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

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

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

Editor’s Note: The Texas Monthly BBQ Festival is almost here! Each day until then, we’ll be talking to one of the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we’re featuring Gerald Birkelbach, 55, of City Meat Market in Giddings. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

Photographs by Daniel Vaughn.

What is your heat source?

Post oak.

Who did you learn your craft from?

I learned it right here with on the job training starting 37-and-a-half years ago to be exact.

What’s your signature meat?

I think our signature meat is the pork Boston butt and the pork ribs.

Sauce or no sauce?

It is offered, yes. I do it both ways though to be perfectly honest. It depends on how I feel. We also make a jalapeno pepper sauce that’s on the tables and if I want sauce I’ll use that over BBQ sauce. (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, brisket, City Meat Market, Gerald Birkelbach, Giddings, smoked meats, Texas BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival

Editor’s Note: The Texas Monthly BBQ Festival is almost here! Each day until then, we’ll be talking to one of the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we bring you Nick Pencis of Stanley’s Famous Pit Bar-B-Q in Tyler. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

Photo courtesy Daniel Vaughn.

What is your heat source?

We use pecan. It’s just kind of a preference thing. Stanley’s actually sits on a pecan grove. I was smelling the pecan smoke, and I thought ‘no one around here smokes with pecan. Everyone’s hickory, hickory, hickory. Or mesquite or oak, and it’s like, I’m gonna be a different guy.’ It’s my personal preference, and I just decided I’m gonna be straight pecan guy.

Who did you learn your craft from?

I came to work here in 2005, and I bought it in 2006. That’s the crazy thing, I had never in my life barbecued before. But I just have always been a huge, huge fan of barbecue. I’m 100 percent self taught.

What’s your signature meat?

I’m really happy with our sausage. I don’t know if I would call it our signature meat, but I’m happy with the philosophy. I don’t like MSG or weird chemical things. The sausage is just pork and spice in a natural case.

Do you make your own sausage?

You know, there is a meat market a block from here that’s been here since the 1950’s and I take my recipe and they make our sausage. It’s fresh. I’m not able to actually do it here, but they do it for me there. They bring me sausage every other day or so. The first batch we ever made was for the Texas Monthly BBQ festival last year. And people liked it! So I was like, alright, let’s figure it out. (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, Nick Pencis, pecan, sauce, smoked meats, Stanley's, Texas BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Tyler

Editor’s Note: The Texas Monthly BBQ Festival is almost here! Each day until then, we’ll be talking to one of the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we bring you Scott Morales, 45 and Vencil Mares, 87, of Taylor Café in Taylor. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

As far as your heat source, I assume you guys use all wood there?

Scott: Yes.

And what kind of wood?

Scott: Post Oak

Who did you learn your craft from? Did you previously work at another barbeque joint?

Scott: I learned the majority from Vencil and then a little bit on my own, just barbecuing on weekends.

How about you, Vencil?

Vencil: From Southside Market in Elgin, Texas.

And at your place do you have a meat that you consider a signature meat?

Scott: Probably our turkey sausage. The turkey sausage and pretty much everything’s to die for.

The turkey sausage, you guys make that in-house. Do you have another sausage?

Scott: Yes. We also make our own beef sausage also.

Is that like an Elgin “hot guts” style?

Scott: No it’s pretty much a signature of Vencil’s. It’s always been. (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, bbq, Scott Morales, smoked meats, taylor, Taylor Cafe, Texas BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Vencil Mares

Editor’s Note: The Texas Monthly BBQ Festival is almost here! Each day until then, we’ll be talking to one of the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we bring you Kerry Bexley, 44, of Snow’s Barbecue in Lexington, Texas [ed: while Tootsie Tomanetz is the pitmaster, Kerry gets the ball rolling on Friday night 'til Tootsie comes in at 2 a.m. on Saturdays.] For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

Photo courtesy Daniel Vaughn

What is your heat source?

We only use oak wood and we cook our briskets on indirect heat. All other meats are slow cooked over a bed of coals.

Why oak?

Oak is plentiful in our area—Lee County, Texas.

Who did you learn your craft from?

I actually learned from Miss  Tootsie who has more than 45 years in the game.

What’s your signature meat?

We take pride in everything we do but our brisket is the most popular item, after that would be our signature sausage, then chicken, pork and ribs, special care is taken with everything we do.

Sauce or no sauce?

We offer our own blend of sauce on the table but we do not put any on during cooking process. We use a dry rub on our meat. (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, barbecue, bbq, brisket, Kerry Bexley, Lexington Texas, smoked meats, snow's barbecue, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, TMBBQ

Editor’s Note: The Texas Monthly BBQ Festival is almost here! Each day until then, we’ll be talking to one of the featured pitmasters, with questions from TM staffers, esteemed BBQ experts, Twitter followers and you, the readers of this blog.

Today we bring you Joe Duncan, 61, of Baker’s Ribs in Dallas, Garland, Mesquite, Rowlett, Greenville, Canton, Houston, Weatherford, Rowlett, and even Eden Prairie, Minnesota. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

Photo courtesy Daniel Vaughn

What is your heat source?

Hickory wood.

Who did you learn your craft from?

I did an internship with Roland Lindsey but I taught myself quite a few things. I just learned some smoking techniques and what not there.

What’s your signature meat?

Well, obviously ribs. You know what the name of my restaurant is right? (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, Baker's Ribs, dallas, eternal flame, Joe Duncan, smoked meats, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, TMBBQ