/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>6816507

Some etymologists believe that barbecue derives from the word barabicu found in the language of the Taíno people of the Caribbean and the Timucua of Florida,[1] and it has entered multiple European languages in the form of barbacoa. Specifically, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the word back to Haiti, that translates as a "framework of sticks set upon posts".[2] Gonzalo Fernández De Oviedo y Valdés, a Spanish explorer, was the first to use the word "barbecoa" in print in Spain in 1526 in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española (2nd Edition) of the Real Academia Española.[3] After Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, the Spaniards had seemed to have found native Haitians roasting animal meat over a grill consisting of a wooden framework resting on sticks and a fire made underneath, that flames and smoke would rise and envelop the animal meat, giving it a certain flavor.[4] Strangely enough, the same framework was used as a means of protection against animal attacks at night.

Traditional barbacoa involves digging a hole in the ground and placing some meat (usually a whole goat) with a pot underneath it, so that the juices can make a hearty broth. It is then covered with maguey leaves and coal and set alight. The cooking process takes a few hours. Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, described this method of roasting alligators among the Mosquito People (Miskito people) on his journeys to Cabo Gracias a Dios in his narrative, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.[5]