Barbeque Fun Facts - Yum!

Here are some finger-lickin' facts to get your stomach growling for the barbeque season:

• The first barbecuers may well have been prehistoric cavemen. Anthropologists say they may have started roasting meat some 1.4 million years ago. Other sources say this originated in the Caribbean where the native Indians used wood gratings over a slow fire to cook strips of meat.
• 3 out of 4 American households own a grill and they use it on average of 5 times per month.
• The most popular holiday weekend for barbecuing is July 4th (surprise, surprise!), then Labor Day, with Memorial Day close behind.
• The word "barbecue" may have come from the French phrase "barbe a queue" (from whiskers to tail-The term refers to the original method in which a whole animal was cooked on a spit over an open fire), or the Taino Indian word for their method of cooking fish over a pit of coals (barbacoa). Another source says that roast mutton in Romanian translates into "barbec." So there are several accounts that vary on the true origins of the word. Barbecue is also known as "Barbeque", "barbicue", "barbique", "Bar-B-Cue", "Bar-B-Que", "Bar-B-Q", "BBQ", "Cue", and "Q".
• The most popular foods for cooking on the grill are, in order: burgers (85 percent), steak (80 percent), hot dogs (79 percent) and chicken (73 percent).
• Barbecues have been a White House tradition since Thomas Jefferson. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, hosted the first barbecue at the White House that featured Texas-style barbecued ribs.
• There's a difference between barbecuing and grilling. Most backyard chefs are actually grilling rather than barbecuing. Grilling involves placing the food directly over the heat source, be it coals, gas-fired flame or whatever. Barbecuing means cooking food slowly via indirect heat and smoke.
• According to ESPN, there are hundreds of organized events throughout the country, with cash prizes as high as $110,000. (Competitive barbecuing and beach volleyball are the only sports in which the spectators are the winners.).