The fine weather has hit us already and, with summer just around the corner, eating outdoors becomes one of our favourite pastimes. Having a barbecue is one of the better ways to enjoy the sunshine and some mouth-watering food ­ a quite sumptuous combination! This is the time of year where we relieve the supermarket shelves of their sausages, burgers, fish and various cuts of meat and poultry. With this in mind, careful preparation is always the key to a pleasurable ‘cook-out’.

HOW DID IT BEGIN?

• There are several trains-of-thought as to how the art of barbecuing originated. One suggestion has it that the French pioneered this cooking method by deriving it from their expression Barbe-a-quene, which means to cook from the ‘whiskers to the tail’. In addition, smearing an extravagant sauce all over the meat created the so-called ‘French touch’.


• Yet, on the other hand, the belief is that barbecuing began in the Caribbean where the native Arawak Indians would cook meat by placing it on wooden sticks over a fire pit. The wooden sticks were called barbacoa and it is believed that this is one of the earliest references that we have of outdoor grilling. Spanish colonists and sailors were taught how to cook in this manner and adopted the barbacoa term to describe this cooking method.


• It is also claimed that the term buccaneer is somehow related to barbecuing. The French word boucanier was used to refer to a native from the islands of Hispaniola and Tortuga, the former being populated with Spanish colonists and the latter by the French. The natives would hunt for meat and cook over a fire in a wooden frame, known in French as a Boucan. This word came from an Arawakan expression, which meant ‘a rack, sometimes used for roasting.’


• However, several ardent barbecue fanatics in America are entertaining a literal translation provided by the Chief of the Taino Indigenous Nation of the Caribbean and Florida! The translation of ‘barbecue’ was given as follows:
  
  - Ba from Baba (father)
  - Ra from Yara (place)
  - Bi from Bibi (beginning)
  - Cu from Guacu (the sacred fire)
  
  Put together it meant "the beginning of the sacred fire father." The Chief further explained that a native ‘Taino Barabicu’ means ‘the sacred fire pit.’