BBQ in New York

Ok. So I told you what I'm going to do. Now let's look at some of the challenges.

BBQ is not a New York food. I'm born and raised in New York. Here Barbeque or Barbecue or BBQ is defined as any type of food covered in BBQ sauce, say Kraft. It can be cooked in the oven, micro waved or cooked on a grill. This ain't BBQ. (Today I'm using BBQ as the abbreviation for barbeque. I just don't feel like typing the whole word.)

Barbeque is slow cooked meat. Slow cooked over a wood fire. It is usually beef or pork. The meat is usually rubbed with a spice mixture before it is cooked and mopped with a liquid while cooking. It could be marinated before it is cooked. It is sauced at the end of cooking or after it is cooked. Maybe. Or maybe not. Every pit master cooks his/her BBQ differently. Every region cooks BBQ differently. Whatever BBQ is, you know it when you taste it.

BBQ is American food. BBQ is a state of mind.

BBQ is not a vowel. You don't BBQ food. You cook food to become BBQ.

BBQ means different things in different parts of the country. In Texas, it's Beef. In South Carolina it's Pork and in Kansas City, it's ribs.

Being a New Yorker, or a Yankee as I've been called in the South, (all-though I think of people from New England as Yankees); I'm not a purist about what I will cook and call BBQ. I've done fish and shell fish. I've done chicken. I may eventually try to do Vegetables or Tofu. But, if I cross that bridge I may be asked to resign from the Kansas City BBQ Society.

So what the hell is a NY boy doing trying to create not only completion quality, but the world's best BBQ? C’mon back. I'm going to try and explain.