A Globe-Trotter's Guide to BBQ
Burcu Avsar1/8Pork and Lamb Kebabs with Dried Apricots and Onions
Travel the world’s barbecue trail and you’ll find meat on a stick almost everywhere. South Africa’s version goes by the Afrikaans name sosatie. Like all good Cape Malay meat dishes, fruit and curry are never far off—the former (usually apricots) interspersed with the meat on the skewers, the latter used to flavor the marinade and sauce. “Cape Malay,” by the way, refers to the descendants of Indonesian and Malaysian slaves and indentured servants brought to Cape Town to work in farming. “There is.…
2/8Beer-Marinated Flank Steak with Aji and Guacamole
Colombia may be the best kept barbecue secret in South America. Sure, Argentina gets the attention for its cowboy-style asado. And Brazil has enjoyed spectacular success exporting its rodizio-style restaurants—the kind where the waiters parade spits of grilled meats through the dining room. But Colombia? I doubt that most North Americans could name a single Colombian grilled dish. Well, it's time to shine the spotlight on the only country in South America to have coasts on both the Atlantic and !…
Craig Cutler3/8Ginger and Honey Baby Back Ribs
Ribs are among the constants on the world's barbecue trail, but just how they're prepared reflects a strong regional and cultural bias. The vast ranch lands and forests of the New World, for example, led to American-style barbecue, with its large slabs of spareribs slow-roasted on a smoker for the better part of a day. Asians adopted a different strategy: cooking small cuts or single ribs on tiny grills engineered for fuel efficiency. The flavor would come not from wood smoke (Asians don't have wood to burn by the cord), but from the explosively flavored seasoning indigenous to the region, like lemongrass, ginger, and fish sauce. Case in point: These Cambodian-style ribs, from Sarun Pich, a chef at the Amansara resort in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
4/8Grilled Black Cod with Fried Garlic and Chiles
It's Basque chefs like Juan Mari Arzak and Martin Berasategui who grab the headlines for their culinary pyrotechnics (think of their food as the culinary equivalent of the Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao). But what you may not realize is that the Basque country is also a hotbed of grilling—done by and large with a simplicity that stands in striking contrast to the foams, jellies, and deconstructions of Spain's culinary avant-garde. A sprinkle of sea salt, a splash of vinegar or olive oil—these are the seasonings favored by the majority of Basque grill masters. Consider this simple grilled cod topped with olive oil and fried garlic—inspired by Beti-Jai ("always a holiday"), a popular restaurant tucked away in the warren of narrow streets in the old quarter of Donostia-San Sebastián.
Hans Gissinger6/8Turkey Shawarma with Tomato Relish and Tahini Sauce
Shawarma is the Middle Eastern version of a large vertical shish kebab known as doner kebab in Turkey and gyro in Greece. It's made by impaling layers of meat on an oversize spit with a flat base and roasting the meat in an upright rotisserie. There are at least three advantages to this singular method of cooking. The dripping fat bastes the meat below it; the meat is sliced to order (at least it should be) from the outside, which gives every customer a crusty end cut; and because the crusty meat slices are piled on pita bread with fresh vegetables, pickles, and tahini sauce, you get a whole meal—and a healthful one—in a single sandwich. Traditionally, shawarma was made with lamb, but more and more Israeli grill masters use thinly sliced chicken or turkey. Shawarma is easy to prepare if you have a vertical rotisserie, and somewhat more challenging to adapt to the home grill. But direct-grilling the turkey slices does give you a close approximation of the taste and texture of classic shawarma.
8/8ABOVE: Yogurt-Marinated Chicken Kebabs with Aleppo Pepper; RIGHT: Cheese-Stuffed Potatoes with Yogurt-Spice Paste and Sesame Seed Crust
Most people go to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to visit the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex. I went there for barbecue. More specifically, I went there to eat coconut-grilled corn, Cambodian steak seared with chile paste, and baby back ribs blasted with ginger, honey, and fish sauce.
Three years ago, I embarked on an unusual journey: to travel the world's barbecue trail in quest of the best grilled and smoked dishes for a new book and TV show called Planet Barbecue. I ate beer-marinated flank steak with fiery aji (Colombian salsa) in Bogotá and cheese-stuffed tandoori potatoes at a grill parlor in Delhi. I feasted on chicken thighs grilled with yogurt, hot pepper, and garlic in Istanbul, and sosaties, South Africa's fruit-marinated kebabs, in Cape Town. And just when I thought I couldn't manage another bite, there were grilled giant Java Sea shrimp with lemongrass-chile sambal to sample in Bali.
The world's barbecue trail takes you to six continents (or seven, if you include the occasional barbecue-obsessed scientist stationed in Antarctica). Most countries have evolved their own unique grills, rubs, marinades, grilling techniques, and styles of barbecue—and the way that a country grills says a lot about its culture.
In Indonesia, for example, seafood and meats are grilled with aromatic pastes of lemongrass, ginger, galangal, turmeric, pepper, and chiles. On the other side of the world, Argentina's gauchos take the opposite approach, seasoning their grass-fed beef with little more than coarse salt and wood smoke. Shish kebab is king in Turkey, where a staggering variety of meats are cooked on skewers over a grill lacking the one thing we consider essential in North America: a grill grate. Big is beautiful in Texas, home of the smoked brisket and mammoth beef shoulder clod. In Asia, good grilled things come in small packages, like Japanese yakitori and Malaysian satay.
So what's been my favorite barbecue in the 53 countries I have visited to date? It's a question people ask often, and the most likely answer is the grilled meal I enjoyed in the country I visited most recently—or the one I'm about to try on my next journey. Here are eight of my favorites, drawn from the four corners of Planet Barbecue. Fire up your grills.
