UPDATE: Barbecue Crossroads

100 advance copies of Barbecue Crossroads will be sold by Foodways Texas at the Barbecue Symposium April 4-6 as a fund-raiser for the organization.

In stories, recipes, and photographs James Beard Award-winning writer Robb Walsh and acclaimed documentary photographer O. Rufus Lovett take us on a barbecue odyssey from East Texas to the Carolinas and back. In Barbecue Crossroads we meet the “keepers of the flame,” the pitmasters who still use old-fashioned wood-fired pits, and we sample some of their succulent pork shoulders, whole hogs, savory beef, sausage, mutton, and even some barbecued baloney. Recipes for these and the sides dishes, sauces and desserts that come with them are painstakingly recorded and tested.

But Barbecue Crossroads is more than a cookbook, it is a trip back to the roots of our oldest artisan food tradition and a look at how Southern culture is changing. Walsh and Lovett trace the lineage of Southern barbecue backwards through time as they travel across a part of the country where slow-cooked meat has long been part of everyday life.

What they find is not one story, but many. They visit legendary joints that don’t live up to their reputations—and discover unknown places that deserve more attention. They tell us why the corporatizing of agriculture is making it difficult for pitmasters to afford hickory wood or find whole hogs that fit on a pit.

Walsh and Lovett also remind us of myriad ways that race weaves in and out of the barbecue story, from African American cooking techniques and recipes to the tastes of migrant farm workers who ate their barbecue in meat markets, gas stations and convenience stores because they weren’t welcome in restaurants. Walsh and Lovett also expose the ways that barbecue competitions and TV shows are undermining traditional barbecue culture. And they predict that the revival of the community barbecue tradition may well be its salvation.

Find out how food manufacturers drive growth opportunities. Food manufacturers will continue to rely on food processing and packaging-equipment companies to drive innovation for changing tastes and “on-the-go” convenience requirements. Finally, customers will increasingly rely on equipment manufacturers to provide technologically driven operational efficiencies to improve yields, minimize energy and footprint requirements, and/or reduce labor costs through automation.

Barbecue Crossroads will be released April 15 from the University of Texas Press. The book is now available for pre-order on Amazon

2 thoughts on “UPDATE: Barbecue Crossroads

  1. Jim

    Very excited about this book. Got a feeling it won’t be the usual bbq travelogue, but something with great texture, like a sublime slow-smoked brisket.

  2. robbwalsh Post author

    Thanks Jim. Do hope you enjoy it.

Comments are closed.