Because eating barbecue is my job, I am often asked if I fear running out of new joints to review. The answer is no. Texas is a big place with a big appetite for barbecue, a demand that draws new pitmasters to open new restaurants all the time. In fact, my problem is almost
Here I sit, a contradiction personified. I’m typing in a Starbucks in Dallas wearing a t-shirt that reads “LOCAL” and drinking hot coffee on our first true 100 degree day of the year. I just finished the last bite of a sandwich I abhorred before I ever bought it, one
It’s big, it’s bright red, and Jackson Street BBQ is a great new option for Texas barbecue in downtown Houston. Opened earlier this year, it’s a joint venture between Houston chef Bryan Caswell and local pitmaster Greg Gatlin. The two joined forces on a menu with plenty of variety, and
– The difference between barbecue and grilling from CNN.– The Wall Street Journal also has a piece on barbecue and grilling.– Here’s how your grill actually works: Physics: Infrared, convection, conduction, and how your grill works http://t.co/DSiM82bane pic.twitter.com/C40970tRRd — Meathead
TMBBQ welcomes guest writer Megan Giller who takes us to Japan for some Texas barbecue. Craig White. Photo from White Smoke’s Facebook page.Craig White is a Texan. He’s a pitmaster and an expert in smoked meats, and like many of his breed he can be secretive. White
Before there was Texas, one form of Texas barbecue was cemented in the culture of the Rio Grande Valley. How so? The answers lies in a hole in the ground. We’re talking about barbacoa de cabeza en pozo—beef heads cooked with wood coals in subterranean pits.Beef barbacoa can be found
With all the candidates thus far who have entered the 2016 run for president, the logos and mottos abound. Our new crop of Texas Monthly interns figured that none of the candidates matched the qualifications of one Aaron Franklin, proprietor of Austin’s Franklin Barbecue, so they made some alterations to the
The transition from competition barbecue to commercial barbecue can be challenging. Restaurateurs generally have to cook more than once a week, there’s more meat to smoke, and a lot more people need to be pleased than one table of judges. In my experience, shelves full of competition trophies don’t often translate
– Stubb’s barbecue sauce sold for $100,000,000 and TM’s Dan Solomon has the story.– CHD Expert provides some interesting industry numbers on the impact of barbecue joints in the country’s restaurant landscape.– Steven Raichlen is back with a new barbecue show called Project Smoke.–
It’s hard to find a city of consequential size in the country that hasn’t seen a new barbecue joint open recently. The craft is more popular than ever, and restaurateurs are taking note. With this boom comes an increased awareness that great barbecue demands the type of smoke that only
It was twenty years ago that Ivy Chambers moved his budding sausage business out of his home and into a bona fide restaurant in Fort Worth. Over the years he added more barbecue items to the menu – brisket, ribs, bologna – and continued to operate the business until handing
– Texas Governor Greg Abbott says that calling barbecue sauce “the most important thing about barbecue” was, in hindsight “my biggest regret” while in office.– Officials in China have seized meat illegally smuggled in from Vietnam. It was all previously frozen, and some of it was
Owner/Pitmaster: Whup’s Boomerang Bar-B-Q; Opened 2000Age: 64Smoker: Wood-fired Offset SmokerWood: Mesquite, Post Oak, and PecanBennie Washington’s business may only be fifteen years old, but his barbecue experience goes back four decades. As a delivery truck driver for Pepsi, barbecue was a hobby, then a short-lived foray as a professional in
Times have never been better for small-batch Texas barbecue sauces. Six months ago, Texas-based grocery store H-E-B debuted a new line of barbecue sauces in their stores, featuring bottles from the state’s most popular barbecue joints, including Louie Mueller Barbecue, Fargo’s BBQ, Terry Black’s Barbecue, and Hays County BBQ.The case
Today Wayne Mueller begins the final leg of his around-the-world barbecue missionary tour, a journey that has taken him to Japan (through Tokyo and three other cities); a stint at the World Expo in Milan; two flights through London, and one very long weekend in New York City
– Travel + Leisure calls Austin “America’s next great food town” citing great restaurants like Franklin Barbecue and Valentina’s Tex-Mex.– Directly from Big Apple BBQ -> How not to trim a brisket: – The Daily Meal asks for tips from some barbecue experts at the Big
The Bubba Tater is one of the most daunting dishes to tackle in Texas barbecue, that is if you plan to eat the whole thing. Most joints just list it as a barbecue baked potato, but it usually starts with a russet potato the size of a Nerf football. When
The menu of Emancipation Day.
In a renovated gas station that looks more like a former Blockbuster with a colorful sign that evokes Baskin Robbins, sits Big Daddy’s Ribs & BBQ. It opened last year along a widened El Dorado Parkway on the east side of Lake Dallas where suburbia has overtaken anything resembling lake-related
– Southern Living’s Robert Moss released his list of the fifty best barbecue joints in the South.– Some in Houston aren’t happy about being snubbed by Moss.– Kansas City is named the best city for barbecue by Travel + Leisure. Don’t worry, they also
Owner/Pitmaster: Sammy’s BBQ; Opened 1992Age: 45Smoker: Wood-Fired RotisserieWood: HickoryMarshall Prichard could pass for a decade younger than his forty-five years. Somehow the barbecue business has been kind to him in the aging process. He was there on day one when Sammy’s BBQ opened in 1992, and he still brings a youthful
It was 10:00am and I wanted ribs for lunch. A good rack of pork ribs takes anywhere from four to six hours in a smoker. The low-and-slow method is pretty foolproof for making them tender and juicy, but I figured I could get the job done quicker. A lot quicker. The
San Antonio chef Tim Rattray visited Dallas last week to be the guest chef at Knife for one in a series of special collaboration dinners benefiting RED*. Throughout the week, Knife’s chef John Tesar invited five chefs including Aaron Franklin of Austin’s Franklin Barbecue and Rattray from
Until this week, I had never enjoyed a great bite of barbecue at Sammy’s BBQ in Uptown Dallas. I used to work in the neighborhood when I had a desk job, but Sammy’s was a lunch option only if somebody else was choosing. I had become a barbecue snob, and I
– Wayne Mueller is at the World Expo in Milan, Italy serving up Texas BBQ: Texas meets Italy meet Texas. Wayne Mueller, the Master of the BBQ Pit, and Laurel Evans of
Santa Maria style barbecue is probably the least familiar of any barbecue style in the country, especially for those outside California. That’s likely due to how hyper-regional the menu and the fuel are, but also how limited its representation is outside the Santa Maria area. Even three hours in either direction,
California is known for a lot of things—sunshine, wine, earthquakes—but its barbecue scene isn’t one of them. Which isn’t to say they don’t have it at all. There are, of course, the smattering of “Texas-style” and “Louisville-style” and all the other ex-patriate homages to various barbecue iterations. But California has
The sausage wrap is underrated. It’s too simple to get much attention, but it deserves more than bottom-of-the-menu status. At its most basic, a sausage wrap is a link of sausage wrapped in a single slice of white bread. You can call it a wrap, a roll-up, fold-over, or sandwich.
East of Dallas, there’s a twenty mile stretch of Highway 205 that connects Rockwall and Terrell. Right in the middle is a converted barn, complete with a grain silo, that houses Eddie Deen’s BBQ. You might know that name because you’ve had a catered meal at the Eddie Deen Ranch
– A new class of the Barbecue Hall of Fame has been named. This year, Ed Fisher, Steven Raichlen, and Paul Kirk will be inducted.– Tim Carman of the Washington Post examines the rise of the urban barbecue joint, and credits Aaron Franklin for bringing barbecue
Former Owner: Gary’s BarbequeAge: 75When he was twenty-six, Gary Williams said doctors told him he was bipolar and diagnosed him with depression and a chemical imbalance. “That’s a load, but I made it. I had a great doctor,” he told me while we sat across from one another at
Before brisket dominated Texas barbecue, meat markets served a vast variety of smoked beef cuts. The old-school meat markets of Central Texas would smoke anything left in the case too long, most often cuts from the forequarter, like shoulder clod or beef chuck. In the Dallas area during the forties and
If I had visited The Shack Bar-B-Q six months ago, I would have easily called it Lubbock’s best barbecue. Nowadays the once bare barbecue market in town is suddenly crowded with the addition of The Shack and nearby Evie Mae’s Barbecue, a three-month-old trailer that is one of the best new barbecue
– Waypoints named BARBQ, SMOKE, RIBBS, and BRSKT exist in the Kansas City (ZKC) sky country.– The best barbecue in America is in Georgia, says TripAdvisor: Craving some #BBQ? @TripAdvisor‘s picks for America’s best spots: http://t.co/0bGAqmOvKj via @CNNTravel pic.twitter.com/KfCHL2Psaj
When it comes time to fire up the smoker on Memorial Day . . . wait, let’s consider you, the average cook. You probably don’t own a smoker; you probably just own a grill. And perhaps those new summer issues of the glossy food magazines have convinced you that you can turn it into a
Kerlin BBQ in Austin, Texas, is the best barbecue joint in the country. Or at least that’s the conclusion Johnny Fugitt arrived at after traveling the country and eating 365 barbecue meals in 365 days, a journey he chronicled in his new book, The 100 Best Barbecue Restaurants in
Making sausage ain’t easy. There’s the trimming, grinding, seasoning, stuffing, and then the smoking. For barbecue joints, buying a few boxes of cheap sausage from your food distributor is a tempting prospect when compared to the hours required to make your own. But Texas is a place where smoked sausages are a
The smell of manure hit me when I broke the seal of the rental car door in Farwell, Texas. Just a mile and a half south of town is a sprawling cattle feedlot, and traveling the ninety minutes from Amarillo I drove through towns like Bovina and Hereford. Just by the names you now
– Austin’s so-called “smoke scrubber” ordinance is dead. Members of the Economic Opportunity Committee “voted unanimously this afternoon not to require BBQ food trucks and restaurants located near residential areas to install smoke scrubbers.”– A deep look at the price of beef in America:
Founder: Bodacious Bar-B-Q; Opened 1968Age: 76Smoker: Wood-fired Offset SmokerWood: OakRoland Lindsey went from running the pits for his dad in Dallas when he was fifteen, to running a chain of barbecue joints in (mostly) East Texas. He officially started Bodacious Bar-B-Q in Longview in 1968, and it has grown significantly since then.Since it was
Pastrami is to New York City like smoked brisket is to Lockhart, Texas: they are the signature smoked meats of their respective cities, and both lay claim to being the originator. Black’s BBQ has said in the past that they were the first to put brisket on the menu in Texas. They were
Wayne Mueller is going around the world on a Texas barbecue missionary tour. In a month’s time he’ll travel from Taylor, Texas to Japan, Europe, and back to the good old U.S. of A. In that time Mueller will cover about 25,000 air miles, and he’ll smoke a whole mess of beef ribs.
The best barbecue in Lubbock is in Wolfforth, Texas. That might be news to you even if you’re a student at Tech because Arnis and Mallory Robbins just opened their trailer doors three months ago. After a stint with a landscaping company in Tucson, they decided to come back to
– A Texas pitmaster has been honored by the James Beard Foundation as the best chef in the Southwest region. Congratulations, Aaron Franklin: The winner of Best Chef: Southwest: Aaron Franklin, @bbqfranklin, Austin #jbfa — Beard Foundation (@beardfoundation) May 5, 2015 – Here’s more
Sausage. It’s one of the signatures of our state’s barbecue style, but the time intensive process of grinding, stuffing, and smoking sausage fell out of favor when barbecue left the meat market. With the rise of commercial sausage makers, many barbecue joints were (and are) happy to purchase their sausage
Aaron Franklin did it. Last night the owner and pitmaster at Austin’s Franklin Barbecue became the first ever pitmaster recognized in any “best chef” category of the annual James Beard Foundation Awards. (See this earlier post for more on the significance of the win) For the
Skylight Inn cooks whole hogs over wood coals in Ayden, North Carolina just like they did when they first opened in 1947. This past weekend I embedded myself with Samuel Jones, the third generation of the Skylight Inn family, at BBQ on the Neuse. The event
Popular restaurants all over the world have signature dishes, some even have just one item that makes them a dining destination. You go to Katz’s Deli in New York for pastrami, Mary’s Cafe in Strawn, Texas for chicken fried steak, and nobody complains about the fish at House of Prime Rib in
– Brisket prices are finally trending downward. Our national nightmare might be coming to a close.– A tribute to Annie Mae Ward who established the barbecue stand at New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville, aka The Church of the Holy Smoke.– The Texans Vince Wilfork
The wholesale cost of brisket has been increasing, sometimes dramatically, since 2013. Now, it seems to be tumbling from its peak. Back in mid-January the wholesale price for whole briskets (IMPS 120) was $3.59/lb and this week it has dropped to $2.74/lb. That’s the lowest price for brisket
