Barbecue
cooking method
Barbecue or barbeque (often shortened to BBQ worldwide; barbie or barby in Australia and New Zealand) is a term used with regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods, employing live fire and smoke to cook food.
The term is applied to the devices associated with those methods, the broader cuisines these methods produce, and the meals or gatherings at which this style of food is cooked and served. Though, the cooking methods associated with barbecuing vary.
The various regional variations of barbecue can be categorized into methods using direct or indirect heating. Indirect barbecues are associated with US cuisine, in which meat is heated by roasting or smoking over wood or charcoal. These methods of barbecue involve cooking, and using smoke at low temperatures with long cooking times for several hours.
Elsewhere, barbecuing more refers to the direct application of heat, grilling of food over hot coals or a gas fire. This technique is done over direct dry heat or a hot fire for a few minutes.
Etymology and spelling
The English word barbecue and its cognates in other languages come from the Spanish word barbacoa, which has its origin in a Taíno word. Etymologists believe this to be derived from barabicu found in the language of the Arawak people of the Caribbean and the Timucua people of Florida.
The public source identifies “Barbecue” as cooking method. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Barbecue, cooking and method.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q461696. The Library of Congress control number is sh85011786. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barbecue” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.