Despite my advice to the contrary, my daughter Katie has been pursuing food writing as a career track lately. As much as I wish she would find something better to do for a living, I am very proud of her efforts. Here’s a recent blog post from her regular gig at Whisked Foodie: http://whiskedfoodie.com/chefs-rant/a-happy-birthday-pig-pickin-party/

The box of chipotle-almond chocolate bark I got from Expressions Fine Chocolate on Wilcrest may have been the best appreciated Christmas gift this year. I got it for my wife, but I am “helping” her eat it.

Judging by the front room at Expressions Fine Chocolate, it looks like the place [...]]]>

The box of chipotle-almond chocolate bark I got from Expressions Fine Chocolate on Wilcrest may have been the best appreciated Christmas gift this year. I got it for my wife, but I am “helping” her eat it.

Judging by the front room at Expressions Fine Chocolate, it looks like the place is going out of business–there aren’t any candies in the glass display cases. The chocolatier and owner, Valerie, has got so many wholesale orders that she doesn’t bother trying to be a retailer anymore. But that doesn’t mean she won’t sell you some outstanding handmade chocolate at a great price. You just have to order them first, and then come and pick them up. Give her a call if you want to place an order.

We took a break from blogging over the holidays while our crackerjack IT staff worked on transferring our online operations to a new server after we got hacked. Christmas was spent on Greer’s Ferry Lake in the foothills of the Ozarks with the Klaasmeyer clan. We shipped in some Totten Inlet Virginica oysters since we couldn’t get any Texas bivalves and I smoke-roasted a beef loin roast on the Weber with some hickory wood.

The day after Christmas, O Rufus Lovett and I took off on another Zen BBQ jaunt through Georgia and Carolinas. Check the twitter hashtag #zenbbq for a list of stops. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m working on some recipes for barbecued pork shoulders and hams using the techniques I learned on the road.

The RobbWalsh.com “Texas Eats” website was down for more than a week due to technical difficulties. If you tried to find us while were out of commission, we apologize.

It seems our server got raided by interweb evil doers. We ended up with the  “WordPress Pharma Hack.” Every time we tried to send [...]]]> The RobbWalsh.com “Texas Eats” website was down for more than a week due to technical difficulties. If you tried to find us while were out of commission, we apologize.

It seems our server got raided by interweb evil doers. We ended up with the  “WordPress Pharma Hack.” Every time we tried to send a link of our site to Facebook, or anywhere else, we transmitted a message about where to buy drugs online.

Cleaning things up and moving to a new server was a little more complicated than it sounded. Our technical department (Pableaux “Bayou Dog” Johnson) had to redo all the photo links and otherwise tinker under the hood.

Thinking about people who spread Spam (not you Hormel) and hack websites makes me angry. Sometimes I daydream about what I would do if I ever got hold of one of these slimeballs. Hacking is a form of theft, right? So would a convicted hacker get his hands chopped off under Islamic law? I know a pitmaster in South Carolina named Tim Hyman who would be perfect for the job of punishing hackers–he is a sort of hacker himself.

I learned about B&B Charcoal from the old-timers at the Washington Lodge of the Sons of Hermann. These guys have been barbecueing on an open pit since the 1950s and their lodge has been holding barbecues since the late 1800s, so maybe they know a thing or two.

The modern Texas barbecue smoker [...]]]> I learned about B&B Charcoal from the old-timers at the Washington Lodge of the Sons of Hermann. These guys have been barbecueing on an open pit since the 1950s and their lodge has been holding barbecues since the late 1800s, so maybe they know a thing or two.

The modern Texas barbecue smoker burns hardwood and imparts a strong smoky flavor to the meat. Old-fashioned Southern barbecue is cooked over coals and doesn’t have much of smoky taste. In the old days, barbecuers burned seasoned hardwood in a fireplace and shoveled the hot coals into the barbecue pit. But for the last 20 years or so, the barbecue crew at the Sons of Hermann Lodge in Washington has been starting their fire with lump charcoal. “But you can’t use just any charcoal,” veteran BBQ man Bubba Roese confided.

B&B Charcoal company in Weimar sells lump charcoal made from oak and brags that their curing method removes acid and resins that cause inferior charcoal to impart bad flavors to the meat. I found B&B Lump Oak Charcoal at my local HEB grocery store in Houston. You can call them at 1-855-BBQCOAL to find out where to buy their charcoal near you.

Snow’s brisket is famous. It comes with the somewhat dubious Calvin Trillin seal of approval. Ever since Texas Monthly rated Snow’s the best barbecue joint in Texas, I have felt it my duty to join the crowd and make a pilgrimage to the hamlet of Lexington. Yesterday, I got lucky–I scored a sample [...]]]> Snow’s brisket is famous. It comes with the somewhat dubious Calvin Trillin seal of approval. Ever since Texas Monthly rated Snow’s the best barbecue joint in Texas, I have felt it my duty to join the crowd and make a pilgrimage to the hamlet of Lexington. Yesterday, I got lucky–I scored a sample of their brisket at the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival without a pre-dawn drive in the country.


But I was called out in public for not sampling Snow’s until now: “What took so long, Robb?” asked @BarbecueSnob Daniel Vaughn via twitter.

Back in 2008, I explained my recalcitrance and questioned Calvin Trillin’s judgement at length in a post on the Houston Press blog. To sum it up–Snow’s is only open briefly on Saturday mornings. To insure a place in line, I have been told I need to be there by 8 am. The joint is better than two hours from my house in Houston, so that means getting up on Saturday morning at five something to go stand in line for brisket. Not an appealing prospect, especially when you have a wife and kids with their own Saturday morning agendas. And then there are the doubts. My inner curmudgeon finds something a little suspect about a barbecue joint that is open so seldom. “Anybody can make great barbecue for a few hours on Saturday morning,” Rick Schmidt at Kruez Market scoffs.

But I gave Snow’s brisket a fair chance. And to be honest, it wasn’t nearly as good as Franklin’s brisket which was being sliced a few booths away. Apparently, my opinion was shared by the rest of the crowd who voted for the “People’s Choice Awards.” Franklin’s won the Best Brisket category. And Franklin’s is actually open at lunch time. Kudos to the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival for providing a chance to finally compare the two famous briskets side by side.

A new feature of the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival this year was The Barbecue Genius Counter, staffed by students and professors from the Texas A&M Animal Sciences Department Meat Science Center. At last, an opportunity for barbecue fanatics to find answers to such burning questions as: What is a tri-tip and how do you cook it? And: Where can I find an 80 pound whole pig for my barbecue pit?

The Barbecue Genius Corner was also answering questions about Foodways Texas BBQ Summer Camp which be held again next June at the Texas A&M Meat Science Center in College Station. The event is limited to 50 students and is sure to sell out. Your best bet to get a ticket is to become a member of Foodways Texas right away since Foodways Texas members will get advance word when tickets go on sale.

At dawn on the morning of Sunday October 16, I drove into the parking lot of the Washington Lodge of the Sons of Hermann. As I described in an earlier post, a handful of old fraternal organizations in this part of Texas have preserved the pit barbecue style that was once common all [...]]]> At dawn on the morning of Sunday October 16, I drove into the parking lot of the Washington Lodge of the Sons of Hermann. As I described in an earlier post, a handful of old fraternal organizations in this part of Texas have preserved the pit barbecue style that was once common all across the South. This Sons of Hermann Lodge was established in 1898 and the members claim that their barbecue tradition goes back that far too.

I heard about the event from Bubba Roese while eating a burger at the legendary 105 Grocery. Bubba and I were talking about Texas cooking when he got onto the subject of barbecue. He told me that the German meat markets in Lockhart and Giddings weren’t really cooking barbecue. Barbecue isn’t supposed to taste like smoke, he said. He invited me to come to the Sons of Hermann hall on the third Sunday in October to see how it’s done. It took me a couple of years, but I made it.
Twice a year, once in October and once in April, the lodge holds barbecue fundraisers. At the April event, only chicken is served. But at the annual fundraiser held on the third Sunday of October, pork and beef are barbecued.

Pork butts and briskets are the preferred cuts today and the fuel is charcoal, but 50 years ago, lambs and the small pigs called shoats were slaughtered on this spot and cooked over wood coals.

“We didn’t barbecue beef until we started buying briskets in the 1960s, recalls Bubba, who has been attending barbecues at the lodge since the 1940s. Back in the 1940s and early 1950s, the animals were slaughtered on the spot. And you couldn’t kill a steer unless you were having a really huge barbecue. “Refrigerators were pretty rare, and it was just too much meat to handle. Texas barbecue was mostly whole hogs and whole lambs on an open pit back then.” I asked him if anybody still barbecues whole hogs in Texas today. “Some people rented the hall for a wedding not long ago and they cooked whole hogs out here,” Bubba said. “You can get six hogs on this barbecue pit.”

“We don’t use wood coals anymore, dry wood is too expensive. We’ve switched over to B&B charcoal. It’s a Texas charcoal company, they make lump charcoal and its really easy to cook with.” The pit was open in the old days, but today it’s covered with sheets of cardboard to retain heat and moisture and cut down on fuel consumption.

While the rest of the meat is cooking, the barbecue crew likes to make special items for their own consumption. There were several coils of homemade sausage and couple of rabbits cooking that morning.
The Sons of Hermann barbecuemen started their fire at 2am and cooked the beef and pork until around 10:30, when it was time to start carving for lunch service. The brisket was a revelation, tender, juicy and nicely flavored with charcoal. I didn’t really miss the smoke. The pork was succulent and practically squirting fat, but it wasn’t cooked long enough to yield the mushy “pulled pork” texture that’s popular in much of the South.

It was a rare honor to attend this event, interview the participants about old-fashioned barbecue and take down their mop sauce and barbecue sauce recipes.

I was gobsmacked to see that the centuries-old Southern barbecue tradition has been preserved in Texas.

The “Brown Beef” (top), “Brown Pig” (center) and “Little Pig Ham” (bottom) are the three most popular sandwiches at Neely’s Sandwich Shop on East Grand Avenue in Marshall, Texas. The first is made with chopped barbecued brisket and sells for $2.85, the last is made with sliced barbecued ham and sells for $3.25. [...]]]>
The “Brown Beef” (top), “Brown Pig” (center) and “Little Pig Ham” (bottom) are the three most popular sandwiches at Neely’s Sandwich Shop on East Grand Avenue in Marshall, Texas. The first is made with chopped barbecued brisket and sells for $2.85, the last is made with sliced barbecued ham and sells for $3.25. But the $2.85 chopped barbecued pork sandwich outsells both of the other two by a wide margin–it’s become so iconic that most people mistakenly call the restaurant “Neely’s Brown Pig.”

The restaurant’s barbecue pit is a steel cylinder type and burns hickory wood–the pork butts, briskets and hams are all wood-smoked. The “Brown Pig” is made by chopping the smoked pork butts in a Buffalo Chopper, and then seasoning the ground meat with barbecue sauce. It is served on a small hamburger bun, spread with a little mayo and dressed with shredded lettuce. Bill Moyer, a Marshall native and Neely’s fan called it “the best sandwich between here and China.”

When the restaurant was founded in 1927 as Neely and Sons, the chopped pork sandwiches sold for 15 cents each. The name was changed to Neely and Brothers when James Neely’s father died and he took over. Later it became Neely’s Sandwich shop. The current location was originally a drive-in. You can still order from a take-out window on the front of the place, the last vestige of the old method of operation.

Two Neely sisters still own the building, but the business was sold to an employee, Sally Cobb, a few years ago. Sally still works as a waitress at the restaurant she owns, darting from table to table taking orders and delivering Brown Pigs.

It’s interesting that chopped pork is more popular than chopped beef at Neely’s. James Neely’s barbecued pork sandwich was patterened after the chopped pork sandwiches at the seminal drive-in chain called the Pig Stand. When you order a Brown Pig, you hold in your hand a link to the 1920s, when the drive-in was born and Southern-style barbecued pork was a lot more common in Texas.

Foodways Texas announces BBQ Summer Camp dates and details: From Foodways Texas: “Mark your calendars for June 8-10, 2012, for the Foodways Texas Barbecue Summer Camp held in partnership with the Texas A&M University Meat Science Center in College Station, Texas. Tickets for the camp will go on sale sometime in November and we [...]]]> Foodways Texas announces BBQ Summer Camp dates and details:
From Foodways Texas: “Mark your calendars for June 8-10, 2012, for the Foodways Texas Barbecue Summer Camp held in partnership with the Texas A&M University Meat Science Center in College Station, Texas. Tickets for the camp will go on sale sometime in November and we hope to announce a preliminary schedule of panels, pitmasters and events at that time. We will also expand the camp slightly to include a full day Friday and Saturday, as well as a half-day on Sunday. We expect you’ll be covered in at least four different types of wood smoke and have brine stains all over your clothes by the time you leave.

If hanging around in meat lockers sounds like fun...

BBQ Capital of the World?

After defeating South Carolina in a barbecue contest held in Washington DC back in the 1980s, Skylight Inn declared that tiny Ayden NC was the Barbecue Capital of the World.

Whole hogs smoking at Skylight Inn

Lexington NC also claims that title–it seems our nation has [...]]]>

BBQ Capital of the World?

After defeating South Carolina in a barbecue contest held in Washington DC back in the 1980s, Skylight Inn declared that tiny Ayden NC was the Barbecue Capital of the World.

Whole hogs smoking at Skylight Inn

Lexington NC also claims that title–it seems our nation has a lot of barbecue capitals. If Skylight Inn called itself the nation’s whole hog barbecue capital, I don’t know who would argue. It was by far the best whole hog barbecue I ever tasted.

Whole hog Q, cornbread and slaw for breakfast

The combination of crispy skin, juicy middlings and dark ham meat on hot unleavened cornbread was an amazing breakfast.

Feediing the cookhouse furnace at Lexington (North Carolina) Barbecue

Pork shoulders and a couple of turkey breasts on the pit at Lexington Barbecue

The cookhouse at Stamey’s in Greenville has three [...]]]>

Feediing the cookhouse furnace at Lexington (North Carolina) Barbecue

Pork shoulders and a couple of turkey breasts on the pit at Lexington Barbecue

The cookhouse at Stamey’s in Greenville has three furnaces and 12 pits.

The cookhouse and woodpile at Stamey's in Greenville North Carolina

Inside the cookhouse at Stamey's