The nation is talking about Texas’s new open carry policy, and two pistol-packing pitmasters are grabbing headlines for their opposing views. Trent Brooks, of Brooks Place BBQ, welcomes open carriers to his Cypress barbecue trailer, and in fact offers a ten percent discount for anyone showing off
When a process is notoriously complicated and unpleasant, people tend to trot out a time-worn idiom: you don’t want to know how the sausage gets made. While the saying is especially useful when it comes to any political bureaucratic dealing, it’s a bit derogatory and it slightly diminishes the art of the craft,
There’s little room for variety in the smoked beef ribs you find at Texas barbecue joints—salt, black pepper, and smoke are doled out in big doses on impressively large hunks of beef and bone. They make for an imposing sight, and are a far cry from what anyone would consider refined.
The bounty of Texas barbecue.
– Operation BBQ Relief is doing great work in tornado-damaged Rowlett:– Restaurant owners, including those of Slow Bone and Lockhart Smokehouse supplied free meals to those affected by the storm in Red Oak.– Chris Osburn traveled the American South to find his picks for the best
Over the last few days, I’ve shared recipes for a from-scratch ham, a smoked fried turkey, and a smoked pork crown roast. Now for the mother of all holiday meal centerpieces: the prime rib.Aside from beef tenderloin, prime rib is usually the most expensive
Pork crown roast is a popular cut with an inferiority complex. It wants to be taken as seriously as prime rib, thought it would probably settle for the respect of rack of lamb. Alas, a bone-in loin of commodity hog isn’t much to look at, so butchers dress it up by making
I’m of the opinion that most foods can be improved when they’re smoked, and one of my favorite dishes that proves this proclaimed axiom is smoked turkey. We’ve got plenty of great options in Texas, all of which likely beat the oven-roasted turkey that your family overcooked at Thanksgiving. But when it
Do you have a ham brining in the refrigerator? No? Then go back to step one here. (Don’t worry. If you missed step one, there’s still time for a New Year’s ham.) For everyone whose ham is about to complete its salt-water bath, here’s what to do next.After
There’s no sign over the door—at least not for now—but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter. The Big Bib BBQ and its new attached event space anchor the corner of an aging strip center along Austin Highway in northeast San Antonio. It’s under construction, and the awnings are being replaced, but
– These are 37 things you need to know about Texas barbecue from Wide Open Country.– Not to be outdone, Thrillist tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about Texas barbecue.– 50 things you may not have known about barbecue, from Thrillist. Some you
Researchers at Texas A&M are seeking to improve Texas barbecue. This isn’t the first time that an institution of higher learning has aspired to this lofty ambition; Harvard students already tried to design the ultimate smoker. And now the Aggies are focusing on the meat of the matter, so to speak.Earlier this
Yes, really. Make a ham. From scratch. Don’t just reheat one from the grocery store like you did for Easter. You still have the time to get it on if you start now. After a seven- or eight-day brine, you can have one you can call your own on your
Frank “Trey” Felton is the owner of Thorndale Meat Market, which we reviewed last week on TMBBQ. Felton, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, is a talented pitmaster, but his skills don’t stop at the smoker; writing is another passion. Felton is the author of Jewel of
Central Texas was once known for its meat market-style barbecue joints, i.e. meat markets that had a barbecue business on the side. Many of those places are gone, or they have converted into barbecue-only businesses. A few holdouts remain, including one shining example: the Thorndale Meat Market.About an hour northeast of Austin, out on Texas
– It’s the time of year when Stiles Switch brings us their 12 Days of Smoked Meat: If you were lucky enough to to join us today…Smoked Bone In Ribeye. #12DaysOfSmokedMeat continues tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/I3aPjAxtrZ — StilesSwitchBBQ (@StilesSwitchBBQ) December 10, 2015 – In which
Hitting the barbecue trail in Texas is something of a weekend sport. Plenty of people create their own routes, but one of the more official itineraries—the Texas Barbecue Trail, which takes you from Taylor to Elgin, Lockhart, and finally through Luling—is enormously popular. As the name suggests it’s a great
The Smokey Denmark barbecue trailer on East Fifth Street in Austin has a new head pitmaster: Keenan Goldis. Goldis recently took over for Bill Dumas (who is now working with Lance Kirkpatrick at Stiles Switch), and he may be a familiar name to anyone who enjoyed his wild creations at
I’ve never eaten at a restaurant more often before a first review than this one. Including opening night, I’ve enjoyed seven meals at 18th & Vine since they opened the doors in early October. It helps that the restaurant is just fifteen minutes from my house, but it also takes a
– Stubbs sauce versus Stubb’s restaurant: Stubb’s bottled barbecue sauce is suing Stubb’s Bar-B-Q https://t.co/BNluyj687P pic.twitter.com/QShCWekkSr — Eater Austin (@EaterAustin) December 1, 2015 – More details on the Stubb’s v. Stubb’s lawsuit from Texas Monthly. – Golfer Jordan Spieth is the reigning Masters
Not all briskets are created equal. That much is obvious to anyone who’s had a great one—or a bad one. Those experiences are easy to contrast, but what about when it’s not a question of good or bad? When it’s a matter of simply being different?I was struck by the variety in
In 2009, Shannon Bankston and Heather Hoff opened a barbecue shack back in the tiny Northeast Texas town of Ladonia, population 612. Before long they sought out a bigger audience and moved Fatboy’s BBQ to the next county over, specifically to a roadside stand in Cooper, Texas, population 1,969. Fatboy’s popularity in the
– A new short film about Central Texas style barbecue:Central Texas Barbecue from Urtext Films on Vimeo.– Midwood Smokehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina has put out a request for a pitmaster from Texas to come work for them.– Thanks to Destination BBQ, it’s
Smoked turkey is now so common that nearly every grocery store deli case in the country carries at least one variety (and more often, many more than one). We now take this protein option for granted, but smoked turkey doesn’t have the same long history as beef and pork barbecue do in this
Back in April, I gave El Paso some tough love. I had tried and failed to find good barbecue there, and I wrote about my futile search in an article called “BBQ in Far West Texas? I’ll Paso.” With a headline like that, it’s no surprise that the piece resulted in
Chicharrón, pork rinds, gratons, cracklins—call them what you like, but fried hog fat with the skin on is a wonderful thing. I recently attended a Louisiana boucherie (what is essentially a communal gathering where a whole hog is butchered and broken down; read more about it here), and I was
It was an hour after the gunshot and parts of the hog—which was being rapidly dismantled—were being passed and carried in every direction. Hams hit the smoker; shoulders were tossed in pots of boiling water; fatback was diced; stomach and intestines were getting a good rinse before they became casings for sausage and boudin,
– A whole new meaning to cow tipping: Chopper 5 is in Mesquite- a truck transporting 86 cows tipped over on the ramp from U.S. 80 to Interstate 635. https://t.co/DCPLBco23y — Samantha Davies (@SDaviesNBC5) November 12, 2015 – Texas Monthly’s list of the
Until relatively recently, when I heard (and sometimes gave) barbecue recommendations for places located along the edges of Texas, often the tip came with a qualifier: “It’s good for ___.” Fill in the blank with East Texas, The Panhandle, or the Valley. Even our Top 50 BBQ lists had a
– The Washington Post’s Tom Sietsema traveled to Houston during his tour of ten great American food cities. Texas barbecue makes a big appearance including a discussion of the jiggle factor at Killen’s Barbecue.– A recent study linked barbecue consumption to kidney cancer, but one publication wonders how
I recently posted the photo below on Twitter, and the reaction was swift and severe (read it all here). I said it was some of the worst barbecue I’d ever eaten. One commenter was sympathetic, saying, “Sorry you had to eat it!” But I didn’t really
I ate a lot of lamb around the state a few months back, but it’s a protein I had never cooked in my own smoker. Given that the most common cut found at Texas barbecue joints is the bone-in lamb breast, that’s what I went searching for. While the cut isn’t easy to
If you’ve traveled down I-35 between Waco and Austin, you’ve probably wondered about Schoepf’s. Red billboards in either direction beckon. The name is noticeable if only for its phonetically challenging spelling (they say it “shuffs”). It might also be in your consciousness if you’re a longtime reader of Texas Monthly, which included
– Barbecue competitor and television personality Myron Mixon ran for mayor in his hometown of Unadilla, Georgia, and won by twenty votes.– The Houston Chronicle provides this historical profile of Houston pitmaster Lenoa Ginn.– Sunday’s Texas Monthly TMBBQ Fest in Austin was a success:
Standing at the counter at Kreuz Market in Lockhart last week, I was asked, “Bread or crackers?” I thought about it for a moment, but all I wanted to say was, “How about some tortillas?”Instead, the large group I was with opted for a half sleeve of saltines (filling up on
Thanks to everyone for making this year’s Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival a success. Here are a few of our favorite shots from the day. Don’t scroll down if you’re hungry.[View the story “TMBBQ Fest 2015” on Storify]
This feature was originally published in the Fall 2015 issue of Gravy, the quarterly magazine from the Southern Foodways Alliance.Patillo’s Bar-B-Q in Beaumont, Texas, is the fourth-oldest barbecue joint in the state. You’ve probably never heard of it. Its founder, Jack Pat(t)illo, is believed to be a
Thanks to Calvin Trillin, barbecue is once again in the national spotlight. In his recent New Yorker article “In Defense of True ‘Cue,” Trillin highlighted True ‘Cue, an organization that campaigns for what they designate as “Real Barbecue,” while decrying what it refers to as “Faux ‘Cue,” meat sold as barbecue that isn’t
– With brisket prices coming down, both Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland and Riverport Barbecue in Jefferson have lowered their prices on brisket.– Rick Bayless is insightful on the future of barbecue, and he puts the smack down on the way barbecue is generally portrayed
Kansas City deserves all the credit for one of barbecue’s greatest inventions: the burnt end. These are the crusty ends from the fatty side of the brisket that are cubed into bite-sized morsels. They’re sometimes re-seasoned and/or sauced, then smoked further to get more tender and a bit crunchy
There’s plenty of skill that goes into preparing competition-style barbecue, but most contestants will tell you that it’s really one thing that separates first place from tenth: luck. Luck that conditions are favorable during their cook; luck that every entry gets into its respective entry box flawlessly; and luck that the box finds its
De’Andre Jackson never thought he’d be cooking barbecue for a living. As a football star out of Garland, he started for the Big 12’s Iowa State. Entering his senior year, some had him graded as the third best cornerback in college. An ACL-tear toward the end of the season kept
Ronnie Killen has had enough with high-priced brisket at his Houston-area barbecue joint. Killen’s Barbecue has garnered praise for his juicy smoked briskets (and just about everything else on his menu) from Texas Monthly, and even the Food Network, but it didn’t come cheap. Along with big
– Nine more sleeps until the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival in Austin on 11/01.– Lance Kirkpatrick from Stiles Switch in Austin was on KEYE slicing brisket like the ones they’ll be serving at the Barbecue Festival.– We released our new list of the 25
Rummaging through your family genealogy can be dicey. The history could be upsetting (just ask Ben Affleck), but you also might be able to confirm some royal bloodlines. And for Austin’s John Lewis Jr., what he and his father discovered was even more rewarding than any monarch. The man who built
Dickey’s Barbecue Pit has more than 500 locations, but their newest remodel in Dallas is one of kind—for now. New graphics, lighting, and design flourishes give it an updated look that’s five years in the making, says CEO Roland Dickey Jr. in an article by Restaurant Business. It’s an
Wyatt McSpadden – Austin, TexasThe work of Wyatt McSpadden has been featured countless times in Texas Monthly. It was his work that graced the pages of our 2013 Top 50 BBQ Joints issue, and two years ago, TMBBQ highlighted a series of photographs he captured of Tootsie
For all chefs, there are moments in their culinary careers that forever shape them. Moments when principles are seared into their brain by mentors, books, or classes only to manifest in their cooking techniques for life. For Travis Heim, owner and pitmaster of Heim Barbecue, in Fort Worth, one of those illuminating experiences came
It’s been two years since Texas Monthly published its last Top 50 BBQ Joints list. It was a feat of reporting that took me and my barbecue-eating cohorts across the state to eat at countless legendary restaurants, holes-in-the-wall, out-of-the-way joints. The work didn’t end when the issue went to press.
– Pulled pork is everywhere: Fast-food chains are going hog wild for pulled pork http://t.co/nk6g1EXetv pic.twitter.com/rSUXMFXizr — Bloomberg Business (@business) October 9, 2015 – Dallas’s NPR station, KERA, is in Austin and gives us this tour of Franklin Barbecue. – Aaron
