– 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
Waiting in line for barbecue is a fact of life if you seek out the good stuff at prime times. You know when heading out to Lockhart, Taylor, or any number of barbecue destinations on the weekends that you’re not going to walk right up to the counter to place
It’s not extinct, but the Hill Country style of barbecue certainly belongs on the endangered list. Sometimes called the West Texas style, this method of cooking directly over coals–once pervasive–is seen less frequently. Compounding the problem, it appears fewer and fewer people are bothering to learn or carry on the
Dining at Hard Eight BBQ is as much about experience as it is about the meal. During a recent visit to the original Stephenville location, I lined up with thirty other people, an impressive crowd for 1:00 p.m. on a Friday. Together we stood together facing cord upon cord of neatly piled mesquite and two
– No more freelance line-standers at Franklin Barbecue: You’ll have to wait in line for your own brisket now w/ Franklin Barbecue’s line holder ban http://t.co/SawW7eALrR pic.twitter.com/LNm34XuyxD — Eater Austin (@EaterAustin) October 4, 2015– On the same day, the Supreme Court
When we marvel at the endurance of family-run barbecue joints in Texas, it becomes noteworthy when one hangs on for four—hell, even three—generations. So if someone deciding to make a living in the same way as their great-grandfather is pretty rare, but in the middle of Dallas, there is a business that’s
With so much barbecue fluff on television these days, it was nice to see a serious discussion of smoked meat on . . . The Simpsons? The writers obviously did their homework for last night’s episode. Homer bought a smoker shaped from a meteor (that looked a lot
The challenges of running a barbecue food truck weren’t lost on B.R. Anderson when he opened B-Daddy’s BBQ, in San Antonio, in 2012. After all, he was the third owner of the trailer he bought, stepping in after the other two gave up on their ventures. But in restaurants, it’s often innovate
– Matt Garner, a central figure in the formation of Houston’s barbecue style, gets nice treatment in the Houston Chronicle.– Also in the Chronicle, food critic Alison Cook announced her 100 favorites restaurants in Houston this past week. Killen’s Barbecue was #4, CorksScrew BBQ was #31, Roegels Barbecue Co. was
“Barbecue is the closest thing we have in the United States to Europe’s wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.”Barbecue historian John Shelton Reed wrote the above line just over a decade ago for an essay printed in the food writing collection Cornbread Nation 2, and in the
Barbecue and politics have long, shared history. A few months back we looked at some humorous political slogans calling for brisket as a 2016 contender. Aaron Franklin was even seeking some votes, but now it’s Brad Orrison of the The Shed Barbeque & Blues Joint looking for
This barbecue joint does not exist. No, this is not the start of a philosophical argument over what is and isn’t real. What I mean to say is that I thought this category of barbecue joint–“the unknown”–was gone forever. The “unknown” is a place that I would characterize as a “hidden gem,” a restaurant that
– I reiterated on the Texas Standard that sous vide meat with liquid smoke is not barbecue.– For The Love of Meat, a documentary about Texas barbecue and the pitmasters who make it will debut with a screening in Austin on 10/08.– Catch a glimpse of
Owner/Pitmaster: 4 Rivers Smokehouse; Opened 2009Age: 49Smoker: Gas-fired rotisserieWood: HickorySitting with a 2003 copy of the Texas Monthly Top 50, John Rivers occupied a table inside Rusty Taco in Dallas waiting for me. His travel schedule didn’t allow for a barbecue lunch, so bacon, eggs, cheese, and avocado on a tortilla became
Just when it appeared we had hit peak bacon—last week’s introduction of Sizzl, Oscar Meyer’s dating app for bacon lovers, could be pinpointed as the moment things jumped the shark—Chris Shepherd, the chef at Underbelly in Houston, found a way to improve the most popular ingredient of the past five
High-caliber Texas-style barbecue keeps popping up in the oddest places. Two weeks ago I found some great brisket in Los Angeles, and this past weekend the same thing happened in Portland, Oregon. I visited a tiny place called Matt’s BBQ, and its origin story is a wonderful microcosm that
