– 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
Owner/Pitmaster: Davila’s BBQ; Opened 1959Age: 65Smoker: Indirect Heat Wood-Fired PitWood: MesquiteEdward Davila has just hit retirement age, but he can’t imagine life without working at the barbecue joint. He’s been doing it since he was a boy, and now he’s teaching his son to follow in his footsteps.After our interview, Davila wanted
With the rise of review sites like Yelp and the ascent of food blogging, restaurants are scrutinized more than ever. Traditional restaurateurs have long understood the power of a negative review, but concern with the critics was rarely something that barbecue joints worried themselves with. But the barbecue zeitgeist—which I recognize that I,
Restaurateurs dismissing the use of all wood cookers saying “the city won’t let us cook with wood” no longer have an excuse, at least not in San Antonio. Just beyond a low counter that they call the altar at El Machete, there’s a crackling mesquite fire, the flickers of which you
– A semi hauling more than twenty tons of pork butts caught fire on the Interstate in Kansas City.– The New York Times offered their take on the Austin barbecue smoker resolution. They looked at it in context of other odor-related cases. You’ll also learn what
Pioneer BBQ has been around a while in the middle of Nixon, a town about an hour southeast of San Antonio. It was operated by the Chambers Brothers out of Luling, then a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses who eventually put the business up for sale on Craigslist. That’s where Shawn
We love our beef in Texas, and historically, the rest of the nation did too. According to numbers from the USDA, beef and pork battled for protein supremacy until about 1950, when beef took a clear lead for the next six decades. Today, with falling beef consumption and the surging popularity
This month we bring you a profile of another photographer who has captured the people, the food and the spaces that make up the world of barbecue.Matthew Fuller – Wimberley, TexasWorking in the classical traditions of photography, Matthew Fuller creates beautiful color and black and white images that resonate with a
Three years ago I ate some promising barbecue from a food truck in the shadow of I-410 in San Antonio. Chris Conger was doing it all that day inside what was called Conger’s Smoke Shack, cooking, slicing, and making change. Last year he had stowed away enough change to make the
– A Field Guide to the American Sandwich from the NYT. Texas chopped beef gets some love, but the best photo is from Iowa.– Louis McMillan of McMillan’s Famous Bar-B-Q in Fannin, Texas was recently recognized by the State Senate of Texas for his work in
Owner/Pitmaster: Billy’s Old Fashion BBQ; Opened 1986 (estimated)Age: 68Smoker: Indirect Heat Wood-Fired PitWood: Red Oak and HickoryIt seems that everybody who drives by Billy’s Old Fashion BBQ in Jasper honks and waves. George “Billy” Mahathay is a popular man, almost as popular as his barbecue. He told me jokingly that
On January 18, 1910, a newspaper advertisement for Watson’s Grocery included “Smoked Brisket Beef” for thirty cents per pound. It’s the earliest advertisement for smoked brisket that I have found in Texas, and it was in El Paso. With such a long history of smoking briskets you’d think they would
