With barbecue cooking finally getting the respect it deserves, Stylist decides it’s time women got in on the action

Photography: Dennis Pedersen

A regular scene in any British summer is that of the backyard barbecue: intermittent drizzle, a bucket brimming with ice and bottles of Brewdog and, of course, the backs of several men clustered protectively around the flickering flames, their perspiring faces glowing cherry red from the heat as they mutter about “core temperatures” and “optimum coal glow” while silently judging the tong-holder’s grilling technique. There’s something about meat on coals – that heady billowing of smoke mingled with a fleshy musk scent and the ‘tsk tsk’ sound of dripping fat – that prompts even the most progressive of men to revert to hunter-gatherer stereotypes. Relying, as it does, on hard graft at an open coal-face – cheeks flushed, sweat pouring and the very real danger of serious injury all in the pursuit of the perfectly singed halloumi – barbecuing screams ‘rugged outdoorsiness’ more than any Victoria sponge recipe ever could. I’ve always been drawn to the flames, happy to ignore my smoke-infested eyes to get ever closer, but inevitably even men who normally shirk kitchen duties feel entitled to grab the tongs and the beers and shove women in the direction of a deckchair and the rosé.

In 2016, barbecue cooking has never been ‘hotter’ – and it’s time British women woke up to what we’re missing. The aroma that recalls a lifetime of campfires, the warm glow of charcoal, the therapeutic effects of building something as tangible as fire in an increasingly digital world, and the in-your-face flavour of that first bite – I intend to reclaim my right to this simple yet profound pleasure. Testosterone, I’m afraid, adds nothing to the flavour of barbecue.

And this is the summer to do it. As the barbie goes gourmet, hit barbecue restaurants and cult food trucks are dominating the summer dining scene in cities as far afield as Austin, Singapore, Perth and Helsinki. Barbecue festivals such as London’s Meatopia and Bristol’s Grillstock are now major dates in any food-lover’s calendar. Women, we’re missing out, and I say we rightly need to reclaim the flames.

I say ‘reclaim’ because barbecuing is in our DNA. It was (hu)man’s ability to cook meat over flame that enabled us to consume sufficient nutrients to develop our brains and ascend to the top of the food chain so, quite literally, barbecue is what separates us from beasts. Over five centuries ago, Christopher Columbus first witnessed indigenous tribes on the Caribbean island he named Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and Dominican Republic) cooking meat over an indirect flame, using green wood to keep the food and the wood from burning. Historical records indicate that the Spanish explorers named this cooking style ‘barbacoa’, and as they turned their expeditions north, they carried the technique with them to the colonies, travelling as far north as Virginia. By 1732, Alexander Pope was writing about the all-familiar craving: “Send me, Gods! A whole hog barbecu’d.”

Other nations have their own barbecue heritage. In Australia, for example, women would steam, roast and barbecue meat and vegetables in traditional Aboriginal earth ovens. The Argentine asado, where non-marinated meat is cooked in a smokeless pit, goes back centuries but today is a huge half-day family tradition. However it was in the Southern states of the US – the so-called barbecue belt – that the art of coal-fired cooking was truly honed, giving rise to four distinct styles named after the areas they came from – Carolina, Memphis, Texas and Kansas City.

Barbecue belt purists would argue that the beef-based barbecue of Texas, or the mutton-based barbecue found in Kentucky, doesn’t constitute authentic barbecue; whole hogs cooked over smouldering coals in long pits was the original methodology. But the influence of European colonists and immigrants is written all over the history of barbecue. North Carolina’s vinegar-based sauces derive from the British colonists’s technique of basting to preserve the juices within the meat, whereas in South Carolina, with a strong contingent of French and German immigrants, a mustard-based sauce was born. Always community affairs, by the 19th century, barbecue was so popular it had created its own language. Politicians were using community barbecues to court voters, giving rise to political metaphors such as “grilled”, “skewered” and “raked over the coals”. Barbecues were also, unusually, mixed-race occasions – at first, African-American slaves would cook for their white masters, but later they came to eat together at community pits. “It was said that the slaves could barbecue meats best and when the whites had barbecues slaves always did the cooking,” wrote former Virginia slave Louis Hughes in his 1897 autobiography Thirty Years A Slave. After the civil war (1861-1865), barbecue became central to black identity in the South, although the Encyclopaedia Of Southern Culture records that “whites, in a strange reversal of Jim Crow traditions, made stealthy excursions for take-out orders” from roadside barbecue stands.

Cultural phenomenon

Slowly, the barbecue became gentrified, but it wasn’t until the Fifties that its popularity really boomed. At that time, Weber-Stephens Products began to heavily market its phenomenally successful kettle-shaped charcoal grill to a newly prosperous white American middle class, deftly repackaging the barbecue tradition as a family leisure activity. Billboard adverts portrayed cheery, Ken-like fathers brandishing skewers in newly created suburban gardens. Men who would never dream of pulling on an apron indoors were happy to do the cooking. And unsurprisingly – given that they did the cooking the rest of the time – women let them. For the next 20 years the backyard barbecue business sizzled, as Americans moved to the suburbs and tossed steaks onto their grills in record numbers. Year after year, the barbecue industry witnessed double-digit growth; and every year, the barbecue gender divide solidified.

How to BBQ like a woman: the last stronghold of inequality? It’s in your backyard.