Rodney Scott

billyreid:

craftsman

Pitmaster, Rodney Scott. Photos by Angie Mosier

During the last census, Hemingway, South Carolina, was recorded to have just under 500 residents; we’re willing to bet that Rodney Scott has fed each and every one of them.

Rodney is a force. His passion for life is evident in his commitment to community, his loyalty to his friends, his willingness to help his neighbors, and certainly in the food he prepares at Scott’s Bar-B-Que, his family’s longtime business, located in Hemingway, just 49 miles west of Myrtle Beach.

Rodney has cooked for Billy Reid countless times over the years and is as good and true a friend as ever we’ve known. And don’t even get us started on his BBQ, not to mention his special sauce. It’s life changing – and we like our BBQ, so we should know.

In November, the pit house behind Scott’s, where Rodney can smoke up to 14 hogs over his preferred wood mix of hickory, oak, and pecan, was lost to a fire. Though that setback didn’t slow Rodney down much as you might think, in a true testament to his friendship, the national group of chefs, restaurateurs, thinkers, and entrepreneurs that call themselves the Fatback Collective rallied to concoct a plan to help Rodney rebuild the pits and continue to feed and nourish his community.

Enter the Rodney in Exile BBQ Tour. Over the next two weeks, Rodney will be touring the southeast, stopping in Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham, Oxford, New Orleans, with a finale stop in Charleston to do what he does best with members of the Fatback Collective, who in addition to being very devoted friends also just happen to be some of the best chefs in the United States. (They’re all too humble to tell you that, but we can certainly brag on them.)

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Barbecue Rankings

How would you like to pack your bags and spend the next half-year doing nothing but traveling around the U.S., stopping at every barbecue restaurant from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine? At each ‘cue shack, the owner would skip forth from the kitchen bearing a platter of the house specialties for your delectation. As the months pass, the numbers grow. Before long, you will have eaten at several hundred barbecue restaurants. You can taste the individual ingredients in the sauce. Your tongue can actually tell how many hours a rib has been in the smoker. If the potato salad isn’t perfect, you lean to the left and surrender it to a silver spittoon engraved “Boss.”

This is the (somewhat exaggerated) reality for Johnny Fugitt, a St. Louisan who sold his house and began the next phase of his life as a barbecue nomad.

Since last October, Johnny Fugitt has definitely had my dream job: travel across America, try all of the barbecue, and rank the restaurants.

(h/t)

Barbecue Rankings

Top 10 Austin Barbecue Joints: Top 10 Austin Barbecue Joints

burntendstx:

Here’s what the Austin Chronicle considers to be the Top 10 BBQ joints in Austin. Burnt Ends agrees with almost all of it.

Top 10 Austin Barbecue Joints: Top 10 Austin Barbecue Joints