Barbecue in the United States at barbecue competitions. There are 3 ingredients to barbecue. Meat and wood smoke are essential. The use of a sauce or seasoning varies widely between regional traditions. The first ingredient in the barbecue tradition is the meat. The most widely used meat in most barbecue is pork, particularly the pork ribs, and also the pork shoulder for pulled pork. The techniques used to cook the meat are hot smoking and smoke cooking. These cooking processes are distinct from the cold smoking preservation process. Hot smoking is where the meat is cooked with a wood fire, over indirect heat, at temperatures
Horse meat is eaten nationally, and Tongan emigrants living in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia have retained the taste for it, claiming Christian missionaries originally introduced it to them. In Islamic law, consuming horse meat is Halal. The consumption of horse meat has been common in Central Asia societies, past or present, due to the abundance of steppes suitable for raising horses. In North Africa, horse meat has been occasionally consumed, but almost exclusively by the Christian Copts and the Hanafi Sunnis (a common form of Islam in Central Asia and Turkey), but has never been eaten in the Maghreb.