Did black people invent American BBQ?

[Samori Toure]

The word specifically comes not just from cooking meat over an open fire, but slow-cooking it above the flame using a wooden framework (the first barbecue grills). The word they took wasn't actually the word for cooking the meat, it was the word for the wooden grills themselves.

You all are still going with the theory that native people created that style of cooking and the Spanish named it. But none of you bothered to ask how did African Americans who lived on different plantations in different States in the Southern USA learn that style of cooking? Because the vast majority of African Americans came directly from Africa to the USA between 1720-1780, rather than through the Caribbean. They were never around Taino Indians or any Spainards to learn that style of cooking, yet how did the slaves know how to barbque?

A dude broke off some knowledge in here earlier and y'all dudes walked right by it.
Did black people invent American BBQ?

History of Barbecue
February 1, 2021 Caleb Crossman

"Look up any web article on “the history of barbecue” and you’re likely to get statements to the effect that the word “barbecue” comes to us from the Caribbean by way of Spanish Conquistadors who learned of slow-cooking over a fire using a wooden frame from the Taino-Arawak people. The Spanish adopted the Haitian word barbacoa meaning “sacred fire pit” to describe this process and have used it since at least 1526, when it first appeared in a Spanish dictionary. Many attribute the origin of the modern word “barbecue” to the word barbacoa. It is equally likely that the word “barbecue” stems from the Taino-Arawak word “barbicu.” The Taino people inhabit what is today Hispaniola, the island home of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. What you won’t read quite as often is that the meats of choice were goat, deer, alligator, and possibly human. Sacred fire pit, indeed.

But the word “barbecue” has other roots, as well. The West African Hausa people used the word “babbake” to refer to a variety of processes involving cooking and fire. This explanation has a lot going for it. Particularly, the fact that a single word with myriad meanings came to define a past-time that is as fraught with ambiguity today as its origins in the distant past... ."

History of Barbecue | Community | MAK Grills

The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa with the largest concentration being in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana. So the Hausa were cooking in that fashion long before any of them were brought to the USA as slaves.

Here are pictures of their food and more articles.

Hidden Barbecue History Too Delicious To Be Ignored

The Hirshon Nigerian Skewered Beef BBQ – Suya

Barbecue is an American tradition – of enslaved Africans and Native Americans | Michael W Twitty

Suya (Spicy Grilled Kebab)

 

[Professor Emeritus]

You all are still going with the theory that native people created that style of cooking and the Spanish named it. But none of you bothered to ask how did African Americans who lived on different plantations in different States in the Southern USA learn that style of cooking? Because the vast majority of African Americans came directly from Africa to the USA between 1720-1780, rather than through the Caribbean. They were never around Taino Indians or any Spainards to learn that style of cooking, yet how did the slaves know how to barbque?

The same way they learned how to speak English or do anything else in the Americas, because the word and the use of grills had already spread across the colonies.

There are already receipts of the word "barbeque" being used in the USA long before 1720-1780. So I don't see why proposing a later origin makes sense.

The Spanish adopted the Haitian word barbacoa meaning “sacred fire pit” to describe this process and have used it since at least 1526, when it first appeared in a Spanish dictionary. Many attribute the origin of the modern word “barbecue” to the word barbacoa. It is equally likely that the word “barbecue” stems from the Taino-Arawak word “barbicu.” The Taino people inhabit what is today Hispaniola, the island home of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. What you won’t read quite as often is that the meats of choice were goat, deer, alligator, and possibly human. Sacred fire pit, indeed.

First off, that's wild that you're pushing the "Native Americans were cannibals!" narrative to make the point. Second of all, barbicu is an Arawak word and that "maybe they were cannibals!" link is about the Caribs, who were the enemies of the Arawaks, and was a possible war tradition that has nothing to do with the Arawak practice of slow-cooking food on a raised grill. So that's a pretty bullshyt inclusion rigght there.

But the word “barbecue” has other roots, as well. The West African Hausa people used the word “babbake” to refer to a variety of processes involving cooking and fire. This explanation has a lot going for it. Particularly, the fact that a single word with myriad meanings came to define a past-time that is as fraught with ambiguity today as its origins in the distant past... ."

"babbake" doesn't sound nearly as close to barbeque as "barbicu" does, both the "r" consonant sound and the "u" ending vowel are completely absent. So already the explanation doesn't look as good.

Second of all, claiming that babbake refers to "a variety of processes involving cooking and fire" is vague. What processes? How do these vague "processes" relate to barbeque? The Taino word barbicu was very specifically about a raised wooden grill used for slow-cooking food above a flame. Again, that explanation seems to fit better.

 

[BaviKingVA]

cuisine is a team effort (most of the time)

 

[BrothaZay]

We invented damn near everything

Kangz

 

[Robo Squirrel]

You all are still going with the theory that native people created that style of cooking and the Spanish named it. But none of you bothered to ask how did African Americans who lived on different plantations in different States in the Southern USA learn that style of cooking? Because the vast majority of African Americans came directly from Africa to the USA between 1720-1780, rather than through the Caribbean. They were never around Taino Indians or any Spainards to learn that style of cooking, yet how did the slaves know how to barbque?

A dude broke off some knowledge in here earlier and y'all dudes walked right by it.
Did black people invent American BBQ?

History of Barbecue
February 1, 2021 Caleb Crossman

"Look up any web article on “the history of barbecue” and you’re likely to get statements to the effect that the word “barbecue” comes to us from the Caribbean by way of Spanish Conquistadors who learned of slow-cooking over a fire using a wooden frame from the Taino-Arawak people. The Spanish adopted the Haitian word barbacoa meaning “sacred fire pit” to describe this process and have used it since at least 1526, when it first appeared in a Spanish dictionary. Many attribute the origin of the modern word “barbecue” to the word barbacoa. It is equally likely that the word “barbecue” stems from the Taino-Arawak word “barbicu.” The Taino people inhabit what is today Hispaniola, the island home of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. What you won’t read quite as often is that the meats of choice were goat, deer, alligator, and possibly human. Sacred fire pit, indeed.

But the word “barbecue” has other roots, as well. The West African Hausa people used the word “babbake” to refer to a variety of processes involving cooking and fire. This explanation has a lot going for it. Particularly, the fact that a single word with myriad meanings came to define a past-time that is as fraught with ambiguity today as its origins in the distant past... ."

History of Barbecue | Community | MAK Grills

The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa with the largest concentration being in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana. So the Hausa were cooking in that fashion long before any of them were brought to the USA as slaves.

Here are pictures of their food and more articles.

Hidden Barbecue History Too Delicious To Be Ignored

The Hirshon Nigerian Skewered Beef BBQ – Suya

Barbecue is an American tradition – of enslaved Africans and Native Americans | Michael W Twitty

Suya (Spicy Grilled Kebab)

Dap+Reputation

 

[filial_piety]

How does anyone claim credit for inventing bar b que?

 

[Robo Squirrel]

These type threads work

Because I'm right!

 

[ViShawn]

Certain styles yes.

 

[Robo Squirrel]

Black people invented BBQ with sauce & flavor. That is a fact!

I will go to my library shelf in the morning.

 

[Robo Squirrel]

Black people invented BBQ with sauce & flavor. That is a fact!

I will go to my library shelf in the morning.

@ViShawn

Dap+Reputation

 

[Robo Squirrel]

Idgaf what anybody says.

When someone says they are about to BBQ you are thinking about BBQ sauce and ribs & chicken.

Black people invented & perfected
(the recipes word to Michael Irvin) through experience and exceptional performance for over a century.

 

[ViShawn]

@ViShawn

Dap+Reputation

You're right! There's a show High On The Hog you should watch. It talks about African American cuisine but there's an episode on how Black people invented a BBQ style that is seen in Galveston Texas.

Texas BBQ is seen as just smoked BBQ but the Memphis and Lowcountry style (if I recall correctly) is what we invented.

 

[broller]

I don't know where this stuff about Native people and barbque came from, but they were not doing what we call barbque. Open flame cooking has been done through out history. However, what Americans call barbque was created on plantations and historians are very clear on that point. Even the word "pit master" comes from the plantation and it means something:

"...While the culinary art of BBQ has certainly been practiced internationally since humans invented fire, in the United States, the classic BBQ that Americans know and love was primarily cooked by slaves in the South in pits for large social gatherings held by slaveowners on plantations beginning in the colonial era of American history.

The term “Pit Master” refers to an elderly slave who was an expert cook and led the effort to prepare the BBQ for the slaveholders. Younger slaves worked under the “Pit Master” to learn how to prepare a whole hog for a BBQ.

Pigs were then slow roasted in a pit in the ground, with the fire constantly tended for a the long, slow cooking process. Then the pig was removed from the pit, and the pork and ham were served at BBQs in the South, which were a common social gathering before and even after the Civil War. Many “Pit Masters” continued to pass on their BBQ traditions to younger generations, and even into the present day.

Slaves were not allowed to have the best cuts of meat, whether it was beef or pork, and were often given the ribs or other undesirable cuts of meats that slaveholders did not want.

Slaves became adept at taking marginal cuts of meat such as ribs and preparing them in such a way that they were quite tender and delicious, which as time went by became staples of modern BBQ preparation, and ironically for many, the preferred cuts of meat for BBQ.

Slaves were allowed to keep chickens around their slave quarters, and it was a common practice by slaveholders to give slaves Sunday off of work to attend church. Following worship services, it became common for slave families to prepare chicken for Sunday dinner following church services.

Slaves who were cooks for slaveholding families developed pan frying and grilling and smoking cooking techniques for preparing chicken, which was a weekly respite from their labors as slaves during the week.

These traditional cooking techniques were passed down from family member to family member until they have become the fried, grilled, and smoked chicken that we enjoy today in American cuisine..."


https://www.republic-online.com/new...cle_113b15e2-f1d4-11e9-8631-c353b4b1f564.html

Reps

 

[Samori Toure]

The same way they learned how to speak English or do anything else in the Americas, because the word and the use of grills had already spread across the colonies.

There are already receipts of the word "barbeque" being used in the USA long before 1720-1780. So I don't see why proposing a later origin makes sense.




First off, that's wild that you're pushing the "Native Americans were cannibals!" narrative to make the point. Second of all, barbicu is an Arawak word and that "maybe they were cannibals!" link is about the Caribs, who were the enemies of the Arawaks, and was a possible war tradition that has nothing to do with the Arawak practice of slow-cooking food on a raised grill. So that's a pretty bullshyt inclusion rigght there.




"babbake" doesn't sound nearly as close to barbeque as "barbicu" does, both the "r" consonant sound and the "u" ending vowel are completely absent. So already the explanation doesn't look as good.

Second of all, claiming that babbake refers to "a variety of processes involving cooking and fire" is vague. What processes? How do these vague "processes" relate to barbeque? The Taino word barbicu was very specifically about a raised wooden grill used for slow-cooking food above a flame. Again, that explanation seems to fit better.

LOL. So you theory is that American White people learned it from the Taino Indians and then those White people taught Black people. LOL.

I didn't push no damn cannibal theory. I posted an article called the "History of Barbque." Good deflection attempt though.

 

[Samori Toure]

How does anyone claim credit for inventing bar b que?

Barbque as we know it in America.