The Backyard Grill
As America moved out of the cities to the suburbs during the late 1940s onward, new forms of entertaining friends and neighbors evolved, including the barbeque. Cooking outdoors over charcoal, gas heat, and more recently artisanal wood fires became de rigeur in the warmer months and for many year round. Outdoor grills can be as simple as a grate over a pan of coals or a complex system which rivals commercial kitchens. They are the source of debate, including the never ending argument over whether gas or charcoal is the preferred source of heat.
Charcoal in the form of today’s briquette was invented by Edward Kingsford. He had noticed that the production lines for Henry Ford’s Model T produced tons of scrap wood, which was simply burnt. The frugal Ford was intrigued with Kingsford’s suggestion that the wood be converted to charcoal and sold via Ford’s growing network of car dealerships (some state it was actually Ford’s idea and that he ordered Kingsford to stop the waste).
Whichever is correct, Ford soon offered picnic kits as an accessory to his cars. Outdoor picnics and camping trips provided markets for charcoal, but the market exploded with the expansion to the suburbs. The Weber grill and its famed kettle design was introduced in 1952. The gas grill followed in just a few years.
The word barbecue is even a subject of debate, with some preferring to spell it barbeque, and it appears in both spellings on the never ending procession of new sauces produced commercially to enhance the flavor of cooking in the manner it describes. Both versions of the word are derived from the Spanish barbacoa, a term used by sailors with Columbus to describe the cooking racks used by the Arawak Indians.
Before the 20th century, there was no particular allure to cooking over an open fire, since that was how it was usually done. The desire to cook meals outside over flames, regardless of their fuel, was another change to the ways Americans eat. Like many others, it was a change driven by looking backwards to past generations.