Posted by Hannah Howard, June 29, 2008 at 2:00 PM
It's summertime and serious barbecue is having a moment in the sun. It makes sense that July's Bon Appétit is devoted to barbecue.
Good 'cue requires zesty sauce to smother the meat and to lick off your fingers. But consensus ends there. Some like their sauce watery, others prefer it thick. There are tomato-base believers, and those who adhere faithfully to the vinegar-based doctrine.
Bon Appétit names five barbecue sauce champions, all made by seasoned barbecue competitors.
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, May 21, 2008 at 6:45 PM
"You eat barbecue; you don’t grill on the barbecue," one Memphis in May competition judge and friend recently enlightened me. "It's a food, not an appliance."
You would have been pierced with a grill fork last weekend if you misused the word at Memphis in May, the world's largest pork roast competition. Vying for over $90,000 in prizes and bragging rights, 261 teams gathered, including presence from Estonia, Norway and Belgium. Some categories included: best whole hog, best shoulder and best ribs, with entirely separate titles for best sauces. Team names are almost as important as the meat itself. Some of our favorites include: Sweet Swine o’ Mine, Rib Ticklers, and Rhoda Brown’s Smokie Fatties. Typically, most phrases involving "fatties" are good.
Saturday, the party vibe stiffened up when judges sampled the various forms of hog. Check here for full results, and a regularly-updated blog from The Commercial Appeal, the local Memphis daily. Washington Post Food editor Joe Yonan was also on site, sticking his camera into the meat-smoking pits and chatting with grillmasters throughout the weekend. Yonan admitted to me, his moleskin still smelled of beautiful hickory earlier this week when he revisited his notes for the article.
Posted by Robyn Lee, July 18, 2007 at 5:30 PM
Although I know that pigs do not gleefully step into the hands of a pit master to become part of my meal, I feel no qualms about eating tender, smoky barbecued pork. Even after seeing the sign for Johnny's BBQ taken by Shani's Stuff, I'm still down with barbecued pork. But I would question what was going on in the head of whoever thought that the depiction of Porky Pig's frightened doppelgänger roasting in a hellish fiery embrace was the best way to encapsulate the essence of the restaurant. That was the most appealing idea? Really? File this under Suicide Food.
Posted by Robyn Lee, June 11, 2007 at 6:12 PM
If you went to last weekend's Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in New York City's Madison Square Park, you can relive the meat hangover by browsing Kathryn's Big Apple BBQ photo set on flickr. Above is her photo of baby back ribs from Rack & Soul.
Posted by Lia Bulaong, April 4, 2007 at 9:30 AM
Austin area meat eaters and music lovers will tell you about the wonders of Stubb's, the barbecue restaurant and live music venue on Red River founded by the late chef and pitmaster C. B. Stubblefield. The recently published Stubb's Bar-B-Q Cookbook has recipes from the restaurant as well as Stubblefield's personal cookbook, as well as photos and stories from his colorful life.
The Austin American-Statesman's Kitty Crider shares the book's recipe for Korean Steak, Stubb-Style, created after Stubblefield served in Korea and "discovered that Koreans and Texans have much in common: Both love beef, chili peppers, and grilling over a charcoal pit."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 7, 2007 at 6:50 PM
In today's New York Times, Peter Meehan says The Big Apple May Never Be Known as the Big Sparerib, but It’s Smokin’: "New York’s barbecue scene may be missing a lot of things — like dirt roads and screen doors and decades of deep-seated tradition — but love for barbecue in the city is strong. And in the past couple of years the product has caught up to the passion. Restaurants that hobbled out of the gate have hit their strides. The best pits in and around the city have gotten better." Whether you live in the city, are planning to visit or just love barbecue, it's worth reading for Meehan's descriptions of what to eat at the nine best places to get barbecue in and around NYC.
Oh, if the mere idea of good barbecue in the Big Apple seems ludicrous to you, Pete Wells says you should "remember that almost none of the food New York does best is from around here. Every day I ride the subway past stations named for Dutch settlers but I don’t eat anything that Peter Stuyvesant would recognize. The same goes for the people who were here before Stuyvesant. All our New York City food traditions come from some place else. That’s what New York does: we import, we borrow, we imitate, we expropriate, we steal. Usually at first, we do those things badly. Sometimes we get better and once in a while we get inspired and come up with a spectacular sushi bar or French bistro or pizzeria."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 7, 2007 at 6:06 PM
The yearly South By Southwest conference in Austin is coming up this weekend and so Virginia B. Wood of the Austin Chronicle put together Smoke Trail, a guide to eleven purveyors of delectable BBQ around the city center: "Central Texas is nationally known for great barbecue, and we consider the capital to be the burnished buckle of that famous barbecue belt. In part because Austin is where the South meets the Southwest, we've got it all here – the mesquite-smoked West Texas cowboy style, the German/Czech sausages and dry-rubbed smoked meats, and the soul-satisfying deep South style of meats smoked over hardwoods and slathered with sauce. Working on the assumption that many of our March visitors will be concentrated in the core of the city, we're featuring 11 worthwhile joints located no farther than a brisk walk or short cab ride from major central-city attractions."
(Iron Works Barbecue is right behind the convention center and very tasty, I've had lunch there a few times while attending SXSW in years past. Having said that, my favorite meals in Austin have been at The Boiling Pot, a five minute walk away from the convention center—no bbq, but you won't miss it because the seafood is spicy, delicious and served by the bucket.)
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 2, 2007 at 5:31 PM
"chinese BBQ roast pork is one of my favorite foods because it’s delicious and so easily accessible in chinatown, as nearly every block will have a shop that has fresh roast meats in the window. i love anything made with it : roast pork buns, roast pork flaky pastry called “char siu so”, roast pork rice crepe, and scrumptous barbeque roast pork on its own, but i have never seen a flat roast pork cookie before." Jo Jo of Eat 2 Love discovered what sounds like may potentially be my new favorite savoury pastry treat.
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 5, 2007 at 7:02 AM
I spent most of last week in the Kansas City area visiting my family for Christmas. And since neither kin nor Claus left me a slab of ribs or a plate of burnt ends under the tree, I had to go fend for myself. My friend Andy, who smokes meat as part of a local KC barbecue team, accompanied me to three joints he said were currently the "holy trinity" of KC 'cue. Here, in words and pictures, a belated gift for you.
LC's BAR-B-Q
Address: 5800 Blue Parkway, Kansas City MO 64129 [map]
Phone: 816-923-4484
We tried to start at Kansas City institution Arthur Bryant's, but the line was out the door and down the block—a queue of such a length neither Andy nor I had ever seen at Bryant's. We chalked it up to barbecue-starved out-of-towners getting their fix (like me) and drove on to LC's Bar-B-Q, on the southern edge of the city and a little more hidden from tourists.
As usual, LC himself sat at a table in the small and spartan dining room while his pit masters tended the smoker and its meaty contents. We ordered a short end of ribs and a pulled-pork sandwich to split. (Yeah, yeah, so our order was modest—we had to pace ourselves for the day's eating.)
I'd never had the ribs at LC's before, having always been steered toward the pulled-pork or brisket sandwiches by friends in the know. The ribs were a disappointment. Much too lean and none too meaty, they drew most of their flavor from the outer char, put there, Andy speculated, by some time on the grill.
The pork sandwich, however, was perfect, as usual. Piled high as a triple decker on soft slices of white bread, the meat was tender and juicy, with a good balance between fat and lean, and the flavor was smoky with a faint applelike finish.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, January 3, 2007 at 5:44 PM
There was a fascinating story on NPR that got lost in the shuffle in the days leading up to the holidays. On December 22, the network aired a piece on Bobby Egan, a Hackensack, New Jersey, barbecue-joint owner who for many years has been an unofficial go-between for North Korea and the United States.
According to the story by Adam Davidson, Mr. Egan, owner of Cubby's BBQ Ribs, fell into the role in the 1980s, when some friends of his, Vietnam veterans, asked for his help in dealing with POW-MIA issues. Mr. Egan began assisting them, traveling to Vietnam several times and eventually making friends with the country's Communist officials. The Vietnamese took a shine to Egan and mentioned him to the North Koreans, who sought him out as a liaison.
The North Koreans only rely on him when talks between it and the U.S. have broken down completely, the story says, but Egan hasn't been as influential during the George W. Bush administration as he was during Clinton's. Still, the government of Kim Jong Il has "twice authorized Mr. Egan to offer a full end to their nuclear programs in exchange for money and diplomatic relations with the U.S." The reporter says Egan often takes calls from the North Koreans while working the front counter at Cubby's.
Says North Korean U.N. representative Kim Yong Il, "Bobby Egan is one of our good friends. He's trying to make bridges between the people of my country and the people of the U.S."
CUBBY'S BBQ RIBS
Address: 249 South River Street, Hackensack NJ
Phone: 201-488-9389
