To explain what I mean, I think you can level up a cooking style. For example, pasta. At level 1, you’re boiling dried pasta and adding sauce out of a jar. At level 1, you add your own spices. Level 3, switch to fresh pasta. Level 4, make your own sauce. And finally at level 5, make the pasta from scratch.
So with BBQ, I guess level 1 would be cooking the meat so it’s neither burnt nor underdone. Maybe level 2 is mixing different meats/cuts that have different heat/time requirements and cooking well. Further levels = ?
At least one of the levels is practicality: The acts of buying and/or preparing every other food, condiment and implement that will be used for the barbecue, then cleaning everything up afterwards without implicitly relying on anyone else.
The grilling might be the fun bit, but there’s a lot else either side.
You don’t just hand someone a grilled meat patty, however beautifully it’s cooked and seasoned. The required bun has to come from somewhere. So did that plate. Maybe there’s butter on the bun. Maybe there’s salad. Maybe the meat needed marinating, etc.
In most areas of the US that take BBQ seriously, grilling != BBQ.
Grilling means direct heat, BBQ in those areas refers to indirect heat, usually with some smoke component.
Right verb or wrong verb, it doesn’t really invalidate the point I was making. If all you do is stand by the barbecue, put things in it and flip the food occasionally while everything else magically happens around you, you’re only doing the fun bit.
What is the right word for indirect heat cooking anyway? “Smoking” in that context doesn’t necessarily imply making it hot for close-to-immediate consumption, and “cooking” seems far too general.
Likewise, “barbecuing” could mean grilling, so that’s too general as well.
I’m from North Carolina. There was a candidate for NC governor once who lost his race because he was heard saying he was “sick of barbecue.” It’s a THING here.
Likewise, “barbecuing” could mean grilling, so that’s too general as well.
No. No it doesn’t.
Grilling is a short duration, high direct heat process.
Barbecuing is a long duration, low indirect heat process.
Those who use barbecuing as a synonym for grilling are objectively wrong and have measurably damaged you and your ability to communicate about food preparation.
Objectively wrong for your part of the world maybe.
I guess my part of the world probably doesn’t have a word for the distinction because here it can mean either.
Either that or it’s a case of common parlance versus learned parlance, like, for the sake of any example, when people say “theory” but mean “hypothesis” and in learned parlance “theory” has a different meaning.
My part of the world uses the word “barbecue” specifically to mean the kind of cooking we were talking about and avoids that ambiguity you were struggling with, so I think I can confidently say use of the word “barbecue” as a synonym for “grill” when the word “grill” is also in use is uselessly defective.
Level 1: just doing it on a regular grill like a Weber kettle grill or similar.
Level 2: a pellet or electric smoker where you’re not really in control
Level 3: a small dedicated smoker where you tend the fire
Level 4: A second, complementary dedicated smoker (e.g., if you have a horizontal one for brisket and the like, maybe you buy a vertical one for hanging ribs and doing stuff like that.) It’s a new level because you’re now an obsessive who buys things you don’t strictly need but now it’s your hobby and you can tell the difference.
Level 5: A professional grade, expensive smoker, possibly welded to a trailer for tailgates or family gatherings. Alternatively, building a brick smoker in your backyard or something like that.
Level 5 (special recognition): The guy who made the filing cabinet smoker
I generally agree with this order, but my journey took me in a different order. After having propane forever I moved to a Weber and the snake method, but then I went with an offset with a real fire box.
After getting really good results but not always having enough time to stoke the fire for 12+ hours I bought a very high end pellet smoker that I converted to also use charcoal and wood.
My stick burner gets used maybe once a year now. I’ll go pellet at least once a week, and charcoal or wood in the converted pellet at least once a month. I also can build a makeshift konro inside my pellet smoker, and I use that all the time.
Oh right, I also have an offset vertical smoker, and hunt a lot of my own protein, so yeah, it’s a deep hole I’ve dug into.
I’ve been thinking about buying a pellet smoker because my grocery sells the pellets now but I have two smokers and my friend is a big dude — a former offensive lineman — and he loves nothing more than drinking beer and tending to a fire. He loves monitoring the temperature and soaking the wood in water to get it just right. He probably should/could smoke meat for a living and be happy forever.
I like to keep it simple and am into technology so I have wireless thermometers and love my barrel smoker where, once you learn the quirks, it’s basically set it and forget it and get perfect ribs. But I feel like I’d be taking something from a friend if I didn’t also have the 12 hours of beer and monitoring to the temp/fire part. That’s his form of meditation.
I hear you, it’s definitely a zen state.
I live walking distance from the ocean, so it’s nice to set a pellet up and monitor it from the beach. Run back when it’s time to wrap/spray/etc, and then hang on the sand until the internal temps remind me it’s time to head home and rest everything in a cooler.
All of my sausage, fish, and jerky goes in the vertical smoker. I have to manually tend the fire on that, but the temp swings and fuel consumption are much more stable, so it’s generally quite a bit easier than minding my normal offset.
Chilling in the yard to tend fire and empty a 30 rack with the neighbor is fun for sure, and my stick burner develops better bark than the pellet, even if I use wood in it. So when I want to go all in on a competition, or I’m doing like 8 briskets at a time for a huge event I’ll run the stick burner. Otherwise it’s something in the pellet smoker.
At least for me the progression was like this:
L1 - Sausage on grill
L2 - Meats on grill an getting the heat an timing right
L3 - Rubs and brines and grilled veggies
L4 - Baking bread and pizza
L5 - Serving a complete family dinner with different cuts of meat, fish, veggies and bread from one grill
L0: acting like “grilling” is barbecue.
No one cares.
