Check out this week’s feature story in the Houston Press on our latest research project: “Barbecue is one of the oldest artisan food traditions of the Americas. For the past few years, I have been crisscrossing the Old South documenting Southern barbecue culture. When I set out, I expected to…
Shayne Carter was tending the pit at Kenney Hall when I got there on the morning of the 4th of July. This was his first year helping out at the Kenney community barbecue. Beef shoulder clods, mutton, and pork butts were the meats being cooked. I had recently seen Carter…
Harley Goerlitz, the famous Texas cook-off competitor, told me he entered the mutton category of a cook-off in Tennessee. His entry was shunned by the judges because it didn’t include mustard barbecue sauce—the traditional accompaniment to mutton. “Now I know,” Harley said with a shrug. While researching our new barbecue…
I took my family to the annual Father’s Day BBQ in Millheim, Texas yesterday. The event is a fundraiser for the old German dance hall built by the Millheim Harmonie Verien, a German music group founded in 1872. My daughter won a strawberry cake with cream cheese icing at the…
Barbecued Mutton (Adapted from the Barbacoa de Borrego recipe in The Tex-Mex Grill) Expect strange looks when you invite people over some delicious barbecued mutton. Back in the day, what we now call lamb was known as mutton. (In Australia, it’s lamb up to one year of age, then it…
Here’s some video shot by Jay Francis of the community barbecue we did on March 31 to benefit Foodways Texas. Thanks to Revival Market and the Houston Chowhounds group for their generous support!
Corporate money and the cutthroat “do anything to win” attitude has ruined BBQ cook-offs. And artisan barbecue is becoming rare in restaurants. But cook-offs and restaurants aren’t where American barbecue came from anyway. The oldest barbecue tradition in America, the community barbecue, continues largely unnoticed in churches, clubs and lodge…
The first whole hog I ever barbecued came out amazing–but then again, I had a lot of help. Starting with Morgan Weber, my pig farmer/butcher. The meat had a melt-in-your-mouth texture, thanks to the marbling on the Red Wattle/Mangdalista heritage hybrid Morgan bred for his Houston store, Revival Market. Morgan’s…
Is injecting a great technique–or a nasty habit? My traditionalist barbecue friends think injecting a pork shoulder or whole hog with brine or flavorings is heresy. The pitmasters of yesteryear certainly didn’t do it. But injecting is standard procedure on the barbecue cook-off circuit. Most competitors, like Chris Lily and…
My friend Richard Flores, a veteran barbecue cook-off competitor, has always wanted to cook whole hogs in a classic Southern pit. And I have to come up with a whole hog recipe for my upcoming Southern barbecue cookbook. So we decided to work together on the project. I showed him…
