New Beginnings

The Coolest of ‘Cue Schools

Trying to take notes while talking to four young men who all want to tell you how good the barbecue was at Lexington No. 1, a.k.a. Honey Monk’s, is a little like trying to shake hands with an octopus. “It was sort of tough and crunchy on the outside, but sweet and juicy on the inside,” said Art Richey, a poli-science major from Russellville, Alabama. Or was that Will Foster, a business administration major from Alpharetta, Georgia? No, Will’s the one who had his first taste of pork rinds in the Tar Heel state: “My heart said ‘NOOOOOOO,’ but my gut said, ‘yes.’

“I am here to study barbecue,” said Jeff Vaughan, also a business major from West Palm Beach, Florida. Or was that Matt Lee, a pre-engineering student from Cullman, Alabama. These are smart lads, I thought as I got to know them. Not an English major among ’em. Four fraternity brothers who had talked their English teacher into letting them take January off to cross five states to get a clue about cue. Why didn’t I think of that when I was in school?
“We’ve gotta do a 10 page paper when we get back,” one of them said. Writing’s hard, they observe. “Duh!” thinks Professor BBQ. “It’s really hard for me,” one of them starts the sentence, “Sitting down for 30 minutes before I get anything on paper,” another one says finishing it. But as you can see on their Web site http://www.southernbbqboys.com, multiple portals provide multiple points of view.
By the time they got to Stamey’s they were still stuffed with Lexington outside meat and pork skins, but they liked Stamey’s barbecue and its clean, uncomplicated taste and sauce. Art liked their brunswick stew, which is a personal favorite. The talk turned to sauce and the octopus of voices began, with people from other tables joining in the discussion and giving suggestions about where they HAD to eat.
From Greensboro, they’re headed east to Greenville, North Carolina, where they hope to hook up with my friend, Carl Rothrock and eat at the legendary B’s. Next is The Pit and then Wilber’s in Goldsboro. In South Carolina, they’re going to try Sweatman’s, of course, and I tried to talk them into stopping in at Brown’s in Kingstree. Country Cousins in Lake City is on their list. And then they’re headed to Georgia and back to Alabama.

While they were converting our supper into streaming video and digital images and sound and impressing the heck out of Professor BBQ with their facile handle on technology, the subject of the downside of being forever connected came up. Their teacher, they said, can follow almost every move that they make. “She contacts us through every portal,” one of them said. “There’s no escape.”

The Truest Cue of Them All

My wife, our daughter Alice, and I left the Lowcountry around noon with a bag of ham biscuits, some fruit and a box of the to-die-for homemade Heath bars that my sister-in-law Ginger makes for us every Christmas. The bag was empty before we got to Orangeburg and by the time we crossed the North Carolina line, we were all mighty hungry — but not for the same thing. Of course we got lost trying to get to Honey Monk’s by the back roads in the fog, and my daughter kept pointing out that she really doesn’t care for barbecue. And, no, she’d didn’t remember trying the cue at Lexington No. 1 as a wee child, or any of the times I’d brought it home on business trips to Charlotte. Yes, she allowed she would eat with us, but she was making no further promises; in fact, she’d probably get a hamburger.
Friends, perhaps you may have children who don’t share your passion for certain foods. Mind you, I’m not complaining. A couple of summers ago Alice went to Berkeley and became a full-fleged foodie. We flew out to visit, and in three days of eating nonstop, we were hardly able to begin to try all the incredible eats she’d scouted out. We even got a last minute seating at Chez Panisse — unheard of good fortune– where they didn’t have barbecue on the menu, but they did have sand dabs and quail, which certainly worked just fine. In addition to her lukewarm feeling for barbecue, Alice inexplicably, given her parentage, doesn’t like anchovies or crabs or shrimp or eggplant, though she loves calimari and grilled meats. No family is perfect, after all. I’m slowly gaining acceptance for these things that I can’t change in life, and I was resigned to my daughter eating a hamburger in what I consider the restaurant with North Carolina’s finest barbecue. But I did consider wearing a disguise.
When we pulled into the parking lot at 6:30 on a Saturday, there was a line out the door, and I thought about just getting take out. But I heard Alice tell her mother, “That does smell incredibly good.” I pointed out the smokestacks and the plate glass window through which you can watch the behind-the-scenes chopping of succulent browned pork shoulders. We decided to eat at the counter and I was amazed after I’d ordered a sandwich of outside meat to hear Alice say, “Bring me the same.” Minutes later, the toasted bun came to the counter, spilling its chopped contents onto the plate and filling the air with the fragrant mix of seared pork, piquant pepper and pungent smoke. As I tucked into my sandwich ravenously, I noted that when you get barbecue this good, it’s flavor maxes out your taste buds and permeates your nostrils with smoky overtones. After the first few bites, some barbecue loses its definition and character and you might as well be eating roast pork. The smidgens of barbecue at Lexington No. 1 that I picked up off of my plate after I’d inhaled my sandwich were just as flavorful as the first bites. “Order another one and let’s split it,” Alice said. “I thought you didn’t really like barbecue,” I said offhandedly. And then, giving her dad one of the best Christmas presents he’s been given in years, she said, “This is not just barbecue; this is what barbecue ought to be.” That’s my daughter.

About Bivalves Rather Than Barbecue

Yes, it’s December and it’s cold as can be with a wind-chill here in the Triad down to the single digit — or so the radio said. Why, then, would we want to go to a raucous and crowded beach bar — Bimini’s, which true to its Myrtle Beach original location has an island atmosphere that combines a meat market for singles at the bar with a family atmosphere at the table for other lovers — lovers of seafood that’s better-than-Calabash. The answer for me is oysters, maybe my favorite food after barbecue. Yes, it’s a very odd groove, but a lively one to say the least, with kids playing with each other in the middle of the room and adults pretty much doing the same at the bar. Then again, it seemed a perfect place for me to get passionate about bivalves.

Almost as soon as we were seated and without much ado, two oblong gobbler-sized turkey roasters arrived at the table, packed tiptop with oysters. “Good God,” Anne said, seeing how many there were. “Good is God,” I replied. While we had been waiting for a table, I’d crowded up to the bar and ordered a draft beer based purely on the pull handle, which was a wicked looking pirate head with a patch over his eye. I couldn’t understand what kind it was amidst the mating calls all around me, but I felt very old when I couldn’t hear the bar-tender, though I thought she said “Shot-top,” which didn’t sound like a bad concept for a beer in a place where people might be doing shooters. Hey, I knew how to do that and had done it with tequila in Oaxaca. I embarrassingly also ordered Anne a Ginger Ale and also thought my hearing had gone bad when the barmaid told me the tab — $2! This was my kind of place.
We both went right to work and decided that the oysters, based on size and the clustering, were from Florida. They were plump, exceedingly juicy, tangy without any added sauce and almost as salty as Carolina bivalves. What struck us both is how many oysters we had. Our waitress had looked a little concerned when we said we wanted two orders and I guess when you do the math of three times two times a dozen, maybe 72 oysters does sound like a lot, but then again, that’s only 36 oysters a piece, a mere three dozen, which I felt sure I could eat, especially since the only other thing that we got were hush puppies and slaw. After we’d been rather enthusiastically shucking and slurping for a while, someone came by the table and commented that we sure seemed to be having a good time. At least we didn’t have people getting up from their tables and moving as happened once when we cracked crabs in a fancy Charleston restaurant. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen — or dining room, whichever pertains.
I frankly hadn’t looked up except to order another shot-top, which the waitress said was “Shock-top,” which didn’t seem to be a better name than shot-top, but we learned it was imitation Blue Moon, which is imitation Belgium beer, which some would say is imitation German beer since the German’s invented European beer and they were imitating the Egyptians, if my memory serves me right. “There’s not another oyster in the house,” our waitress announced, “and you’re enjoying them so much, everyone’s wanting to order them.” I thanked her for the compliment, saying that I’d had years of practice perfecting my slurp. That, Anne said after the waitress has left, might explain why we ended up with so many oysters and so many small singles. “They just emptied the bag into the cooker and gave us all that was left. I started to count shells, but by then due to the very nature of bivalves there were almost twice as many as we’d started with and I’ll have to admit that my top was a little shocked from the mighty thirst I’d quenched with imitation-imitation beer. “I can’t eat another one,” Anne finally said. There were at least six more oysters left and I was filling a little full, but I used a trick I learned in South Carolina, eating oysters where we buy them by the bushels. I opened all of the oysters first, which gave me time to get a second win. Than I mixed them up with horseradish and cocktail sauce, adding a little Tabasco sauce. As I picked up the bowl, Anne looked at me querulously. “Dessert,” I said.

Hamming It Up

Credit goes to Bill Smith of Chapel Hill’s iconic Crook’s Corner. During a cooking class on oysters that he presented, he happened to mention his family’s holiday tradition of corning hams. “Corning?” I asked. This sounded like a diversion that might lead to something truly rewarding — barbecue. He said that down in Eastern North Carolina when the weather turned cold and his folks slaughtered pigs, they often corned hams. He went on to explain the technique. They would simply cover the fresh hams with salt for 10 days or so and then cook them for the holidays.

His lip-smacking description of his cousins and uncles tucking into one of these holiday hams stuck in my memory and for the past three years, I’ve corned a ham for either Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Last year, I got started late because I had to hunt high and low before I found a 17 pounder. Seven days before I baked it, as suggested in the recipe adapted from Smith’s Seasoned in the South (Algonquin Books), I inserted a knife into either end of the ham next to the bone and filled these incisions with salt. I then blanketed the ham with Kosher salt, tucked it and its large baking pan into an extra-large plastic bag, and stored the ham in the fridge. For the next six days I poured off the liquid that collected in the pan and replenished the salt daily. The night before I cooked the ham, I rinsed it, flushed the salt out of the incisions, and left it soaking in water.

The next morning I put the ham in a roasting pan and baked it “until the meat pulls away from the bone,” for over four hours–long enough so that I was the last person to make an appearance at Christmas lunch. I made a quite a grand entrance, but I think they were waiting for my ham rather than me.

My nephew and my sister started picking at the ham before the knife was even sharpened. “Even better than last year,” was the judgment, which drew others to the platter. It disappeared almost as fast as it was cut and pulled from the bone. And each time I’d see one of my cousins during the year, they’d ask me whether I was going to corn a ham this year.

Determined to get an earlier start this year, I had to compromise with a shoulder, unable to find a large ham which the butchers said wouldn’t be available until nearer Thanksgiving. I, however, corned it for the full 10 days this time and finished it off on the grill, trying to gild the lilly. In my view, the longer time and smaller size resulted in a taste that was too salty. And I don’t think the hour or so on the grill with pecan wood added anything, either. What I’m hoping is that someone else has combined corning and barbecuing and can furnish the clueless cue chef a recipe. Seems to me combining corning and grilling’s gotta be good.

Taking Your Cue from Football and the Gamecocks

Born in 1928 in Irwin, Pennsylvania, Jim Streeter, a.k.a. Coupe, moved to the South in 1939, lived in Raleigh during World War II, where he tried some classic Eastern North Carolina barbecue with vinegar sauce (just like one of the styles of barbecue in South Carolina around Kingstree), and the rest is history.

Question: How did the list get started?
Answer: As the different Members of Gamecock Central would travel to games, when they came back they would make a post saying about the good barbecue place they had found. Then before they traveled to a game, they would ask where was some place that had good barbecue. Before we knew it we had a good BBQ list. Then Brian Shoemaker, GamecocksCentral’s Owner, set up a BBQ Page, and I have been looking after it for some time.

Q: Tell me about becoming a Gamecock and what that means to you.
My bussiness partner in South Carolina was a Star Gamecock in the 1930s. 4 Letterman, Bru Boineau.
Q: I’m guessing you’re retired?
A: I tried to retire in 1989 and have retired several times since then. I was a sideline Photographer for awhile, but I realized that I was getting too old and couldn’t move fast enough.
It’s not the Running Back that gets you its the Linebacker that is going after him.
Q: As a longtime pilot, you used to fly first a 1941 J3 Cub, then later a 1946 Champ, and finally a 1946 classic Ercoupe. Is that where Coupe came from?
A: My handle on Fighting Gamecocks Forum ( I started this Message Board in 1997 and later merged with Brian Shoemaker’s Gamecock Central) was Ercoupe, but later shortened to Coupe.
Q: You used to race stock cars?
A: I drove Modified/Sportsman Stock Cars in the early 50s back when Big Bill (Bill France Sr.) France was getting started.
Q: What’s your earliest memory of barbecue?
A: 1939 at the age of 11. Frankly the Vineger & Pepper turned me off at first.
Q: When did you become acquainted with South Carolina barbecue?
A: I owned and operated Streeter’s Moving and Storage in several locations in North and South Carolina, from 1958 to 1989.I first discovered Mustard Base BBQ when I opened a couple of Branch Offices in South Carolina. So, Mustard Base in 1959, vinegar and pepper base in 1962, and in 1966 Ketchup Base and Tomato Base. We have a unique situation in SC with four different kinds af sauce.
Q: Were your parents or any relatives involved in backyard (or other) barbecue preparation?
A: No, but my Dad was a butcher and he knew good Pork.
Q: What do you think happens to people to transform them into what I call a “barbecue obsessive” like myself?
A: Its sorta like Opium.
Q: Having eaten South Carolina barbecue for years, I’ve always thought that it doesn’t get the respect nationally that it deserves, unlike, for instance, Texas or North Carolina Cue. Why do you think that is?
A: We just got a late start publisizing it.
Q: Why do you think people get so very passionate about what is, after all, is just food?
A: “Its a way of Life.”

Fine Swine Barbecue Wine

“I might have been joking last year,” said Richard Childress, owner of Childress Vineyards and head of the legendary Childress NASCAR team, “when I said I hoped our town might be known as the capital of swine and fine wine.”
Who knows whether his winemaker, Mark Friszolowski, thought his boss’ wisecrack was funny. No matter because Friszolowski and Childress laughed all the way to the bank last year–and then vinted 500 cases for this year’s festival. Made from predominantly merlot grapes, Friszolowski says Fine Swine Wine has a hint of sugar and a whiff of oak: “The semi-sweet, fruity flavor is a perfect match for hickory-smoked barbecue.”
Professor B.B. Cue’s panel of barbecue lovers agreed: “Definitely fruity but dry,” one of them said. “Fruity without being treacly. The spice in it keeps it going,” another opined.
And, surprisingly, the panel thought that it went fine with all three styles of barbecue, two of them North Carolina-based. The majority of tasters thought it went best with the spicy Scott’s sauce, which is a personal favorite of mine. We thought that the ‘cue we’d least like to eat with it was the Memphis-sauced, sweet cue.
The larger question, our veteran cue eaters (and enthusiastic wine drinkers) agreed, is whether any wine really complements classic cue, especially barbecue with a tangy or spicy sauce. “Give me a beer–and a lager at that” one barbecue addict said. “I like the picture of the spotted pig on the label more than the wine,” said another, “and that the proceeds go the Mental Health Association.”

“Nothing brings out the taste of barbecue like sweet tea or good old Coca-Cola, vinted in Atlanta,” said one taste tester with a drawl.

Who Sugared the Ribs and Sweetened up the Barbecue Sauce

I don’t understand why barbecue got married to sugar.
Say “barbecue sauce” to anyone, and most likely they will imagine a red tomato liquid with spices and sweeteners. Why did barbecue sauce change so much from the original early American mix of vinegar and pepper to a more complex mix of tomatoes sauce, spices, sugar and other seasonings? Nowadays you’ll even find a lot of sugared sauce in the South where peppered vinegar ruled long before tomatoes were considered safe to eat.
More than 50 sweeteners are on the market today. The name makes little difference, except for the high fructose corn syrup we’ve all heard about. Flavors vary, but sweet is sweet, be it from cane, beet, corn, honey, fruit or maple sap.
Everybody knows that barbecue cooked to perfection needs no sugar or other seasonings. Wherever you look in the competition barbecue network today, however, as well as in barbecue restaurants, you see cooks on a sugar kick. they rub their meat with sugar, they inject their meat with sugar, they mop or spray their meat with sweetness as they cook it, and they put sugared sauce on their meat when they serve it. Sometimes they glaze it with sugar. How and why, I wonder, did this candy-splashed approach to cooking and serving barbecue get started.
My first taste of barbecue sauce was in Oklahoma City when I was a child. The sauce was on a barbecue beef sandwich. It was sugared and spiced and red. Red tomato catsup laced with spices, herbs, sugar and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Back then that was pretty much the usual sauce, and today even more so. Although I still like the sweet stuff of my childhood–in moderation–my taste for sauces has become broader over the years. Now I also like sauces that are light on sugar or sans sugar and heavy on the vinegar or mustard or both, especially when barbecue pork is on the plate. As for barbecue beef, it’s OK served with optional sweet sauce on the side, but I agree with Kreuz and Smitty’s in Lockhart, Texas: perfect barbecue meat needs no sauce, sweet or otherwise. Admittedly, they are no strangers to salt and pepper.
When we cook slow and low, rendering most of the fat out of meat, why do we undo the health benefits of the barbecue method of cooking by adding high-carb, empty calorie sweetness? It’s not the meat that makes us fat. It’s the sugar.

Ardie Davis is a barbecue legend, the founder of Greasehouse University where you can get your Ph. B., or doctorate in barbecue. He is the author of two books and has two more coming out in April, 25 Essentials: Techniques for Smoking and 25 Essentials: Techniques for Grilling, both to be published by The Harvard Common Press. He lives outside of Kansas City when he’s not on the road, tasting or cooking barbecue.

This Barbecue Joint Is Anything But A Joint

I didn’t mince my words when I called the co-owner, Jonathan Childres, as I recovered from a lunch of lustrous pork ribs, painted in red sauce and cooked to tender perfection: “What’s with a barbecue restaurant smack dab in the middle of the barbecue belt that may very well be better known for its brussells sprouts than for its barbecue?” And what I didn’t say is that from the outside, it looks more like a day spa than a barbecue restaurant.

“I think our sides have a lot of notoriety because that’s what Rachel Ray had when she came,” Childres said without being the least bit defensive. “We only use fresh vegetables and we get them when we can from local farmers. I spend most Saturday mornings at the farmer’s market.” He gives his co-owner Damon Latas credit for the sides and for most of the cooking: “Damon’s a real chef. I’m a cook.”

Take the brussels sprouts, which they were regrettably out of when I took my wife there specifically so she could try them. They slice them about 3/8-inch thick and blanch them before putting them on ice. Then just after someone orders sprouts, Damon gets a pan going with some of their house-smoked, molasses-cured bacon and sizzles them up with a little garlic. “Put bacon on cardboard and soften it up and it’s good,” says Childres.The result, trust me, would make anyone eat their vegetables without encouragement from their momma.
The sensational tamales come from a Guatemalan cook, who used to cook some of her native treats for the staff before being asked to cook them for patrons. She also makes empanadas. This willingness to stray from traditional barbecue sides came from Childres’ experience running Backstreet Cafe and Latas’ years at Henry’s Bistro, both well-known Chapel Hill eateries.

Then I dropped the big question, even though I already knew the answer to it and my friends from Greenville have already guessed: the method of cooking. “I have all the admiration in the world for anyone who does pit cooking, but I don’t want to do it.” And Childres says that with a little expertise, good barbecue can be made with a gas-fired cooker with a fire box to give the cue a smoky taste. “We’re trying to let the sweetness of the pork come through and we want you also to taste and smell the wood.” Which is where oak and hickory chips come in. Then there’s the mild and subtle vinegar sauce: “We want the sauce to be a counterpoint to that and not cover up the sweetnesss of the meat and the taste.”

I told him that I thought that the pulled pork was excellent for not being pit-fired, but that the ribs were where the Joint really shined, especially the sauce. “Let me tell you about that sauce,” he said. When he was working at Backstreet cooking Cajun and Creole, people kept telling him they wanted some barbecue. He had a sauce recipe of his own, he said, that was so-so and he asked the chef, Bob Bridges, whether he had a sauce recipe.”Chef said he had a pretty good sauce recipe, and then he said, “You know my family are the Bridges that do barbecue down in Shelby, don’t you?” And so was born the red sauce, which goes on the chicken, ribs and brisket — tangy, a little bit spicy and not too sweet.

To me, barbecue is more than meat and if I had to lodge a single complaint against the traditional barbecues in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, it’s that their sides, for the most part are entirely predictable — frozen french fries and hush puppies, same-old slaw, beans right out of the can — and in Western North Carolina, few bother to offer collards or greens. But maybe that’s the definition of traditional.

I should add one thing, though. The Barbecue Joint is not cheap. It’s easy for two people to run up a $30 check. I totally understand that using fresh ingredients, many of them local grown, is the cause and I’m all for it, but don’t go expecting fast-food prices because it’s not fast food. Also you should know The Barbecue Joint is planning to move around the end of this year, at which time they’ll be expanding the menu and their space. But the old favorites will all be there, Childres assured me. And, yes, they’ll have brussells sprouts.

Who Knew? N.C. Western Cue Was Inspired in Deutschland

From Holy Smoke, The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, The Definitive Guide to the People, Recipes, and Lore:

“The humble creators of the Eastern tradition are known to God alone, but the pioneers of Piedmont-style have names: John Blackwelder of Salisbury; George Ridenhour, Jess Swicegood, and Sid Weaver of Lexington; and, a little later, Warner Stamey of Lexington, Shelby, and finally Greensboro. It’s said that you are what you eat, but it’s equally true that you eat what you are – and in one respect these men were all the same thing:

John Blackwelder’s family had been in Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, and Rowan counties since soon after Gottlieb Schwartzwalder came from Germany to British North America before the Revolution.

George Ridenhour’s people came to Salisbury in 1779 from Pennsylvania, where the Reitnaurs first settled after coming from German-speaking Alsace in 1719.

Jess Swicegood’s family came to America from Germany in 1724 and also passed through Pennsylvania before settling in Davidson County in 1775 and Americanizing their name from Schweissgouth.

Sid Weaver’s antecedents are a little more elusive, although many North Carolina Weavers started as Webers, and his ancestor Andrew was listed as “Andras” in the 1860 census.

The North Carolina Stameys, Warner included, are all descended from a Peter Stemme who came from Germany in 1734 and made his way down the valley of Virginia to what is now Lincoln County in 1767.

Can you spot the common element? Of course you can. When you add maternal lines, these family trees are as full of Germans as a Munich beer hall at Oktoberfest. Compare those family names to the big names in Eastern barbecue, good British ones like King, Parker, Jones, Ellis, Shirley, and Melton, no matter whether they’re affixed to white families or black ones. (Did we point out that Pi0edmont barbecue is a business conducted mostly by white folks?)”

From HOLY SMOKE: THE BIG BOOK OF NORTH CAROLINA BARBECUE by John Shelton Reed, Dale Volberg, Reed, and William McKinney. Copyright (c) 2008 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. http://www.uncpress.unc.edu