My smoker has been dormant for too long. Far too long. This weekend I jumped at the tiniest chance to fire it up, and smoked some ribs for Tamar, Andrew, and Rachel. Once again, all I could get at the local butcher were the gourmet back ribs, which (as I’ve said many times before) aren’t my absolute favorite. These were decently meaty, though, and had a good amount of fat.

I followed the usual routine – rubbed ‘em the night before with my usual mix of salt, pepper, cumin, garlic powder, paprika, brown sugar, celery seed. Into the fridge, out of the fridge, on at around 9:30, off at around 2:30. A good amount of time for ribs this size.

Everyone agreed these were the best ribs I’ve ever made. You can see from the pics below that they got a wonderful crust and the pink… well, it was all smoke ring. Booya. Flavorful, juicy, smoky, and falling off the bone. Literally.

Actually, it was kind of a problem for me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved ‘em. But part of the rib eating experience is picking it up and gnawing it off. On a good rib, you don’t have to work hard, and the meat just slides off the bone.

With these, I couldn’t even chop up the rack without most of the meat falling off. No one else seemed to think this was a problem. If I had it to do again, though, I’d take them off 30 minutes earlier, hoping they’d basically be just as tender and wonderful, but stay on the bone.

Sundays, 9 am to 1 pm
NewPark Mall Farmer’s Market
Newark, CA

Phat Matt’s BBQ is a catering and farmer’s market operation that serves brisket, tri-tip, pulled pork, and hot links fresh from their mobile smoking rig. I’ve had their pulled pork twice now. Usually they drench the pork in a thick, dark sauce more appropriate for brisket or ribs, but this time, when I asked, they told me that the pork already has a light vinegar sauce on it, so I ordered my pulled pork sandwich sans the incorrect sauce. (Amusingly, the guy plating the meat was in such a groove that he had to make the sandwich three times before he managed not to squirt the extra sauce on top, it was so automatic for him.)

It was a good move: their pork was tender, moist, and tasty. It had a good deal of smoke flavor, but my taste buds and the bags of charcoal I saw sitting around the smoker led me to believe that they are probably not smoking with hickory as is traditional for pork shoulders in North Carolina. (UPDATE: I guessed wrong! They do smoke with hardwood. See below.) Smoking with charcoal alone does impart flavor, but it’s harsher and less sweet than what you get from a good hardwood. When Judd and I smoke, we use a mix of charcoal (to sustain the fire) and hardwood chunks soaked in water (so they smolder nicely instead of catching fire).

Nonetheless, with the addition of a little of my homemade eastern Carolina-style vinegar sauce, my pulled pork sandwich turned into the closest thing to the real North Carolina deal that I’ve found in the Bay Area. Maybe next time I can talk them into selling it that way all the time — in the meantime, try picking up some pork from Phat Matt’s and adding your own vinegar sauce. The recipes from The Lexington Collection will steer you right. I use Dennis Rogers’ version, scaled down because I don’t go through a gallon of sauce as quickly as you might imagine.

UPDATE: Charlotte, one of the owners of Phat Matt’s, reports that they do slow-smoke their pulled pork and brisket offsite over various hardwoods and that the charcoal I saw is for grilling other meats. Also, they will provide more of their Lexington-style vinegar sauce upon request, which is great news for lovers of NC-style ‘cue. See her comment below for more details. Thanks, Charlotte!

6203 Millhouse Rd.
(Google Maps is a little off, though: it’s really at the corner of Millhouse/Mt. Sinai and Highway 86.)
Chapel Hill, NC
(919) 942-7576

Hours: Sometimes variable — call ahead. Closes before dinner Monday through Thursday; usually closed for a break during the winter holidays.

The Nutshell

The best eastern North Carolina-style BBQ you’ll ever eat, smoky, tender, and flavorful. Great traditional accompaniments like hushpuppies and sweet tea.

The Place

You might recall Allen & Son from the Los Angeles Times profile of owner and pit-master Keith Allen back in 2007. This venerable destination has been a North Carolina fixture for decades, so it made a fitting final stop on our Triangle BBQ itinerary. The homey dining room sits by itself near some railroad tracks outside of Chapel Hill. Inside, they have checkered tablecloths, a motley assortment of folding metal chairs and old wooden ones, and lots of reviews and memorabilia on the walls. If you walk around out back, you can see the well-worn cinderblock smoking pits.

The Meat

Especially after our excellent meal at The Barbecue Joint, we had high expectations for Allen & Son. We weren’t disappointed: Keith Allen’s product remains the best North Carolina-style ‘cue we’ve ever had. It was full of pork flavor, with a nice balance between tender inside pork and tasty outside brown. You can order the BBQ on a platter or in a sandwich, which comes on a soft (and quickly soggy) hamburger bun with a basic but satisfying slaw on top of the meat.

(Judd says: I for one arrived at Allen & Son expecting to be disappointed, if only because of the obscenely long build up and high expectations. Then, as we were leaving The Cue Joint, Andrew proclaimed that he wasn’t sure Allen & Son would be substantially better. Anyway, all this is to say, I think of it as an even greater achievement that Allen & Son knocked our socks off. I agree with everything Andrew said, and I’d add that the texture was perfect. With long-smoked pork it’s easy for the meat to get mushy, lose its integrity, even if it still tastes good. Allen & Son was right on the edge, but didn’t go too far. I also liked that it wasn’t too uniform — there were larger pieces of pork that hadn’t been completely shredded. Tasty bites!)

Why is Allen & Son’s BBQ so good? Well, fewer and fewer pit-masters do what Keith Allen still does: chop hickory wood and slow-smoke pork shoulders starting in the wee hours of the morning. Many popular places have moved to quicker, cheaper methods like pre-cooking the meat and then popping it in the smoker for just a short time or using electric smokers that mete out smoke from processed chips. These modern techniques sometimes produce good ‘cue, but they never produce the transcendent pork that Allen & Son serves.

The Sides

The hushpuppies are excellent: crunchy, coarse cornmeal batter fried up crispy. The slaw is wet and a little creamy — I’m partial to a drier slaw — but it is well-seasoned and ultimately successful. Since the basic sides are so good, I never seem to get around to trying the others, but their menu seems less extensive than The Barbecue Joint’s. Dessert is another Allen & Son claim to fame, but I’ve never had enough room left for it after a BBQ meal there. Keith Allen makes many of the desserts himself while the meat is smoking.

In the End

Allen & Son is a mandatory stop on any North Carolina BBQ itinerary. You will be hard-pressed to find better pulled pork anywhere — it is that good. I hear you can phone in an order to have it shipped to you overnight if you must have your fix but you can’t make it to Chapel Hill. It just might be worth it.

630 Weaver Dairy Rd.
Chapel Hill, NC
(919) 932-7904

The Nutshell

BBQ with a gourmet twist. Good but not great pulled pork, delicious sides, delectable desserts.

The Details

The Barbecue Joint in Chapel Hill was the second BBQ stop in our recent field trip to my home state. We sneaked out of lunch at the conference we were attending (the nominal reason for this BBQ junket) with a mix of native North Carolinians and curious Californian friends to sample the fare at this unassuming spot in a strip mall on Weaver Dairy Road. (Amusingly, the place is right next a Curves fitness center. The owner told us that the Curves used to be a Weight Watchers until the frustrated members, tempted by the smell of BBQ wafting over, decided to move their franchise elsewhere.)

The first thing we noticed about the ‘Cue Joint was a decidedly unorthodox menu. Of course they serve the usual pulled pork platters and sandwiches, but they also include such non-pork delicacies as duck confit and sweet potato bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Hey, no problem there — I’m all for gourmet touches as long as the BBQ is up to snuff.

We sat in the sun on the patio and sipped sweet tea (a delicious clue that they hadn’t strayed too far from Carolina orthodoxy) while we waited for our meat to arrive. We weren’t disappointed: the pork was tender and juicy, with a nice pink smoke ring testifying to its time in the smoker. The sauce was typical eastern North Carolina vinegar-based. My only complaint about the ‘cue was that it lacked the full complement of smoky goodness — there were no visible “outside brown” bits, the chewy pieces from the outside of the shoulder that pack much of the flavor.

As for the sides, the baked beans were spectacular, sweet and spicy with hefty chunks of ham. The slaw was light and crunchy, a perfect complement to BBQ. The thick-cut fried green tomatoes had a tasty cornmeal crust fried up right and crispy, a substantial improvement on the adequate but unremarkable version at Mama Dip’s. And in a subtle but inspired touch, the BBQ entrees came with a few apparently homemade sweet pickled cucumber slices. Usually I’m a dill pickle partisan, but these pickles made me reconsider my stance. They were crisp and lightly sweet, not soggy and cloying like store-bought sweet pickle rounds.

Just as we finished our meal, the owner came out with three desserts on the house: the sweet potato bread pudding with whiskey sauce we’d been eyeing earlier, a slice of key lime pie, and some banana pudding. (We hadn’t even dropped the bbq.isgoodfor.us name yet, so chalk it up to genuine hospitality!) The key lime pie was well-executed but perhaps the least notable of the three. The banana pudding hit the spot; it’s a North Carolina classic with chunks of banana and vanilla wafer cookies. The real superstar, though, was the bread pudding and its delightful interplay of caramelized sweet potato goodness with whiskey fire. We passed around all three plates, but the bread pudding drew the most longing stares as it made the journey around the table. (Will there be one more bite for me?)

Add the Barbecue Joint to the list of must-eats in Chapel Hill. It’s not quite the same genre as old stalwarts such as Allen and Son’s, but there’s room for both under the BBQ big tent.

In short, I’m very pleased. It was a 9lb (give or take) beast that I cooked for about 8-8.5 hours. I dry rubbed it with a simple mix of salt, a lot of pepper, dried thyme and dried oregano. I followed a technique that lets the brisket smoke open for about 4 hours. The you wrap it in aluminum foil. It’s not air-tight, so you still get smoke penetrating, though probably less. The benefit is you get more of a roasting effect and it makes the thing darn tender. And tender it was – most, flavorful, nice smoke ring.

Unfortunately, a lot of the meaty joy was counteracted whe I committed a cardinal brisket sin. I sliced it the wrong way. I sliced with the grain instead of across the grain. It matters. A with-the-grain slice has more integrity since the fibers aren’t broken – it will seem tougher even though the meat is moist and tender. Cut across the grain (or on a diagonal) as every good BBQ place does, and all of a sudden it seems to fall apart, fork-tender. Oh well, live and learn.

Here’s the time lapse version of the cooking process.

Beginning:

Middle:

End:

Yum.

Oh how I love my wife Tamar. She bought me a brand new smoking rig for Christmas. I’m so happy I could cry. It’s the Char-Broil Silver Smoker – smoker, bbq, and grill. What a beast. This thing is made of solid cast iron – it weighs a ton. It seems very well put together – very robust fittings, ceramic coated cooking grates. The legs seem a bit wobbly considering how heavy it is, but we’ll see. Note that there should be a shelf on the front of it, but we decided to water seal the planks first because Tamar read some complains about mold and rot. The key feature here is the offset firebox. Basically, light a fire in the smaller chamber on the left, add wood chunks, and fill the smoker chamber with meaty goodness. The indirect heat is just what you want, and the chimney on the opposite side draws smoke through past the meat. Of course, I could just light a fire in the main chamber and grill normally. And did I mention this thing is BIG? I could fit 3 or 4 giant briskets, maybe 10 racks of ribs, a whole pig, 3 turkeys, a giant salmon, the largest block of tofu ever made. You name it. I’m giddy.

So, of course I had to try it out. As Tamar reminded me, becoming a great smoker is mostly about getting in tune with your equipment, so I didn’t have high expectations for the first time. I bought a nice, meaty rack of gourmet back ribs from Ver Brugge for the occasion. I gave ‘em a dry rub, sat ‘em in there for about 3 hours under mesquite smoke. Every now and then I spritz’d them with a special recipe made mostly from Worstershire sauce. While cooking I had the joy of opening the smoker chamber to spritz my ribs, only to find that I couldn’t actually see the ribs because the smoke was so thick. YES!

Anyway, they turned out amazing. Tamar thinks the best tasting ribs I’ve ever made. Very smoky, tender and juicy. I could have left them on for another hour or two – the meatiest part of the rack in the middle was not as tender as the ends. I also should have trimmed the fat a bit better. I like to leave a good amount of fat on – it’s what makes the meat juicy and tender, and imparts a ton of flavor. If you smoke it right, a lot of the fat should render off. But there was a big thick layer of it along one part of the ribs, and I should have trimmed it. Oh well.

Unfortunately, the smoker doesn’t come with a thermometer for the main chamber – it’s an added accessory for $9.99. Well worth the price, I think. I had to call Char-Broil directly to mail order it, but it wasn’t a hassle.

The verdict? Delicious. Now if only the Finns were into slow smoking — reindeer barbecue would be a real treat.

This is a really nice smoker to work with. The whole thing is heavy cast iron, retains heat very well. Light a batch of coals in the bottom tray, and they’ll last for at least 4 hours. We added soaked mesquite wood chunks every now and then. The really brilliant part of this smoker design is the heavy cast iron water tray that slides in just above the fire. Fill it with water (and later on beer, wine, etc.) and it’ll temper the heat perfectly for the racks above. The lowest rack stays at a near perfect 250 degrees, while the two above average 225 and 200 respectively. Of course, after hours of collecting drippings, the liquid that’s left in the pan also makes for an ideal sauce base.

Check out the smoke ring on this beautiful tri-tip that Darren smoked. One interesting thing Darren does – he sears the steak on the grill for a few minutes before putting it in the smoker. I think this is a good idea for beef especially, since it helps to seal in the juices. When I do a pork shoulder, I like to keep the fire at 350 or so for the first 30 minutes, which accomplishes a similar thing – crusty brown outside to seal juices.

A few days later we smoked again, this time pork ribs and a lamb shoulder. The ribs were quite good – nicely smokey, very tender. We got them from Darren and Christine’s friend Cooper who runs a pig farm. This pork is so tender, flavorful, and nicely marbled. Check out Cooper’s operation, Sweet Briar Farms – you can order all kinds of pork products over the web. If you live around Eugene, also keep an eye out for them at local farmers markets.

The lamb shoulder was interesting. (unfortunately, no pictures) We rubbed it with salt, pepper, a little cumin. Then we cut little slits in the meat and shoved about 20 garlic gloves in there. We smoked it for about 6 hours, which wasn’t quite enough, but it shredded nicely and made some tasty, tasty sandwiches. The smoking tempered that gamey lamb flavor, but it was still there. Very interesting.

1. Find a good butcher. Calling around we found that prices varied somewhat, and quality (I’m sure) as well. If you live in the East Bay, order from Ver Brugge. Ask for Jerry – he’s the nicest guy. He tells me their pig supplier is a small farm in Canada that’s ‘as close to organic as you can get.’
2. Make sure you are ordering (and paying) for the dressed weight of the pig, not the live weight. Dressed weight is the weight after the pig has been completely prepared for your consumption. You can guess what live weight is.
3. Depending on who you ask and how big a pig you get, plan on 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of carcass per person. That’ll turn out to be in the ballpark of 1/2 lb of meat per person.
4. Our pig is costing us in the neighborhood of $2.80 per pound. Remember that cleaning and preparation is built into that cost, and it’s not small chore. The butcher has to take out the guts and (more annoyingly), since the skin will be left on make sure that it is completely clean and smooth. Often this will require them to actually get out the Bic and shave the damn thing.
5. Ask your butcher to cut off the feet no matter how you cook the pig. We’re doing butterfly style instead of rotisserie, so we’ve also asked them to cut the breast bone for us and take the head off. Strictly speaking, you don’t have to take the head off for butterfly, but for a variety of reasons (including the gross-out factor), we’ve opted to do it. You’ll only lose 5ish pounds of meat by cutting off the head. The part I’m really sad about losing, though, is those cheeks. Pork cheeks are heaven.

The Nutshell

The best cooked ribs in town, and everything else is good but not great. Don’t expect much from the side dishes.

The Place

KC’s, on San Pablo just South of Dwight, looks from the outside like a hole in the wall. Inside, though, it has more character than any other BBQ place around. The large and rustic dining room is chock full (inexplicably) with vintage stoves, washing machines and the like, and there’s a giant wagon cart in the middle. Its really a great place to sit, though – Jane’s thinking of having a party there.

The Meat

Ribs are the thing at KC, so of course I’m happy. Andrew and I agree that KC’s smokes the best ribs of anywhere in town. The meat is obviously very high quality – tender but dense and good to bite into, nicely marbled but not fatty, very little gristle. They must take a lot of care smoking these ribs to pink perfection, though they wouldn’t give away any of their secrets.

The Sauce

Better than average, for sure, but not as good as Flint’s sauce, which remains our favorite by far. It’s a good consistency, fairly tomato-ey but with a bit of dark molasses sweetness to match. Usually they ask you to pick the spicyness, though this last time we were there they didn’t ask. If they do, get the medium – it’s not too spicy, but it builds a little over time.

The Sides

Your entree will come with beans and potato salad but don’t get too excited about either. The beans are almost certainly canned, and the potato salad tastes like an upsettingly sweet dill pickle.