At Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, I found a display on the subject of political barbecues. In the election of 1840, Whig candidate William Henry Harrison threw barbecues and held parades instead of debating such national problems as the expansion of slavery and the establishment of a national…
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…
Congratulations to Keeley Steensen for her new movie about Taylor Texas pitmaster Vencil Mares, winner of this year’s Foodways Texas Lifetime Acheivement Award. Vencil Lives Here from Foodways Texas on Vimeo.
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…
BBQ Summer Camp Counselers: From top left: Robb Walsh, Dr. Davey Griffin, Hoover Alexander, Dr. Jeff Savell, Dr. Elizabeth Englehardt, Mary Kimbrough, Ray Riley Kneeling: Thomas Larriviere, Daniel Vaughn, Marvin Bendele, bottom row: the hog. Saturday night’s dinner this year at Foodways Texas (FTX) BBQ Summer Camp was a traditional…
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!
The “cowboy wok” is legendary in South Texas. I have known about them for a long time, but I never had one until recently. And now it is one of those pieces of backyard barbecue equipment I just can’t live without.
