Slow & Low Is the Way to Go.
Coming Saturday November 12th our Slow Smoke Cooking Classes...more info
Barbecuing is not what dad did in the back yard on Sunday afternoons to steaks, hamburgers, and hot dogs. As you probably know by now that's grilling. These two methods of cooking are sometimes confused because they are both done over live fire, buy they are really quite different. Unlike grilling, barbecuing is not listed among Escoffier's leading culinary operations. The way to really find out about barbecue is get on a plane and go to The South or Southwest United States, Kansas City or Memphis Tennessee.
Barbecuing essentially consists of placing a large cut of meat in a closed pit and allowing it to cook indirectly by the smoke from a hardwood fire. The temperature is kept from180 to 220 degrees (F), and the very slow cooking causes the connective tissues of the meat to tenderize and dissolve. Were talking about cooking over a real wood fire, real slow and for a long time. Barbecuing was created expressly to turn large, tough, inexpensive cuts of meat such as brisket and pork shoulder into tender, palatable eating.
Since the actual cooking agent is the smoke from a hardwood fire, unlike grilling, barbecuing is a cooking method in which the fuel lends a distinct flavor to the final product. In some parts of the country pit-masters swear by hickory, in others by oak, and in still others by mesquite, but discussion of the hardwoods is another story for later.
Barbecuing has also been confused with spit roasting and smoke curing, but it differs from them in significant ways. Spit roasting is basically a grilling process for large cuts of meat in which the rotation of the spit alleviates the necessity of quick cooking; smoke curing is a preserving process in which the product is brined and smoked at a very low temperatures, around 100(F), with preservation rather than tenderization as its goal. 
Whatever the technical definition, barbecuing is unique to the United States, a phenomenon that transcends mere culinary methodology. As such, it should take its rightful place alongside other classic celebratory rites of world cuisine like the Hawaiian luau, in which the pig is cooked in a pit called an imu, or the Tahitian pig roast where the pig is wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in a hole dug in the ground. Like all these, barbecuing is a ritual, inseparable from the culture that gave it birth, created for the common folk from what was readily affordable and available to them. No wonder it has such a broad appeal.