I'd say it's as much history as cooking food over a fire. Modern cooking appliances make it easier/more practical but there's nothing quite like a good BBQ...

:)

Have you got a BBQ? My answer to such a question, following some clumsy digging in my kitchen and backyard, is increasingly no. Sometimes, embarrassment giving way to defensiveness, I wonder why anyone bothers to ask. For years a “fire” has sufficed for my cooking of food; it’s months since I chargrilled some meat. Presented with a gas hob, more and more super markets point me to ready meals to cook with my microwave. (I worry that the content of my burger bears no resemblance to real ingredients, but on the flip side—ha! flip!—I’ve begun losing all sense of what that indication of my insides might look like.)