Vaughn Daniel - The prophets of smoked meat: a journey through Texas barbecue

For 10,343 reasons this book is dedicated to our wives, Jennifer and Erin. Their unwavering patience allowed the laughable itinerary required to create these pages.

Contents

Longhorns at the King Ranch outside of Kingsville

Pit at the Salt Lick in Driftwood

Hershel Tomanetz at Snows BBQ in Lexington

The author and Sam Watkins at Bubbas Smokehouse in San Angelo

Hwy 90 at night between Langtry and Comstock

In the end, it was made deliciously clear that, whether your taste be for barbacoa, brisket, or ribs, youll find no better quality and variety than that in Texas.

LOLIS ERIC ELIE

Smoke is mysterious, fire is uncertain, and pitmen are expensive. So the mystery, uncertainty, and expense of taking the chance to make great barbecue is being replaced by the quantifiable methods of always making pretty good cue.

JIM SHAHIN

The author at Blacks Barbecue in Lockhart

I make no pretenseI am not a native Texan. I first set foot in Texas in 1998. My Oklahoma-born girlfriend and I were in Dallas for the annual football game held at the State Fair of Texas between the University of Texas and their archrival the University of Oklahoma. Her fatherwho would become my father-in-law six years laterhad bought us both our plane tickets and game tickets, and I was giddy with excitement to take in my first live big-time college football game. The Sooners were playing the Longhorns, and my girlfriends father was a Sooner fan, so I was obliged to wear crimson. Come halftime, the outlook for the Sooners with just three points was grim, and our groups spirits were low. My enthusiasm dampened, I darted out to the concessions to get some foodin this case, a rib sandwich from the Smokey Johns tent. I had always loved ribs. I paid quickly and ran back to our seats with my bundle of foil-wrapped smokiness. The band was leaving the field as I hurriedly unwrapped and bit ferociously into my sandwich. Those idiots left the bones in! I exclaimed to no one in particular. I was just an infant when it came to Texas barbecue and didnt realize....

Three years later I returned to Dallas for good. I didnt know it, but I was about to experience a personal awakening similar to the one Id had five years earlier, when I arrived at Tulane University in New Orleans, just a naive kid from small-town Ohio. Everything about life in the Big Easy was radically different from the hay fields and dairy farms of my youth, and I found my place in New Orleans through food. Before my first semester was complete I was exploring new parts of the city for that perfect poboy, navigating what seemed like a whole new language just to get the right steaming bowl of seafood, and relishing the social lubricant of a crawfish boil, where hands stained red from spice could barely grip that third bottle of Abita. Lessons in food are lessons in culture, so the more food discoveries I made, the more at home I felt. After graduation, spurred by love, I drove straight to Texas. Once I arrived, it was again food that I sought to guide me as well as ground me in this strange new place.

My first week in town, Jessica, a good friend and Dallas native, suggested we dine at Peggy Sue BBQ for a taste of authentic Texas barbecue. Peggy Sue BBQ is a sit-down joint with table service and a decidedly fifties vibe in the upscale University Park neighborhood. But all I remember about that meal was the bold smokiness of the brisket, which I doused in the houses signature spicy sauce that comes warm in a miniature metal pitcher. In Ohio, brisket is corned and boiled and served with a side of limp cabbage. My first taste of Texas brisket was a revelation. It awakened a desire for more of it.

A few years later my smoked-meat palate would be revolutionized all over again. My good friend Sam and I took a weekend road trip to Central Texas, the promised land of Texas barbecue. We planned a pilgrimage to all the hallowed barbeque joints there. In these sacred spots, butcher paper soaked to transparency is the only thing that resembles a plate, and forks are considered superfluousinstead, you use your hands, lubricated with animal fat, to convey the meat to your eager mouth. Even hours after you leave one of these barbecue joints, the smell of your clothes gives away your journey. But before Sam and I hit Central Texas, I knew none of this. I was a sheltered Dallasite who was used to a knife and fork and plenty of sweet sauce. But after repeating the primal experience a total of sixteen times over that weekend, I was never again able to enjoy mediocre barbecue the way I once had, and my quest to taste the best of real Texas barbecue began.

Its taken me years to understand, but Texas barbecue is defined more by what it isnt than what it is. A basic (and correct) definition might be simply seasoned meat cooked to tenderness over hardwood smoke, but Texas barbeque encompasses so much more than that. Tell someone outside of Texas that barbecue sauce is actually peripheral to smoked meat in the Lone Star State and youll get the same blank stare youre sure to receive when attempting to explain to a Yankee that beans dont belong in chili. Ask a pitmaster for his or her rub recipe and surprisingly, theyll usually give it to youalong with a grin that lets you know the secret to the transcendent barbecue isnt in the ingredients but in the technique, a process theyve repeated a few thousand times. Sadly for you, that pinch of onion powder isnt getting you on that mountaintop. Texans cherish the simplicity that the best barbecue joints in this great state deliver, and any outsiders lucky enough to get a taste of it will return home with a hole in their charred soul.

The authors car on Hwy 180 near the New Mexico border

A balanced meal at Smittys Market in Lockhart

The author at Hwy 152 and Texas Beef Rd. just west of Borger

After visiting more than five hundred barbecue joints across the state, I still yearn for new horizons. In my search for great Texas barbecue Ive sampled some of the best of what this state has to offer, but the potential rush of discovery continues to lead me down back roads and through questionable neighborhoods. Theres always so much to keep learningand tasting. The city of Memphis alone requires two barbecue styles (wet and dry) of its own, so why shouldnt the Lone Star Statelargest in the lower forty-eightcontain more than one style? Still, my experience has taught me that many people are surprised to learn that there are four distinct styles that characterize Texas barbecue, and that we eat more than just brisket. Each individual style has a loose geographical origin, but none have strict boundaries.