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By Time staff
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 29, 2000
The term "barbecue" generates a lot of confusion. Sometimes it's used to mean the grill on which cooking is done. Some people use it to mean the way food is cooked, outdoors over live flame (wood, charcoal or gas). Some use it to refer to the food itself: typically pork, beef or chicken slowly smoke-cooked and often basted with sauces that are more or less smoky, or tomatoey, or vinegar-based. (All of them are the best, and partisans will fight anyone who says otherwise.)
For our purposes we're using the verb "to barbecue" to mean "to grill": to cook quickly outdoors over live gas flames.