Mouse over for captions, or click for full-size image. See ya next year (or tomorrow at your favorite joint)!

Tagged: austin, barbecue, bbq, beef, brisket, franklin bbq, pork, ribs, sausage, Stanley's, taylor, texas, Texas BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Wayne Mueller

The second annual Texas Monthly BBQ Festival was held Sunday, October 30, at the outdoor terrace of Long Center in Austin. Some 3,000 people attended to sample barbecue from 22 vendors (all of whom had been named to our Top 50 Barbecue Joints in Texas in 2008), listen to music (Jimmie Vaughan and Asleep at the Wheel), and vote for the people’s choice in four categories. The prizes were won this year by Franklin Barbecue of Austin (best brisket), Louie Mueller Barbecue of Taylor (best beef ribs and best sausage), and Stanley’s Famous Pit Bar-B-Q of Tyler (best pork ribs). Last  year’s best brisket winner was Snow’s BBQ of Lexington. Here are some random observations from an assortment of well-fed attendees.

It’s kind of like drinking from a fire hydrant. There is so much here!—Seth Dockery

This is Texas, so the temperature could have been 40, it could have been 95. But today was perfect.—Jen Pencis, Stanley’s Famous Pit Bar-B-Q, Tyler

Cooking’s easy. The hardest part is figuring out the amount of meat. –Todd Ashmore, Opie’s Barbecue, Spicewood

This event is definitely off the ground. Yesterday I was telling people I was in town for the barbecue festival and everybody knew what I was talking about. Last year they had no idea.—Daniel Vaughn, Full Custom Gospel BBQ blog (more…)

Tagged: Foodways Texas, Franklin Barbecue, Kerry Bexley, louie mueller barbecue, Snow's, Stacy Franklin, Stanley's, Texas A&M University, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Tootsie Tomananz

The barbecue bacchanal that is the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival is set to be, for the second year in row, an awe-inspiring helping of the very best barbecue in Texas (and therefore the world). Carnivorous connoisseurs of charry comestibles, a toothy group amongst whose ranks the Texanist proudly counts himself, will have their smoky dreams brought to life for this glorious once-a-year afternoon in Austin. To understate it badly, it’s going to be a very appetizing affair.

In all, there will be 22 of the state’s most renowned barbecue establishments showcasing their succulent wares at the Fest. Smitty’s Market in Lockhart? Check. Snow’s BBQ in Lexington? Check. Casstevens Cash & Carry in Lillian? Check. Even already-venerable newcomer Franklin Barbecue in Austin will be there.

Attending the festival will be not unlike like having the results of a months-long barbecue road trip conveniently delivered to you, where you can check nearly two dozen places off of your barbecue bucket list in one fell swoop. But wouldn’t it be a crying shame to have to be wheeled over to the emergency services tent for a light head and a heavy belly after having only visited, say, a dozen or so of the pits? Here, for the lucky attendants, are a few things to keep in mind. Not attending this year’s fest? Take note for next year.

Admittedly the Texanist does not always heed his own advice, but try to exercise a little self control. In such a setting, what with all the mouthwatering aromas and glistening morsels, it will be impossible, but it never hurts to make the effort. Just remember, you are not a contestant in a competitive barbecue-eating contest. (more…)

Tagged: brisket, meat coma, smoked meats, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, The Texanist

Editor’s Note: Just one more day until the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival! As you surely know by now, we’ve been interviewing all the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we’re featuring John A. Fullilove, 38 , of Smitty’s Market in Lockhart. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

Photos courtesy Daniel Vaughn

What is the heat source you use?

Indirect post oak fires, no gas and no electricity whatsoever. It’s been that before my father’s time and my grandfather’s time. Guess we’re 25 years behind the times and it seems to work well for us.

So do you start a new fire everyday then?

We actually use the coal from the day before and we’ll shovel it in and put some wood in there and kind of fan it until it goes again. We don’t use any lighter fluid or anything like that.

Do you cook slow and low or fast and high?

Real fast and high. We cook our briskets in 46 hours. Buy quality meat and put a high heat to it, that’s what I was always told. We don’t use any thermometers whatsoever but the temperature ranges anywhere from 300 to 400 degrees.

Where did you learn your barbecue craft from?

It’s a family thing, third generation. Learned a lot from what I didn’t like through the years but kept it as traditional as I could. Times change but we try to stay a little bit behind the times if we can.

What are some of your non-secret dry rub ingredients?

We don’t use any fillers or preserves so we’re just looking at black pepper, red pepper, and salt. Simple is best, we try to keep it consistent. There are many things we like and ways we do it ourselves but we try to do it the way it’s always been done.

Do you believe in using sauce?

BBQ sauce is something we added a year or two years ago after we changed the name and location of Smitty’s. We actually cook it ourselves for probably the past eight or nine years. We added sides at the same time. We base the ribs ourselves with something new I added.

What is your signature meat?

That’s something that’s changed over the past ten years. The staple meat I grew up on was shoulder clod and pork chops but now everyone likes brisket and ribs. They seem to travel well. We’ve probably increased the brisket by 500 percent and the ribs have been new territory for the past eight years or so. We sell a lot of them.

Do you make your own sausage?

Yes, we make anywhere from 10 to 15,000 links a week. Its all hand tied and cooked with post oak.

Do you use aluminum foil or butcher paper?

We don’t cook with any aluminum foil. We do serve on butcher paper. What holds the flavor in though is that hot fire heating it up.

What are some of your favorite barbecues in Texas besides your own?

Oh I couldn’t really tell you. I mean I’m sure everyone has their own niche and claim to fame, definitely their own backing and following.  But that’s a hard question to answer or argue about. I say give everyone a try.

What do you think a home cook should look for when buying a brisket?

Don’t want it too lean in my opinion. Not too much excess fat but I mean you watch everyone pick one out for the BBQ competition and you want it to shake.

Any other advice or techniques for the home smoker?

Buy quality meat.

Ever had Texas barbecue outside of Texas?

This right now [as he is driving through New Mexico] is my first trip outside of Texas and we couldn’t find a BBQ pit in Colorado.

What BBQ are you looking forward to trying at the TMBBQ Festival?

I don’t see it as a competition, it’s more like a gathering. We’re feeding Texas Monthly’s party – I’m not going to it with a competitive mind. We just have a good time and meet a lot of people.

How many pounds of meat do you cook in a day?

That’s a hard one for me to answer because we touch every bit of it and everything we do. But we do butcher a lot of meat and when we do our four-day production, it’s over a ton. (A ton being 2,000 pounds raw.) We do a whole lot and at 13 years of Smitty’s being open we’ve increased it every year.

Tagged: brisket, John Fullilove, Lockhart, Smitty's Market, smoked meats, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival

Photo by Trey Kazee

Make that 22 pitmasters.

Since Bertram Smoke Haus made our Top 50 in 2008, a lot has happened with the joint northwest of Austin. Pitmaster and owner Jim Wallace moved out of his original location, a 100-plus year-old former mercantile and lumber store, for a bigger new spot that he renamed Bertram Bar B Que.

Unfortunately, as some of our most die-hard BBQ Finder App and web site users already know, Bertram 2.0 did not work out.

The good news is, Wallace is still manning the mesquite, including as a caterer, but more importantly, he’s planning to re-open back at the old Smoke Haus spot as soon as possible.

The bad news is, because of that transition, he can no longer make the festival on Sunday. We at TEXAS MONTHLY still wish him the best, and look forward to future feedings at the new old place.

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, austin, barbecue, bbq, bertram, brisket, burnet, oatmeal, ribs, sausage, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival

On Sunday, some 3,000 hungry carnivores will descend on the Terrace at the Long Center in Austin to devour a truly massive spread of meat at the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival. We’ll have 22 pitmasters from across the state serving up brisket, ribs, and sausage as festival-goers enjoy live music from Jimmie Vaughan and Ray Benson. Sounds like a pretty good time, doesn’t it?

This will be the second annual BBQ Festival, an event that grew out of the Top 50 BBQ Joints round-up we publish in the pages of the magazine. For the festival, we invite those 50 joints to come and serve up their meat in one location. Last year 21 of them made it; this year we’ll have 22, including a new category for the best new place to open since our last list, the “Newcomer Tent,” which will be occupied this year by Austin sensation, Franklin Barbecue.

BBQ is important to Texans and it’s important to Texas Monthly. In the year since the inaugural 2010 festival, we’ve also launched a BBQ smartphone app and a companion BBQ website, TMBBQ.com. The app locates nearby barbecue joints both within Texas and all over the world, as well as delivering reviews and information, connecting barbecue enthusiasts, and letting users engage in some friendly competition. It launched for iPhone on June 8, and currently has more than 15,000 active users. Today, we’re making it available on Android as well. Take a look.

These digital efforts, and the festival—as well as our every-five-years Top 50 BBQ Joints story—give you a sense of how seriously we take our smoked meat here at Texas Monthly. And they also give you a sense of how seriously we take the idea of engaging with our readers in as many different ways as we can, in print, on screens and mobile devices, and at live events. (more…)

Tagged: BBQ Finder App, smoked meats, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival

Editor’s Note: Just a couple more days until the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival! As you surely know by now, we’ve been interviewing all the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we’re featuring Toby Pilgrim, 44, of Country Tavern in Kilgore. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

What is your heat source?

We use a combination of oak, pine and hickory. These are the ones that work the best, and they’re just the best ones for me. We use different woods for different things. We use oak and hickory for our ribs, and we like to smoke our sausage with pecan.

Who did you learn your craft from?

This is a family deal. I’m the third generation in this restaurant. I learned from my dad, and my dad learned from the man before him. My family acquired it. And my grandmother owned the restaurant, and my dad took over cooking from the original cook, and I cooked after my dad.

What’s your signature meat?

Ribs. As I grew up with this restaurant, all we sold was ribs. We’ve always been known for ribs. We don’t even have a menu. One point as a kid, you came in and got ribs and plate of potato salad. But we’ve grown into other meats over the years. But we sell more ribs than anything else. The ribs are good. They’re better than most I’ve tried at other barbecue restaurants. I think it has a lot to do with our seasoning and how we cook them. We smoke them on the pit just like everybody else does and for the same time and at the same temperature as everybody else does. But we rub them with seasonings the night before.

Do you prefer sauce or no sauce?

I like them both ways, to be honest, and our customers are the same way. The ribs have so much flavor already, but the sauce is good too. The sauce is a kind of a tomato-y, vinegar-based sauce—kind of like a sweet and sour and spicy sauce. It’s not real thick. That’s the best way I can describe it. (more…)

Tagged: Country Tavern, Kilgore, smoked meats, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Toby Pilgrim

For the past couple of years, we’ve taken a look at the Texas wine industry. (And don’t worry, we’ll continue to do so.) This week I’d like to introduce you to a different kind of Texas wine that you can’t get from grapes. Instead, it’s made from 100 percent organic Texas rice. Yes, rice. Fans of sushi and Japanese cuisine are likely familiar with saké, a Japanese wine made from fermented rice. But did you know that this clean, off-dry beverage also goes well with Tex-Mex and barbecue? (gasp!)

A few weeks ago, Texas welcomed the first official Texas saké to the market made from organic rice from Wharton right in the heart of Austin at the Texas Saké Company. Owned by certified saké professional and self-proclaimed saké enthusiast Yoed Anis, the company is officially the first ever kura, or saké brewery, in the state as well as the first completely organic saké kura in all of North America.

But let’s start with talking a little about what saké is, and what it isn’t.

Saké is a Japanese rice wine made in a similar way to wine and beer in that it is fermented rather than distilled like spirits such as vodka and whiskey. And much like wine and beer, it can take on a variety of different flavor characteristics from cantaloupe and coconut to pear and lemongrass. Saké is differentiated into a number of different grades based on the level to which the grains of rice are polished for the purest rice taste. The higher percentage of polish, the more premium the saké. Great saké is usually dry with just a bit of sweetness balanced with acidity.

A few common types to recognize on a drink menu:

Junmai – The first of the premium grades of filtered saké made purely from rice, water, yeast, and koji (the fermenting mold used to brew saké). Jumnai is clear and tends to have a full-bodied flavor with hints of apple,  peach, or pear.

Ginjo – A more premium grade of filtered saké. The rice must be polished down to 60 percent of the original grain for production. The result is a cleaner, more delicate feel with crisp tropical flavors.

Diaginjo – A step up from ginjo, this premium grade of filtered saké requires a 50 percent polish on the rice. These sakés require a great deal of care for production and are therefore priced higher and enjoyed as a sipping beverage rather than with food.

Nigori – This style is distinguished by its milky presentation. Nigori is unfiltered leaving rice sediment in the final product that gives a sweeter, off-dry taste.

Saké is not a party shot like Jägermeister intended to be consumed as part of a “bomb” when dropped into a pint of beer. (Even if they push “saké bombs” at popular Sushi party dens like DK Sushi in South Austin, I promise the traditionalists are all snickering at you when you do it.) (more…)

Tagged: Fleming's, Jessica Dupuy, Shoreline Grill, Texas Sake, Texas Sake Company, uchi, uchiko, Yoed Anis

Editor’s Note: Just two more days until the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival! As you surely know by now, we’ve been interviewing all the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we’re featuring Tom Hale, 59, of TC’s Ponderosa in Dickens. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

What is the heat source you use at TC’s Ponderosa?

We use a combination of wood and propane. It’s Southern Pride. I couldn’t keep up doing it old style with the wood alone, so we had to find someway to keep up with our customers. We had to go that route.

Who did you learn your craft from?

I learned from my family from my granddad and my dad. It’s something we used to do on weekends, and I picked up on it back in 2001 as a profession.

What’s your signature meat?

Brisket, I think like everybody else in Texas. Our brisket is good because of consistency and flavor. We use mesquite wood, and we make our barbecue the same everyday. We just use a dry rub on it and put it at a certain temperature everyday and put the right amount of smoke on it.

Do you prefer sauce or no sauce?

We don’t put sauce on the meat as we cook it. It’s on the side, and most people like the sauce. They don’t use a large amount of it or anything. We make our own sauce here. There’s nothing too special about it. We actually have a Smokin’ Hot, it’s what we call it. It’s pretty hot, and we smoke it in the pit ourselves.

Do you make your own sausage?

No, I buy it from a German guy about sixty miles from where I live. He’s well known all across the state, and he’s won a contest. The guy I bought this store from had been doing business with him, and I just sort of picked him up. We inherited him. (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, barbecue, smoked meats, TC Ponderosa Barbecue, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Tom Hale

While there isn’t one that features sausage, we’re still perfectly comfortable (and proud) to call these posters by Lubbock artist Dirk Fowler a Holy Trinity.

A regular TEXAS MONTHLY contributor, Fowler came up with the motif when he saw the iPhone icon for our BBQ Finder app, which is just a stylized letter “Q.”

“And so I started drawing the letter “Q” and I realized, some people, when you make a cursive “Q,” it looks like a number two as well,” says Fowler. “And this is the second annual BBQ Festival. So I just decided to make a “Q” that looked like a two.”

The poster in the shape of Texas was the first one Fowler finished. Then, he says, “the little Q tail for the pig happened.

“And I thought it was pretty funny and pretty great,” he continues. “But I also thought, well, if you do a pig you have to do a cow also, because obviously beef is an important part of Texas BBQ.”

Needless to say, creative director TJ Tucker decided Texas Monthly had to have all three.

The posters will be on sale at the festival, but you can also win them in our Twitter contests. You can enter by creating one or all of these three things: a BBQ haiku, a freeform “ode to BBQ,” or a picture of your greatest meaty moment. (Be sure to include the hashtag #tmbbqfest.)

Sadly, Fowler won’t be at the festival himself, as he’ll be making an appearance at Waxahachie’s Texas Country Reporter Festival on Saturday, and then needs to get back to Lubbock. But for the record, his favorite type of “Q” is pork ribs, and his favorite joint is The Smokehouse in Lindsay.

For more info on his work, which will soon also include a poster for Hayes Carll, visit the F-2 Design Facebook page.

Tagged: beef, Cows, Dirk Fowler, F-2 Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Lubbock, Pigs, pork, Posters, Q, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, the Smokehouse