A new flame

We humans have been cooking on an open fire for around two million years. Although it remains the most primal way of preparing our food, we’ve also, in our various different ways, got it down to a rather fine art. Barbecuing, a broad term that covers techniques including smoking, grilling and roasting, is embraced by many different cultures, with plentiful regional variation. The ingredients can be plain, spice-rubbed or marinated and cooked over wood embers or charcoal, on tabletop grills or below ground in a pit.

At South African braais, slabs of meat and spicy, fatty, spiral-shaped sausages are cooked over hot coals. Visit a Brazilian churrascaria, meanwhile, and anything from chicken hearts to whole racks of ribs will be wheeled directly to your table from a charcoal grill. In Germany, outdoor barbecues are loaded with sausages and paprika-spiced pork steaks all summer long; in Japan, bite-size pieces of beef