By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2010-04-26 07:42:26 | Word Count: 542
Since ancient times people cook meat on the fire, and although over millennia cooking techniques have developed and improved, resulting in many cultural and geographical variations, we can assert that this cooking style has succeeded in going through the millennia and becoming widespread in almost every part of the world. You might eat grilled meat in a restaurant, or you might cook it personally open air and then eat it sitting at a camping table immersed in nature: in any case grilled meat is appreciated in any part of the world.
If we toured the world to discover the numberless variations of barbecue, we would find different techniques in every country, but in each place we would discover a common passion for grilled meat, a simple cooking technique which is able to give meat, but also fish, vegetables and cheese, a unique savour. The first place to come to our minds if we hear the word barbecue is probably the States, where barbecue is a veritable institution. It is estimated that in the United States about 80% of families have a barbecue, and the demand is increasing. The data show that in the States families often choose modern and sophisticated models, with all the accessories that are necessary to make a perfect barbecue. But also out of the States and in many other world countries we can find numberless barbecue variations, which have a different name but are all characterised by a similar cooking technique. In South America, for example, grilled meat can have different names: it is called “asado” in Argentina and “churrasco” in Brazil. In both cases they are typical dishes of these countries, with an age-old tradition, dishes that have gone beyond the country’s borders and have made themselves known and appreciated all over the world. In Jamaica barbecue is called “jerk food”, a very spicy and tasty variation of grilled meat, which is cooked with hot peppers that are typical of those places, and various spices.
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The tradition of barbecue is widespread also in the other side of the world: everybody knows kebab, one of the typical dishes of the Mediterranean, Arab and oriental area, but which can now be found in the streets of every world city. Certainly this is not an “American style” barbecue, but the bases are similar: meat on a spit, which in this case is vertical, and cooked near a heat source. Kebabs can be served as a simple meat dish or as the filling of a tasty sandwich. Grilled meat is a tradition also in Indonesia and in Japan. In the first case we refer to it with the term “satay” (small skewers with pieces of grilled chicken or beef), while in Japan you can eat “yakitori”, grilles skewered chicken, vegetables or fish.
To sum up, both if you grill meat on a charcoal barbecue in the States and if you enjoy a kebab in a Turkish restaurant, in any case grilled meat always achieves great success, and we can certainly assert that it knows no boundaries.
