Many of the foods that people associate with America didn't actually originate in the United States.

Hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza are all things that were popularized in the U.S.

But they didn't originate there.

However, there is one form of cuisine which is uniquely American, barbecue. While it is

American, it developed with influences from Native Americans, Africans, and

Europeans. Learn more about barbecue, how it developed and its regional differences

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Before I get into a discussion of barbecue I should probably define my terms of it.

When I said barbecue is a uniquely American cuisine you might be thinking that

there's Korean barbecue, Japanese barbecue, and many others.

As you'll see, those are very different forms of cooking compared to American barbecue.

The word barbecue was associated with those styles of cooking by Americans after the fact.

Likewise, cooking meat over a fire is as old as humanity itself.

Grilling, roasting, or broiling really isn't something that has any particular origin.

However, cooking over an open fire really isn't barbecue, even though it's often called that.

What have many people called barbecue is really just grilling. The origins of barbecue stem back to the

native people who lived in the Caribbean before Europeans arrived. The

Tino, the native people who lived in the Caribbean before Europeans arrived, the Tino.

These were the people who lived on what is today, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

The Tino had a method of cooking where they would put fish on sticks over a pit fire that they called a barabiku, which meant sacred pit in their language.

They would create a wooden rack over the pit where they would put fish on it where it would be cooked by the fire and the smoke.

When the Spanish arrived they found this form of cooking to have a unique taste,

and they called the rack which the meat was put upon a barbedcoa.

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