Not sure if you can actually vote for them, but you can now order a political yard sign for the 2020 candidate Brisket and its running mate, Ribs.

If you watched only this (from Houston’s Roegels Barbecue) on debate night, you won:

At Hutchins BBQ in McKinney, an expanded drive-through operation has helped keep the restaurant afloat during the pandemic.

Derek Allan’s Texas Barbecue in Fort Worth is getting into the raw meat business. Wagyu beef ribs, briskets, and ground beef are available for purchase from an online “meat locker.”

Uncrustables aren’t just for PB&J anymore:

The Southern Smoke Festival in Houston will be different this year. Founder Chris Shepherd has organized several barbecue specials at his many restaurants over the first weekend in October. Among other specials, the Georgia James Meat Market is accepting preorders for whole smoked briskets to be picked up on Saturday, and a smoked McRib-inspired pork bun will be the Sunday special at UB Preserv.

Kemuri Tatsu-ya in Austin will reopen for limited dine-in service starting on October 7 with a special menu that includes a brisket bento box.

Los Muertos BBQ in Katy has ditched the food truck for a newly opened brick-and-mortar location.

H-E-B is selling heavy-duty barbecue foil, which I assume is unflavored:

Scientists at Texas A&M’s Human Behavior Lab used eye-tracking technology to help 1775 Texas Pit BBQ in College Station design a new menu layout. It’s meant to increase sales of the joint’s more profitable items, such as smoked turkey and sausage.

The San Antonio Express-News praised the new hot dogs produced by Bandit BBQ. They’re made with Texas beer and Texas beef (from Künstler Brewing and Dean & Peeler Premium Beef).

Boomtown BBQ Company in Beaumont has expanded to a second location. This one’s in College Station.

A new barbecue food truck, Crack-A-Lackin BBQ, has opened in College Station with a custom pit built by owner Paul McBride.

Beach Hill Smokehouse is smoking Texas-style barbecue on a Texas-built smoker in Toronto:

A Bodacious Bar-B-Que location on Sixth Street in Longview (not the original on Mobberly) sustained extensive fire damage on September 26. Owner Shannon Fell says she plans to reopen, but it will take a while to rebuild.

The Rattler’s Den Cafe, which opened in Navasota earlier this year, was sadly destroyed by fire last week. The owners plan to keep selling barbecue sandwiches and chips out of the back.

After a customer of Be Blessed BBQ in Nacogdoches passed away, owner Jeremiah Moss named a sandwich in his honor. The restaurant has since sold more than seven hundred sandwiches to benefit the family of Dillon Miller.

The Houston Chronicle‘s J.C. Reid explores the lasting phenomenon that is the brisket-doughnut sandwich:

Food writer Robert Moss looks at the rise of Mexi-cue nationwide, from barbecue breakfast tacos in South Carolina to tamarind-glazed ribs in California.

So many people lined up for Texas-style barbecue in the Kansas City suburb of Raytown that the county called it an unauthorized “event” and shut down Harp Barbecue, citing COVID-19 concerns.

Memphis is the buckle on the Barbecue Belt, writes Jesse Davis, but both Texas and North Carolina might argue about who really wears the pants in the barbecue family.

A Virginia food writer headed across the border to North Carolina to find some Texas-style brisket. He was impressed.

“The moment the finished smoked brisket was sliced open—pink smoke ring, jiggly, juices spilling from every beefy fiber—I let out a guttural uggghhhhhh so loud and embarrassing my wife started laughing.” Food writer Kevin Pang recounts how watching America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country helped him get through a difficult lifestyle change:

After severe price hikes on meat this spring, the supply is back to pre-pandemic levels, and items like chicken wings and ribeye steaks are even less expensive than they were before COVID, reports the Wall Street Journal.

In April, the CDC investigated what was then the largest COVID outbreak in the country at a Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The agency submitted an initial report with recommendations to stave off the spread. A day later, the recommendations were “watered down,” as Rachel Maddow described it when comparing the two versions of the report.

Sales of brisket in full-service and limited-service restaurants jumped from 30 million pounds nationwide in 2015 to 69 million pounds at the end of 2019.

Don’t bring burgers and hot dogs when seeking barbecue clout. Cal Cunningham, a Senate candidate from North Carolina, quickly owned up to his barbecue faux pas in an interview with the Raleigh-based News & Observer, saying, “No self-respecting son of Lexington would ever do that.”

Kevin Bludso, a judge on the recently released American Barbecue Showdown on Netflix, talked with the Washington Post about the show, his barbecue roots, and his upcoming cookbook.

The winner of American Barbecue Showdownı isn’t a Texan, but then none of the eight contestants were.

Romance and barbecue are a perfect match in this new Japanese comic:

https://twitter.com/MangaMogura/status/1308834335596908545