What’s the future of American barbecue?
Barbecue has long been a staple cuisine in the United States. Like many of the country’s long-standing traditions, its legacy is heavy with the weight of history of America’s original and lingering sins – colonization and slavery. The origins of American barbecue date to the colonial period, when European settlers studied and adapted indigenous cooking techniques and later charged enslaved Africans with sustaining these practices. [1]
Even after slavery ended, Black Americans continued to dominate the barbecue landscape throughout the American South. [2]In more recent years variations grew out of the traditional methods and new barbecue styles took shape in regions outside of the American South, including Chicago, California, and Hawaii. [3]Some of these new styles evolved as immigration to the United States began to swell in the mid-20th century. Many immigrant foodways include their own versions of barbecue, from Mexican asada to Korean KBBQ to Jamaican jerk, each of which has become enormously popular beyond the communities where they originated. [4]