On Food and Cooking

cooking method took its modern form about a
century ago. Barbecuing is the low-
temperature, slow heating of meat in a closed
chamber by means of hot air from smoldering
wood coals. It’s an outdoor cousin to the slow
oven roast, and produces smoky, fall-apart
tender meat.
Modern barbecuing devices allow the cook
to control the amount of heat and smoke
produced, and facilitate periodic basting with
a wide range of sauces, most of them spicy
and vinegary, to intensify flavor, moisten the
meat surface, and further slow the cooking. In
the best devices, the wood is burned in one
chamber and the meat cooked in a second
connected chamber, so that there’s no direct
radiation from the coals, and only the
relatively cool smoke (around 200ºF/90ºC)
transfers heat, inefficiently and therefore
gently. It takes several hours to bring large
cuts of meat — slabs of ribs, pork shoulders
and legs, beef briskets — to an internal