Smokin' the good stuff

Calvin Trillin eats the Best Barbecue in Texas (per Texas Monthly) - at a place called Snow's, open only on Saturdays ("from eight until the meat runs out"), owned and operated by a former rodeo clown and an experienced, elderly female pitmaster, both of whom have (so far) held on to their day jobs:

...Snow’s BBQ turned out to have the sort of layout found in a place like Kreuz Market, except in miniature. It’s a small dark-red building that has room for a counter and six tables—with a few more tables outside, near the cast-iron smokers that in Texas are referred to as pits, even if they’re not in the ground. A sign listed what meats were available, all for $8.45 a pound: sausage, brisket, pork, pork ribs, and chicken. The sides offered were “Mrs. Patschke’s homemade coleslaw and potato salad,” plus free beans. There were only a couple of people ahead of us in line.

Burka stepped up to the counter to order.

“Are there five of you?” the young woman slicing the meat asked, as Burka tried to figure out how many pounds we needed.

“Well,” Burka said, glancing at Evan Smith. “Four, really. One is . . . he has a big meal coming up.”

“You’re ashamed of your friend,” I whispered to Burka. “You’ve abandoned him.”

“I just couldn’t say the V-word,” Burka said. He looked sheepish—not, I would guess, a normal look for him.

Letter from Central Texas - By Meat Alone: The Best Texas Barbecue In The World (Calvin Trillin, writing in The New Yorker)

The "V word", in case you hadn't figured it out - "vegetarian."

Hat tip: deVille

Related:

• Snow's Barbecue web site ("Smokin' the good stuff")
• Texas Monthly article on Snow's
  

Electronics and pork

Some men build skyscrapers. Some men build pyramids. And some men, really, really great men, build gigantic BBQ trailers. The winner of Crutchfield's "You Dream It We'll Help You Build It" contest, Michael Seville took his late father's 10-foot long galvanized propane tank and mounted it as the chief component of this 17-foot mobile BBQ. Then he stuffed the rest of the platform with electronics.

(Gizmodo) Giant BBQ Grill Trailer: Electronics and pork make a great combination

...and don't miss the original post @ Bornrich.org.

Mustard-based sauce is still an abomination

Jason Perlow posts a lovely photo-essay and appreciation of North and South Carolina barbecue.

Over the summer months in 2008, I’ve spent a lot of time in the Carolinas, in particular, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area (The Triangle) and also the Columbia, South Carolina area. Two cities which are as different as can be from a cultural and socio-economic perspective, but which do share something in common — Barbecue.

Even if you are trying to shed the pounds like I am, when you travel, maintaining discipline can be extremely difficult, especially when you are surrounded by co-workers who want to go out and have a good time. And when you’re in the South with a bunch of out-of-town males, particularly in the Carolinas, evening entertainment can usually be classified into two distinct areas — ones which involve Pork and ones which do not. I’m not going to get into the details of the ones which do not, because that could get me in trouble with the wife.

Here are all my Carolina Barbecue sins exposed, some of which I am proud of and would repeat again, and some of which I would not.

Off the Broiler: The Finger-Lickin' Ginormous Carolina Q Post

Big Apple Barbecue Block Party 2008

The weather in NYC today: 95 degrees, humidity 48%, heat index 99+...

Red, white, and blue. There's more barbecue down 26th St, citizen.

And yes, we were foolish enough to go out in this weather to eat some barbecue.

This blog's proprietor, eating City Grocery's (Oxford, MS) crawfish-and-okra hushpuppies.

More pictures at Flickr, from me and others.

Big Apple Barbecue Block Party

The one weekend a year when you can get competition-quality barbecue in New York City is almost here:

The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party runs in Madison Square Park next Saturday and Sunday, June 7-8.

Here are some Flickr photopools from years past...

...and from 2005, enrevanche does the BABBP (and Greenwich Village Idiot podcasts.)

Ribbing

The ribs were so good, that I was using Wildwood's ribs to teach my daughter how competition barbecue is judged. A RESTAURANT RIB. If you've never judged a barbecue contest, you don't understand how rare it is to get ribs of this quality in restaurants. The meat came off the bone only where bitten. The rib sweated lightly where the meat was removed. You could taste the meat and the seasonings and they actually complimented each other!

-- The proprietor of White Trash BBQ waxes ecstatic about Wildwood, the latest restaurant entry in New York City's barbecue joint explosion.

Strange Maps: Barbecue Sauce Styles

Learned discourse from barbecue authority and UNC sociology professor emeritus John Shelton Reed, on the styles of barbecue sauce in use in South Carolina:

* The vinegar and pepper region covers the eastern quarter of the state. This is “a southward extension of eastern North Carolina-style sauce,” states Mr Reed.

* “The tomato region ditto for North Carolina’s Piedmont- or Lexington-style sauce, which is basically the eastern sauce with a little tomato added, still thin and vinegar-flavored.”

* The ketchup region is influenced by what they serve in Georgia “and most of the trans-Appalachian South – or for that matter in grocery stores – a thick, sweet, ketchupy sauce.”

* Unique to South Carolina, though, is “the mustard sauce of central South Carolina, (which) is unique to that state, and (which) gives it more distinct barbecue regions than any other.”

Strange Maps #246: Southern Sauce Sources

Delightfully, a commenter in the thread at Strange Maps made an appropriately-colored Google Maps overlay of the South Carolina Sauce Map.

See here for the North Carolina Google Sauce Map.

And there's much discussion, in the comments, of where the precise dividing lines are.

Barbecue is serious business.

He loved Pig Brother

America was a free country, once, before the Barbecue Police put their boot heels on our necks.

"Or, you can call them the Pig Police, since they hate people cooking pigs in their own back yard!" Amante Enad, 55, of Wheeling told me Thursday.

"That's what I was doing, until they wrote tickets on me and took me to court. I said, 'What rights do I have to cook in my own back yard? Don't I have rights to cook a pig on my own property?' And they gave me the tickets.

If Pig Brother Is Watching, No Barbecue Will Be Safe (Chicago Tribune)

Hat tip: Greg

The North Carolina Barbecue Society

North Carolina is the “Cradle of Cue™.” It all started on our shores. The North Carolina Barbecue Society invites you to join “The Fun Tribe™” and help preserve the history, culture and uniqueness that sets North Carolina barbecue apart from all others. Come visit the Old North State and experience the barbecue diversity that makes North Carolina the Barbecue Capital of the World.

The North Carolina Barbecue Society

Needless to say, I immediately made a healthy contribution to the cause and joined up.

They've got a pretty damned fine idea for a road trip, too.

Hat tip: Greg.

Shockingly, LA Times gets barbecue

This reverent appreciation of Allen and Son, one of the absolute temples of Eastern North Carolina barbecue gastronomy, was sent to me today by *three* different enrevanche readers, only two of whom have websites. ;-)

Blackwood Station, N.C. — The moon was high over the loblolly pines when Keith Allen arrived for work at 2 a.m. He built a fire of hickory logs, and a plume of rich blue smoke creased the black night sky.

When the fire had produced glowing red coals, Allen shoveled them into a pit below two dozen hog shoulders on a metal rack. For the next nine hours, he shoveled more coals, stoked the fire, and turned the shoulders as they cooked a ruddy, smoky brown.

Long after first light, he was still at it. With a cleaver in one hand and a knife in the other, he chopped the pork with a rhythmic whump, whump, whump. Then he plunged two gloved hands into the steaming meat to mix in a homemade sauce of vinegar, salt and red pepper.

And that, for purists, is the long, hard, wearying way of making genuine pit-cooked Eastern North Carolina chopped barbecue.

Barbecue done in rare form (Los Angeles Times, Jan 31, 2007)

A tip of the enrevanche John Deere cap to John, Greg, and anonymous.

OK, people, for the last time...

...there is no good barbecue in New York City.

Update, Sunday morning: However, if you're in NYC and interested in learning how to fix good barbecue yourownself, this looks mighty promising:

We'd like to invite you to The Baron's School of Pitmasters! - A first for New York City and a benefit for St. Mark Sports Association

Paul Kirk, the legendary Baron of Barbecue, co-owner of NYC's R.U.B. Restaurant, Barbecue Guru, Ambassador of Barbecue, Order of the Magic Mop, Certified Barbecue Judge, Kansas City Barbecue Society Board of Directors, Inductee into the KCBS Barbecue Hall of Flame, Author of numerous cookbooks and 1990 Chef of the Year Greater Kansas City ACF Chapter is coming to New York City to teach the Baron's School of Pitmasters.

• When: Saturday October 21, 2006 - Rain or Shine.
• Where: The Water Taxi Beach, 2nd Street and Borden Ave, Hunter's Point, Long Island City, Queens, New York...

BBQ Class: Paul Kirk's School of Pit Masters Sponsored by R.U.B Restaurant