There seems to be a few different styles of barbecue which depend on the country of origin -
British barbecuing tends to be small and easily cooked items such as burgers, steak and the occasional chicken drumstick. This is probably because it's generally cold & raining, so you need to minimise the time you spend outside. I remember shivering under an open garage door whilst my Dad "finished off the steaks to perfection" (perfection to my Dad was 'a little over well done') as the rain teemed down outside.
Australians tend to use barbecues as an extension to their kitchen and consider that it can be used to cook anything and everything. I've got a barbecue book at home which suggests using a kettle barbecue (which needs about 30 minutes of preheating to bring the heat beads / charcoal to a temperature which they will continue to burn at for the next four hours) to do everything from frying eggs on a hot plate, grilling grapefruit or whipping up a soufflé. The recipes include comments like 'Once your fire has reached temperature simply fry each side for 3 minutes and serve'.
In my view Americans do it the right way. They developed a way of using barbecues to take low-value cuts of meat and find ways of making them succulent & tasty. As most cheaper cuts have a fair degree of fat, connective tissue and other less appetising things then a long slow cooking process helped melt everything together and some smoke (which was initially just a side effect of the cooking process) helped season the meat &vary the flavours. Of course being Americans they also cook huge chunks of meat, slather the resulting feed in sugar-laden sauces and run week long competitions to find 'who can produce the best barbecue'. Each State has its own sauce style and its own way of cooking the meat, and woe betide someone who tries to use tomatoes in a South Carolina sauce. When I was in Texas we'd drive for 40 minutes to a favoured 'barbecue pit' and often we were the only guys not wearing soiled flouro workwear and a beard in the joint, but despite my stand-out accent no-one seemed to care and damn the food was good!
Ironically the American style is so successful that the supposedly 'low value' cuts of meat like baby-back ribs ('USA style ribs' in Australia) can sometimes cost as much as the more refined cuts. But not always - I tried to find a 'Boston Butt' at the weekend (which I think is a shoulder joint with the bone in) and I'm not sure I got the right cut, but the principal is still the same.
Initially after a rub was applied the joint looked like this
and after 6 hrs at 220F (I lapse into American for temperatures as all the decent BBQ websites I've found use them), plentiful hickory smoke and some shredding / pulling with a fork it looks like this - whilst it was beautifully cooked it could have done with another hour I reckon
Generally one of the good points about making your own foods is that it brings you closer to your food and you know exactly what went into it. Although for us squeamish city dwellers that can go a little too far at times...
If you have a kettle Weber or similar, grab some hickory chips and give it a go!
British barbecuing tends to be small and easily cooked items such as burgers, steak and the occasional chicken drumstick. This is probably because it's generally cold & raining, so you need to minimise the time you spend outside. I remember shivering under an open garage door whilst my Dad "finished off the steaks to perfection" (perfection to my Dad was 'a little over well done') as the rain teemed down outside.
Australians tend to use barbecues as an extension to their kitchen and consider that it can be used to cook anything and everything. I've got a barbecue book at home which suggests using a kettle barbecue (which needs about 30 minutes of preheating to bring the heat beads / charcoal to a temperature which they will continue to burn at for the next four hours) to do everything from frying eggs on a hot plate, grilling grapefruit or whipping up a soufflé. The recipes include comments like 'Once your fire has reached temperature simply fry each side for 3 minutes and serve'.
In my view Americans do it the right way. They developed a way of using barbecues to take low-value cuts of meat and find ways of making them succulent & tasty. As most cheaper cuts have a fair degree of fat, connective tissue and other less appetising things then a long slow cooking process helped melt everything together and some smoke (which was initially just a side effect of the cooking process) helped season the meat &vary the flavours. Of course being Americans they also cook huge chunks of meat, slather the resulting feed in sugar-laden sauces and run week long competitions to find 'who can produce the best barbecue'. Each State has its own sauce style and its own way of cooking the meat, and woe betide someone who tries to use tomatoes in a South Carolina sauce. When I was in Texas we'd drive for 40 minutes to a favoured 'barbecue pit' and often we were the only guys not wearing soiled flouro workwear and a beard in the joint, but despite my stand-out accent no-one seemed to care and damn the food was good!
Ironically the American style is so successful that the supposedly 'low value' cuts of meat like baby-back ribs ('USA style ribs' in Australia) can sometimes cost as much as the more refined cuts. But not always - I tried to find a 'Boston Butt' at the weekend (which I think is a shoulder joint with the bone in) and I'm not sure I got the right cut, but the principal is still the same.
Initially after a rub was applied the joint looked like this
We were so hungry by that time that we kept it simple - pulled pork, home made guacamole, home made hot sauce, artisan pumpkin bread and some supermarket tortillas (they're on the list of things to make). Washed down with homebrew. It was a good evening.
It seemed a shame to not use the spare space on the BBQ grill so I also whipped up some bacon from a slab of pork belly
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