access of information through the internet comparable. The Germans, however, have a more significantly different background in respect to Southern culture and a number of problems acquiring the appropriate resources to recreate an authentic Southern barbecue-experience. Barbecue-cookbooks by American authors like Jamie Purivance or Steven Raichlen today get translated into several different languages, including German, and are highly successful in Germany. These German editions are in most regards one-to-one translations from English into German (Raichlen Barbecue 106-110), which means that they do not pay respect to the availability of certain ingredients. The same difficulties of course also occur when Germans try to copy recipes directly from English-speaking websites or instructional videos. Most authentic Southern recipes will at least contain one ingredient that Germans, if any, have to go great lengths for to acquire. Often, the first obstacle is the required cut of meat, either pork or beef. German meat-charts look entirely different than their American

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counterparts5, due to the different culinary traditions. One significant difficulty is in this case of course the English name of a certain cut which often is hard to explain to German butcher who most likely has never heard about terms like beef brisket. Cuts that may be identical like the Tri-Tip and the Brgermeisterstck are however used in entirely different dishes. While Californians use high-grade, well aged beef for grilling, Germans braise the in their opinion undesirable Tri-Tip for hours and serve it as Tafelspitz. The question of quality is probably the biggest problem for Germans in their effort to reproduce satisfactory results. The United States Department of Agriculture, in short USDA, operates a voluntary beef grading system with the in this case relevant grades of prime (highest quality), choice (high quality) and select (good), based on the amount of intramuscular fat that provides flavor and the age of the slaughtered cow (Walsh 210). Most commercially available beef in the United States is labeled with one of these grades for higher transparency, although it is voluntarily. Germany does not have a similar grading system what has the effect that customers more or less have to trust their butchers or supermarkets implicitly. Even if German beef was labeled in a similar fashion, it would not live up to the high standards of American beef. Most beef offered in Germany today comes from heifers, a young cow before she had her first calf, or young bulls, which get slaughtered after 16 to 22 months, with both not having enough time to build up enough intramuscular fat (Brinkmann et al. 36). Most cattle however in Germany is bred for the milk-industry and worn out cows are frequently slaughtered for the production of beef. In comparison, the Americans intensively breed suitable races who guarantee high-grade beef products, like the Angus cattle or kobe-style Wagyu cattle which are widely available throughout the United States (Otto catalog) and are generally better fed (either grass or corn) than anywhere else in the world. Breeding cattle for the sole purpose of producing high-grade meat is less common in Germany since customers often are not willing to pay the substantially higher price. Devotees of prime beef in Germany often must accept detours to rural breeders who specialize in popular European cattle like Charolais or Simmenthaler. The problem of obtaining the right ingredients is closely related with the question of what Germans wanto to spend on certain products. Mesquite wood is not indigenous to Germany but can be purchased online or in a number of specialty stores for thrice the money it would cost in the United States. The 18 -inch Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker costs approximately 225 Euro in the US and 540 Euro in Germany. Imported American beef, also available in non-German cuts, is available at the Metro Cash & Carry stores and can almost be considered to be a luxury-product. These are only a few examples since Germans today
5

See appendix

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basically can purchase everything online from retailers who import American barbecue products. So they are challenged with either paying these high prices or trying to substitute with local products which might, but not necessarily, be of a lesser quality. What at first glance might seem to be an obstacle for Germans to come close to what they understand is the real American barbecue-experience also is a chance to become creative and create a uniquely German barbecue-style and industry. Instead of collectively ordering barbecue rubs from the United States to safe on shipping costs, Germans have recently began to create their own products, notably Marco Greulich with his Don Marcos BBQ Rubs (Greulich). With hardwoods like mesquite or hickory not being abundant in Germany, Germans mostly use local woods like the European beech or birch which give smoked meats an entirely different flavor (Jaeger 27). With barbecue pits being expensive in Germany compared to the US-market, a number of German and other European manufacturers like Landmann, Thros or Outdoorchef today offer a wide range of kettle grills and smokers at a cheaper price which, admittedly, often resemble form and function of their American prototypes. A huge number of capable amateur pitmasters simply build their own smokers and appliances. The do-it-yourself subsections of message boards are highly frequented by people who want to have some constructive input on their projects or who want to swap blueprints (Do-it-yourselfgrillsportverein.de). Germans often also not necessarily want to copy American-style barbecue at all costs in the first place. American barbecue sauces for example often are heavily sugared and many recipes recommend basting or glazing meats like ribs during the cooking-process with sweet sauces or juices. Germans often dislike this sweet taste as they both are not used to it and also prefer more savory foods. Since Germany also did not have barbecue restaurants which early on shaped local styles of barbecue, the first opened only recently in 2011, Germans are more prone to either blend American styles, cook old German dishes in a barbecue pit, get inspired by other foreign cuisines or create new dishes altogether. The recipe-database of the Grillsportverein for example provides 29 different recipes for ribs ranging from Americaninspired with sugary glazes to instructions on cooking Bavarian-style ribs with horseradish and sweet mustard.
Ribs with Sweet Mustard and Horseradish 4 Baby Back Ribs Dry rub: granulated garlic, salt, coarse pepper Mopping sauce: sweet mustard, horseradish, lager beer, oil, vinegar, granulated garlic, salt, coarse pepper

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Maple syrup for glazing Rub the ribs with the dry rub and mix the ingredients of the mopping sauce 2. Prepare the smoker for barbecuing, bringing the temperature to 110 C. 3. Put the ribs on the smoker and mop the ribs after about one hour. Continue doing so every 30 to 45 minutes. 4. After 5 hours of cooking, glaze the ribs with the maple syrup on every side. Serve after 5 hours (Waldwuser). 1.

Barbecue books, recently written by Germans, contain recipes like smoked Leberkse (Jaeger 120), authentic American brisket (Jaeger 124), tarte flambe from the Alsace region (Brinkmann et al. 68), bourbon-bbq-beans (Brinkmann et al. 144), duck breast cooked on a wooden plank (Brinkmann et al. 220), chimichurri-paste from Argentina (Brinkmann et al. 59) or even deserts like smoked pear (Brinkmann et al. 233). In short, there is basically no identifiable pattern and Germans are not restricted to any style of barbecue. The question however remains, whether Germans from different regions prefer to cook their local specialties. Bavarian dishes like pork shanks or pork roast can easily be cooked in a barbecue pit. Fish from the North Sea is suitable for smoking. People from regions bordering France have better access to high-quality groceries. Large communities of Turkish-Germans do exist in cities like Berlin or Cologne and lamb meat is abundant in their stores and supermarkets. Almost every region in Germany is known for local kinds of sausages which often can be smoked in barbecue pits. So the answer has to be, that regarding local specialties do the Germans actually have the required preconditions to develop their own local styles. However, when observing barbecue forums on the internet, most pitmasters still prefer to cook American classics like chicken, ribs, pulled pork or occasionally brisket, with their different adaptations of recipes, and seldom feature distinctively local meats or other ingredients. Lolis Eric Elie told Mike Mills during an interview, that in order for a city or a region to produce good barbecue, you need more people doing it and then you end up with friendly competition , and thats how barbecue becomes part of the culture (Mills 259). It remains to be seen if this will happen to the whole of Germany and its different regions in particular. 5. Competitive Barbecue Up to this point, the establishment, differences and possible tendencies towards homogenization of the several styles of American barbecue have mostly been analyzed by their respective local history, questions of ethnic group identity, commercial institutionalization, interior migration and new alternative means of communication like the internet. While these provide valid and illustrative material, they partially are not sufficient

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enough to look beyond the horizon of regional boundaries. Today nationwide barbecue restaurant-chains like Famous Daves with 37 locations around the United States may exist, but they lost the trait of offering authentic regional cuisine and their menus include items like Texas brisket, Georgia chopped pork or Southside rib-tips alike (Anderson). Oldestablished barbecue restaurants like Arthur Byrants in Kansas City do still cook regional and authentic barbecue, but they did not expand beyond their states or citys borders and except for their nationwide fame and tourists sampling their food, they have little points of contract with other barbecue regions. People may interact with each other today on the internet to share recipes or give illustrated reports on their last cooking attempts, they however do this mostly from the privacy of their homes. We have heard about local, public barbecue feasts like the way they were held in colonial times or today in New York City at the Annual Barbecue Bloc Party, but none of these events concentrate a similar massive number of groups with different regional barbecue-backgrounds at one single place like barbecue competitions do. Until the 90s, most barbecue competitions were held in the South and Midwest (Mills 165). Todays biggest Southern barbecue cook-offs, the Memphis in May, The American Royal in Kansas City, The Lexington Barbecue Festival in North Carolina and the Taylor International Barbecue Cookoff in Texas were only launched in the late 70s and early 80s (Moss 232). This time already saw a slight increase in the numbers of competitions held in these regions. Before that, a small number of competitions did of course exist and they mostly were offshoots of county, regional and state fairs (Deutsch 139). They were low in number of competitors and did not show the features of todays professionalism.
In the early days, barbecue contests were pretty bare-bones: contestants slept in pup tents and cooked on Weber kettles and homemade contraptions. (Moss 233)

Carolyn Wells, the executive director of the Kansas City Barbecue Society said, that the competition circuit grew 10 to 20 percent through the 1980s and 1990s (Moss 232). According to Robb Walsh, more than 100 barbecue competitions were held in Texas alone in 1996 (Walsh 57), from cook-offs as small as 20 competing teams to competitions with over 100. After September 11th and the consequence that Americans wanted to spend more recreational time with family and friends (Moss 232) and the new barbecue-euphoria, today you can find a cook-off in just about every corner of the country (Mills 165) with dozens happening simultaneously on every given weekend during the barbecue season which basically runs from spring to fall. These competitions are often huge public events often

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accompanied by food for sale to the public, life music, and games and amusements (Deutsch 139). Eric Lolis Erie said that barbecue competitions today draw competitors from as many different places as there are attitudes toward the spirit of competition (Elie Smokestack 122). So who are these people and why do they take on the burden of driving hundreds of miles on a regular basis, spending thousands of dollars of money and sacrificing their weekends and their sleep? One good reason is of course the possibility to win thousands of dollars which are awarded in prize money in different categories. Competitions are also especially interesting for barbecue restaurateurs. Owners of barbecue restaurants with a celebrity-like status like Mile Mills or Myron Mixon accumulated a high number of trophies at some of the most prestigious competitions in the country, what probably is the best advertising a restaurant can get. Most people, however, take part for recreational reasons because the odds placing high in any category at a competition with for example over 450 attending teams from all over the United States at the American Royal in Kansas City (Mills 165) are astronomical.
This is my hobby number one. People say, You must be crazy spending all that money on barbecue contests.And I say, What do you do for a hobby? and they say, I play golf every weekend. Well how much money does a set of golf clubs cost? Anywhere from 180$ to 600$. Thats what Ive got invested in the equipment that I use to barbecue. Whats it cost for a green fee? Thirty bucks. Itll cost me thirty dollars to come to a barbecue contest and I can bring my wife, my four kids, and we can spend thirty hours together. I say, Can you take four kids out on a golf course while youre playing? (Elie, Smokestack 126)

Mile Mills claims, that barbecue contests are open for everybody. He said, that it doesnt matter much who you are, how much money you have, where you live, or what you do for a living (Mills 165). While this is a very democratic statement it does not change the fact that competing requires substantial monetary resources unless you cook in a small event in your vicinity or you are sponsored. Big companies like Federal Express often support teams because they think it is good advertising (Elie Smokestack 126). Many ambitious teams today use high-grade products in their competitions to maximize their chances to win. High-prized wagyu-briskets which cost up to three times more than regular ones are today no great rarity at competitions. Diana Fick who won the American Royal in Kansas City in 2004 said that she handpicks her baby back ribs from Premium Standard Farms and buys her spices in a specialty store (Raichlen Ribs 135). People who are not that ambitious still have to pay entering fees for every category they want to compete in or have to consider gas-prices and other expenses. While thousands of barbecue teams exist in the United States today, both amateur and professional, cook-offs are divided by social and especially racial lines (Elie Cornbread 49). The people competing are in a great extend white suburban middle and upper-middle class who are willing to do this as a hobby (Elie Smokestack 128). At the

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Houston Rodeo Barbecue Cook-off in 2003, only two or three out of over 300 teams were composed of African Americans (Elie Cornbread 48). Black teams have more difficulties to find corporate sponsors, which are predominantly white, and their members to a great extend earn less money than for example a typical white amateur team like Swine By Design whose members are architects and attend cook-offs for fun and often do not come from a typical traditional barbecue-background (Deutsch 148).

5.1 Major American Barbecue Associations While this circuit obviously is dominated by white-Americans, the competing teams still come from all over the United States, both from the traditional barbecue-regions and party of the country where barbecue only recently was discovered as a recreational hobby. With them competing directly at larger cook-offs in different states and cities, and the sometimes hundreds of judges also not being entirely local, it raises the question what effect this circumstances have on the way teams cook their barbecue. Whether they adapt their barbecue to the way it is traditionally cooked at the location of the competition, they entirely stay true to their own style or they all give in to tendencies of nationwide homogenization. Taking a closer look at the sanctioning bodies of barbecue competitions, especially their sets of rules, and selected notable cook-offs will give a further insight. The Kansas City Barbecue Society today is the largest barbecue organization with over 14000 members (KCBS.us). They also are the biggest sanctioning body of barbecue contests all over the United States and supervise over 300 competitions annually (Fetcher and Winter 208). All judges at KCBS competitions have to be certified and instructed by the society. The four categories which count for the title of Grand Champion are brisket, ribs, pork (butt, shoulder or picnic) and chicken (Davis, Kirk and Wells 8). The judges have to evaluate each entry in terms of appearance, taste and tenderness on a score of 2 to 9. It is blind-judging, which means that the judges do not know whose barbecue they are asserting because they are contained to a single closed off spot and the food is being served in Styrofoam container which may only be garnished with lettuce, parsley or cilantro (Mills 166).

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Figure 11: Typical American blind box containing chicken Grand Champion is in the end the team which cumulated the most points in all four categories together. The organizers of the Memphis in May competition, today one of the biggest competitions with 2011 exceeding 250 teams, hundreds of thousands of attending visitors (Mills 165) and 110,000$ in prize-money, started their own sanctioning body in the mid-80s and created the Memphis Barbecue Network (Moss 232). The MBN is however significantly smaller than the KCBS with only sanctioning 39 cook-offs in 2011. The biggest differences between the two systems are the scoring, the judging-process and the meat-entries. Certified MBN-judges score on a scale of 8 to 10, amongst other criterions also on tenderness, flavor and appearance. However, judging at MBN-events is twofold (Mills 166). One group of judges receives a blind box containing only meat and no garnish at all. Other judges visit the teams on site and score them also in terms of cleanliness and presentation of their cookingarea and personal appearance, verbal instruction of the team, grill and smoked food and a subjective overall impression (Mills 166). The meat-entries are nothing but pork: shoulder, ribs and whole hog. Most competitions today use either one of these systems, while the major cook-offs like the Annual Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational Barbecue or The American Royal are aligned to the KCBS-system. Most other prominent Southern barbecue associations like the Texas-based International Barbecue Cookers Association now are of little interest, since most of them have set of rules similar to the KCBS. However some, yet minor associations or non-affiliated competitions, did preserve their local character and sanction events that represent the barbecue style of their respective states. Brady, Texas for example host the annually World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook-Off (Jamison 155). The Carolina Q Cup in Columbus South Carolina focuses on the local style of whole hog served with a mustard-based sauce. Other barbecue associations today exist basically everywhere in the

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United States like the New England Barbecue Society, the Pacific Northwest BBQ Association, the California BBQ Association or the Utah Barbecue Society and many more (Staten Competition). These Associations might not be as big as the KCBS, but they still avidly organize their own, local cook-offs in regions where this circuit did practically not exist a few decades ago. Different ethnicities too separate themselves from the whitedominated circuit, some because they feel to be overlooked or for religious reasons. The 100 Black Men of America organization for example sponsors since 15 years an annual barbecue competition in Valdosta Georgia. Two of the biggest orthodox Jewish congregations in the nation, the Baron Hirsch and the Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth, are in Memphis, Tennessee (Elie Cornbread 97). With the city being considered as a barbecue capital with a predominance of pork, the Jews nevertheless did not want to be excluded from eating or cooking barbecue. Because of the strict rules of Jewish Orthodoxy, they started the Worlds Only Kosher Barbecue Contest in 1988 (Elie Cornbread 97). The entries are brisket and beef ribs, the teams are supervised by an orthodox Rabi and the food must at least partially cooked by a Jew to be kosher. With now being familiar with the major sanctioning bodies of competitive barbecue, the question remains, what effect their rules have on regional barbecue traditions. As mentioned, teams and judges alike come from different regional backgrounds and have different perceptions what barbecue should taste and look like. Carolyn Wells from the KCBS said that everything in barbecue is controversial (Moss 233) which in theory is true, but the KCBS too, along with other associations, was responsible for standardizing every single aspect of a barbecue competition. The four meats teams have to submit are always the same, regardless if a KCBS-sanctioned event is held in Kansas City or in Alabama. The judges are carefully instructed and certified to be impartial and objective, which means they have to some extend set aside their personal tastes, and even have to swear an oath on it (Davis, Kirk and Wells 18), and are told what to look for in the meat and sauce (Elie Cornbread 84). Every team has the liberty to turn in any part of the chicken in KCBS-events or to use any sauce they want. However, if a team has any ambitions to win a large cook-off, they have to play by certain unwritten rules. Judges for example expect to find uniform looking chicken thighs like in the picture above in their blind box, wings or even whole chicken would not score as high. The same applies to the presentation of every other course. With the judges coming from all over the United States, teams cannot apply less common sauces like South Carolinian mustard sauce.

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You have to have a sweet sauce and a vinegar sauce. Regardless of what a person does, when he sauces down some meat hes gonna judge that meat about ninety percent on what that sauce is like. You just cant help it. Of you aint careful youll get into a sauce-judging contest instead of a meat-judging contest (Elie Smokestack 131)

Germans and other Europeans often too are invited to compete at cook-offs like the Jack Daniels World Invitational Barbecue Championship. They however do not even come close to rank in the top since they are not as familiarized with the preferences of a typical judge, have no experience in preparing blind boxes in a standard way and have to compete against some of the best barbecue-teams in the United States. To sum up, larger barbecue competitions intensify the trend that with competing side by side with pitmasters from all over the country, people are left with less concern for their own regional styles of barbecue (Moss 233), they exacerbate the trend towards homogenization (Elie Smokestack 131) and the best way to win a competition is by copying what everybody else seems to do. The fact, that highly successful competitors not uncommonly open their own barbecue restaurants also is responsible for the influence competitions have on the barbecue-mainstream since they naturally will serve their awardwinning dishes no matter where they locate their businesses. These rules of course do not apply for smaller events with predominantly local teams and judges. Ambitious competitors or the sanctioning bodies also probably should not be condemned prematurely. They may have contributed to blurring traditional regional differences (Moss 233). But they are both responsible for making barbecue more popular across the nation and creating a new generation of pitmasters dedicated to the practice of slow-smoking meats (Moss 234), what otherwise would possibly be endangered by the advent of gas- and electric cookers which are generally not permitted at competitions. The social aspect also should not be neglected. Most barbecue teams, as already mentioned, do not just enter those tournaments to at all costs win thousands of dollars of prize money and bragging rights, they first and foremost want to pursue their hobby and socialize with likeminded people. 5.2 The German barbecue circuit 5.2.1 The German Barbecue Association

The American and German barbecue circuit could not be more different. While barbecue competitions existed for decades in the United States, the first and back then only German barbecue cook-off was organized in 1996. Hundreds of barbecue contests are held each year in the United States, Germany only knows a small one-digit number today. This

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should however not come surprisingly given the fact that barbecue in Germany only recently gained widespread popularity. The self-conception, the level of professionalism and the way competitions are overall organized by the only sanctioning body in Germany, the German Barbecue Association (GBA), however bears little resemblance to their American counterparts. The GBA was founded in 1996 by butchers, caterers and grill-manufacturers in Hilden, Rhineland (GBA). They are part of the World Barbecue Association, which rather can be considered to be entirely Eurocentric. They understand themselves to solely represent the interests of millions of Germans interested in grilling and barbecue. However, only have only over hundred members compared to the KCBS with over 14000 (Drge Klein). Nevertheless, while all over the country more and more local and regional stand-alone grill-contests are being held, like the Bayrische Grillmeisterschaft or the Stuttgarter Stadtgrillmeisterschaft, the GBA is the only sanctioning barbecue-centric body which a) organizes a nationwide contest, the German Barbecue Championship and b) sanctions smaller and local contests. Sven Drge, a well-known barbecue caterer from Berlin, too organized a cook-off, the Berlin BBQ, but discontinued the event in 2010 (Drge Berlin). Since the German Barbecue Championship is the only one of its kind today in Germany and certainly the largest, the further focus will lie on this event. 5.2.2 The German Barbecue Championship

The first German Barbecue Championship was held in 1996, only recently after the foundation of the GBA. Precise data concerning the average number of attending teams or rules before the 2000s unfortunately is not available. The number of participating teams since the 2000s shows by comparison slight fluctuations, the championship in Bad Lippspringe in 2003 attracted 28 teams, the cook-off in Hannoversch Mnden in 2003 only 18 and this years competition in Schwbisch Hall has a starting field of 35 teams (GBA). This also shows us that the German Barbecue Championship has no fixed venue, the GBA apparently tries to introduce the novelty of barbecue cook-offs to different regions every year to attract as much visitors as possible. The participants furthermore are subdivided by the status of being amateur or professional teams which do not directly compete against each other. Amateurs are only allowed to have one member with a gastronomical background, while professional teams can be entirely comprised of caterers, chefs or butchers. An Amateur team which however achieves to become grand amateur champion twice automatically moves on to the professional starting field (Fetscher and Winter 2/2008 50). Amateur teams most of the times

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are hobbyist barbecuers comprised of family members, friends or neighbors or skilled and ambitious people who met each other in internet message boards. The latter today is quite common and proved to be a reliable recipe for success. While members of such teams often live hundreds of kilometers apart and therefore have fewer opportunities to meet and practice, they more than compensate for this by the high individual skill of each selected member. Professional Teams in the majority of cases compete for commercial reasons as they mostly are run by catering companies or retailers of barbecue grills and accessories. The scoring- and judging-system was in some respects inspired by the KCBS- and the MBN-rules. Each dish is evaluated with a score of one to ten based on appearance of the food, flavor, consistency and the side dish. The judging process is similar to the MBN-system with four judges receiving blind boxes and two judges evaluating the food and also the originality of the decor6 on site. The GBA wants the judges to come from all walks of life, both restaurateurs and expert-pitmasters and an equal number of laymen like students or housewives. Since 2010 does the GBA increasingly demand from people who want to judge to join the association and to attend an instructional course hosted by aligned catering companies, with the KCBS as a role model which only admits certified judges. In reality do they however accept everybody who shows interest in judging even without being member or an instruction, since they are with 79 Euros quite expensive and the GBA each year has a huge demand for judges, for example 130 in 2010 (Fetscher and Winter 2/2010 32 ). The team with the most cumulated points in all categories becomes Grand Champion and is awarded 1000 Euro out of the pot of 3350 in 2012 (GBA rules), the team manager of the winning professional team is granted the title of German King of Grilling. The winners of each category receive prize-money and may call themselves German Barbecue Champion. This practice of inflationary creating a number of German Champions is under a lot of criticism, especially by Grand Champions who think that their overall effort is therefore diminished. The main difference between The German Barbecue Championship and any competition in the United States was until recently both the different courses the teams had to cook and particularly the optical arrangement. Teams had to turn in five different categories, mostly bratwurst, ribs, chicken, beef hip and dessert with as many side-dishes as they wanted to use. Chicken and fish did often alternate from year to year. With no restrictions whatsoever, the teams tried to outperform each other on any possible level like presentation, exotic ingredients, etc.
6

Not relevant fort the overall rating.

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Figure 12: Seafood course made by the runner-up of the German Barbecue Championship in Gotha 210, TB&The BBQ-Scouts Nevertheless, the contestants have to cater to the widest range of tastes as possible as the judges in Germany too are no uniform group. One criteria American judges pay a lot of attention to is the desired smoky flavor of meats, German judges however are generally not used to it with the result that most teams are very restrictive in that regard. The GBA today increasingly tries to gradually emulate the KCBS by both restricting the number of side-dishes to one and the addition of categories like beef brisket. The dishes in Schwbisch Hall in 2012 will be bratwurst, spareribs, fish, chicken, beef prime rib and a dessert (GBA). Teams may submit all courses, but they have to select five what will count for the overall rating. The World Barbecue Championship in Gronau in 2011 too saw an intensified effort of Americanizing the event judging from the blind boxes which were decorated with lettuce and parsley. The final goal of the GBA and the mother-organization WBQA is, by implementing these kinds of new rules, to attract new associated members and teams from all over the world to lose their Eurocentric status (Drge Prsident). Americans however never attended either a German Barbecue Championship, which is open for all nationalities, or a World Championship in Europe. Sven Drge calls the German Barbecue Association a small but loud promoter of barbecue in Germany (Klein). With the German Barbecue Championship attracting thousands of visitors in every hosting city and dozens of teams from all over Germany, they certainly played a pivotal role in spreading barbecue throughout Germany. A clear-cut course how they see the future of German barbecue is however not identifiable. German grilling-traditions are for example honored by the inclusion of the bratwurst-category while on the other hand they now want to attract Americans by including categories like brisket. Ambitious American teams however have no reason to travel thousands of miles over the Atlantic and therefore spend a substantial amount of money to participate in a competition they are not familiar with

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while they are able to win significantly more prize-money at any of the larger cook-offs in the United States. German teams today often demand that the German Barbecue Championship should either entirely lean towards American standards or go back to the old system where they had more creative liberties. 6. Conclusion Elies argument of barbecue being a true representative of the nations various facets, can today neither be entirely undermined nor approved. Elie also said, that Americans never have been known for their sense of history (Elie Smokestack 45). America has a dynamic tradition to constantly reinvent itself. External factors like new waves of immigrants or globalization and internal struggles about the coexistence of ethnicities or technical innovations and economic pressure made the United States a country of people who easily discard old mindsets and traditions. The same applies to American barbecue, which always has been in a transgression phase. The distinction between the styles of barbecue as discussed above has only emerged around the turn of the 20th century and represents only one of many phases of American barbecue history. In colonial times it was largely out of necessity cooked by slaves. Their status changed and so did barbecue. Barbecue was introduced to new regions with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and adapted. The renaissance at the end of the 20th century and its subsequent 21st century incarnation as it spread to every corner of the USA changed barbecue likewise sustainably. As some Southern traditions today gradually may die out or are blurred, some people are reminiscing about good old times. They are entitled to complain about the fact that cooking barbecue often has become more convenient due to the introduction of new technologies. That traditional, not mainstream, dished like barbecued mutton gradually disappear, restrictive fire-codes and health-issues make cooking barbecue a more expensive and complicated venture, that restaurants yield to customers demands of a larger range of menu items and that competitions destroy any sense of regional barbecue identity. They however forget about the resilience of barbecue. Barbecue may have lost its mythological character of being a frontier food, but it today is popular and alive as it has never been before. It has grown with American society and is cooked from Texas to New England. Cooking barbecue still requires a substantial amount of time and craftsmanship and could have easily disappeared because of the fierce competition of fast food chains. The main four barbecue styles are still far from being dead. Barbecue aficionados today take great expenses to travel to the authentic places where old-fashioned barbecue still is cooked, which also is a notable

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economic factor for places like Lockhart or Lexington. With non-Southerners today cooking barbecue, adding ingredients that were once exotic and now are common and openly combining different styles, time will tell how barbecue will evolve. Barbecue is the embodiment of American food in the eyes of the Germans. With the ongoing affinity of anything American, the Germans try to make barbecue their own. They developed a remarkable infrastructure of anything barbecue-related. Yet, owed to the fact that barbecue was introduced rather late to Germany we are too in a transition period. Especially the GBA does not know in what direction they want to go. To help to develop a unique German approach to barbecue or to simply copy anything the Americans do? In the long run they have to make up their mind about that question. German hobbyist pitmaster however do not share that burden, they have the advantage to be able to cook whatever they desire. The question however is if they in the future develop similar regional styles like the Americans did.

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7. Works cited 973. (2009, Dez 12). New to smoking in New York. Message posted to www.smokingmeatsforum.com/t/835352/new-to-smoking-in-new-york About the Kansas City Barbecue Society. Kansas City Barbecue Society. 21. Feb. 2012 <http://www.kcbs.us/about.php> Alfino, Mark and Aputo, John S. McDonaldization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998 Anderson, Dave. Famous Daves Menu. Famous Daves of America Inc. 12 Feb. <www.famousdaves.com/menu/> Asimov, Eric. Critics Notebook; With Barbecue, New York is Mostly Just Whistling Dixie. The New York Times. 15 Jul 1998. 23. Mar. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/15/dining/critic-s-notebook-with-barbecue-new-york-ismostly-just-whistling-dixie.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm> Brinkmann T., Daude P.-O. Gildehaus U., Greulich M., Jensen T., Oppermann A., Peters M., Schwab A., Wipfler U., Zapp S., Zapp T. Sehr Gut Grillen: Die besten Rezepte der GrillWeltmeister. Berlin: Stiftung Warentest, 2011 Brooks, Jim. Early, Erin. Holcomb Rodney B. Willoughby, Chuck. A Market Evaluation of Barbecue Sauces Robert M. Kerr Food & Agricultural Products Center. 12 Feb. 2012. < http://www.fapc.okstate.edu/files/factsheets/fapc137.pdf> Burrison, John A. Roots of a Region: Southern Folk Culture. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007. Craig, Kent H. What is North Carolina-Style barbecue? NCBBQ. 13. Apr. 2006. 21. Feb. 2012 <http://ncbbq.com/Modules/Articles/article.aspx?id=20> Dallas tariff. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Feb. 2012. 26 Feb 2012 Davis, Ardie A. Kirk, Paul. Americas Best BBQ: 100 Recipes from Americas Best Smokehouses, Pits, Shacks, Rib Joints, Roadhouses and Restaurants. Kansas City: Andres McMeel Publishing, 2009. Davis, Ardie. Kirk, Paul and Wells, Carolyn. The Kansas City Barbeque Society Cookbook. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2010. Demers, John. Follow the Smoke: 14,783 Miles of Great Texas Barbecue: Places, People, Secrets and Recipes! Houston: bright sky press, 2008. Drge, Sven. Berlin BBQ <www.berlin-barbeque.de/index.php?start> ---. Klein aber laut BBQMAG. 12 Feb. 2012. <bbq-mag.de/index.php?Klein-aber-laut> ---. Neuer Prsident bei der WQBA BBQMAG. 12 Feb. 2012. <bbqmag.de/index.php?Neuer-Prasident-bei-der-WQBA>

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Deutsch, Jonathan. Masculinities on a Spit: Travels with a Competition Barbecue Team. 9. Feb 2004. 13. Jan 2012 < http://www.cerescaico.ufrn.br/mneme/pdf/mneme09/007-p.pdf> Elie, Lolis Eric ed. Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2004. ---. Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart Of Barbecue Country. Berkley: Ten Speed Press, 2005 Engelhardt, Elizabeth S. D. Republic of Barbecue: Stories Beyond the Brisket. Austin: University Of Texas Press, 2009 Fetscher, Elmar and Winter, Klaus. Fire & Food: Das Grill- und Barbecue-Magazin. Weingarten: Fire&Food Verlag GmbH . ---. 13. Deutsche Grillmeisterschaft in Mohnheim. Fire&Food 2/2008. 48-57. Print. ---. 15. Internationale Deutsche Grillmeisterschaft in Gotha. Fire&Food 2/2012. 32-34. Print ---. Berber Q Grillen wie die Berber Fire&Food zu Gast beim BBQ Fest in Bouzinka Fire&Food 2/2012. 38-45. Pring Foodie. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 Jan. 2012. 30 Jan. 2012. Freeland, Tom. Mississippi BBQ. The Southern Barbecue Trail. 18 Feb. 2012. <www.southernbbqtrail.com/mississippi/index.shtml> Garner, Bob. Guide to North Carolina Barbecue. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair Publisher, 2002. ---. North Carolina Barbecue: Flavored by Time. Winston-Salem: John F. Blair Publisher, 2002. Gebert, Michael. Video: History of Chicago Barbecue Food Republic.21 Mar. 2012. 23 Mar. 2012. < http://www.foodrepublic.com/2012/03/21/video-history-chicago-barbecue> GBA. German Barbecue Association. Dez. 3. 2012 <http://www.gbaev.de/php/index.php?gba-home> ---. Rules of the 2012 German Championship. German Barbecue Association. 15 Mar 2012. <www.gbaev.de/php/index.php?meisterschaft-2012> Greulich, Marco. Don Marcos Pig Wing Seasoning. BBQ King Company. 8 Feb. 2012. <www.bbqking.co/seiten/pigwing.html>

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Gregory, James N. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Griffith, Dotty. Celebrating Barbecue: The Ultimate Guide to Americas 4 Styles of Cue. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Hr, Elmar. Grillsportverein.de. 15 Feb. 2012. 16. Feb 2012. ---. Do-it-yourself Message Board. 14 Feb. 2012. <www.grillsportverein.de/forum/eigenbauten> ---. Grillsportverein Message Board. 13. Feb 2012. ---.Foundation of the Grillsportverein. 16 Feb 2012. <www.grillsportverein.deforum/anregungen-der-user/gruendung-des-grillsportverein140278.html#post796763> Jamison, Cheryl and Bill. Smoke & Spice: Cooking with Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue. Boston: The Harvard Common Press, 2003. Kamm, Astrid. Re: Weber Online Kontakt. Message to the Author. 5 Mar. 2012. E-Mail. Kimmel, Tobias. Tomorrow Focus Media Message to the Author. 5 Feb. 2012. E-Mail List of U.S. state foods. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 11 Mar. 2012. 20. Mar 2012. Lumpkin, Elizabeth. Your First Cookoff: How to Make the Jump From Backyard to Competition. KCBS, 18. Feb 2012. <http://www.kcbs.us/pdf/YourFirstCookoff.pdf> Maclin, Edward M. and Veteto James R. eds. The Slaw and the Slow Cooked: Culture and Barbecue in the Mid-South. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011. Mazur, Eric Michael and McCarthy, Kate. God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture. Oxon: Routledge, 2011. Mills, Mike and Amy. Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales and Outright Lies From the Legends of Barbecue. New York: Holtzbrinck Publishers, 2005. Moss, Robert F. Barbecue: The History of an American Institution. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2010. NYC Health. Restaurant Inspection Information. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. 21 Mar. 2012 Our View on Q An Essay on BBQ Chicagofoodies.com. 15. Feb 2012. <chicagofoodies.com/files/manifesto.pdf> Pang, Kevin. Why barbecue went boom in Chicago: Entrepreneurial spirit and economy spark a red-hot trend Chicago Tribune. 14 Jul. 2011. 15 Feb 2012. <articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-14/features/ct-dining-0714-chicago-bbq20110714_1_barbecue_entrepeneurs-barbecue-aficionados-ribs>

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Purivance, Jamie. Webers Way To Grill: The Step-By-Step Guide to Expert Grilling. Tampa: Oxmoore House, 2009. Raichlen, Steven. Barbecue: Die richtigen Techniken: Klassische und neue Rezepte fr perfektes Grillen. Hagen: Knemann Verlag, 2006. ---. BBQ USA: 425 fiery recipes from all across America. New York City: Workman Publishing, 2003. ---. Planet Barbecue! 309 Recipes 60 Countries. New York: Workman Publishing, 2010. ---. Ribs, Ribs, outrageous Ribs: 99 Top-notch, tasty, truly tempting recipes. New York: Workman Publishing, 2006. ---. The Barbecue Bible. New York: Workman Publishing Company, 1998. Riches, Derrick. The History of Barbecue: Part I. About.com Barbecues and Grilling. Jan. 5. 2012 <http://bbq.about.com/od/barbecuehelp/a/aa110197.htm> --- .German Barbecue: Lift a Beer to the Inventors of Texas Barbecue. About.com Barbecue and Grilling. Jan. 13. 2012 http://bbq.about.com/od/regionalandethniccooking/a/aa053197a.htm ---. Owensboro Mutton Barbecue About.com Barbecue and Grilling. 15. Jan 2012 Santa Maria Style Barbecue Santa Maria Valley California Visitor Information. Dez. 13. 2012 http://santamariavisitor.com/cm/santa_maria_barbecue/barbecue.html Sernett, Milton C. Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997 Sokolov, Raymond. The Best Barbeque. The Wallstreet Journal. 30. Jun 2007. 28. Jan. 2012 http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118315470509653519.html St. Louis 101Fired up by Kingsford Grilling.com. 12. Jan 2011. 28. Jan 2012 www.grilling.com/home/article/190/ St. Louis-style barbecue. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 27 Feb. 2012. 3 Mar. 2012 Staten, Vince. A Taxonomy of American Barbecue Sauces. amazingribs.com 5 Feb. 2012 http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/BBQ_sauces/index.html

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---. Barbecue competitions are for the real Iron Chefs. amazingribs.com. 17 Nov. 2009. 12 Feb. 2012. <www.amazingribs.com/links/barbecue_competitions_and_associations.html> ---.The Story of Barbecue. amazingribs.com5 Feb. 2012 <http://www.amazingribs.com/BBQ_articles/barbecue_history.html> Stoner86. (2012, Feb 2) Newbie from New York Message posted to www.smokingmeatsforums.com/t/118538/newbie-from-new-york Suddah, Clare. A Brief History of Barbecue. TIME. July 3. 2009. 25 Jan. 2012 <http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1908513,00.html USDA Census of Agriculture. 2007 Census Publications. United States Department of Agriculture. 2 Mar 2012. 8 Mar. 2012 <www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Census_by_State/index.asp Vann, Mick. A History of Pigs in America. Austin Chronicle 10 Apr. 13 Feb. www.austinchronicle.com/food/2009-04-10/764573 Waldwuser. Ribs mit Hndlmaiersenf und Kren. Grillsportverein Grillrezeppte. 9 Oct. 2011. 12 Feb 2012. <www.grillsportverein.de/grillrezepte/rezepte/ribs-mit-Haendlmaiersenfund-Kren-10228.html> Warnes, Andrew. Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture and the Invention of Americas First Food. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. Weber-Stephen Deutschland GmbH. Press Review. 11. Jan 2012. <de.weber.com/Pressespiegel.aspx?ID=209> Worgul, Doug. The Grand Barbecue: A Celebration of History, Places, Personalities and Techniques of Kansas City Barbecue. Kansas City Star Books, Kansas City, 2001.

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List of Figures Figure 1 Irawan, Budi. 22.5-Inch One-Touch Gold Kettle Grill. 24 Sep. 2011. www.bestcharcoalgrillsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/weber-one-touch-gold-22.5inch.jpg Figure 2 Grillsportverein BBQ & Grillshop. Joes BBQ-Smoker 16 Zoll Longhorn. 15 Feb. 2012. <grillsportverein.de/grillshop/popup_image.php?plD=36&imgID=0&XTCsid=kbt44kbr2prl8mhhjm34bks3q2> Figure 3 Bauwagen 95. Ugly Drum Smoker. 15 Feb. 2012. www.bauwagen95.de/images(uds/ugly_dum_smoker.jpg Figure 4 Zagers Pool & Spa. Big Green Egg Ceramic Cooker. 15 Feb. 2012. <assets1.mytrainsite.com/501228/bge_lg9883---edited.gif> Figure 5 Hr, Elmar. Distribution of members of the internet-based German Grillsportverein. Message to the Author. 16 Feb. 2012. Email Figures 6 and 7 Hr, Elmar. Monthly increase of newly registered members of the Grillsportverein. Message to the Author. 16 Feb. 2012. Email Figure 8 Ford, Gary D. Map of the core regions of traditional American barbecue. Modified to omit Florida. 16 Feb. 2012. <myokeexilelit.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/barbecue-map3.jpg> Figure 9 Krause, Mariella. Sign in Kreuz Market barbecue restaurant in Lockhart, Texas. 24 Jun. 2011. <www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-blog/tiparticle/wordpress_uploads/2011/01/kreuz_market.jpg> Figure 10 Staten, Vince. Rib-tips, St Louis-style ribs and skirt 16 Feb. 2012. <amazingribs,com/images/pix/sic_ribsd.jpg>

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Figure 11 NorthwestBBQ. Typical American blind box containing chicken. 6 Jan. 2012. <farm8.staticflickr.com/7168/6649819635_55ce714b20_b.jpg> Figure 12 Merschl. Figure 12: Seafood course made by the runner-up of the German Barbecue Championship in Gotha 210, TB&The BBQ-Scouts. 17 May. 2010. <mybbq.net/forumneu/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=23013>

Appendix Meat charts and German description in appendix are from the German and English Wikipedia articles beef/Rindfleisch and pork/Schweinefleisch.

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Appendix German Meat Charts

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Rinderhals Querrippe Rinderbrust Fehlrippe Hochrippe Roastbeef Filet

8. Knochendnnung 9. Bauchlappen 10. Bug 11. Oberschale 12. Schliem 13. Hfte 14. Hesse

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Schweinskopf Schweinsbacke Rckenspeck Schweinenacken Brust Stielkotelett Lendenkotelett

8. Filet 9. Schweinebauch 10. Bauchlappen 11. Schweineschulter 12. Schinken 13. Eisbein 14. Schweinsfu 15. Schweineschwanz

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United States Meat Charts

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-------------------------------------Datum, Unterschrift