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50 free BBQ trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free BBQ trivia questions with answers. This BBQ trivia quiz is built for cookouts, tailgates, Fourth of July parties and anyone who has ever argued about sauce. It covers where the word 'barbecue' actually comes from, the four big American regional styles - Carolina, Memphis, Kansas City and Texas - and what makes each one different, from vinegar and mustard sauces to burnt ends and salt-and-pepper brisket. There are questions on the science too: what a smoke ring really is and why the pink does not mean the meat is raw. Then it heads outdoors and abroad: the Chicago sheet-metal shop that turned buoy halves into the Weber kettle, the Ford relative who invented charcoal briquettes, the world's biggest pork barbecue contest, Korean bulgogi, Argentine asado, South Africa's braai and Jamaica's jerk. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for the whole table; the rest will separate the pitmasters from the people holding the tongs. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The English word 'barbecue' comes, via Spanish 'barbacoa', from the language of which people?
The Taíno
Spaniards arriving after 1492 found them roasting meat on a wooden framework over a fire; the folk etymology 'barbe à queue' (beard to tail) is a myth.
Q 02Which of these is NOT one of the four major US regional barbecue styles usually cited?
Santa Maria
The big four are North Carolina, Memphis, Kansas City and Texas; California's Santa Maria tri-tip tradition is a beloved regional style but not one of them.
Q 03In North Carolina, what are the two rival barbecue styles that feud light-heartedly with each other?
Lexington and Eastern
A 2006 bill to make the Lexington festival 'official' was defeated; a 2007 compromise made it merely the official food festival of the Piedmont Triad.
Q 04Lexington-style 'red slaw' is coleslaw made with what in place of the usual creamy dressing?
The pit's own vinegar-tomato sauce
It is also called barbecue slaw, and it is what a Lexington plate is judged on almost as much as the pork.
Q 05Memphis-style ribs come 'wet' or 'dry'. What makes a rib 'dry'?
It is coated in a spice rub and served without sauce
Wet ribs are brushed with sauce before, during and after cooking; Memphis is overwhelmingly a pork town.
Q 06Memphis's World Championship cooking contest is listed by Guinness as the world's largest for what?
Pork
It began in 1978 with 26 teams and takes place in Tom Lee Park at the foot of Beale Street.
Q 07Who is credited as the originator of Kansas City barbecue, serving near 18th and Vine from 1908?
Henry Perry
Two of the city's oldest surviving barbecue restaurants trace their roots to his pit; he had come from Shelby County, Tennessee, near Memphis.
Q 08From which unusual profession did Rich Davis, creator of KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce, come?
Child psychiatry
Historically the city's sauces were not sweet at all; his molasses-heavy recipe changed the popular idea of what KC sauce tastes like.
Q 09In Kansas City, 'burnt ends' - the crusty pieces of smoked brisket - are traditionally served how?
Open-faced on white bread
Pieces of finished brisket go back into the smoker to make them; Texas prefers its brisket sliced.
Q 10Central Texas barbecue is usually rubbed with only which two seasonings?
Salt and black pepper
It is then cooked over indirect heat from post oak, pecan or mesquite - a tradition brought by German and Czech butchers in the mid-1800s.
Q 11Which immigrant community is credited with making brisket popular in Texas in the 1800s?
Jewish
Brisket is the classic cut for Jewish holiday pot roast, corned beef, pastrami and Montreal smoked meat too.
Q 12From which part of the cow does brisket come?
The breast or lower chest
It is made of two pectoral muscles: the lean 'flat' and the fattier 'point'.
Q 13Pulled pork is almost always made from which cut?
Shoulder
The upper shoulder cut is confusingly called the Boston butt; the meat is dry-rubbed, smoked over wood and shredded.
Q 21In which city was the Weber kettle grill invented?
Chicago
Stephen was part-owner of a sheet-metal shop and simply wanted something better than the brazier he cooked on at home.
Q 22Edward G. Kingsford, inventor of the modern charcoal briquette, was a relative of which industrialist?
Henry Ford
He turned the wood scraps from Model T production into charcoal sold at Ford dealerships; a Michigan town was named after him.
Q 23The 1954 Model AP portable gas grill used 20-lb propane cylinders previously used almost only by whom?
Plumbers
Don McGlaughlin's Chicago Combustion Corporation - now LazyMan - had invented the gas grill itself back in the late 1930s.
Q 14South Carolina's distinctive mustard-based barbecue sauce is traced to settlers from which country?
Germany
The very earliest American sauces were just vinegar, salt and pepper, popularized by enslaved Africans in the Carolinas.
Q 15North Alabama's signature 'white sauce' is based on what?
Mayonnaise
It is thinned with cider vinegar and seasoned with sugar, salt and black pepper, and goes mainly on chicken and pork.
Q 16Which major company was the first to sell bottled barbecue sauce, in 1940?
Heinz
The Georgia Barbecue Sauce Company of Atlanta had been advertising a commercial sauce as early as 1909.
Q 17The pink 'smoke ring' under the surface of smoked meat forms when a gas from the fire reacts with which protein?
Myoglobin
Nitrogen dioxide from burning wood or charcoal becomes nitric oxide in the meat, which locks the pigment into a stable pink that heat cannot brown.
Q 18How deep into the meat does a smoke ring typically extend?
8-10 millimeters
The most important factor is the fuel: gas and electric smokers produce far less nitrogen dioxide, so far less ring.
Q 19True barbecue 'smoking' cooks meat for hours at roughly what temperature range?
116-138 °C (240-280 °F)
That is the 'low and slow' that separates smoking from grilling, which uses direct high heat.
Q 20George Stephen built the first Weber kettle grill in 1951 from two sheet-metal halves normally used to make what?
Buoys
An early nickname for the odd-looking grill was 'Sputnik'; Stephen later bought out the Weber Brothers factory entirely.
Q 24In English a 'hibachi' is a small portable grill. What is a traditional Japanese hibachi for?
Heating a room
The word was borrowed for cast-iron and aluminum tabletop grills, and 'hibachi-style' restaurants in the US usually mean teppanyaki.
Q 25George Washington recorded attending a 'barbicue' in 1769 in which Virginia town?
Alexandria
The first recorded American mention is from 1672, in the writings of explorer John Lederer.
Q 26According to the OED, the first recorded modern English use of 'barbecue' appeared in a 1661 book about which island?
Jamaica
Edmund Hickeringill's Jamaica Viewed described flesh 'forthwith Barbacu'd and eat'.
Q 27In Australia and New Zealand, what is a barbecue commonly called?
A barbie
The alternative spelling 'barbeque' is also more common there than in most other countries.
Q 28In South Africa, National Braai Day is celebrated on 24 September, which is also which public holiday?
Heritage Day
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was appointed the day's patron in 2007; 'braaivleis' is Afrikaans for grilled meat.
Q 29At an Argentine asado, what is the grill itself called?
Parrilla
The person doing the cooking is the asador or parrillero, and quebracho is a hardwood favoured for the charcoal; in Uruguay they skip charcoal and grill straight over embers.
Q 30Which two native Caribbean ingredients form the heart of a jerk marinade?
Allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers
The technique came from the island's Arawak and Taíno peoples via the Maroons; 'jerk' comes from the Quechua-derived word charqui, which also gave us 'jerky'.