Barbecue Bros Book Club

Barbecue Bros Book Club: Foods That Make You Say Mmm-mmm by Bob Garner

/ Barbecue Bros / 4 Comments

IMG_2306

Not that we’re anywhere close to being qualified enough to evaluate books but more so as a public service announcement we will periodically discuss barbecue and barbecue-related books.

7860392976_img_0192
Monk: Bob Garner’s latest book, published in 2014, isn’t strictly a barbecue book per se. Instead it focuses on various favorite foods and drinks of North Carolina, though naturally barbecue is featured being that it is the state’s most popular food.

The barbecue chapter of the book covers the basics in terms of the history of barbecue in the state and how the two dominant styles of barbecue came to be. Where it does cover some new territory compared with previous barbecue books from Garner is the introduction of different styles of smokers into NC, comparing offset and rotisserie smokers imported from the midwest and Texas to the traditional NC brick barbecue pits with its direct heat method. Instead of an exhaustive list of all barbecue restaurants (which Garner previously covered in his Big Book of Barbecue), he instead showcases just four restaurants – one from the east (Skylight Inn), one from the piedmont (Lexington Barbecue), a new-style joint that serves beer while still smoking over wood (Hillsborough BBQ Company), and a regional chain (Smithfield’s Chicken and BBQ).

The book does contain recipes as well, and I particularly like that the recipe for “charcoal cooked pulled pork” is for a Lexington-style barbecue recipe smoked on a Weber charcoal grill.

The subsequent chapters of the book cover foods often eaten with barbecue like brunswick stew and collards as well as desserts such as banana pudding and peach cobbler. This is smartly done by Garner.

As for other barbecue-related items, the book also has later chapters on barbecue sauces found in stores, Texas Pete hot sauce, as well as soft drinks created in NC. Longtime readers and followers will note how much I love Cheerwine or Sun Drop with barbecue, and of course the history of those are featured.

“Foods That Make You Say Mmm-mmm” lovingly explores the food and drinks of North Carolina in a way that only a native North Carolinian can. It is very much a Bob Garner book – and that’s a very good thing.

7860389568_img_0193

Barbecue Bros Book Club: Carolina ‘Cue by Our State Magazine

/ Barbecue Bros / 2 Comments

IMG_2306

Not that we’re anywhere close to being qualified enough to evaluate books but more so as a public service announcement we will periodically discuss barbecue and barbecue-related books.

IMG_1750

Monk: Carolina ‘Cue is a collection of articles that appeared in Our State Magazine along with the full color photos that originally accompanied them. The stories move from west to east across the state as you read the book and while the heavy hitters – Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge, Lexington Barbecue, Stamey’s Barbecue, Allen & Son Barbeque, etc – get some coverage in the form of photos between articles, the articles themselves focus on some of the lesser-known joints in the state. And perhaps this makes sense, as the big guys have been covered the most both nationally and locally, so Our State is able to focus on the other places that haven’t had as much exposure.

Each article doesn’t focus on the food so much but rather the story behind the family and the building that makes the food – after all, it is subtitled “the people, places, and plates behind our favorite tradition”. No writer is featured more than twice but there is a cohesive voice and tone from article to article. At just under 100 pages, I breezed through the book in two short sittings but you could easily do it in one.

Carolina ‘Cue was compiled as of 2014 and features 27 restaurants in total (17 in articles, 10 in photos). In the table of contents it states that if you don’t see your favorite then they haven’t gotten there – yet. Here’s hoping a second version of the book can be published in another couple of years to continue the great storytelling project of the state’s favorite food.

Barbecue Bros Book Club: Barbecue by John Shelton Reed

/ Barbecue Bros / 4 Comments

IMG_2306

Not that we’re anywhere close to being qualified enough to evaluate books but more so as a public service announcement we will periodically discuss barbecue and barbecue-related books.

IMG_8198

Monk: The Savor the South cookbook series from the University of North Carolina Press covers one “beloved food or tradition” of the South at a time (like bourbon or pecans – those books are written by Charlotte Observer food writer Kathleen Purvis). One of the latest in the series from 2016 is “Barbecue” from John Shelton Reed, who along with his wife wrote one of my favorite barbecue books ever, “Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue” back in 2008.

Reed acknowledges that the world doesn’t necessarily need another barbecue cookbook – heck, he himself already owns a couple dozen – which is why I appreciate that he attempts to make this particular cookbook more educational than the average one. In his usual dry humor tone, Reed gives a baseline of the history of southern barbecue in the Introduction chapter before exploring the variations in meats and sauces in the subsequent chapters. Finally, he moves on to sides and ultimately desserts by the end of the book.

I may or may not get around to the trying some of the recipes, but the history and education is what really makes “Barbecue” a good read.

Barbecue Bros Book Club: The One True Barbecue by Rien Fertel

/ Barbecue Bros / 1 Comment

IMG_2306

Not that we’re anywhere close to being qualified enough to evaluate books but more so as a public service announcement we will periodically discuss barbecue and barbecue-related books.

IMG_8196A collection of profiles on whole hog pitmasters throughout the southeast, “The One True Barbecue” by Rien Fertel is an enjoyable if not somewhat controversial read. In particular, Fertel ruffled feathers with his chapters on Wilber Shirley and Ed Mitchell. He portrayed the former’s restaurant as a joint with a racial division of labor between the front of the house and the back and the latter as a marketing gimmick in overalls that cooks hogs in a non-traditional manner (hot and fast rather than the traditional low and slow). However fair Fertel’s representation may or may not be (and he is but one man with his opinion), the fact that he spoke with neither for the purposes of this book only added more embers to the burn barrel.

Fertel ties the profiles together through narrative, following his path from New Orleans to the Carolinas and back, with even a stop in Bushwick to visit Arrogant Swine. Each chapter not only explores the pitmaster(s) themselves but in some cases the history of an entire town with Ayden, NC and its two joints Skylight Inn and Bum’s. He particularly favors Scott’s-Parker’s Barbecue in Lexington, TN, visiting with pitmaster Ricky Parker in the first chapter and then his sons after his death in the last chapter. In between, Fertel visits 12 other whole hog joints in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, and the aforementioned Arrogant Swine in NY.

I enjoyed Fertel’s writing and found this to be a quick read that I devoured over just a few sittings. Fertel cut his teeth writing oral histories for The Southern Foodways Alliance, and his experience writing on southern food showed. A small complaint would be that the only color photographs are confined to a section at the center of the book – I would have loved to see them throughout as opposed to the smaller black and white ones within the chapters. In any case, I can’t recommend “The One True Barbecue” enough.

–Monk