BBQ Styles, Ranked

Central Texas smokes beef brisket over post oak with little more than a salt-and-pepper rub, sold by the pound on butcher paper — the style Franklin Barbecue turned into a pilgrimage.

Diners cook marinated bulgogi and galbi themselves over a tabletop grill surrounded by banchan side dishes, a format that has spread to cities worldwide.

Built on a wide range of meats slow-smoked over hickory and finished with a thick tomato-and-molasses sauce; institutions like Arthur Bryant's popularized burnt ends.

Famous for pork ribs served 'dry' with a spice rub or 'wet' with sauce, plus pulled pork shoulder; the Memphis in May contest is a defining event of the craft.

Split between Eastern whole-hog with a vinegar-and-pepper sauce and Lexington shoulder with a vinegar-tomato dip — the state's fiercest food debate.

Argentine and Uruguayan beef grilled slowly on a parrilla or cross over wood coals, a social ritual central to national identity.

Cantonese barbecued pork glazed with honey and five-spice, roasted to a glossy red edge and hung in the windows of siu mei shops.

Brazilian meats like picanha are skewered and grilled over coals, then carved tableside in the endless rodízio service.

Bite-size chicken skewers grilled over intensely hot binchotan charcoal and seasoned with either salt or a sweet tare glaze.

A South African cookout over wood coals built around boerewors and grilled meat, so central to the culture it anchors the national Heritage Day.

Southeast Asian marinated meat skewers grilled over coals and served with peanut sauce, with roots in Indonesia's Javanese cuisine.

Jamaican meat marinated with Scotch bonnet peppers and allspice, then smoked over pimento wood for its signature heat and aroma.

Mexican meat slow-cooked in an underground pit wrapped in maguey leaves; its Taino-derived name is the literal origin of the word barbecue.

Chicken marinated in yogurt and spices then cooked at blistering heat in a clay tandoor, giving it a charred exterior and smoky depth.

A whole pig spit-roasted over coals until the skin turns glass-crisp, a festive centerpiece across the Philippines and former Spanish colonies.

California's Central Coast tradition of grilling seasoned tri-tip over coastal red oak, served with pinquito beans and salsa.

Hawaiian pork cooked underground in an imu oven with hot stones and banana leaves, the smoky centerpiece of a traditional luau.

Neither Mongolian nor barbecue — it is a stir-fry method invented in 1950s Taiwan by Wu Zhaonan, cooked on a flat iron griddle, borrowing the name for marketing.