Bryan King - 12 Bones Smokehouse: an updated edition with more barbecue recipes from Asheville, NC

First published in 2015 by Voyageur Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc., 400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

2015 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

Text 2015 Bryan King, Angela King, and Shane Heavner

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

King, Bryan, 1974

12 Bones Smokehouse : a mountain BBQ cookbook / Bryan King, Angela King, Shane Heavner, Mackensy Lunsford.

pages cm

Includes index.

Digital edition: 978-1-62788-642-0
Hardcover edition: 978-0-76034-726-3

ISBN 978-0-7603-4990-8 (paperback)

1. Barbecuing. 2. Side dishes (Cooking) 3. 12 Bones Smokehouse. I. King, Angela, 1977- II. Heavner, Shane. III. Lunsford, Mackensy. IV. Title. V. Title: Twelve Bones Smokehouse.

TX840.B3K4525 2015

641.5'784--dc23

2014044799

Acquisitions Editor: Thom O'Hearn

Art Director: James Kegley

Page Design: Kim Winscher

Photography: Taylor Mathis

Photograph : Pattiy Torno

A MOUNTAIN BBQ COOKBOOK

King, Heavner, and Lunsford

12 Bones Smokehouse began its life in the belly of a squat and unassuming cinder block shack. It was square in the middle of a floodplain in Asheville, North Carolina. In fact, the building was still filled with river scum after it had lost its last restauranta greasy spoon frequented by warehouse workers and dump truck driversto chest-high floodwaters. The previous owner simply gave up.

The founders, Tom Montgomery and Sabra Kelley, cleaned things up, hung a few signs, and got the smoker running. They hoped to lure a little more than a hundred diners into the restaurant daily with the sweet smell of smoked meat and a marquis outside advertising Tender Butts and Sweet Racks.

Partly due to that sign, Sabra says the first calls to the restaurant were from people asking if they were opening a strip club. But by the time Tom and Sabra passed the restaurant on to current owners Bryan and Angela King, the transformation of 12 Bones was nearly unfathomable.

In those intervening years, Barack and Michelle Obama had eaten 12 Bones sweet racks three times. But they werent the only fans. The little cue shack that could began pushing close to a thousand customers some days. The entire neighborhood around the restaurant continued to change as well. Boutique restaurants and breweries became a stones throw away instead of a cars drive. But the restaurant has stayed more or less the same place it always was: a quirky little joint where people eat off metal plates and write on the walls.

When it comes to style, 12 Bones makes no apologies and declares no major allegiances. Want to argue about what city makes the best barbecue? Thats all fine and good, but 12 Bones makes room under its roof for all types. Just like the restaurant, in this book youll find odes to Memphis-style cue sitting beside a sauce that would be right at home in eastern Carolinathen turn the page and theres a recipe or two that would make folks from Kansas City smile. Of course theres also that rib sauce made with blueberries and chipotles, which might just be as close as you can get to Asheville-style barbecue.

So let the purists be the purists, fire up the grill, and enjoy some Southern cue, 12 Bones style.

Mackensy Lunsford

Over the years we have been asked some pretty funny questions at the restaurant: Are these old family recipes? Did President Obama have to pay for his meal? Can you ship ribs to California? What is that spice in the cornbread? Was this building underwater during the flood?

Youll find most of the answers, at least regarding the recipes, in this book.

Some of the recipes honor old family traditions, some are stolen from former places of employment and some are pure I-need-a-special-for-today last-minute genius. On the pages that follow, youll see a recipe for vinegar slaw that came from Sabras great-grandmother, Lilly Brightman, around 1890 in Kentucky. Our corn pudding, on the other hand, was the brainchild of Ron Brannon. He started 12 Bones with us, and many of the original recipes were ones that he and Tom perfected in the weeks before we opened by asking, usually at 3 a.m., What else can we throw into this smoker? (Sadly, Ron passed away before we got famous. He would have loved the notoriety.)

12 Bones has always been about the food and not much else. Luckily, when you open a restaurant focused on flavor alone, it is easy to inspire your staff as a team. And when youre on the 12 Bones team, we dont care if you have neck tattoos or wear a Mullet Styles of the World T-shirt, just as long as you can expertly prepare our delicious ribs the exact same way for 700 customers on a Tuesday. Piercings? We generally dont trust people who work in the restaurant industry who dont have them.

That may sound crazy, but its worked pretty well for us over the years. Everyone concentrates on the food and, for the most part, customers and staff alike enjoy the experience.

So much so, that sometimes people stick around for quite a while. After eating here a few times, and much personal introspection, Bryan and Angela moved from the tech world of Silicon Valley to the slower pace of Asheville in late 2011. Without much restaurant experience, they got a crash course in everything 12 Bones, learning every position from the dish pit to the smoker before taking over as owners. What can we say? 12 Bones seems to inspire a certain sort of devotion.

So it is with Chef Shane Heavner, who was raised about an hour away from here. He learned to cook from his great aunts and further honed his education at the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College Culinary Program at age 30. He joined the 12 Bones family in 2008 and became an integral part of everything we do around here. Many recipes in this book, in fact, belong to Shane.

We hope you enjoy this cookbook. It will at least answer the question of the spice in the cornbread. It also may just save you from the disastrous experience of shipping ribs. Oh, and dont take our treatise on cue as gospel; make sure to experiment a little with the recipes yourself. Thats how we got here, after all.