These days, barbecue can be defined as a method in which you slow cook you’re meat at low temperature for long periods of time. The most well known meats for barbecue are pork, ribs, brisket, whole pigs, mutton roasts and other pork or beef products. The term barbecue is used not only to describe the cooking process of the food, but it also entails the process of making a good barbecue sauce that goes with the preparation of the meat.
Historians are still unsure of where barbecue originated and who invented it. There is a possibility that the term originates from the Taino Indian word barbacoa, which is a term that means meat-smoking device. A second possibility is that it comes from a French expression barbe a queue, which means whiskers to tail.
In the American culture barbecue began in the later period of the 19th century during cattle drives. The Midwestern cowboys would consume large quantities of tough meat with a dipping barbecue sauce, which more often than not was brisket, a meat that requires several hours of cooking before it is served.