Image by: Smithsonian.com

Barbecuing is one of America’s favorite pastime and has a long tradition in patriotic history. We can date barbecuing back over centuries ago when our ancestors cooked meat with fire. The method of barbecuing has evolved through time and the way we know it nowadays is meat that is cooked over a grill or smoked in a pit. The origin of the word barbecue derives from barbacoa. It roots from a Caribbean Indian tribe called the Taino. Barbacoa to them meant “grilling on a raised wooden grate.”

The history of barbecuing in America dates as far back as the colonial days. The colony of Virginia in the 1650s would barbecue to feed the armory. After the Revolutionary War, there were events with barbecues to commemorate the win. One of the biggest barbecue enthusiasts was George Washington. In his diaries, there were many references about it. The first commercial charcoal briquet factory was designed by Thomas Edison and built by Henry Ford in 1921.

These days, barbecuing has been deeply rooted in Southern cooking and in the U.S. the South holds the title of the barbecue capital of the world.