They went as quickly as they came! Sorry, ya’ll! The Texas Monthly BBQ Festival tickets have officially sold out. The VIP tickets were gone faster than the blink of an eye, and now the general admission passes have all been snatched up as well. For those lucky individuals who got their passes, we look forward to seeing you all on September 23!
Trust me, you’re in for a day of some delicious barbecue, and we apologize for the meat sweats in advance. For those of you who missed out, get like a pack of ravenous wolves and track some tickets down. Believe me, you don’t want to miss out on this year’s action.

Tagged: barbecue, bbq, brisket, Layne Lynch, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival

Do you smother your meats in tangy barbecue sauce? Have you ever planned a road trip just to devour some Central Texas barbecue? Would you stand in a three-hour line for a single serving of brisket at Franklin Barbecue? Well, ready your wallets my fellow barbecue-loving fiends! Tickets for the Texas Monthly BBQ Festival go on sale today at 10 a.m., and you better grab tickets while you can because – similar to a hearty serving of finger-lickin’-good Texas barbecue – these tickets will go fast.

The third annual festival takes place on Sunday, Sept. 23 at the Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin. Through this link, individuals can purchase VIP or general admission tickets and sample amongst over 20 barbecue joints from across the state. For more information about the festival visit the Texas Monthly BBQ page or follow us on Twitter.

Tagged: austin, barbecue, Layne Lynch, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival

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

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

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, Abraham Avila, barbecue, brisket, Los Fresnos, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Wild Blue BBQ

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 Gary Vincek, 48, of Vincek’s Smokehouse in East Bernard. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

Photo by RioGailTX

What is your heat source?

We use pecan and oak wood. We start off with pecan and finish with oak. If you do everything with pecan it gets dark; pecan’s a real heavy smoke

Who did you learn your craft from? Did you work previously for another BBQ joint, learn it from family, or did you just learn it on your own?

I used to work at Dozier’s. It’s just a meat market and barbecue joint. I learned here on my own through trial and error. There was a lot we didn’t sell.

What’s your signature meat?

Mainly brisket.

Sauce or no sauce?

We have it here if people want, and about 85 percent of people want it. But when we’re cooking, we don’t use any except the mop sauce which is vinegar, oil, and Worcestershire sauce. (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, barbecue, brisket, Gary Vincek, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival, Vincek's Smokehouse

Editor’s Note: Just five 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 Jeremiah McKenzie, 39, of Baby J’s Bar-B-Que & Fish in Palestine. For more info, visit their page on TMBBQ.com.

Describe the scene at Baby J’s.

I have a little joint where you walk in and feel at home. It’s real colorful. My board’s black; it’s got “Baby J’s” on it with a homemade piece of cobbler. When you go out, it’s “Nothing Baby About It,” with two babies, a boy and a girl.

What type of wood do you use?

Pecan and a very little amount of hickory.

Who did you learn your craft from? Did you work previously for another BBQ joint, learn it from family, or did you just learn it on your own?

My brother-in-law and my dad like to barbeque a lot. I was in the oil fields workin’ and I got fired, because I’m kinda heavy-set. I said, “I’m never going to get fired again. I’m going to start my own business.” And I started barbequing and being successful.

You must feel pretty good now.

The same guy that fired me came back and gave me a bunch of catering.

What’s your signature meat?

Our customers say the ribs. We use baby back, and they’re real tender. I believe in using the old-fashioned rib. We slow cook it, we don’t boil it, and it’s tender and juicy with good seasoning. We dry rub it, and it falls off the bone.

Sauce or no sauce?

I don’t put sauce on mine. We make our own sauce, black Kansas City-style barbeque sauce. I don’t want sauce. Good barbeque doesn’t have to have sauce. Our ribs aren’t dry.

Slow and low or high and faster?

Slow and low. We cook our brisket about eighteen hours. Don’t get in a rush with it.

What temperature do you try to maintain?

About 175, not over 200. It’s so tender, you gotta let it cool off to cut it.

What non-secret ingredients are in your spice rub?

I love a lot of onion powder. I like garlic powder, those two are very healthy for you. We use a lot of black pepper, the good, restaurant kind. (more…)

Tagged: 23 pitmasters, Baby J's Bar-B-Que & Fish, barbecue, Jeremiah McKenzie, palestine, Texas Monthly BBQ, Texas Monthly BBQ Festival