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.

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

Two Piece Basket at Hill Country Chicken in NYC

The fried chicken at Hill Country Chicken in Manhattan was pretty good, so were the french fries and cole slaw. The chicken was fried to perfection, it would have been really great if they hadn’t sprinkled so much salty seasoning on it at the [...]]]>

Two Piece Basket at Hill Country Chicken in NYC

The fried chicken at Hill Country Chicken in Manhattan was pretty good, so were the french fries and cole slaw. The chicken was fried to perfection, it would have been really great if they hadn’t sprinkled so much salty seasoning on it at the end. And I like a lot of salt.

The owner of Hill Country Chicken, Marc Glosserman, is a Texan whose grandfather was once the mayor of Lockhart. Glosserman also owns Hill Country Barbecue Market in Manhattan. I have never been to the barbecue place, but I couldn’t resist trying the chicken.

I took Sam Sifton, the restaurant critic of the New York Times, to Babe’s Chicken Dinner House in Roanoke when he visited Texas just before the Superbowl. In his article, Sifton wrote, “New York has nothing to compare with the excellence of Babe’s fried chicken.” New York was in the middle of a fried chicken fad, he told me and everybody up there was obsessing about chicken. His comments made me curious to try the NYC version.

James Boo

He was particularly disturbed by the Doughnut Plant, a place that dipped raised doughnuts in lavender, expensive chocolate and vanilla bean glazes. Boo is Korean-American from L.A. and he knew a lot of Korean-Americans who grew up working long hours in their parents’ doughnut shops to help the family survive. In light of their struggles, he found the yuppie doughnuts contemptible.

Boo wasn’t a big fan of New York’s BBQ joints either. In his treatise “Death by BBQ,” Boo described a solo cross country pilgrimage from D.C. to Austin looking for authentic BBQ. I was so impressed by Boo’s devotion to BBQ that I asked him to have a beer with me while I was in NYC last May.

The yuppification of blue collar eateries is a fascinating subject. We wrestled with the issue in building El Real Tex-Mex Cafe. I also addressed it in the Houston Press in a review titled “The Inkblot Test” in which I compared the venerable Triple A diner on Airline in Houston with a yuppie imitation of a diner downtown. (The downtown place is no longer in business while the Triple A is still around.)

I liked the Triple A, but my girlfriend at the time liked the yuppie place better. And she had a good point: Entering a greasy diner full of truck drivers was not the same experience for me as it was for an attractive blond in high heels. Her insights made me more sympathetic to the fact that we all see the world from a unique point of view.

Fried Chicken at Barbecue Inn

My ex-girlfriend would probably love Hill Country Chicken. The food is tasty, the place is cute, they’ve got Modelo in a can. For under $15, its a helluva cheap dinner in NYC. Maybe it isn’t Babe’s Chicken Dinner House or Barbecue Inn, but if they laid off the seasoning sprinkler a little, it would be a damn good imitation.

I thought this was a hallal pizzeria, what’s with the pepperoni?” I asked the Mexican-American pizza maker.

“It’s hallal pepperoni–it’s made out of beef,” he replied. Crespo’s Pizza is located near Beltway 8 in West Houston at 10232 Westheimer (turn on Seagler). The Bosnians who hang out at Pita + a little farther [...]]]>

I thought this was a hallal pizzeria, what’s with the pepperoni?” I asked the Mexican-American pizza maker.

“It’s hallal pepperoni–it’s made out of beef,” he replied.

Crespo’s Pizza is located near Beltway 8 in West Houston at 10232 Westheimer (turn on Seagler). The Bosnians who hang out at Pita + a little farther down Westheimer rave about this pizzeria. The organic whole wheat crust has a pleasant chewy consistency–it’s nothing special compared to a coal oven pie. The big appeal is that Crespo’s pizzas are hallal. As you may have noticed, Bosnian food doesn’t include any pork. The country was part of the Turkish Empire for a few hundred years and the Muslim hallal tradition is still part of the culinary culture.

My kids like Crespo’s pizza and at $13.50 for a large, I like the price. So we will probably go back–even though we are swine-loving people.

Needless to say Crespo’s is also popular with Houston’s huge Muslim Indian, Pakistani and Middle Eastern Arab communities. And while it isn’t exactly Kosher, many of my Jewish friends would probably say, “close enough.”

Chris Shepherd

Chef Chris Shepherd’s new restaurant, Underbelly, will be next door to the Hay Merchant Craft Beer Bar in the old Chances building–across the street from our very own Tex-Mex joint, El Real! I ran into Shepherd at the Farmer’s Market last weekend. Alison Cook had just reported the news. Underbelly will [...]]]>

Chris Shepherd

Chef Chris Shepherd’s new restaurant, Underbelly, will be next door to the Hay Merchant Craft Beer Bar in the old Chances building–across the street from our very own Tex-Mex joint, El Real! I ran into Shepherd at the Farmer’s Market last weekend. Alison Cook had just reported the news. Underbelly will be a Farm-to-Table establishment with a Nose-to-Tail butcher shop. Shepherd told Alison Cook that the name is not only a nod to his famous dish–fried pork belly with Steen’s syrup–it’s also a reference to the seedy neighborhood where he is locating the place. Hey, wait a minute!

I told him he should put some outdoor dining tables on the sidewalk so that our customers and his customers can hit beach balls back and forth across Westheimer!

The Greenberg Smoked Turkey

My family consumed two Greenberg Smoked Turkeys and a turducken over the Thanksgiving holiday. (There were 26 of us.) I didn’t know the fascinating story of the Greenberg Smoked Turkey until I read about it in my friend John T. Edge’s column in his New York Times. The Tyler, [...]]]>

The Greenberg Smoked Turkey

My family consumed two Greenberg Smoked Turkeys and a turducken over the Thanksgiving holiday. (There were 26 of us.) I didn’t know the fascinating story of the Greenberg Smoked Turkey until I read about it in my friend John T. Edge’s column in his New York Times. The Tyler, Texas turkey smoking operation turns out some 200,000 birds every holiday season and they’ve been at it for decades. As soon as I heard about it, I had to try one.

The mail order Greenberg Turkeys cost $50 each for two 12-pounders. The mail order turkeys are frozen before shipping. They were nearly black and extremely smoky-flavored with big veins of greenish seasoning that had been injected all through the meat. I wish I could say I loved the Greenberg turkeys. I was expecting them to be a lot better than the ones I smoke on the barbecue in my backyard. The seasoning was great–I think I’ll start using my Cajun injector to imitate it. But the bird was dry. For this flaw, I blame the freezing. We were celebrating at my brother’s place near Rockwall, less than an hour from Tyler–for a fairer comparison, I should have driven down there and picked up the turkeys myself. If you get them at the plant, I assume they aren’t frozen.

The best thing about the Greenberg turkey was the gumbo I made from the bones the next day. The stock was so smoke-flavored, I had to add a quart of chicken stock to tone it down a little. I made a copper-colored butter roux and added ten cups of chopped onions, celery and red peppers along with the leftover turkey cut into dice and a pound of andouille sausage. After a few hours of simmering, I served the bold gumbo in big bowls over mounds of leftover mashed potatoes. It was awesome. It tasted great over leftover sweet potatoes too.

I guess the moral of the story is: If you are going to buy a Greenberg Smoked Turkey, it’s worth driving to Tyler to get it. It’s cheaper that way too.