The Word Barbecue Was Born in This Pit

On Sunday morning in the Rio Grande Valley, the line forms early. Before church, before the heat comes up, families pull in at the taquería or the carnicería and buy barbacoa by the pound, still warm, wrapped in butcher paper, with a separate container of consomé to sip. At home it goes onto warm corn tortillas with nothing but chopped onion, cilantro, salsa, and a squeeze of lime, and the whole family eats together before the day begins. In South Texas this is not a special occasion. It is just Sunday, and it has been for generations.

It is also, quietly, the most important plate in this entire book — because barbacoa is where the word barbecue comes from. Every pit, every smoker, every brisket and rack of ribs in these pages traces its name and its method back to this one tradition. We have spent fourteen chapters traveling the country watching Americans cook over fire. Here, in the agave-lined pit of South Texas, is the source.

01The mother of barbecue

The word came first. When the Spanish reached the Caribbean they recorded a Taíno word — barbacoa — for a raised wooden frame used to cook and dry meat over a fire. That word traveled with them into Mexico, where it attached to the ancient practice of pit-cooking, and eventually crossed into English as barbecue. In central Mexico, barbacoa means lamb or goat steamed in maguey leaves in an earthen pit; in northern Mexico and South Texas, it means barbacoa de cabeza — a whole cow's head, an economical, nose-to-tail tradition that turns the cheeks, the tongue, and everything else into something extraordinary. The pit came first. Everything else in this book is a variation on it.

02The pit and the agave

The method is the oldest one here. You dig a pit — el pozo — build a hardwood fire down in it, and let it burn to coals. The head, salted and often coated in a chile adobo, is wrapped in maguey (agave) leaves that steam and perfume the meat as it cooks, then lowered in, covered, and buried overnight. By morning the cabeza is meltingly tender, the cheek meat — cachete — the most prized part of all. If it sounds like the Hawaiian imu two chapters back, it should: the buried fire is a human idea older than any border. But this is the version that gave the whole tradition its name.

03Sunday morning and the adobo

What flavors the modern pot and the meat on the plate is the adobo. Dried guajillo and ancho chiles, garlic, comino, oregano, bay, and pepper, loosened with a little lime or vinegar into a deep red paste — rubbed into the meat before it cooks and simmered into the rich consomé alongside. Then the taco is finished with almost nothing, because it needs almost nothing: chopped white onion, fresh cilantro, a spoon of salsa, a squeeze of lime, on a warm corn tortilla. It is humble and communal and unbroken, a Sunday ritual that is also, if you follow the word back far enough, the beginning of everything.